A military court Thursday convicted a U.S. Army tank company commander of a lesser criminal charge in connection with the shooting death of a wounded Iraqi last year.

Capt. Rogelio “Roger” Maynulet was found guilty of assault with intent to commit voluntary manslaughter, which carries a maximum of 10 years in prison. Prosecutors had sought conviction on a more serious charge of assault with intent to commit murder, which carried a 20-year maximum

.

Read more…

In a scathing report, a presidential commission said Thursday that America's spy agencies were “dead wrong” in most of their judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction before the war and that the United States knows “disturbingly little” about the threats posed by many of the nation's most dangerous adversaries.

The commission called for dramatic change to prevent future failures. It outlined 74 recommendations and said President Bush could implement most of them without action by Congress. It urged Bush to give broader powers to John Negroponte, the new director of national intelligence, to deal with challenges to his authority from the CIA, Defense Department or other elements of the nation's 15 spy agencies.

It also called for sweeping changes at the FBI to combine the bureau's counterterrorism and counterintelligence resources into a new office.

Read the full report here.

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

Three Romanian journalists and another individual taken hostage by an unidentified group in Iraq were shown on Wednesday on a video broadcast by the Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera.

Two hooded men were seen pointing their weapons at the four visibly scared hostages, who were seated on the ground.
[…]
Marie-Jeanne Ion, 32, a reporter for Prima TV, her cameraman Sorin Miscoci, 30, and Eduard Ohanesian, 37, of the Romania Libera newspaper were reported missing by the Romanian foreign ministry earlier this week.

The channel said that the three journalists identified themselves one-by-one on the tape, adding that the kidnappers had not made clear any demands to free their captives.

There was no immediate confirmation of the identity of the fourth captive shown on the tape, but US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick has said that a fourth person, a US national, went missing as the same time as the Romanians.

According to Romanian media, he is an Iraqi-American businessman, Mohammed Munaf, who financed the travel of the Romanians and acted as their guide in Baghdad.

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

Iraqi insurgents have opened fire on a US military patrol in the city of Mosul.

Six people were killed in a subsequent exchange of gunfire between the insurgents and US soldiers, including a woman and child.

What Reuters doesn't want you to know, from the San Francisco Chronicle :

Witnesses reported a clash between four insurgents and American forces at a checkpoint in Mosul in the north. A local police official told the Associated Press that the four insurgents jumped from a car and began shooting, killing six Iraqis and wounding eight others before being killed by return fire. U.S. military officials said they had no information on the attack.

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

Two suicide car bombers have killed seven people in attacks in northern Iraq, amid continuing violence in the region.

In the first attack, three Iraqi national guards and two civilians were killed in an attack on a checkpoint south of Kirkuk.

In another attack, a suicide car bomber detonated his bomb beside an Iraqi Army patrol in Samarra, killing two soldiers.

Meanwhile in the capital Baghdad, a gunman has shot dead an American soldier, then escaped into a crowd of Iraqis.

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

A United Nations (UN) food expert has attacked the American-led occupation of Iraq, saying that since Saddam Hussein was ousted the number of Iraqi children suffering from malnutrition has almost doubled.

The expert, Jean Ziegler, was speaking at the annual meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva.

Mr Ziegler says malnutrition is increasing in Iraq.

His report claims that when Saddam was overthrown around 4 per cent of Iraqi children under five were going hungry.

Now that figure has almost doubled to 7.7 per cent.

Mr Ziegler blames the situation on the war led by coalition forces.

Unfortunately, the raw figures Herr Ziegler mentions don't seem to be available online.

UPDATE : From the San Francisco Chronicle :

The U.S. delegation and other coalition countries declined to respond to his presentation, which compiled the findings of studies conducted by other specialists.

Ziegler did not mention the role of Iraq's insurgency in the nutrition problem, something often cited by aid groups.

The figures below, also from the UN, would appear to show some inconsistency here. But they're from the Food and Agriculture Organisation, not the Human Rights Commission (which even Kofi Annan thinks should be disbanded as “beyond repair”).

The apparent inconsistency is explained by another report from the UN, this time the World Health Organisation.

Between 1991 and 2002, acute malnutrition rates (low weight for height) among children under the age of five in southern and central Iraq rose to 11.0% in 1996 and then fell to 4.0% in 2002 . Rates for stunting (low height for age, reflecting chronic malnutrition) peaked in 1996 at 32.0%, and then declined to 23.1% in 2002.

The figures from the WHO (pdf) are as follows:

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

An Al Qaeda linked militant group posted videotape on the Internet on Tuesday of the execution of three men who said they were Iraqis working for a Jordanian haulage firm under contract to the US military.

The footage posted by the Army of Ansar al-Sunna showed three men “confessing” to work for the “Jordanian Akram Shaheen firm which is contracted for US forces” and expressing “regret” for their actions.

The trio were then taken to an open space where two hooded gunmen shot them dead.

From Reuters via The Australian :

…Colonel Abdul Karim Fahid, the chief of Balat al-Shuhada police station, was gunned down with his driver in Dura, a defence ministry source said.
[…]
…a policeman and a municipal cleaner were killed when a police patrol hit a roadside bomb planted in a garbage dump in Al-Amil neighbourhood in south-western Baghdad, police said.

Nearby Yarmuk hospital said it had received one dead and seven wounded, most of them police, from the attack.

Hospital staff said it had also received the bodies of two pilgrims shot in Mahawil, south of the capital, as they walked to the shrine city of Karbala for a major Shiite religious festival.

Police in nearby Mussayab said two of their comrades had been killed and 10 people were wounded, most of them policemen, when a booby-trapped bicycle left on the side of the road exploded.

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

A suicide car bomber has blown up his vehicle near a crowd of Shiite Muslim pilgrims, killing at least seven people and wounding nine.

Police in Kerbala say the attack occurred on the road leading from Hilla, 100 kilometres south of Baghdad.

On the Al Qaeda side, that is. The exact opposite of the Coalition.

From the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation):

Foreign fighters entering Iraq in recent months make up a growing percentage of insurgents battling US troops and the country's fledgling security force, according to a senior US military commander.

In an interview with CNN in Mosul, General John Abizaid - the commander of US Central Command which covers Iraq - said that while most insurgents appear to be Iraqis, “the percentage of foreign fighters over the past several months seems to have increased”.

He also said the insurgents' ranks likely include “former Baathist criminals”.

“It seems to be pretty well established that they tend to cross over from Syria, although we know that there have been some infiltrations from the Saudi border, there have been some from the Iranian border,” General Abizaid said.

“The Syrians are not doing everything we've asked them to do,” he said, adding that Syria's intelligence services are not being aggressive enough in dismantling “facilitation cells” inside Syria.

In a separate CNN interview, George Casey, the commanding US general of the Multi-National Force in Iraq, told the news network that current insurgent assaults were running at between 50 and 60 attacks a day.

And on a related note, from Reuters via The Australian :

“There are tens of Saudis in jail because either they wanted to go to Iraq, were caught trying to get in or were collecting money for people going to Iraq,” said Mansour Nogaidan, a former militant who is now a critic of Saudi Arabia's strict Wahhabi school — blamed by some for inspiring anti-Western violence.

Militants have found other routes, mostly through Syria. Recent successes by Saudi security forces in their battle with al Qaeda militants may have pushed more fighters toward Iraq.

One senior Saudi security official recently told a private gathering there may now be 1,500 Saudis in Iraq, Nogaidan said.

Fares Houzam, a researcher on al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia, said he estimated up to 2,500 Saudis have traveled to Iraq since the U.S. invasion in March 2003, 400 of whom may have died there.

“Every day somewhere in Saudi Arabia, in the north or the south, there is a family accepting condolences,” he said.

Note: Also available at the “Opinion Journal” and Chrenkoff, (as well as Winds of Change.NET's hyperlinked version, here). Big thanks to James Taranto and Joe Katzman, and to everyone who contributes and supports this series.

Something strange took place a few days ago in Doura, a working-class suburb of Baghdad. So much so that even the “New York Times” had to sit up and take notice:

Just before noon today, a carpenter named Dhia saw a troop of masked gunmen with grenades coming towards his shop and decided he had had enough.

As the gunmen emerged from their cars, Dhia and his young relatives shouldered their own AK-47's and opened fire, police and witnesses said. In the fierce gun battle that followed, three of the insurgents were killed, and the rest fled just after the police arrived. Two of Dhia's young nephews and a bystander were injured, the police said.

“We attacked them before they attacked us,” Dhia, 35, his face still contorted with rage and excitement, said in a brief exchange at his shop a few hours after the battle. He did not give his last name. “We killed three of those who call themselves the mujahedeen. I am waiting for the rest of them to come and we will show them.”

The “New York Times” was wrong - this was most certainly not “the first time that private citizens are known to have retaliated successfully against insurgents” (see, for example, this story from January and this one from a few days ago, also quoted below) - but then again, as far as Iraq is concerned, this was far from the first time that the “NYT” has caught onto a trend long apparent to many other observers.

As the old saying goes, one swallow does not make a spring, even if a very angry one and armed with AK-47, but the indications are that in the new, post-election environment, more and more ordinary Iraqis are standing up to be counted in the fight for the future of their country. Violence, hardship and frustration there are still aplenty in Iraq today, but a lot of positive developments have also been taking place for quite some time now. Below, a round-up of some stories you might have missed over the past two weeks. Maybe the “New York Times” will report on these trends in a few months' time.

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

Arthur Chrenkoff covers positive news out of Iraq, while many members of the “mainstream” “media” ignore it. Roger L. Simon has been on the Enronesque U.N. Oil-for-FoodPalaces scandal since Day 1, and lately he's been working with Wall St. Journal reporter Claudia Rosett, one of the few MSM reporters to actually dig into this multi-billion dollar scandal. He writes:

“This blog has new information from sources close to the investigation of the United Nations Oil-for-Food Scandal by Paul Volcker's Independent Inquiry Committee. After some delay, the committee is releasing its preliminary results at noon Tuesday. This report may reveal, among other things, startling information tending to indicate Secretary General Kofi Annan had more knowledge of, or was closer to, his son Kojo's activities with Cotecna - the company whose role in the scandal seems so pervasive - than previously thought…..”

There will be follow-ups from both Simon and Rosett on the rest of Mouselli's testimony, but they do offer some previews. Looks like a bombshell is about to hit. It will be interesting to see if the liberal media covers this, and how.

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 makeup of the new Iraqi government remains uncertain as the winners of the January elections continue to try and develop a deal that is acceptable to the two-thirds of delegates required to get the new government off the ground. The National Assembly will meet again on Tuesday to continue the process.

• Gen. Waleed Kashmoula was the anti-corruption director in Mosul. He was killed this past week by insurgents. At his funeral, insurgents attacked the mourners. Sminklemeyer knew Gen. Waleed and offers a great tribute, plus a question - what type of people attack a funeral?

• Arthur Chrenkoff takes a look at another piece that wonders if the Iraqi insurgency is on the downswing. It is almost certainly too early to know if the resistance is merely down or actually running through a bad patch, but the fact the media is now considering the possibility of the resistance losing is a significant victory for Iraq. LT Smash points out that Iraq's insurgents may be seeking an 'exit strategy,' - more potential Good News from Iraq (which is also up).

• The Iraqi Interim government reports that U.S. and Iraqi forces teamed up to kill 85 militants at a possible training camp near Baghdad. The precise numbers of enemy dead are unconfirmed, but the fact the raid was a result of citizen tips, indicating that ordinary Iraqis do not fear the insurgency's ability for reprisals. (Hat tip: The Indepundit.) But Iraq'd reports on claims that the camp is still in operation and that claimed casualty figures were markedly lower than initially reported.

Other Topics Today Include: American MPs shred an insurgent ambush; student strike in Basrah; raids in Karbala; reconstruction highlights; fisking the AP; learning about democracy in Iraq; Carnival of the Liberated; goodbye to a milblogger.

Read the Rest…

From Reuters via The Australian :

The al-Qaeda wing in Iraq today said it had shot dead a senior Interior Ministry official kidnapped last month and posted a video of the apparent killing on the internet.

The video showed a man, who identified himself as Colonel Riyadh Katei Aliwi, sitting on a chair with his hands bound behind his back.
[…]
A militant was later shown shooting the man in the head after reading a statement saying he had been condemned to death by the group's own Islamic court as “an apostate fighting God and his Prophet (Mohammad)”.

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

The US Army's abuse of detainees in Iraq went beyond Abu Ghraib prison and included brutal beatings of suspects as well as forcing them to do physical exercises until exhaustion, US military documents made public say.

More than 1,200 pages of documents were released late on Friday in response to a court order that instructed the US Department of Defence to comply with a Freedom of Information (FOI) request filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other human rights groups.

The documents include evidence that forced physical exertions may have caused the death of at least one detainee held by the US Army in the northern Iraqi town of Mosul.

There are also reports of brutal beatings and sworn statements that soldiers were told to “beat the f… out of” prisoners.

“These documents provide further evidence that the torture of detainees was much more widespread than the Government has acknowledged,” ACLU attorney Jameel Jaffer said.
[…]
Many of the documents focus on the 311th Military Intelligence Battalion, whose task was to collect information on Islamist insurgents and hiding associates of the deposed regime of former president Saddam Hussein.

Military investigators reported to their superiors that “abuse of detainees in some form or other was an acceptable practice and was demonstrated to the inexperienced infantry guards almost as guidance”, the papers show.

In a bid to extract information, guards and interrogators “were striking the detainees,” the investigators went on to say, while other intelligence personnel and translators “engaged in physical torture”.

However, no punitive action was recommended against the battalion commander.

The victims include a high-school boy, whose jaw was broken in detention as a result of which his mouth was wired shut and he could eat only through a straw.

The victim was told to say that he had fallen down and no one beat him, according to the documents.

The Army investigators concluded that the jaw was broken either as a result of a blow by a US soldier or a collapse due to “complete muscle failure” from strenuous physical exercises he had been ordered to perform.

The investigative team also saw soldiers kicking blindfolded and handcuffed detainees several times in the sides while yelling profanities at them, one of the documents said.

If the report is accurate, unlike the Abu Ghraib situation, which involved (physically) harmless obscenities and petty thieves rather than physical torture during interrogation of war criminals (and which was swiftly dealt with by US Army internal investigation) this is more serious. A lot more. People were actually injured, and investigators reported evidence of attempted cover-ups.

These documents may go some way to explaining the various unpublicised courts martial subsequent to the Abu Ghraib publicity circus.

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

Iraqi soldiers, backed by US helicopters, are reported to have seized 131 suspects in a dawn raid on insurgents planning attacks on the holy city of Kerbala.

The Defence Ministry says troops also retrieved tonnes of explosives.

The Defence Minister, Hazim al-Shaalan, described it as a very successful operation based on intensive surveillance.

Several suspected militants were reported killed in the operation, which began late on Friday and culminated in the dawn raid just outside Kerbala, about 100 kilometres south-west of Baghdad.

Officials say say those arrested included foreigners using fake Iraqi identification papers.

Three tonnes of TNT explosive, hundreds of rocket-propelled grenade launchers and at least three prepared car bombs were also found.

From Reuters via The Australian :

US military police have discovered two long tunnels dug with scraps of metal and wood leading out of the largest detention facility in Iraq, military officials said today.

The tunnels – one about 200 metres long and the other about 92 metres long – led out of cell blocks at Camp Bucca, a US-run facility near the southern Iraq town of Umm Qasr, where more than 6000 detainees are held.

They were discovered on Thursday, before anyone had a chance to escape, Lieutenant Colonel Guy Rudisill, spokesman for detainee operations in Iraq, told Reuters.

The longer tunnel ran about 4 metres to 5 metres underground and was wide enough for a large man to crawl through. It had completely cleared the prison's security fences, while the other one had not reached out of the compound.

“Thanks to some good detective work, we managed to find them before anyone escaped,” Rudisill said.

Updating a previous post, about some Kentucky MPs who put the cleaners through an Al Qaeda ambush. Many soldiers in these kinds of unit are female, and this unit was no exception.

From the blog Blackfive comes an after action report.

After three minutes of sustained fire, a squad of enemy moved forward toward the disabled and suppressed trucks. Each of the enemy had hand-cuffs and were looking to take hostages for ransom or worse, to take those three wounded US soldiers for more internet beheadings.

About this time, three armored Hummers that formed the MP Squad under call sign Raven 42, 617th MP Co, Kentucky National Guard, assigned to the 503rd MP Bn (Fort Bragg), 18th MP Bde, arrived on the scene like the cavalry. The squad had been shadowing the convoy from a distance behind the last vehicle, and when the convoy trucks stopped and became backed up from the initial attack, the squad sped up, paralleled the convoy up the shoulder of the road, and moved to the sound of gunfire.

Confident of their success, the Jihadis filmed the whole thing as a propaganda exercise. The quality isn't good though, as their carefully executed ambush (with odds of 4:1 in their favour) soon turned decidedly “pear-shaped”. The film (like one of the Jihadis) was captured, and is available as a 5 MB download. The video ends abruptly with an armoured Hummer coming into the picture just as the Jihadis are starting to advance while shouting “Allahu Ackbar!”. It's not known whether the cameraman was one of the score or more killed, or the dozen or so that escaped.

The team leader sergeant—she claims four killed by aimed M4 shots.

Winds Of Change has links to video of interviews with the MPs concerned.

And a couple of suicide bombers too. From the AFP via The Australian :

One bomber blew up his minibus next to the Modern Village police station, 55 kilometres south of the capital, killing two civilians and wounding 19, most of them pilgrims, police and hospital sources said.

Two hours earlier another bomber blew his vehicle at an Iraqi army checkpoint near the Latifiyah bridge wounding three soldiers and two children, army and hospital sources said.

“We heard the man scream Allahu Akbar (God is greatest) before blowing himself up,” said a man at the scene who gave his name as Abu Mustapha.

Earlier police said another soldier was killed and three wounded when a car bomb exploded near their checkpoint in Iskandariyah…
[…]
In further violence, Colonel Salman Mohammed Hassan, a brigadier general in the old Iraqi army, was killed by gunmen as he left a funeral at a mosque in Baghdad Jadida, security sources said.

Another colonel, Sirajeddin Abdullah, who is attached to defence ministry in Baghdad, was kidnapped by gunmen as he drove up to his hometown of Kirkuk, the commander of Iraqi forces in the northern oil city, General Anwar Hamad Amin, said.

From the Financial Times :

Many of Iraq's predominantly Sunni Arab insurgents would lay down their arms and join the political process in exchange for guarantees of their safety and that of their co-religionists, according to a prominent Sunni politician.

Sharif Ali Bin al-Hussein, who heads Iraq's main monarchist movement and is in contact with guerrilla leaders, said many insurgents including former officials of the ruling Ba'ath party, army officers, and Islamists have been searching for a way to end their campaign against US troops and Iraqi government forces since the January 30 election.

“Firstly, they want to ensure their own security,” says Sharif Ali, who last week hosted a pan-Sunni conference attended by tribal sheikhs and other local leaders speaking on behalf of the insurgents.

Insurgent leaders fear coming out into the open to talk for fear of being targeted by US military or Iraqi security forces' raids, he said.

Sharif Ali distinguishes many Sunni insurgents, whom he says took up arms in reaction to the invasive raids in search of Ba'athist leaders and other “humiliations” soon after the 2003 war, from the radical jihadist branch associated with Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Unlike Mr Zarqawi's followers, who are thought to be responsible for the big suicide bomb attacks on Iraqi civilian targets, the other Sunni insurgents are more likely to plant bombs and carry out ambushes against security forces and US troops active near their homes.

Sharif Ali said the success of Iraq's elections dealt the insurgents a demoralising blow, prompting them to consider the need to enter the political process.

See Op-Ed from Feb 22nd on this subject. It wouldn't be the first time TCP provided accurate analysis and predictions a month before the events happened.

As past readers are no doubt aware, I've been a fairly vocal advocate of the view that powerful elements of the Iranian government (i.e. the ones that matter) are up to no good in Iraq. So it is with a great deal of interest that I read the ICG report on Iranian involvement in Iraq. I disagree with the particulars and some of the general pieces of the ICG report, as I did with their report on al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia). With that said. I have a lot of respect for the excellent and professional analysis the International Crisis Group (ICG) has done re: Algeria and Jemaah Islamiyyah (just to give 2 examples).

I decided to summarize report just as I did for the Norwegian Intelligence analysis on al-Qaeda in Europe. Then I'll discuss where our analysis diverges.

Please note that the fact that I disagree with this doesn't mean I think it's garbage, which is one of the reasons I'm going to the all trouble of summarizing the information contained therein.

• ICG: Iraqi Perceptions of the Iranian Threat
• Perceptions: Dan Darling Responds
• ICG: The Legacy of the Iraq-Iran War
• Legacy of the War: Dan Darling Responds
• ICG: Iran Interests and Presence in Iraq
• Iran's Presence: Dan Darling Responds
• ICG: Iraqi Political Parties
• Political Parties: Dan Darling Responds

UPDATE: Dan has Part 2 up now…

From Reuters :

The rate of U.S. deaths in the Iraq war has fallen sharply since the historic January elections as American military leaders tout progress against the insurgency but warn of a long road ahead.

March is on pace for the lowest monthly U.S. military death toll in 13 months, and the rate of American fatalities has fallen by about 50 percent since the parliamentary elections in which millions of Iraqis defied insurgents to cast ballots.

Defense analysts noted that while violence aimed at U.S. forces has declined in the 7 1/2 weeks since the election, insurgent attacks on Iraqis have escalated.
[…]
Since the election, the rate of U.S. military fatalities in Iraq has been about 1.7 per day, compared to about 3.4 per day from November to election day — a 50 percent drop. It is also about one-fifth lower than the rate experienced from the start of the war until the election.
[…]
The official Pentagon count released on Thursday listed 1,519 U.S. military deaths since the March 2003 invasion to topple President Saddam Hussein. It said another 11,442 U.S. troops have been wounded.

[Top US Commander in Iraq, Lt Gen] Casey said he was not ready to declare the elections a “tipping point” toward victory.

“We're in a good position following the elections, but … we have a lot of work ahead to get to our final objective in Iraq,” Casey said.

From The Australian :

In Baghdad, nine Iraqi soldiers were wounded when their patrol hit a roadside bomb on the capital's southern side, medical sources at Yarmuk hospital said.

In further violence north of the capital, a mortar attack on an Iraqi army barracks in Suleiman Beg killed one soldier and wounded a man who had come to visit one of his soldier sons, an army spokesman said.

Four mortar rounds fell on the camp about 7:00 am (1400 AEDT) causing heavy damage, he said.

Another mortar attack on a convoy near Tikrit, 180km north of Baghdad, destroyed a truck with Turkish license plates, police sources in the area said.

The fate of the driver was unknown.

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

A suicide bomber has blown up his car at a checkpoint in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, killing 11 Iraqi special police commandos.

The US military says nine police, two US soldiers and three civilians were injured.

The bomber blew himself up at a checkpoint in the east of the city.

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

Five women, four of whom worked for the US military, were found shot dead in a bullet-ridden car in western Baghdad.

Four of the women worked at a military base in the Iraqi capital, the 3rd Infantry Division said in a statement.

It gave no further details.

UPDATE: From the AFP via The Australian :

Five Iraqi cleaning ladies who worked on a US base south-east of Baghdad died when their car came under gunfire, an Iraqi official said today.

Gunmen travelling in a vehicle opened fire on the women in the Mashtal neighbourhood, east of the capital, on Thursday at 3:00 pm (2200 AEDT), the source who asked not to be identified said.

Family members of the women said they worked on a base in Rustumiyah.

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

The US Army is ordering more people to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan involuntarily from a seldom-used personnel pool as part of a mobilisation that began last year.

The soldiers are part of the Army's Individual Ready Reserve (IRR), which is made up of people who have completed their volunteer active-duty service commitment but remain eligible to be called back into uniform for years after returning to civilian life.

The Army, which is straining to maintain troop levels in Iraq, last June said it would summon more than 5,600 people on the IRR in an effort to have about 4,400 soldiers fit for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Some of the initial pool will be granted exemption requests for medical reasons and other hardships.

Lieutenant Colonel Pamela Hart says the Army has now increased the number of IRR soldiers it needs to about 4,650, which means a total of about 6,100 will get mobilisation orders.

From the AFP via The Australian :

Eighty insurgents were killed in an operation involving Iraqi and US forces against a suspected training camp near Lake Tharthar, north of Baghdad, an Iraqi army commander said.

”We have killed 80 fighters in a battle that lasted 17 hours. We lost 12 of our men including four officers,” said Colonel Mohammed Ibrahim with the Joint Coordination Centre, a rapid reaction unit that includes Iraqi and US forces.
[…]
About 240 members of the Iraqi ministry of interior's 1st Police Commando Battalion took part in the operation which started at about 11am (7pm AEDT) yesterday, Lieutenant Colonel Sarmad Hussein of the unit said.

He said there were Algerian, Saudi and Syrian fighters at the camp.

As the force approached the camp fighters opened fire, killing a number of Iraqi commandos and prompting US forces to send in reinforcements by air and ground, the US military said late yesterday.

There were no American casualties during the operation.

In other news, from the same article:

…nine Iraqis, including three soldiers, killed in attacks mainly in Sunni areas in the north yesterday.

Separately, at least seven Iraqi commandos died when they raided an insurgent base near Samarra with the backing of US troops, the US military said.

An Iraqi army general died of his wounds suffered in an attack on Sunday, and seven bodies of executed Iraqi soldiers were found in the north and south, police sources said.
[…]
Meanwhile, Iraqi police last week seized 30 men linked to terror groups and involved in three beheadings, the rape and murder of three women and the murders of 40 other people, General Adel Molan said.

Some of the men belonged to al-Qaeda and some to its sister group, Ansar al-Islam, the general said.

They were caught in Baladruz, 60km north-east of Baghdad.

From the New York Times :

Ordinary Iraqis rarely strike back at the insurgents who terrorize their country. But just before noon today, a carpenter named Dhia saw a troop of masked gunmen with grenades coming towards his shop and decided he had had enough.

As the gunmen emerged from their cars, Dhia and his young relatives shouldered their own AK-47's and opened fire, police and witnesses said. In the fierce gun battle that followed, three of the insurgents were killed, and the rest fled just after the police arrived. Two of Dhia's young nephews and a bystander were injured, the police said.

“We attacked them before they attacked us,” Dhia, 35, his face still contorted with rage and excitement, said in a brief exchange at his shop a few hours after the battle. He did not give his last name. “We killed three of those who call themselves the mujahedeen. I am waiting for the rest of them to come and we will show them.”

It was the first time that private citizens are known to have retaliated successfully against insurgents. There have been anecdotal reports of residents shooting at attackers after a bombing or assassination. But the gun battle today erupted in full view of half a dozen witnesses, including a Justice Ministry official who lives nearby.

So even the NYT couldn't ignore it, this time.

Something I was tipped off to by Blackfive, written by Lt. Currie over at Si Vis Pacem Para Bellum. He needs to get a better colour scheme, but there's nothing wrong with the writing in Turning Point as he describes a recent patrol in Iraq:

“On with the show, so progressing along Thunder6, and I found ourselves on point. This being the place where a man is the first in the formation, the first to move out, and for those of you who watch the old Star Trek, he was the dude in the red shirt that in the script was written as guy who gets killed in scene 1. When LTC F said I was to take point, I looked at him and said; “Sir, you can't put the black guy on point! Don't you watch TV?!?!”

There's lots more, of course, including an an accompanying photo album. Apparently, MilBlogger Major K is also linked to this unit - sounds like the basis for a TV series, if you ask me.

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

• Terrorists struck at Iraqi security forces and American forces from Mosul to Baghdad, killing six including the head of the Iraqi police's anti-corruption task force.

• Is the insurgency weakening? That's the claim of Marine General John F. Sattler, and Greg Djerian of The Belgravia Dispatch and Wretchard (reporting from his new digs) report on the claims.

• U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld warned the nascent Iraqi government to be careful not to weaken the Iraqi security forces that will be vital for defeating the insurgency. Rumsfeld also took a shot at the Turkish government, suggesting that the insurgency would have been far less successful had Turkey permitted the 4th Infantry Division to attack Iraq from the north.

Other Topics Today Include: Eyes on the War; terrorists' revenge; aftermath of a hotel bombing; reconstruction highlights; first meeting of Iraq's assembly; anti-terrorist protest; promoting real democracy; Carnival of the Liberated; diplomatic tiff with Jordan; anti-war protests; remembering the start of the war.

Read the Rest…

From the AFP via News Ltd :

At least 45 people have been killed in insurgent attacks across Iraq as Washington defended its decision to go to war on the second anniversary of the US-led invasion.

Why media bias as the heading? Well, there's double-counting from other AFP reports, and then there's who exactly was kiled:

Twenty-four Iraqi insurgents were killed and six coalition soldiers wounded in a firefight in a Baghdad suburb overnight, the US military said. “At approximately noon today (2am AEDT), 24 terrorists were killed and seven wounded when they attacked coalition forces on the outskirts of Baghdad. Six soldiers were injured during the attack,” the military said without elaborating.
[…]
In the northern city of Mosul, a suicide bomber with a fake badge slipped into a building housing the provincial anti-corruption department and blew himself up inside the office of its chief, General Walid Kachmoula, killing him and two of his guards.

As we reported earlier.

Attackers struck again hours later opening fire on the procession bearing Kachmoula's coffin as it made its way to the cemetery, killing two people and wounding 14, hospital sources said.
[…]
In another flashpoint town, gunmen attacked a police station in Baquba killing at least four policemen and wounding two as a truck bomb rammed into the entrance of an Iraqi army barrack nearby wounding 17 people, 14 of them soldiers, said a police source.

Four insurgents were killed in an ensuing firefight, added the source.

Making 30 “insurgents” killed, counting the suicide bombers.

In Kirkuk, a US soldier was killed and three others wounded when a roadside bomb hit their patrol, said the US military.

Again, as we reported earlier.

In Baiji, west of Kirkuk, a Turkish driver travelling in a convoy escorted by the US military was killed by small arms fire, said Lieutenant Colonel Hassan Salah.

A policeman was killed and three others wounded in a similar attack in Samarra, while the bodies of an Iraqi army officer and his cousin were found in the same area, according to police.

In Basra in southern Iraq, a civilian was killed when a roadside bomb exploded in the path of a police patrol, police said.

Two years on, it's time to take stock of the situation in Iraq.

Over at the Brookings Institution, there's a comprehensive report giving figures for a wide variety of metrics, from car and telephone ownership through to attacks on oil infrastructure by month, casualty rates to US and Iraqi forces, and results of opinion polls.



ESTIMATES OF IRAQI CIVILIANS KILLED SINCE THE START OF THE WAR

From the New York Times :

The top Marine officer in Iraq said Friday that the number of attacks against American troops in Sunni-dominated western Iraq and death tolls had dropped sharply over the last four months, a development that he called evidence that the insurgency was weakening in one of the most violent areas of the country.

The officer, Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, head of the First Marine Expeditionary Force, said that insurgents were averaging about 10 attacks a day, and that fewer than two of those attacks killed or wounded American forces or damaged equipment. That compared with 25 attacks a day, five of them with casualties or damage, in the weeks leading up to the pivotal battle of Falluja in November, he said.
[…]
“They're way down on their attempts, and even more on their effectiveness,” General Sattler said.
[…]
Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday that 12,000 to 20,000 hard-core insurgents were operating in Iraq. That is about the same range American intelligence officers have given since October.

“We still have a lot of work to do,” acknowledged General Sattler…

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

A US soldier has been killed and three others have been wounded after a roadside bomb hit their patrol in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk.

The US military says the attack happened at about 10:30am (local time).

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian broadcasting Corporation) :

A suicide bomber has killed the head of the Iraqi police anti-corruption department in the northern city of Mosul.

A US Lieutenant Colonel says the bomber detonated explosives strapped to his body in the building where Brigadier Walid Kashmoula worked.
[…]
Al Qaeda's wing in Iraq, led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, have claimed responsibility for the attack.

“This will be the fate of those who stand by the polytheists,” Al Qaeda Organisation for Holy War in Iraq said in a statement posted on an Islamist website.

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

At least four Iraqi policeman have been killed in a bomb blast in the northern oil centre of Kirkuk.

Police say they were attacked as they were burying a colleague, who was killed the day before.

Another eight people were wounded in the blast and have been taken to Kirkuk's general hospital.

In other violence, an Iraqi soldier and two civilians have been killed in the north of the country.

From the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

Protesters around the world have marked the second anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq with street marches.

Rallies were held in most European capitals with one of the largest taking place in London, where close to 50,000 people took to the streets.

In Istanbul, Turkey, 15,000 turned out to denounce the invasion. Protests were also held in Adana and the capital, Ankara.

In London, police estimated about 45,000 demonstrators joined a march from London's Hyde Park past the American embassy and on to Trafalgar Square.

In Sweden, a few hundred protesters filled a square in downtown Stockholm, chanting: “USA, out of Iraq.”

Protesters also gathered in Rome and the Greek cities of Athens and Salonika.

The main theme of all the protests was to denounce the US-led action in Iraq but there were deep divisions about how to proceed.

There are also protests in Iraq :

Iraqis kept up protests Saturday against a Jordanian man they believe carried out a suicide bombing that killed 125 people in Hillah on Feb. 28. ''No, no to terrorism,'' chanted about 200 people in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.

Several in fact.

More than 2,000 people marched through Baghdad March 18 to protest a bombing that left 125 people dead.

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

A soldier from the Caribbean island of Grenada has become the first person for 23 years to win Britain's highest military honour, the Victoria Cross.

Private Johnson Beharry, 25, joined the British Army in 2001 and served in Iraq last year.

He received the award for two separate acts of heroism in which he saved the lives of more than 30 colleagues during insurgent attacks.

The amazing details of Pvt Beharry's valour are available in full at the UK Telegraph.

“Some Talk of Alexander,
And some of Hercules.
Of Hector and Lysander,
And such brave names as these.
But of all the world's great heroes,
There's none that can compare,
With a Tow-row-row-row Row-row
To a British Grenadieran.”
With apologies to the regimental march of the First Foot Guards

Bulgaria has announced it is reducing its troop commitment in Iraq and could withdraw all its troops by the end of the year.
[…]
Bulgaria has close to 500 troops in Iraq but it is planning to pull out almost 100 soldiers in June.
[…]
The Parliament will meet next week to discuss whether to keep Bulgarian troops in Iraq after that.

Mr Svinarov said the government, led by former king Simeon Saxe-Coburg, would decide by the end of the month whether to withdraw all troops by the end of 2005.

“There is no decision yet, but we have prepared a report,” he told reporters.

“It is normal (to think) that if there is a presence in Iraq in 2006, it should be different from a military one.”

Posted By Zoe Brain at 08:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

From CENTCOM:

Over 2900 Iraqi Soldiers Graduate :

More than 2,900 Iraqi Soldiers graduated today as part of the Direct Recruit Replacements program at the Iraqi Training Battalion at Kirkush Military Training Base.

These graduates, who all have prior military service, spent three weeks in basic skills refresher courses with concentrations in traffic control points, local security patrols, and fixed site security.

Germany, UAE To Train Engineers :

An agreement between Iraq, Germany and the United Arab Emirates to jointly train Iraqi military forces is clearing the way for the preparation and equipping of an Iraqi engineering unit.

The agreement, signed during German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's March 4-5 visit to the UAE, has Germany supplying instructors and equipment such as graders, bulldozers, 20-ton cranes and cement mixers to the unit, which will consist of 250 Iraqi trainees. The UAE will cover the expenses for the trainers, trainees and interpreters, according to German Embassy officials.

Police Graduate 144 From Basic Training :

The Iraq Police Service graduated 144 new police officers from the Al Kut Regional Training Academy on March 16. This was the third class to complete the eight week training course from the Al Kut facility.

The basic police training program is designed to provide fundamental and democratic policing skills based on international human rights standards to the students in preparation for assuming police officer responsibilities. The program consists of academic study of general policing topics combined with a strong focus on tactical operational policing skills.

To date, more than 25,000 police recruits have completed the eight-week training course developed for new recruits. An additional 35,000 police officers have completed the three-week Transitional Integration Program course that provides officers with prior experience a condensed version of the longer basic police training course.

156 Complete Police Advanced Training :

The Iraqi Police Service graduated 156 police officers from advanced and specialty courses at the Adnan Training Facility, March 17, as part of the Iraqi government's ongoing effort to train its security forces.

The courses consist of Basic Criminal Investigations with 21 graduates, Interviews & Interrogations with 22 graduates, Internal Controls with 25 graduates, Violent Crime Investigation with 40 graduates, Kidnapping Investigation with 15 graduates and Critical Incident Management with 33 graduates.

The Basic Criminal Investigation course covers topics such as theft, burglary, arson, robbery, sexual offenses, and homicide investigation. Participants also receive instruction and hands-on training in fingerprinting, photography, tool marks and plaster casting techniques. More than 1,250 police officers have previously completed the Basic Criminal Investigations course.

Thousands of New Soldiers Complete Training :

Several hundred men who showed up at the front gate of an Iraqi Army base in southeast Iraq immediately after the country's Jan. 30 elections graduated March 17 from basic combat training.

The 766 volunteers, who had no prior military experience before seeking to join the Army, went through eight weeks of training conducted by elements of the Iraqi Training Battalion and the 5th Division.

In addition, 2,500 Direct Recruit Replacements graduated March 17 at the same base. The DRR soldiers, who have prior military experience, go through a three-week refresher course.

The soldiers will be assigned to the 3rd and 5th Divisions of the Iraqi Army. They will report for duty after a brief period of leave.

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

Mr Berlusconi “reiterated to President Bush his wish to begin a gradual and progressive withdrawal of the Italian contingent in Iraq as quickly as possible, and if possible from September,” his office said in a statement.

Mr Berlusconi said he would not act unilaterally.

“If it's not possible, it's not possible, everything has to be agreed with the allies,” he said.

“We will do everything in a concerted manner.”

When [UK PM] Mr Blair was asked about the Italian withdrawal in the House of Commons overnight, he said Mr Berlusconi's comments had been misinterpreted.

Both leaders now agree their countries troops will remain in Iraq until Iraqi forces are ready to take their place.

From USA Today :

The survey of 1,967 Iraqis was conducted Feb. 27-March 5, after Iraq held its first free elections in half a century in January. According to the poll, 62% say the country is headed in the right direction and 23% say it is headed in the wrong direction. That is the widest spread recorded in seven polls by the group, says Stuart Krusell, IRI director of operations for Iraq. In September, 45% of Iraqis thought the country was headed in the wrong direction and 42% thought it was headed in the right direction. The IRI is a non-partisan, U.S. taxpayer-funded group that promotes democracy abroad.

Pollsters did not survey three of Iraq's 18 provinces because of security and logistical concerns. Two of those omitted, Anbar and Ninevah, are predominantly Sunni Muslim. A third, Dahuk, is mostly Kurdish. Krusell said that even if those areas had been included and 100% had expressed negative views, the poll would still have shown that most Iraqis believe that the situation in their country is improving.

And from UPI via the New Kerala of India :

The majority of Americans have negative views about U.S. involvement in Iraq, a Washington Post/ABC News poll published Wednesday said.

As the second anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion approaches, 53 percent said the war was not worth fighting, 57 percent said they disapprove of the president's handling of Iraq, and 70 percent said the number of U.S. casualties, including more than 1,500 deaths, is an unacceptable price.
[…]
The poll was conducted by telephone March 10-13 among a random national sample of 1,001 adults, and the results have a 3 point margin of error.

From the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

An explosion has hit a house used as the offices of an English-language newspaper in central Baghdad.

Police say there are no casualties.

Ambulances rushed to the scene, not far from Baghdad's national theatre and hotels housing foreign contractors.

It is not clear whether it was a mortar or car bomb that caused the explosion.

The house was engulfed by flames soon afterwards.

Locals say the house was used by the Baghdad Mirror, Baghdad's only English-language weekly.

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

The deputy commander of the Iraqi army in western Al-Anbar province was shot dead by US troops at a checkpoint Tuesday night, a police officer said.

”The US forces opened fire at 8:00 pm on Brigadier General Ismail Swayed al-Obeid, who had left his base in Baghdadi to head home,” police Captain Amin al-Hitti said.

“They spotted him on the road after the curfew, which goes into effect at 6pm,” the officer said in Baghdadi, 185 kilometres west of the capital.

No immediate reaction was available from the US military.

And no second-source confirmation over 20 hours after the initial report. The Al-Jazira, Xinhua and Cuban press stories all copy the same AFP report.

More details as they come to hand.

UPDATE: From Turkish Press :

The US military denied Wednesday that US troops shot and killed an Iraqi general at a checkpoint Tuesday night in Iraq's western al-Anbar province.

”It is categorically untrue,” said Lieutenant Colonel Barry Venable, a Pentagon spokesman.

In Baghdad, the US military said in a statement that no coalition checkpoints in the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force's area of responsibility, under which al-Anbar province falls, “reported any engagement of any kind during this timeframe.”

Iraq's first freely elected parliament in half a century began its opening session Wednesday after a series of explosions targeted the gathering. The opening marked a major milestone on the road to forming a new government in a country still beset by violence.

The parliament's 275 members, elected during Jan. 30 elections, convened in an auditorium amid tight security in the heavily guarded Green Zone with U.S. helicopter gunships hovering overhead.

Minutes before convening, at least a half dozen explosions detonated a few hundred yards away. The U.S. military said two mortar rounds landed inside the zone but caused no injuries.

Read more…

BOWING to popular pressure, the Italian Government said last night that it would start pulling its more than 3,000 troops out of Iraq in September.

The surprise announcement by Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister, came less than two weeks after US troops shot dead Nicola Calipari, Italy’s top intelligence officer in Iraq, as he escorted a freed Italian hostage to safety.

Italy has 3,200 troops and Carabinieri paramilitary police in al-Nasiriyah, a former insurgent stronghold in the British-controlled southern sector of Iraq. The Italian withdrawal is bound to increase pressure on the British Government to fill the gap.

Read more…

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

Security forces have arrested two figures close to Saddam Hussein in the northern town of Tikrit, the Iraqi government said.

”On March 8, 2005, security forces, based on information from local Iraqis, captured the terrorists Abdullah Maher Abdul Rasheed, Marwan Taher Abdul Rasheed, and two others” in Tikrit, the government said in a statement.

“Abdullah Maher was the brother-in-law of Saddam Hussein's son Qusay. It is strongly believed that he used large amounts of money that he received from Qusay and Saddam to finance terrorism in Iraq.

“In addition Marwan Taher was once a bodyguard for Saddam Hussein and has been involved in a number of attacks against the security forces,” the statement said.

It was unclear whether US or Iraqi forces arrested the two men or whether it was a joint operation.

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

A US government watchdog agency says Pentagon data on Iraqi security forces was “unreliable” and also showed there was an escalating insurgency.
[…]
The Pentagon had told Congress on Monday that there are 142,472 trained and equipped Iraqi security forces.

”Data on the status of Iraqi security forces is unreliable and provides limited information on their capabilities,” Joseph Christoff, of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), told a House of Representatives Government Reform sub-committee.

Mr Christoff also said Pentagon intelligence data showed an escalating insurgency, as “each monthly peak in the number of violent incidents is followed by a higher average number of attacks in subsequent months”.

Rear Admiral William Sullivan, who provided the Pentagon figures to the committee, acknowledged they included some Iraqi police who may have left their post or were absent without leave.

He also said the Pentagon is trying to develop a way to measure how ready the Iraqi forces are for combat or various types of security duty.

The US administration has spent about $US5.8 billion to develop Iraq's security forces.

President George W Bush is seeking another $US5.7 billion in an $US81.9 billion emergency spending bill that Congress is considering for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Without reliable information, Congress may find it difficult to judge how federal funds are achieving a goal of transferring security responsibilities to the Iraqis,” Mr Christoff told the panel.

The US goal is to train and equip about 271,000 Iraqi security forces, police and military combined, by July 2006.

The Pentagon has been forced to scale back its estimates of ready forces from about 206,000 as it became apparent many were not combat-ready, particularly after the November offensive in Fallujah.

“This is like fantasy land. This is as fictive as the weapons of mass destruction,” Dennis Kucinich, an Ohio Democrat Congressman, told Rear Admiral Sullivan of the Pentagon's figures.

“I'm embarrassed for you that you would come to a congressional committee with this kind of a phony report.”

Rear Admiral Sullivan said the latest numbers were verified by General David Petraeus, who is in charge of developing Iraqi forces, and General George Casey, commander of US forces in Iraq, although he said they admit there are gaps in knowing how many are on duty on a given day.

Representative Kucinich is best known world-wide for his passionate opposition to Chemtrails and Orbital Mind Control Lasers. Or rather, his former opposition.

On Tuesday, a car bomb targeting a U.S. military convoy exploded on a road near the main avenue leading to Baghdad's international airport, police Capt. Thamir Talib said. Four civilians were killed and seven were wounded, including two police officers, he said.

In a report unconfirmed by U.S. officials, witnesses said some U.S. troops were also wounded. When U.S. forces arrived on the scene to evacuate them, another car bomb exploded, wounding more troops. One Humvee was destroyed and two civilian cars were in flames, witnesses said.

A U.S. military spokesman said he was checking into the report.

Another homicide car bomb exploded in northeastern Baghdad, killing one child and wounding at least four people, including a police officer, police Col. Muhanad Sadoun said. The bomber was trying to hit a traffic police patrol but crashed into a tree, Sadoun said.

Thousands of Iraqi Shi'ites protested on Monday after hearing reports that relatives of a Jordanian suicide bomber suspected of killing 125 people in the town of Hilla celebrated him as a martyr.

After breaking into the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad and tearing down the flag, protesters called on all foreign Arabs to leave the country and denounced Jordan's King Abdullah.

Anti-Jordanian sentiment has been spreading since Iraqis read newspaper reports that Jordan's Raid al-Banna blew himself up beside people lining up for jobs in the Shi'ite town of Hilla last month in the single bloodiest attack in postwar Iraq.

Al Qaeda's wing in Iraq, led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for the blast.

The Iraqi government said in a statement it strongly condemns “the expressions of joy” exhibited by the family of Banna, who it described as a terrorist.

Read more..

Note: Also available at the “Opinion Journal” and Chrenkoff. Many thanks to James Taranto and Joe Katzman respectively for their support, and to all the readers for their help - I appreciate all the links you forward, all the words of encouragement and all your help in publicizing the series.

The Wall Street Journal's very own Bret Stephens has recently written an intriguing piece about how media can - and often does - get it wrong:

“The cliche is that journalism is the first draft of history. Yet a historian searching for clues about the origins of many of the great stories of recent decades - the collapse of the Soviet empire; the rise of Osama bin Laden; the declining US crime rate; the economic eclipse of Japan and Germany - would find most contemporary journalism useless. Perhaps a story here or there might, in retrospect, seem illuminating. But chances are it would have been nearly invisible at the time of publication.

“The problem is not that journalists can't get their facts straight - they can and usually do. Neither is it that the facts are obscure; often, the most essential facts are also the most obvious ones. The problem is that journalists have a difficult time distinguishing significant facts - facts with consequences - from insignificant ones. That, in turn, comes from not thinking very hard about just which stories are most worth telling.”

Perhaps nowhere has this phenomenon been more apparent in recent times as in Iraq, where as Stephens writes, “the media was so busy telling the story of everything that was going wrong in Iraq that it broadly missed what was going right” and thus failed to connect the proverbial dots.

The judgment on Iraq is still out, of course, as it rightly belongs to history and not the media. But just in case you, too, have a little inkling that the media has been missing some stories out of Iraq, and that these missed stories also matter, here's the last two weeks' worth of positive developments and good news from Iraq to balance your picture and perhaps even help you connect the dots yourself.

• Society
  
• Economy
  
• Reconstruction
  
• Humanitarian Aid
  
• 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

• Discussions over the makeup of the new Iraqi government continue to percolate without resolution, as the Kurds and the Shiite alliance were unable to reach a compromise over the weekend. The talks will continue this week. Omar has some thoughts on the impasse. Spencer Ackerman takes a look behind the scenes at what may be motivating the impasse, and the NYT looks at the issue of oil in Kirkuk and its effects on Kurdish-Arab tensions.

• Apparently some of the looting that took place in Iraq following the fall of Baghdad was quite deliberately directed: the New York Times is reporting that looters hit specific Iraq weapons sites and stripped them bare, making off with components capable of building nuclear weapons. (Where they found such components in a country that conventional wisdom now tells us had no WMDs remains a mystery.) An Iraqi minister says he believes the weapons components were taken for sale and not for use in a weapons program.

• While some MilBloggers have returned home, new MilBlogger Thunder6 steps up to blog from Iraq in 365 and a Wakeup.

Other Topics Today Include: suicide bombing in Mosul; mass graves near Syria; a Cat and a Cowboy come home; reconstruction highlights; Carnival of the Liberated: Ukraine begins its withdrawal; how to make more money doing the same old thing in Iraq.

Read the Rest…

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

At least five Iraqi civilians, including a woman, were wounded in the northern city of Mosul when a US military helicopter opened fire on insurgents.

”The helicopter was … engaged by small arms fire from a nearby building. The helicopter returned fire,” the US military said.

“At least five Iraqi citizens were injured in the crossfire. The civilians were transported to a local hospital for treatment. An investigation of the incident is under way.”
[…]
“Gunmen in an Opel opened fire on the helicopter which started shooting,” one of the wounded, Hamid Mohammed said.

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

Eleven Iraqis were killed in rebel attacks in the past two days, Iraqi security sources said.

The chief engineer at Baghdad airport, Moayad Ibrahim al-Muslah, was shot dead at his home in Ghazaliyah district in western Baghdad, an interior ministry official said, on condition of anonymity.

Separately, a policeman was killed when a mortar struck a checkpoint in Maamel district in eastern Baghdad, the official said.

Another bomb attack aimed at a US patrol on the eastern side of the city killed two Iraqis, including a 15-year-old boy, and wounded at least 10, according to hospital and security sources.

A policeman at the scene, Captain Mohammed al-Rubaiye, said it was a car bomb.

In northern Iraq, four people were killed, including two Iraqi policemen, when a pick-up truck bomb exploded outside the home of one of the police commanders in the restive town of Al-Shurgat, police said.

Two Iraqis soldiers died in a bomb attack in Siniya near Baiji, home to Iraq's largest refinery, 200 kilometres north of Baghdad, police said.

Outside Baquba, 60 kilometres north of Baghdad, a truck driver was killed and two others were wounded by armed men after they delivered gravel to a US base.

In Mahahawil, 90 kilometres south of Baghdad, two shepherds were found dead and a third wounded when they accidentally set off unexploded bombs from the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, police said.

Two other Iraqis were killed when a US military vehicle smashed into four cars in southern Baghdad, the official said.

Separately, the corpses of 12 Iraqis were found south of Baghdad in a treacherous belt of towns, where rebels regularly carry out executions and kidnappings.

“Twelve bodies, three of them soldiers, were found on a farm five kilometres east of Latifiyah,” the source said.

Nine of the dead resembled Shiite pilgrims on their way to the shrine cities of Karbala and Najaf when they were ambushed, the source said.

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

Two US contractors, working for the Blackwater security firm, were killed and a third wounded in a roadside bomb blast today just south of Baghdad, a US embassy official said.

”It happened around 2:00 pm on the road to Hilla. Two Blackwater employees were killed by an improvised explosive device,” said US embassy spokesman Bob Callahan.

The vehicle had just left Baghdad when it was hit by the bomb, Mr Callahan said.

The Associated Press reports that a study of nearly 2,200 stories on television, newspapers and Web sites found that most of them couldn't be categorized either negatively or positively.

Twenty-five percent of the stories were negative and twenty percent were positive, according to the study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism:

The three network evening newscasts tended to be more negative than positive, while the opposite was true of morning shows, the study said. Fox News Channel was twice as likely to be positive than negative, unlike the more evenhanded CNN and MSNBC, the study said.

From California Yankee.

London Times Online reports:

THE Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has promised President George W Bush that he will not pay more ransoms to free hostages in Iraq.

Fancy that.

Hat tip: Michelle Malkin

A man blew himself up Thursday inside a Shiite mosque in the northern city of Mosul, witnesses said.

There appeared to be casualties, but officials were not immediately reachable to confirm the report. American troops cordoned off the area near the mosque.

The attack took place in the northeastern Tameem neighborhood during a funeral, witnesses said.

Read more…

[More as it comes in]

More at BBC:

An explosion has torn through a funeral procession at a Shia mosque in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul causing many casualties, witnesses said.

Early reports say at least 19 bodies have arrived at the mortuary in the mainly Sunni Muslim city.

Update: Fox is reporting 30 dead.

Winds has written about the Marsh Arabs of Iraq before, the victims of Saddam's ecocide and the world's silence as an area the size of the Everglades was deliberately turned from wetlands into desert after the 1991 uprising.

The good folks at Oxblog point to a recent NY Times update. The marshes are beginning to return to a semblance of what they once were, but much of it may never be restored - and despite efforts like Eden Again, even the restored areas are unlikely to return to their previous state any time soon. This excerpt from Kevin Kelly's book helps to explain why. Alternately hopeful and disturbing, the Times article raises questions about the costs of war - and equally, about the costs of “peace.”

UPDATE: Norm Geras has more on that latter subject.

From Reuters via The Australian :

Gunmen killed the son of an Iraqi tribal leader as he left a US base today while an Iraqi army contractor was gunned down near Tikrit the same day, police said.

Hamad Suhail, son of Sheikh Suhail Ahmed, the head of the Al-Makadima tribe around the town of Al-Dujail, was killed as he left the US base in Balad, 70km north of Baghdad, said Major Adel Abdullah of the town's police.

Mohammed Jafaar, a medic at Balad general hospital, said Suhail's body was riddled with bullets.

Captain Ahmed Bayaneddin of Tuz police said the Iraqi contractor doing work for the country's new army was shot dead at about 9am (5pm AEDT) by gunmen in a black BMW as he drove from the town of Tuz to Tikrit, the seat of Salahuddin province and hometown of ousted leader Saddam Hussein.

An Iraqi soldier was killed and three were wounded when their patrol hit a roadside bomb in the rural village of Dahab, near Al-Duluiyah, not far from Balad, said Captain Assad Sadad.

Further north, a civilian was killed between Baija and Al-Siniyah, when he was caught by a roadside bomb intended for a US military convoy, a security source said.

Three Iraqis, including a five-year-old boy, were wounded in a similar attack between Samarra and Al-Dour, according to police and medical sources.

Gunmen shot dead five policemen in a drive-by shooting in the Iraqi capital on Thursday, one day after authorities said they'd found dozens of corpses — some bullet-riddled, others beheaded — at two different sites.

Gunmen in two cars opened fire on a vehicle carrying Col. Ahmed Abeis , the head of a police station in central Baghdad , killing him and four of his guards, said police Capt. Talib Thamir.

Read more….

Or, in the original Dutch ( from Nederlands Dagblad ) :

De Amerikanen zijn de grootste vijanden van de mensheid

So Italian Journalist Giuliana Sgrena allegedly said on the flight from Beirut to Baghdad.

My Dutch isn't wonderful, but it's good enough so I can read Dutch Newspapers. The following translation from Zacht Ei is accurate. (Though I'd say “Watch out you don't get Kidnapped” in the first line, for example - it's a more literal translation of “Kijk uit dat je niet gekidnapt wordt”.)

'Be careful not to get kidnapped,' I told the female Italian journalist sitting next to me in the small plane that was headed for Baghdad. 'Oh no,' she said. 'That won't happen. We are siding with the oppressed Iraqi people. No Iraqi would kidnap us.'

It doesn't sound very nice to be critical of a fellow reporter. But Sgrena's attitude is a disgrace for journalism. Or didn't she tell me back in the plane that 'common journalists such as yourself' simply do not support the Iraqi people? 'The Americans are the biggest enemies of mankind,' the three women behind me had told me, for Sgrena travelled to Iraq with two Italian colleagues who hated the Americans as well.
[…]
'You don't understand the situation. We are anti-imperialists, anti-capitalists, communists,' they said. The Iraqis only kidnap American sympathizers, the enemies of the Americans have nothing to fear.

Hat Tip: LGF

Updating a previous post, from The Observer :

The US Army claimed the Italians' vehicle had been seen as a threat because it was travelling at speed and failed to stop at the checkpoint despite warning shots being fired by the soldiers. A State Department official in Washington said the Italians had failed to inform the military of Sgrena's release.

Italian reconstruction of the incident is significantly different. Sgrena told colleagues the vehicle was not travelling fast and had already passed several checkpoints on its way to the airport. The Americans shone a flashlight at the car and then fired between 300 and 400 bullets at it from an armoured vehicle.
[…]
Enzo Bianco, the opposition head of the parliamentary committee that oversees Italy's secret services, described the American account as unbelievable. 'They talk of a car travelling at high speed, and that is not possible because there was heavy rain in Baghdad and you can't travel at speed on that road,' Bianco said. 'They speak of an order to stop, but we're not sure that happened.'

From Giuliana Sgrena's newspaper article in Il Manifesto via CNN :

The car kept on the road, going under an underpass full of puddles and almost losing control to avoid them. We all incredibly laughed. It was liberating. Losing control of the car in a street full of water in Baghdad and maybe wind up in a bad car accident after all I had been through would really be a tale I would not be able to tell.

And finally from La Republica, a set of pictures of the vehicle, showing 1-2 bullet holes in the front windscreen, damage to the front left side window, and one in the front left tyre. That's all the visible damage there is, the car appears nearly untouched. So several hundred high-calibre rounds missed.

Police said Wednesday they found 35 bodies in two different places in Iraq, some shot to death, the others beheaded.

Twenty of the corpses were found late Tuesday near Rumana, a village about 20 kilometers (12 miles) east of the western city of Qaim , near the Syrian border, police Capt. Muzahim al-Karbouli said.

Each of the bodies was riddled with bullets and found wearing civilian clothes, al-Karbouli said. The dead included one woman, but their identities were not known, he said.

Al-Karbouli said the victims appeared to have been killed several days earlier. They had not been died up or beheaded, as other victims have in Iraq.

A separate discovery was made Tuesday south of Baghdad in Latifiya, where 15 headless bodies were found by Iraqi troops.

The decapitated corpses were found inside an abandoned base of the former Iraqi army, Defense Ministry Capt. Sabah Yassin said. The bodies included 10 men, three women and two children.

Read more…

A suicide bomber detonated a rubbish truck packed with explosives today outside a hotel used by Western contractors, killing himself and at least three others.

Dozens of people were injured in the dawn blast.

The attacker drove the truck into a cap park between the Sadeer hotel, which has been repeatedly attacked by gunmen in the past, and the Ministry of Agriculture.

Volleys of automatic weapons fire could be heard before and after the explosion.

Police said a group of insurgents wearing police uniforms first shot dead a guard at the ministry's gate, allowing the truck to enter a compound the ministry shares with the hotel. Foreign security officials said other security guards in the area then fired on the vehicle, trying to disable it before it exploded.

Casualties were taken to several hospitals in the city.

Officials at al-Kindi hospital said at least three dead and five wounded were taken there.

Ibn al-Nafis hospital counted at least 27 wounded.

Read more…

From Iraq The Model :

The majority was Iraqis (all were men except for one woman) but there was also a number of Arabs in the group, mainly from Sudan!
The 1st criminal the interrogator started with was a 27 year old man
from the southern suburbs of Baghdad between Baghdad and Hilla.
He confessed of performing several attacks against the IP and the ING men killing a total of 15 IP men and 6 ING soldiers.
It's very upsetting to know that pathetic men like this criminal charged 250000 ID (less than 200$!) for each operation they perform regardless of the number of the “targets” being eliminated.
A second terrorist described in his confession how he took part in kidnapping 6 IP men and blowing up the police station in the town of Msayab using a number of IEDs and later executing the 6 policemen. All this for 250000 ID for each one of the 8 members of the gang!

Back to the 1st terrorist. When he was asked about his group he said that he was a member of the “Islamic Army” group. I will quote a short part of the conversation that took place between the officer and the criminal on TV.

Officer: were you doing these killings for Jihad?
Criminal: yes Sir.
Officer: for Jihad or for money?
Criminal: for both Sir.
Officer: how could Jihad be paid for!!
Criminal: (no answer)
Officer: you're Muslim?
Criminal: yes
Officer: on ID card, huh?
Criminal: yes
Officer: do you pray or go to the mosque?
Criminal: no
Officer: do you drink?
Criminal: yes Sir.
Officer: so you don't pray and you don't go to the mosque and you drink and you kill for money and after all this you call your evil doings Jihad?!!! And you call your group the “Islamic Army”!!
Criminal: (no answer again)
Officer: so, tell me about those 9 policemen. Where were they coming from and where were they heading?
Criminal: coming from 'Msayab and heading to Hilla
Officer: so they weren't coming from Tel Aviv? (from the officer's tone, obviously mocking the conspiracy theorists).
Criminal: no Sir, they were Iraqis.
Officer: THEN WHY DID YOU KILL THEM!!?

From the BBC :

The Italian media have been carrying unconfirmed reports that 6m euros ($7.9m, £4.1m) changed hands to free Ms Sgrena.

The government has not confirmed the claims, but for the first time there has been no official denial either.

At about 200 euros/murder, that's 30,000 victims.

From the AFP via The Australian :

In the restive northern city of Mosul, two suspected insurgents were killed and two wounded during a raid by US troops in search of weapons yesterday, a military statement said, adding that two “extremely large” caches were seized.

The arms caches included 200,000 rounds of ammunition, over 950 mortar rounds and over 1850 pounds of explosives, it said.

US soldiers repelled an attack in Dujail, east of Baquba, yesterday killing two insurgents and detaining five, said a statement.

In Ramadi, the provincial capital of Anbar province, new Iraqi commandos conducted a raid on a hospital today “to investigate possible insurgent activity taking place on the premises,” said a US military statement.

A car bomb was detonated near a US-Iraqi security checkpoint yesterday in eastern Ramadi, said another statement without giving further details or saying if there were any casualties.

A SENIOR official with the interior ministry in Iraq has been gunned down in Baghdad, a ministry source said.
“The deputy director for passports and identification was shot dead by armed men in Baghdad,” the source said.

More info here:

An senior policeman working in the Interior Ministry was shot dead in Baghdad on Tuesday, ministry officials said.

Maj. Gen. Ghazi Mohammed, who worked in the immigration department of the ministry, was killed in a drive-by shooting.

Update: Fox is reporting that an Al Qaeda is claiming responsibility for the murder - no link yet.

From the LA Times :

“It was the catalyst,” Cloutier said, red-eyed and weary after two days of round-the-clock raids and firefights after Palmatier's death. “It was like pulling out the one log that breaks the logjam. Everything just started flowing.”

The colonel confronted the local political establishment, threatening villages with an invasion of tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles.

“This will not stand,” he told tribal sheiks and village mayors, demanding that they divulge the names of the insurgents who were responsible for the bombing.
[…]
Late that afternoon, sheiks, mayors and police officials filed into Cloutier's sparsely furnished office inside a former Iraqi military compound, just past a stuffed boar's head mounted over the operations center. The colonel had shared tea with most of them during introductory visits in this country where U.S. commanders are like local viceroys, dispensing money and organizing civic projects. He had been cordial and diffident.

Now, 10 hours after Palmatier's death, Cloutier was seething. He did not greet the men. He did not offer them tea. He did not stand.

Cloutier is built like a football lineman, thick through the shoulders and neck. His dominant feature is his massive skull — shaved to the scalp, pink and shiny. In his combat fatigues and boots, coiled in anger, he is a formidable sight.

For nearly an hour, he railed at the Iraqis. “I told them I have money in one hand and tanks in the other,” he said. “I asked them what they wanted: the money or the tank.”

After he finished, the colonel paused and said, “Now I want the names.”

The Iraqis handed him 13 names of alleged insurgents, he said.

Guerrillas launched a series of attacks in Iraq on Monday that left 31 people dead and dozens wounded as the country took its first major step toward forming a government whose most crucial task will be dealing with the insurgency.

Al Qaeda in Iraq purportedly claimed responsibility in an Internet statement for much of the bloodshed — violence in and around Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, where 15 people died.

The Baqouba assaults included a car bomb, three roadside bombs and small arms attacks three checkpoints, one of them just south of Baqouba in Muradiyah, said police Col. Mudhafar al-Jubbori

U.S. Maj. Ed House said a car bombing outside a police station there killed nine people and wounded 17. The dead included the bomber, two police, three soldiers and three civilians.

In another attack near the city, a group of about 20 insurgents in five vehicles attacked an army checkpoint with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, killing five Iraqi soldiers. The troops fought back, killing one of the attackers. Nine people were wounded, House said.

Guerrillas also fired a mortar around near the blue-domed governor's office, causing no casualties, a spokesman for the U.S. 42nd Infantry Division, Maj. Richard Goldenberg.

Another car bomb exploded outside the home of an Iraqi army officer in Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad, killing 12 people and injuring 21 others, said the city's police chief, Ayad Ahmed. Hospital officials said most of the casualties were bystanders.

The bomb exploded outside the home of Iraqi army Lt. Col. Mohammed Abdul Mutaled, Ahmed said. Iraqi security forces are frequently targeted by insurgents.

In Baghdad, gunmen killed two police and wounded a third in a drive-by shooting in the eastern slum of Sadr City, said Dr. Abdul Jabar Solan, director of a hospital where the casualties were brought.

Two civilians were also killed when a roadside bomb targeting a joint U.S.-Iraqi military convoy exploded in the west Baghdad neighborhood of Amiriyah. The explosion missed the convoy, damaging two passing cars and wounding four people, including two girls, said 1st Lt. Ali Hussein Hamdani. Another roadside bomb exploded in the southeastern New Baghdad suburb, wounding several people on a bus.

Read more…

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

At least 25 people, mostly Iraqi soldiers, have been killed in a string of attacks against the country's security forces in Balad and Baquba, north of Baghdad.

The deadliest attack was in Balad, 70 kilometres north of Baghdad, where at least 15 people, including two soldiers, were killed when a suicide bomber blew up his vehicle at the house of an Iraqi army officer.
[…]
Five soldiers were killed when gunmen attacked an Iraqi army checkpoint in the Al-Muradiyah area west of Baquba with rocket propelled grenades and assault rifles.

“About 20 terrorists in five vehicles attacked the checkpoint,” a US military statement said, adding that one of the assailants was killed.

The attack was claimed by Zarqawi's Organisation of Al Qaeda of Jihad in the Land of Two Rivers.

“A lion from the martyrs brigade launched a martyr operation about 8 am (local time) against the apostates of the national guard and the police in Baquba,” a statement posted on a website said. The claim could not be authenticated.

Separately, two policemen and two civilians were killed when a booby-trapped car parked on a street in Baquba's Al-Mualimeen neighbourhood exploded as an Iraqi police patrol passed, police said.

Another 11 people were wounded including six policemen, medics said.

The policemen had been on their way to help the soldiers attacked at the checkpoint when the car bomb exploded, police said.

A US military spokesman in the area south of the restive city of Samarra confirmed the attack but gave a toll of two killed and nine wounded.

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

• Iraq's new National Assembly will meet on March 16, with or without a new government in place. The hope is to use the meeting to force compromises between the various factions.

• Blackfive has a must-read letter from an Air Force Forward Air Controller who spent the last few months supporting a Marine unit and has a number of fascinating firsthand reports from the field.

• Joe Gandelman of The Moderate Voice has a round-up of links and info. re: the Italian journalist who was supposedly kidnapped, and whose car was recently shot at by U.S. forces. More inside…

Other Topics Today Include: al Qaeda in Iraq tries a new tack; rebuilding Iraq's health infrastructure; Turkey gives up $1 billion for Iraq; picking up the pace on Iraq reconstruction; al-Jafaari accepts al-Talibani; a new Iraqi poll; Carnival of the Liberated; hostage accident; Iraq hurts Army recruiting.

Read the Rest…

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

Iraqi commandos and United States soldiers have stepped up operations in Samarra, north of Baghdad, in search for top wanted militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a senior Iraqi security official said.

”We have information that Zarqawi may be hiding in Samarra or this region and this operation is aimed at checking that out,” the officer said on condition of anonymity.
[…]
The official said 66 suspects have been arrested in the operation, which is expected to last a week with the goal of rounding up 250 wanted suspects working for seven armed groups in the area.

On the ground all entrances leading to Samarra were sealed as Iraqi and US forces conducted their searches.

No vehicles were allowed to circulate inside the city where most businesses, schools and government institutions were closed for a second day.

The US military confirmed the operation.

“Elements of the Iraqi Ministry of Interiors 1st Commando Brigade began operations to kill or capture insurgent elements in the city of Samarra this weekend,” said Major Richard Goldenberg of the 42nd Infantry Division, adding that US soldiers are providing a supporting role.

He said the operation was based on Iraqi intelligence.
[…]
One Iraqi soldier was killed and five wounded when their patrol was attacked by gunmen overnight east of Samarra, said Captain Ahmed Sadad of the Iraqi army.

Four other soldiers were wounded in a roadside bomb in the Al-Duluiyah area, south of Samarra, said police and medical sources.

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

Giuliana Sgrena, the Italian journalist wounded by United States troops shortly after her month-long kidnap ordeal ended this weekend, has confirmed that she was voluntarily released by her kidnappers.

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

Iraq is expected to hold the first meeting of its newly elected National Assembly on March 16 and hopes to choose a government before then, the Deputy Prime Minister says.

”The meeting will be on March 16 and we agreed to continue meetings (on a government) and hope to reach an agreement by then,” Barham Salih said.

“If we don't reach an agreement then the National Assembly will begin its work and discussions will continue inside the assembly.”

An Indiana National Guard soldier accused of murdering an Iraqi police officer will be court-martialed, the Army announced Friday.

Cpl. Dustin Berg, 21, is accused of killing Hussein Kamel Hadi Dawood Al-Dubeidi south of Baghdad in November 2003, then shooting himself. Berg, of Ferdinand, Ind., received a Purple Heart for wounds sustained in the incident.

An investigator testified during an Article 32 hearing last month that Berg changed his story multiple times before admitting he killed the police officer. Special agent Clarence Joubert of the Army Criminal Investigative Division said Berg initially said he was shot by a man in a red turban and white shirt.

Berg's attorney said at the hearing, which is similar to a civilian grand jury hearing, that his client acted in self-defense.

Read more…

US soldiers called on Sgrena''s car to stop before they began to shoot

An investigation has been opened on Friday's shooting incident in which US soldiers killed an Italian officer and wounded the released Italian hostage, journalist Giuliana Sgrena, as the latter's car was speeding towards a US army checkpoint near Baghdad airport, Multi-National Forces in Iraq announced Saturday. In a statement issued today, the Multi National Forces explained that around 8:55 p.m. local time US soldiers warned the driver of the car that was transferring the released Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena to stop at the checkpoint; however the driver continued to speed toward the checkpoint prompting the soldier to open fire.

The soldiers tried to stop the car through waving their hands, flashing lights and firing warning shots, but when they realized that the driver was not going to stop they fired at the vehicle's engine to force them to stop.

White House Says Regrets Death in Iraq Shooting

The White House said on Friday it regretted the killing of an Italian security agent and the wounding of freed Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena when U.S. forces fired on their car at a checkpoint in Iraq.

“We wish her a speedy recovery,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan said of Sgrena. “We regret the loss of life.”

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a close ally of President Bush, has demanded explanations from Washington.

…

The agent who died, Nicola Calipari, was hit with a bullet and died after he covered Sgrena with his body, Berlusconi said.

Mr Berlusconi issued a statement saying: “The prime minister expects that, in the spirit of the particular friendship that characterises relations between Italy and the United States, the US government leaves no stone unturned to shed light on what happened and on who might be responsible.”

Reuters:

Berlusconi said he personally knew Calipari who had worked on previous hostage release cases in Iraq and that the agent's wife worked in his Palazzo Chigi office.

The man, a former policeman, was also known to Sgrena's partner Pier Scolari who he met in the days running up to her release.

“He was an extraordinary man, a man who gave me the certainty that Giuliana would come home. When I learned he had been killed by American soldiers … I felt a pain which for a moment overshadowed the joy of (Giuliana's) liberation.”

Ms. Sgrena has arrived safe in Rome:

Ms Sgrena's partner said he could not blame the US soldiers for the shooting, saying they were probably “scared boys”, and that the real blame lay with those who had sent them to Iraq.

Ms Sgrena's colleagues at the Communist daily Il Manifesto were holding a party to celebrate her release on Friday evening when news of the shooting reached them.

From The Australian :

The latest group of Australian soldiers bound for Iraq were farewelled today as they set off for a six month deployment.
[…]
The group of more than 40 soldiers has been drawn from the 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (6 RAR), the 2nd Cavalry Regiment (2 Cav), 2/14th Light Horse Regiment Queensland Mounted Infantry (2/14 LH QMI) and the 1st Military Police Battalion from Sydney.

Ms Gambaro said they would join more than 100 soldiers of the Security Detachment 6 who deployed from Brisbane on December 29 and would replace soldiers from the Darwin-based 5/7RAR.

From Reuters via The Australian :

Repairs and new construction have begun at 10 of the 90 sites, said the report to the UN Security Council from Demetrius Perricos, the chief weapons inspector.
[…]
Before they left Iraq, UN inspectors had examined 411 sites, the report said. After the war, they examined 353 sites and determined that 70 of them were “subjected to varying degrees of bomb damage”.

”The continuing examination of the imagery has revealed that approximately 90 of the total 353 sites analysed containing material of relevance have been stripped and/or razed,” Mr Perricos said in the report.

From the AFP via The Australian :

FOUR US soldiers have been killed in action in Iraq's restive western Al-Anbar province, a US military statement said today, while another soldier was killed in a vehicle accident further north.

”Four Soldiers assigned to First Marine Expeditionary Force were killed in action March 4,(Friday) while conducting security and stability operations in the Al Anbar province,” said the statement without providing further details.

A separate statement said one US soldier was killed and another wounded in a vehicle accident near Tikrit, north of Baghdad, at about 10pm (6am AEDT) yesterday.

The latest deaths raised to 1499 the number of US servicemen killed in attacks or accidents in Iraq since the launch of the American-led war to oust Saddam Hussein nearly two years ago, according to Pentagon figures.

The figure including deaths by natural causes, disease etc exceed 1500. Approximately 300 have been killed in auto accidents, and 1200 in combat or terrorist attacks.

U.S. forces fired at a car carrying Italian reporter Giuliana Sgrena shortly after her liberation, killing an Italian secret service agent and lightly wounding the journalist, her newspaper said on Friday.

Gabriele Polo, the editor of Il Manifesto newspaper, said Sgrena's car was fired on as it made its way to Baghdad airport.

“This news which should have be a moment of celebration, has been ruined by this fire fight,” Polo told Sky Italia television.

“An Italian agent has been killed by an American bullet. A tragic demonstration which we never wanted that everything that's happening in Iraq is completely senseless and mad,” he added, struggling to fight back his tears

.

Read more…

Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena has been released in Iraq, a month after she was seized at gunpoint on a Baghdad street, Italy's foreign ministry said on Friday.

“I can confirm it 100 percent,” said Margherita Boniver, an undersecretary at the Italian foreign ministry. “She should board a plane in the coming hours and should be back in Rome later tonight.”

The 57-year-old Sgrena, who works for the Rome-based daily Il Manifesto, was kidnapped on Feb. 4. Insurgents later released a video of her sobbing and wringing her hands as she pleaded for Italian troops to be pulled out of Iraq.

Sgrena was one of two female Western journalists abducted in Baghdad this year. Florence Aubenas of France's Liberation was seized along with her Iraqi driver on Jan. 5.

Read more…

From CENTCOM:

Iraqi Police Graduate 27 SWAT Officers :

he Iraqi Police graduated 27 officers from the Special Weapons and Tactics training course March 3. The officers completed a specialized four-week training curriculum that places a heavy emphasis on weapons training and includes training in dynamic entries, mechanical breaching, diversionary devices, sniper training, intelligence and surveillance, offensive driving skills, and human relations and police conduct.

The Provincial SWAT teams provide a provincial-level, high end, rapid response, tactical unit responsible for high-risk arrest and hostage rescue. They provide special weapons and tactics capability to the provincial or city police commander. To date, 156 officers have previously completed the course and are operating as SWAT teams in various areas throughout Iraq.

Iraqi Police Graduate 292 From Advanced Training Courses :

The Iraqi Police Service graduated 292 police officers from advanced and specialty courses at the Adnan Training Facility, March 3, as part of the Iraqi government's ongoing effort to train its security forces.

The courses consist of Kidnapping Investigations with 27 graduates, Basic Criminal Investigations with 63 graduates, Interview & Interrogations with 41 graduates, Organized Crime Investigations with 58 graduates, Incident Command System with 32 graduates, Internal Controls with 44 graduates, and Executive Leadership with 27 graduates.

The Kidnapping Investigations course provides students with basic theory and practice of crisis negotiation. The course explores the psychological underpinnings of crisis situations and instructs students on law enforcement priorities in a kidnapping crisis situation.

The Basic Criminal Investigation course covers topics such as theft, burglary, arson, robbery, sexual offenses, and homicide investigation. Participants also receive instruction and hands-on training in fingerprinting, photography, tool marks and plaster casting techniques.

Interviews & Interrogations covers advanced interview and interrogation techniques and includes instruction on the preservation and protection of human rights, and the importance of ethical behavior during interviews and interrogations.

The Organized Crime Investigations course is taught by trainers from the Federal Bureau of Investigations and focuses on international cooperation on crimes associated with organized groups. Topics covered in the course include: money laundering, gambling, conspiracy, alien smuggling, witness protection, electronic surveillance and working with informants.

Incident Command teaches first response techniques to a crime or accident scene, how to coordinate agencies responding to the scene and managing assets at the scene.

Internal Controls provides training on how to deal with personnel complaints and allegations, as well as police conduct in general. Training includes the processing of complaints and conducting follow-up investigations to determine the facts of allegations made against members of the Iraqi Police Service.

Executive Leadership, designed for senior police leaders, covers executive level concepts of planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting and budgeting. Other areas covered in the course are visionary leadership organizational values, interpersonal communication skills, motivational techniques and strategies, along with strategic planning.

Iraq's Emergency Response Unit Graduates 72 Officers :

The Iraqi Police graduated 72 police officers from the Emergency Response Unit course March 3. The officers completed an intensive 4-week basic ERU program of instruction with a strong focus on weapons training and handling, defensive tactics and physical fitness. The course includes instruction on human relations and police organizations.

The ERU provides a national level, high-end, rapid response law enforcement tactical unit responsible for high-risk arrest, hostage rescue and explosive ordnance disposal. With three companies currently operational, ERU has conducted a number of successful missions on national level anti-Iraqi force targets, provided support to other Iraqi Ministry of Interior forces, participated in combat operations in Fallujah and ongoing counterinsurgency operations.

The graduating officers will be integrated into the ERU's operational companies. They will join 344 prior ERU graduates who will attend ERU Advanced training in the coming months.

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

The Baghdad bombs went off at morning rush hour, with the first vehicle serving as a decoy for the second and more powerful blast outside the ministry, a strategic post in Iraq's battle against the insurgency.

”A Kia vehicle tried to enter the checkpoint and at this moment blew up. It was not that effective but made a large amount of smoke so we couldn't see anything,” said policeman Mohammed Jaafar.

“Two minutes later, a Jeep Cherokee reached the checkpoint and opened fire with an MG machine gun and police fired back but it was too late because he reached the checkpoint and blew up.”

Five policemen were killed and five more wounded, an interior ministry official said.
[…]
The Government on Thursday said it had extended Iraq's state of emergency laws for another 30 days from February 28, giving the Government the right to impose curfews and restrict movement around the country.

The military has announced two more US deaths in Iraq, pushing the total number of military personnel killed there past the 1,500 mark.

The military says the two died from wounds received in a roadside bombing in Baghdad Wednesday. The military says another soldier was killed the same day south of the capital in an area known as the “Triangle of Death.”

Those fatalities raise the total number of dead to 1,502.

More..

The first car bomb detonated Wednesday morning in central Baghdad near an Iraqi army recruiting center, killing six soldiers and wounding 28 other people including soldiers, recruits and civilians, Iraqi police said.

A firefight followed the explosion.

The bomber's car exploded near the entrance to the center around 7 a.m. (11 p.m. ET Tuesday) in the Salhiya neighborhood. The vehicle failed to make it past the blast walls surrounding and protecting the facility.

About two hours later, a second suicide car bomb — targeting an Iraqi military convoy — exploded in the Jadriya neighborhood of southern Baghdad, police said. The attack killed seven and wounded two others.

Read more…

The judge overseeing the trial of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has been assassinated, FOX News has learned.

U.S. officials confirmed Judge Raid Juhi, 35, has been killed, and Iraqi officials are expected to provide details on his assassination.
[…]

Juhi, who was also presiding over the criminal trials of 11 of Saddam's henchmen, has been living and working under U.S. and Iraqi military protection. It was not clear how a group of gunmen managed to shoot and kill him.

While an obvious target for assassination, Juhi refused to hide in anonymity. In an interview with the New York Times last October, he explained: “There is something very good in Iraqis being able to see that Saddam is gone and that he and other members of his regime now have to face the authority of a judge, of an ordinary man like me.”

Read more…

French journalist Florence Aubenas, looking pale and distraught, appealed for help on a video Tuesday in her first since she went missing in Iraq on Jan. 5.

The veteran war correspondent for the Liberation newspaper and her Iraqi translator were last seen leaving her Baghdad hotel. The video was dropped at the offices of an international news agency in Baghdad.

Iraqi policemen stand over the body of a beheaded woman in Baghdad. A note was pinned to the body with the word spy written in Arabic. (Thaier Sudani — Reuters)
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It was not possible to verify the tape's authenticity or when it was made.

Appearing alone in front of a maroon-colored background, Aubenas looked tired and said she was in bad health. She called upon French lawmaker Didier Julia - who had mediated in the release of other French hostages - to help her.

“Please help me, my health is very bad,” she said in English. “Please, it's urgent now. I also especially Mr. Didier Julia, the French deputy to help me. Please Mr. Julia help me, it's urgent, help me.”

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