BAGHDAD, March 21 - The soldiers crept into the abandoned gymnasium shortly before midnight.
Flashlights provided the only light. Commanders whispered their orders.
More Iraq news
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A senior Iraqi official said on Thursday the government was holding talks with some major insurgent groups that might be nearing a point where a number would join a fight to drive al Qaeda out of Iraq.
Saad Yousif al-Muttalibi, international affairs director at the National Dialogue and Reconciliation Ministry, said the talks were designed to persuade the groups to halt guerrilla warfare against the government and help defeat al Qaeda.
"We've already established links and contacts with major insurgent groups," Muttalibi told the BBC in an interview.
You usually let letters of this viewpoint pass without comment, but sometimes you have to say "give me a break".
As the author writes it is without question "saddening to see our young fallen heroes." But contrary to what he writes the more than 3,000 killed in Iraq in fact have fallen in vain. Even John McCain, that vigorous promoter of Bush's surge, a few days ago called their lives and the thousands of wounded and maimed a "waste."
He later had a correction to the effect that's not what he meant, but I suspect the inner workings of his mind prevailed over the "politic" thing to say. The real enemy behind 9/11 was and still is in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan. If the lying, deceitful Bush had not pulled our forces out of Afghanistan for his adventure in Iraq then we might be winning there.
MIAMI (Reuters) - Amnesty International urged the United States on Thursday to abandon plans to try Guantanamo prisoners before military tribunals and asked other nations not to contribute any evidence for use at the trials.
The London-based human rights group said the trials do not meet international standards of fairness and should be moved to the U.S. federal courts.
"These trials threaten to cut corners in pursuit of a few convictions and add to the injustice that the Guantanamo detention facility has come to symbolize," said Susan Lee, Amnesty's Americas Program Director.
Author's disclaimer: Although the contents of this column are 100 percent true, it is for entertainment purposes only. If someone drowns or injures himself as a result of reading this column I am not responsible. It is their own damn fault.
On Tuesday we celebrated the Spring Equinox. It was also the day that I celebrated something much more spectacular than the common movements of our celestial bodies and the changing of the seasons. For the first time in my life, I made it through the winter without getting sick and I did it without one visit to the doctor, a stash of antibiotics or any changes to my diet. Oddly enough, I am quite convinced that the ancient torture technique of waterboarding is to thank for my healthiest of winters.
Fear not my good readers. Even though I have a beard, I did not join al Qaeda or the Taliban to find this out. Nor have I been whisked away to some secret prison in Syria or Eastern Europe to make this amazing discovery. I'm still as much a Patriot as Tedi Bruschi or Tom Brady.
TRIPOLI, Lebanon ? Deep in a violent and lawless slum just north of this coastal city, 12 men whose faces were shrouded by scarves drilled with Kalashnikovs.
In unison, they lunged in one direction, turned and lunged in another. ?Allah-u akbar,? the men shouted in praise to God as they fired their machine guns into a wall.
The men belong to a new militant Islamic organization called Fatah al Islam, whose leader, a fugitive Palestinian named Shakir al-Abssi, has set up operations in a refugee camp here where he trains fighters and spreads the ideology of Al Qaeda.
DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (AP) -- Local and foreign militants fought a gunbattle in northwestern Pakistan, leaving at least 46 dead, officials said, the second such clash this month in a region where the government is urging tribesmen to move against al-Qaeda-linked fighters.
At least two children were also reportedly killed and around 20 wounded when a stray mortar round from the fighting in South Waziristan hit their school bus.
The clash between Uzbek militants and tribesmen continued Tuesdsay after breaking out a day earlier near the town of Wana, a senior military official and a senior government official said. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were unauthorized to make comments to media.
The agency is too large and bureaucratic to effectively fight terrorism.
By John Yoo, JOHN YOO is a former Justice Department official, a law professor at UC Berkeley and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of "War by Other Means."
March 21, 2007
BAGHDAD, March 20 — Insurgents detonated a bomb in a car with two children in it after using the children as decoys to get through a military checkpoint in Baghdad, an American general said Tuesday.
Speaking at a news briefing at the Pentagon, Maj. Gen. Michael Barbaro, deputy director for regional operations at the Joint Staff, said American soldiers had stopped the car at the checkpoint but had allowed it to pass after seeing the two children in the back seat.
“Children in the back seat lower suspicion,” he said, according to a transcript. “We let it move through. They parked the vehicle. The adults run out and detonate it with the children in back.”
YEP, YOU DID IT, George -- mission impossible accomplished.
Unbelievably, four years of a bungled occupation have managed to make Saddam
Hussein's tyranny look good in comparison to "liberated Iraq."
DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (AP) — Local and foreign militants fought a gunbattle in northwestern Pakistan, leaving at least 46 dead, officials said, the second such clash this month in a region where the government is urging tribesmen to move against al-Qaeda-linked fighters.
At least two children were also reportedly killed and around 20 wounded when a stray mortar from the fighting in South Waziristan hit their school bus.
The clash between Uzbek militants and tribesmen broke out near the town of Wana on Monday and continued Tuesday, a senior military official and a senior government official said. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were unauthorized to make media comments.
March 21, 2007 -- THE ISSUE: Khalid Sheik Mohammed's confession to masterminding over 30 terror plots.
What to do with Khalid Sheik Mohammed ("Mohammed Speaks," Editorial, March 16)?
A simple public hanging in Times Square would do.
Lawyers and a Muslim group say they will defend at no cost airline passengers caught up in a lawsuit between a group of imams and U.S. Airways if the passengers are named as "John Does" and sued for reporting suspicious behavior that got the Muslim clerics booted from a November flight.
The six imams are suing the airline, Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Airports Commission, and the unnamed "John Does" to be named later, for discrimination, saying they were removed from the flight for praying in the airport.
Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, a Phoenix-area physician and director of American Islamic Forum for Democracy -- a group founded in 2003 to promote moderate Muslim ideas through its Web site (www.aifdemocracy.org) -- told The Washington Times his group will raise money for legal fees for passengers if they are sued by the imams.
Is anyone really surprised about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's "confession" that U.S. military officials released last week? After all, we have heard for years that he was the al-Qaeda mastermind behind 9-11 and other atrocities.
Now, Mohammed publicly has said so, albeit under duress. He indicated that torture induced part of his revelations. But this detail that he provided has at least as much importance: that undue pressure did not precede his testimony before a military tribunal.
Several conclusions beckon. One, Mohammed really does wish to talk truthfully about his deeds, perhaps to brag, although we have no way of separating fact from fiction. How much of what he said is simply noise? Moreover, we are seeing an incomplete version of his confession.
The Democrats in the House, about as bereft of seriousness as a Laurel and Hardy routine, are pumping legislation to get the United States out of Iraq by the end of August 2008, and what we need here, I think, is something Australian.
I don't mean just anything Australian, but someone with as sharp a tongue as that country's conservative Prime Minister John Howard, who once took a look at a proposal by Sen. Barack Obama to evacuate U.S. troops by March 2008 and then summed up the obvious.
"If I were running al Qaeda in Iraq," he said, "I would put a circle around March 2008 and pray, as many times as possible, for a victory not only for Obama, but also for the Democrats."
Last week, you probably received a hefty Voters' Pamphlet that outlines ten state-wide measures that will appear on the ballot this election cycle. If you managed to wade through the legal text and polarized arguments for and against the various measures, you still missed discussion of the impact that two of these measures - 41 and 48 - would have on our local schools here in Sisters.
The cuts we can expect from Measures 41 and 48 are almost 14 percent of the district's total budget. In rough terms, this reduction is equivalent to what our district currently spends to educate our kindergarten, first and second grade students combined.
Measure 41 essentially allows taxpayers to use the total of their federal tax deduction exemptions on their Oregon tax returns. It may reduce the state tax your household pays; it definitely reduces the state's revenue. Measure 48 doesn't directly reduce anyone's taxes, but it does impose constitutional limits on state spending.
When President Bush announced a surge of troops into Baghdad in January, Democrats pounded him for the folly of putting U.S. troops in the "middle of a civil war." Two months later, the question is, What happens to a civil war if only one side shows up to fight?
The Shiite militias that had become the main driver of violence in Baghdad are ducking and covering. Militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr is in hiding. His fighters aren't resisting U.S. troops who have begun conducting patrols in his stronghold of Sadr City. According to Gen. Dave Petraeus, 700 members of Sadr's Mahdi Army have been detained in recent months.
This hardly means that peace and harmony reign in Baghdad, but it has reduced the killing significantly. If at the beginning of the year anyone had predicted such progress from the addition of just two U.S. combat brigades in Bagdad, he would have been derided as a delusional optimist.
It wasn't what you'd call a very happy anniversary.
Four years into the war in Iraq, which was supposed to be a "cakewalk," to say that expectations have been lowered would be as much an understatement as, well, noting that "mistakes were made."
In his brief address Monday, President Bush said that "the fight is difficult, but it can be won." Dwell on that for a moment. The "mission accomplished" president, once so full of certainty and swagger, isn't telling Americans that victory is proximate or even inevitable, just that it is still possible.
Regarding the Supertanker firefighting aircraft, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach, pretty well says it all in his news statement (Victorville Daily Press, Dec. 12) while visiting SCLA airport for a DC-10 Supertanker water bomber demonstration when he said regarding Forest Service refusal to use firefighting Supertankers: “This appears to be the worst case of old-boy networking that I have seen in my career. I’m very deeply impressed with this private-sector alternativ...
Surprise, surprise, a bold Democrat finally has told the truth about Iraq, a truth that goes like this: However chaotic it gets, we can't just pack our bags and come home. Even if a Democrat is president, we've got serious business there and "so I think that we will have troops" in Iraq.
Here's the second surprise: The truth-teller was Sen. Hillary Clinton.
It was the good Hillary, the adult who lived in the White House, is a serious student of foreign policy and knows we must project strength to friends and foes. The good Hillary wants to be president, but refuses to pander to a public disgusted with the war. We need to see more of her.
WASHINGTON – U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald was ranked among prosecutors who had "not distinguished themselves" on a Justice Department chart sent to the White House in March 2005, when he was in the midst of leading a CIA leak investigation that resulted in the perjury conviction of a vice presidential aide, administration officials said Monday.
The ranking placed Mr. Fitzgerald below "strong U.S. Attorneys ... who exhibited loyalty" to the administration but above "weak U.S. Attorneys who ... chafed against Administration initiatives, etc.," according to Justice documents.
The chart was the first step in an effort to identify U.S. attorneys who should be removed. Two prosecutors who received the same ranking as Mr. Fitzgerald were later fired, documents show.
File / AP Waleed Mohammed Bin Attash Also Online
Four years in Iraq: A long haul for families
U.S. convoy attacked in Afghanistan
Mayor Rocky Anderson called for President Bushs removal by impeachment Monday as anti-war protesters rallied at City Hall on the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.
Speaking to a crowd of hundreds, Anderson delivered a litany of accusations. He said Bush lied about the reasons for invading Iraq and authorized a global campaign to detain and torture foreign nationals suspected of having ties to Al-Qaeda terrorists in defiance of domestic and international law.
I do not say this lightly, but the record is plain: President Bush is a war criminal, Anderson, a Democrat in heavily Republican Utah, said in another stinging denunciation of the Republican president. He must be held accountable.
Davenport, Iowa -- Today is the fourth anniversary of the beginning of the war in Iraq.
Some Americans say it's critical to stay the course and win the war. Others say its time to get out and they're taking their concerns to the streets.
Everyone we spoke with today had a personal connection to this war whether they fought for our country in the past or they have a loved one over there now.
This column was written by William Kristol. In order to preserve the cosmic harmony, it seems the gods insist that good news in one place be offset by misfortune elsewhere. It may well be that Gen. David Petraeus is going to lead us to victory in Iraq. He is certainly off to a good start. If the karmic price of success in Iraq is utter embarrassment for senior Bush officials in Washington, D.C. ? well, in our judgment, the trade-off is worth it. The world will surely note our success or failure...
Obviously, it's too early to say anything more definitive than that there are real signs of progress in Baghdad. The cocksure defeatism of war critics of two months ago, when the surge was announced, does seem to have been misplaced. The latest Iraq Update (pdf) by Kimberly Kagan summarizes the early effects of the new strategy backed up by, as yet, just one additional U.S. brigade deployed in theater (with more to be added in the coming weeks):
This "rolling surge" focuses forces on a handful of neighborhoods in Baghdad, and attempts to expand security out from those neighborhoods. . . . A big advantage of a "rolling surge" is that the population and the enemy sense the continuous pressure of ever-increasing forces. Iraqis have not seen such a prolonged and continuous planned increase of U.S. forces before. ? The continued, increasing presence of U.S. forces appears to be having an important psychological, as well as practical, effect ...
In that moment when he leapt from his car, Junior Telfort knew he needed help.
''I started looking around, like, `Man, you know what? People are probably looking at me like, ``This guy's crazy. He just jumped out in the middle of traffic like he's going to snatch this other driver out of the car.'' ' ''
Telfort, now 24 and discharged from the National Guard, served as a specialist with the Hollywood-based Alpha Company of the 53rd Infantry Brigade. His unit patrolled Ramadi, providing security. They never knew when their compound would be attacked by mortars.
Pelosi balks at plan for 'war without end,' says it won't pass
12:04 AM CDT on Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Associated Press
BAGHDAD --In the four years since U.S. troops marched into Iraq, Baghdad, once a city where Sunni and Shiite Muslims mixed and intermarried, has become a maze of concrete blast walls.
Once-pleasant neighborhoods are now battle-weary front lines often empty of their original residents. And the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia of anti-American cleric Muqtada al Sadr, marches on.
Even as American military officials praise Sadr followers for cooperating with U.S. efforts to patrol Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood, a Shiite stronghold, militia members continue to push into neighborhoods on the western bank of the Tigris River, where Sunnis long have dominated.
A Yemeni captive being held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, confessed to recruiting the suicide bombers and buying the speedboat that blasted a hole in the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen, in 2000, killing 17 U.S. sailors, according to a transcript of a hearing released Monday by the Pentagon.
The captive, Waleed Mohammed bin Attash, also admitted in the document that he helped plan the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya that killed more than 200 people, mostly Africans.
Together, the two episodes were among the worst anti-American attacks blamed on al Qaeda before Sept. 11, 2001.
Al-Qaeda operative also admits being liaison for bin Laden, African cell
11:32 PM CDT on Monday, March 19, 2007
From Wire Reports
A Democratic plan to require the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq passed its first test in the House Appropriations Committee on Thursday as the panel voted to go ahead, overcoming Republican opposition.
Rallying enough support for the bill, which allots $95.5 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been a challenge for Democratic leaders. Many party members support bringing troops home sooner than the 2008 deadline, while others have been reluctant to embrace a firm deadline to end the war.
Republicans proposed eliminating the 2008 deadline and inserting language that would promise not to cut funding for troops.
Poll: More than half of all Iraqis say it's 'acceptable' to attack U.S. troops
March 19, 2007 - A new national survey paints a devastating portrait of life in Iraq: widespread violence, torn lives, displaced families, emotional damage, collapsing services, an ever starker sectarian chasm -- and a draining away of the underlying optimism that once prevailed.
Violence is the cause, its reach vast. Eighty percent of Iraqis report attacks nearby -- car bombs, snipers, kidnappings, armed forces fighting each other or abusing civilians. It's worst by far in the capital of Baghdad, but by no means confined there.
Democrats aggressively challenged President Bush's Iraq policy at both ends of the Capitol on Thursday, gaining House committee approval for a troop withdrawal deadline of Sept. 1, 2008, but suffering defeat in the Senate on a less sweeping plan to end U.S. participation in the war.
Anti-war Democrats prevailed on a near-party line vote of 36-28 in the House Appropriations Committee, brushing aside a week-old veto threat from the administration and overcoming unyielding opposition from Republicans.
I want this war to end. I don't want to go to any more funerals, said New York Rep. Rep. Jose Serrano, one of several liberal Democrats who have pledged their support for the legislation despite preferring a faster end to the war.
White House political adviser Karl Rove raised questions in early 2005 about replacing some federal prosecutors but allowing others to stay, an e-mail released Thursday shows. Meanwhile, pressure mounted on the White House Thursday to fire Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for the abrupt dismissal of the U.S. attorneys.
The one-page document, which spans e-mails between the White House and the Justice Department in January 2005, also indicates Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was considering a range of options in dismissing U.S. attorneys early in President Bush's second term.
But it concludes with Gonzales' top aide warning that an across-the-board housecleaning "would certainly send ripples through the U.S. attorney community if we told folks they got one term only."
The U.S. troop buildup and security crackdown in Iraq shows early signs of success, and politicians in Washington must not set "specific deadlines and very strict conditions" for military commanders, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said Sunday on Face The Nation.
"I think that the way I would characterize it is so far so good it's very early," Gates told Bob Schieffer. "I would say that the Iraqis are meeting the commitments that they have made to us, that they have made the appointments; the troops that they have promised are showing up. They are allowing operations in all neighborhoods. There is very little political interference with military operations. So here, at the very beginning, the commitments that have been made seem to be being kept."
But, as the war enters its fifth year, violence and instability continue to plague the country outside of Baghdad. This weekend seven more U.S. service members were killed in Iraq, and, on Saturday, hundreds of civilians were made ill by chlorine-laden truck bombs. Gates said that the continued fighting outside the Iraqi capital was anticipated.
The poll indicated Iraqis have become less optimistic about the future compared to a similar survey in 2005 when respondents were generally hopeful.Monday, March 19, 2007
Experience more news: Video | Photos
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Only 18 percent of Iraqis have confidence in U.S.-led forces, a new poll showed on Monday, as President Bush faced anti-war protests at home four years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
KARACHI (Reuters) - The lawyer of an Islamist militant sentenced to hang in Pakistan for his role in the 2002 murder of U.S. reporter Daniel Pearl said on Monday he would use a top al Qaeda militant's confession to support an appeal.
British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, or Sheikh Omar, was sentenced to death in 2002 for the kidnapping and murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter, who was abducted while researching a story on Islamic militants.
But Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- the self-proclaimed mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States -- said in a confession released by U.S. authorities last week that he killed Pearl.
The lawyer for a man convicted of killing Wall Street Journal reporter
Daniel Pearl said Sunday he will file an appeal using an Al Qaeda lieutenant's
recent confession that he beheaded the reporter.
Is anyone really surprised about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's "confession" that
U.S. military officials released last week? After all, we have heard for years
that he was the al-Qaeda mastermind behind 9-11 and other atrocities.
U.S. soldiers had a little company while on a break yesterday after a foot patrol in Baghdad's Shi'ite enclave of Sadr City. (AP)
-------------------
Police said Khalaf Ghargan, the mayor of Dijelah, was abducted by gunmen about 300 yards from his home. Witnesses said the kidnappers ambushed Ghargan's car, dragged him out and sped away. Two bodyguards and a driver were left behind, they said.
Dijelah lies just south of Kut, 100 miles southeast of Baghdad. Kut is the capital of Wasit province.
• Visit FOXNews.com's Iraq Center for more in-depth coverage.
KARACHI (Reuters) - The lawyer of an Islamist militant sentenced to hang in Pakistan for his role in the 2002 murder of U.S. reporter Daniel Pearl said on Monday he would use a top al Qaeda militant's confession to support an appeal.
British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, or Sheikh Omar, was sentenced to death in 2002 for the kidnapping and murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter, who was abducted while researching a story on Islamic militants.
But Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- the self-proclaimed mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States -- said in a confession released by U.S. authorities last week that he killed Pearl.
The U.S. troop buildup and security crackdown in Iraq shows early signs of success, and politicians in Washington must not set "specific deadlines and very strict conditions" for military commanders, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said Sunday on Face The Nation.
"I think that the way I would characterize it is so far so good ? it's very early," Gates told Bob Schieffer. "I would say that the Iraqis are meeting the commitments that they have made to us, that they have made the appointments; the troops that they have promised are showing up. They are allowing operations in all neighborhoods. There is very little political interference with military operations. So here, at the very beginning, the commitments that have been made seem to be being kept."
But, as the war enters its fifth year, violence and instability continue to plague the country outside of Baghdad. This weekend seven more U.S. service members were killed in Iraq, and, on Saturday, hundreds of civilians were made ill by chlorine-laden truck bombs. Gates said that the continued fighting outside the Iraqi capital was anticipated.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico --Lawyers for an Australian detainee at the U.S. military camp at Guantánamo Bay have filed an injunction to stall his trial on charges of providing material support for terrorism.
The legal team for David Hicks asked a U.S. District Court in Washington last week to suspend the military commission, said Marine Maj. Michael Mori, Hicks' Pentagon-appointed lawyer.
Hicks, 31, is scheduled to appear before the military commission on March 26, more than five years after he was captured in Afghanistan and sent to the U.S. base in eastern Cuba.
BAGHDAD --Sunni insurgents, resilient despite the five-week security crackdown in the capital, killed at least six more U.S. troops over the weekend. A Sunni car bomber hit a largely Shiite district in the capital Sunday, killing at least eight people.
The American military said four U.S. soldiers died and one was wounded when the unit was struck by a roadside bomb in western Baghdad. During the ongoing security sweep in the capital and surrounding regions, the battalion had found eight weapons caches and two roadside bombs and helped rescue a kidnap victim, the military said.
A fifth soldier was killed in an explosion in Diyala, an increasingly volatile province just northeast of the capital. A Marine died in fighting the same day in Anbar province, the vast, largely desert region that sprawls west of Baghdad to the Saudi Arabian, Jordanian and Syrian borders. The regions are controlled by the Sunni insurgency.
It's been long since any of us heard from Osama bin laden. Or received any of his complimentary home video productions. The last one was in 2004. Born in 1957, he turns 50 this year, but nobody can say whether Osama is fit and fine, sickly and old or even dead or alive.
Honestly, it doesn't even matter anymore. Even if he is alive, the threat is not from him anymore or rather not just from him. The new threat is from the thousands of budding Osamas in the various terror camps around the world, which are breeding grounds for extremist activities. There is much hate against America in these countries and capitalizing on this, terrorist leaders are emerging and trying hard to live up to their role model Mr. Bin Laden.
One such recently surfaced "new talent" is Shakir al-Abssi, operating from a lawless coastal city in Lebanon. Following the ideology of al-Qaeda, this man was responsible for the assassination of an American diplomat in Jordan and is labeled a dangerous terrorist by American and Middle Eastern intelligence officials. This is just in Lebanon. There are other places in the Middle East, South Asia, Africa and Europe which have scores of people like these. In 2002 or so, a video about Afghanistan wa...
WASHINGTON --In official documents, Detainee No. 266 was an accused al Qaeda member who refused to admit or deny terrorism links, or even to speak to his captors. His Saudi countryman, Detainee No. 264, was a relief worker and self-described admirer of Americans who was handed over to U.S. forces by Pakistani policemen seeking to collect a bounty.
On June 24, both men were released from the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to the custody of Saudi Arabia, which promptly freed them.
The two men are among scores of Guantánamo detainees who have been quietly repatriated in the past three years amid growing pressure from their home countries and international human-rights advocates. Now, a new analysis by lawyers who have represented detainees says U.S. decisions undermine the government's own claims about the threat posed by many of the prison camp's residents, some of whom are approaching their fifth year of detention without formal charges or trials.
WASHINGTON, March 17 — In January, when President Bush announced his plans to reinforce American troops in Baghdad, Shiite militias were seen as the main worry. Some analysts predicted that bloody clashes with Shiite militants in the Sadr City district in northeastern Baghdad were all but inevitable.
Instead, during the early weeks of the operation, deadly bombings by Sunni Arab militants have emerged as a greater danger. In particular, the threat posed by the Sunni group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia was underscored when American troops seized a laptop computer from a senior operative in the group who was killed in late December.
Information from captured materials indicates that the group’s leadership sees “the sectarian war for Baghdad as the necessary main focus of its operations,” according to an intelligence report that was described by American officials.
Four years into the Iraq war, about the only thing that has not changed is President Bush's insistence the fight can be won.
With more than 3,200 U.S. troops dead and still no clear way out, the political landscape could not be more different.
Public support for the war has fallen to its lowest levels. Republicans have lost control of Congress because of voters' angst over the conflict. Even the president has acknowledged the tactical approach to the war must change.
By Tina Susman and Christian Berthelsen, Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times
March 18, 2007
BAGHDAD --
The Bush administration says it wants to end extremism by addressing underlying conditions, but the money goes to military might.
March 18, 2007
Official stance
WASHINGTON — Singled out in next year's State Department budget as its "principal counter-terrorism initiative," the Regional Strategic Initiative is aimed at using "soft power" rather than firepower to counter Islamic extremism.
It was developed in response to the president's National Security Strategy released in March 2006, which called for a gradual refocus toward strengthening alliances to defuse area conflicts, and away from military might.
But like some similar programs, the Regional Strategic Initiative has been starved for funds and other support — and has lost some of its top leadership.
Tres conductores suicidas que manejaban camiones cargados con gas de cloro atacaron la oficina de un líder tribal sunita opuesto a Al Qaeda y otros objetivos en la provincia de Anbar, matando a ocho personas y contaminando a 350 civiles iraquíes y seis soldados estadounidenses con el gas venenoso.
Los ataques del viernes --ideados para sembrar el pánico-- reflejan la creciente pugna entre los insurgentes y un sector cada vez más amplio de sunitas que se oponen a ellos. Los asaltos ocurrieron dos días después que el primer ministro Nuri Al Maliki, un chiita, viajara a Anbar para reunirse con los jefes tribales y minar su apoyo a la insurgencia.
La ofensiva comenzó después de las 4:00 pm del viernes cuando un conductor detonó su carga explosiva que transportaba en una camioneta en Ramadi, hiriendo a un soldado estadounidense y un civil iraquí, dijo el alto mando en una declaración.
Last week, the Associated Press carried a story-- it appeared in the Reno Gazette-Journal on Feb. 12--about the clear and present danger posed by a dramatic television series, 24.
The program revolves around counter-terrorism agent "Jack Bauer," who uses terrorism--notably, torture--to fight terrorism. The AP viewed this and other pop culture items that feature torture with alarm. It reported that the advocacy group Human Rights First recently met with the producers of 24 to try to get them to tone it down.
We're reminded of David Letterman: "Vice President Quayle, sir, Murphy Brown is a fictional character."