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. R