David Morgan
Reuters
27 September 2005
WASHINGTON, Sept 27 (Reuters) - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's network of al Qaeda-linked insurgents is emerging as a self-sustaining force, despite repeated blows by U.S. forces and the reported death of his second-in-command, U.S. intelligence officials and other experts say.
The Zarqawi network, responsible for some of the Iraqi insurgency's bloodiest attacks, has grown into a loose confederation of mainly native Iraqis trained by former Baath Party regime officers in explosives, small arms, rockets and surface-to-air missiles.
Since U.S. counter-insurgency assaults forced many of its operatives to exit Iraq's cities, counterterrorism officials say al Qaeda has been trying to set up a safe haven for training and command operations in western Anbar province.
"The suggestion is that this has shifted from being a terrorist network to a guerrilla army," said Vali Nasr, a national security affairs expert at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.
"If this were not checked, the insurgents would become not only militarily more powerful, but politically more powerful. We're definitely trying to deny that milestone to Zarqawi."
U.S. military officials on Tuesday said they had killed Zarqawi's No. 2 in Iraq, an operative identified as Abu Azzam. Al Qaeda did not verify the U.S. claim.
But intelligence officials said the death of Zarqawi himself would not mean al Qaeda's defeat in Iraq, partly because he has ceded authority over day-to-day operations to regional commanders and tribal leaders who operate according to his strategic guidelines.
"If he died in the cause, that's huge. That's what everybody wants. Then he's a giant figurehead and everybody can do something in his name," one intelligence official said.
"He has enough force in place to sustain operations," the official added. "Al Qaeda in Iraq ... regenerates very quickly. You knock off a guy who's in charge in a certain area, another person steps into the gap."
Zarqawi's network, believed to consist of 2,000 to 5,000 hardcore fighters and an equal number of active supporters, represents 10-15 percent of the Iraq insurgency in numbers of fighters, officials say.
Defense and counterterrorism officials said Zarqawi's insurgents have recently been joined by elements of Jaish Mohammad, a 4,000-member insurgent group loyal to Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime. The addition gives Zaraqwi new tactical skills inside Baghdad, a defense official said.
Although the Jordanian-born Zarqawi has long been associated with foreign fighters, officials believe 85 to 90 percent of al Qaeda in Iraq's members are Iraqi.
A minority of foreign fighters carry out most of the group's suicide bombings, which has made Zarqawi's network appear more effective than other segments of the insurgency.
While committing only about 2 percent of insurgent attacks, officials say, the Zarqawi network has killed 17 percent of the insurgency's victims, the vast majority of them Iraqis.
Zarqawi, who has a $25 million U.S. bounty on his head, has also surpassed the insurgency's Baathist and former regime elements in part by using the Internet as a propaganda tool for circulating sensational images of attacks on U.S. forces.
With Iraq's constitutional referendum due on Oct. 15, officials say Zarqawi appears to be consolidating his position at the forefront of the Sunni insurgency by declaring all-out war on the country's majority Shi'ite population.
But his main strategic objective remains the expulsion of U.S. forces from Iraq, a goal that officials say has helped him unify support among local Sunni Arab insurgents.
"They're the ones seen to be drawing American blood," said Steven Simon, co-author of the book, "The Age of Sacred Terror" (Random House).
Attacks on civilians have earned Zaraqwi criticism from Sunni political groups such as the Iraqi Islamic Party. Other mainstream Sunni groups have avoided the issue.
But there is growing concern that Sunni political isolation will only deepen if the upcoming referendum vote ends leads to the adoption of the proposed constitution.
"It's almost self-evident that Sunni dissatisfaction is going to increase," said a counterterrorism official.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Morgan, "Zarqawi emerging as self-sustained force-US intel", Reuters, 27 September 2005.
This site is designed for use by researchers, educators, and students who seek access to its 2000+ military policy articles for research and/or educational purposes. Provided on a not-for-profit basis per 'fair use' rules.
29 September 2005
Reuters says U.S. troops obstruct reporting of Iraq
Barry Moody
Reuters
28 September 2005
LONDON, Sept 28 (Reuters) - The conduct of U.S. troops in Iraq, including increasing detention and accidental shootings of journalists, is preventing full coverage of the war reaching the American public, Reuters said on Wednesday.
In a letter to Virginia Republican Sen. John Warner, head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Reuters said U.S. forces were limiting the ability of independent journalists to operate. The letter from Reuters Global Managing Editor David Schlesinger called on Warner to raise widespread media concerns about the conduct of U.S. troops with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who is due to testify to the committee on Thursday.
Schlesinger referred to "a long parade of disturbing incidents whereby professional journalists have been killed, wrongfully detained, and/or illegally abused by U.S. forces in Iraq."
He urged Warner to demand that Rumsfeld resolve these issues "in a way that best balances the legitimate security interests of the U.S. forces in Iraq and the equally legitimate rights of journalists in conflict zones under international law".
At least 66 journalists and media workers, most of them Iraqis, have been killed in the Iraq conflict since March 2003.
U.S. forces acknowledge killing three Reuters journalists, most recently soundman Waleed Khaled who was shot by American soldiers on Aug. 28 while on assignment in Baghdad. But the military say the soldiers were justified in opening fire.
Reuters believes a fourth journalist working for the agency, who died in Ramadi last year, was killed by a U.S. sniper. "The worsening situation for professional journalists in Iraq directly limits journalists' abilities to do their jobs and, more importantly, creates a serious chilling effect on the media overall," Schlesinger wrote.
"By limiting the ability of the media to fully and independently cover the events in Iraq, the U.S. forces are unduly preventing U.S. citizens from receiving information...and undermining the very freedoms the U.S. says it is seeking to foster every day that it commits U.S. lives and U.S. dollars," the letter said.
"SPIRALING OUT OF CONTROL"
Schlesinger said the U.S. military had refused to conduct independent and transparent investigations into the deaths of the Reuters journalists, relying instead on inquiries by officers from the units responsible, who had exonerated their soldiers.
The U.S. military had failed even to implement recommendations by its own inquiry into one of the deaths, that of award-winning Palestinian cameraman Mazen Dana who was shot dead while filming outside Abu Ghraib prison in August 2003. Schlesinger said Reuters and other reputable international news organisations were concerned by the "sizeable and rapidly increasing number of journalists detained by U.S. forces".
He said most of these detentions had been prompted by legitimate journalistic activity such as possessing photographs and video of insurgents, whichU.S. soldiers assumed showed sympathy with the insurgency.
In most cases the journalists were held for long periods at Abu Ghraib or Camp Bucca prisons before being released without charge.
At least four journalists working for international media are currently being held without charge or legal representation in Iraq. They include two cameramen working for Reuters and a freelance reporter who sometimes works for the agency.
A cameraman working for the U.S. network CBS has been detained since April despite an Iraqi court saying his case does not justify prosecution. Iraq's justice minister has criticised the system of military detentions without charge.
Schlesinger's letter said: "It appears as though the U.S. forces in Iraq either completely misunderstand the role of professional journalists or do not know how to deal with journalists in a conflict zone, or both."
Reuters and other media organisations in Iraq had repeatedly tried to hold a dialogue with the Pentagon to establish appropriate guidelines on how to safeguard journalists. These efforts had failed "and the situation is now spiraling out of control", Schlesinger said.
He asked Warner to question Rumsfeld specifically about the rules of engagement towards professional journalists, the failure to hold independent investigations into shooting incidents and to ask what was the guidance to U.S. forces on how to distinguish legitimate journalists from insurgents.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Citation:
Barry Moody, "Reuters says U.S. troops obstruct reporting of Iraq", Reuters, 28 September 2005.
Reuters
28 September 2005
LONDON, Sept 28 (Reuters) - The conduct of U.S. troops in Iraq, including increasing detention and accidental shootings of journalists, is preventing full coverage of the war reaching the American public, Reuters said on Wednesday.
In a letter to Virginia Republican Sen. John Warner, head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Reuters said U.S. forces were limiting the ability of independent journalists to operate. The letter from Reuters Global Managing Editor David Schlesinger called on Warner to raise widespread media concerns about the conduct of U.S. troops with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who is due to testify to the committee on Thursday.
Schlesinger referred to "a long parade of disturbing incidents whereby professional journalists have been killed, wrongfully detained, and/or illegally abused by U.S. forces in Iraq."
He urged Warner to demand that Rumsfeld resolve these issues "in a way that best balances the legitimate security interests of the U.S. forces in Iraq and the equally legitimate rights of journalists in conflict zones under international law".
At least 66 journalists and media workers, most of them Iraqis, have been killed in the Iraq conflict since March 2003.
U.S. forces acknowledge killing three Reuters journalists, most recently soundman Waleed Khaled who was shot by American soldiers on Aug. 28 while on assignment in Baghdad. But the military say the soldiers were justified in opening fire.
Reuters believes a fourth journalist working for the agency, who died in Ramadi last year, was killed by a U.S. sniper. "The worsening situation for professional journalists in Iraq directly limits journalists' abilities to do their jobs and, more importantly, creates a serious chilling effect on the media overall," Schlesinger wrote.
"By limiting the ability of the media to fully and independently cover the events in Iraq, the U.S. forces are unduly preventing U.S. citizens from receiving information...and undermining the very freedoms the U.S. says it is seeking to foster every day that it commits U.S. lives and U.S. dollars," the letter said.
"SPIRALING OUT OF CONTROL"
Schlesinger said the U.S. military had refused to conduct independent and transparent investigations into the deaths of the Reuters journalists, relying instead on inquiries by officers from the units responsible, who had exonerated their soldiers.
The U.S. military had failed even to implement recommendations by its own inquiry into one of the deaths, that of award-winning Palestinian cameraman Mazen Dana who was shot dead while filming outside Abu Ghraib prison in August 2003. Schlesinger said Reuters and other reputable international news organisations were concerned by the "sizeable and rapidly increasing number of journalists detained by U.S. forces".
He said most of these detentions had been prompted by legitimate journalistic activity such as possessing photographs and video of insurgents, whichU.S. soldiers assumed showed sympathy with the insurgency.
In most cases the journalists were held for long periods at Abu Ghraib or Camp Bucca prisons before being released without charge.
At least four journalists working for international media are currently being held without charge or legal representation in Iraq. They include two cameramen working for Reuters and a freelance reporter who sometimes works for the agency.
A cameraman working for the U.S. network CBS has been detained since April despite an Iraqi court saying his case does not justify prosecution. Iraq's justice minister has criticised the system of military detentions without charge.
Schlesinger's letter said: "It appears as though the U.S. forces in Iraq either completely misunderstand the role of professional journalists or do not know how to deal with journalists in a conflict zone, or both."
Reuters and other media organisations in Iraq had repeatedly tried to hold a dialogue with the Pentagon to establish appropriate guidelines on how to safeguard journalists. These efforts had failed "and the situation is now spiraling out of control", Schlesinger said.
He asked Warner to question Rumsfeld specifically about the rules of engagement towards professional journalists, the failure to hold independent investigations into shooting incidents and to ask what was the guidance to U.S. forces on how to distinguish legitimate journalists from insurgents.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Citation:
Barry Moody, "Reuters says U.S. troops obstruct reporting of Iraq", Reuters, 28 September 2005.
Ex-army officers attack 'chaos' of Iraqi regime
Patrick Cockburn
The Independent
29 September 2005
It was meant to be a moment of reconciliation between the old regime and the new, a gathering of nearly 1,000 former Iraqi army officers and tribal leaders in Baghdad to voice their concerns over today's Iraq. But it did not go as planned.
General after general rose to his feet and raised his voice to shout at the way Iraq was being run and to express his fear of escalating war. "They were fools to break up our great army and form an army of thieves and criminals," said one senior officer. "They are traitors," added another.
The sense of hatred felt by these influential men, mostly Sunni Arabs, towards the new order installed by the US since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 is palpable and it bodes ill for Iraq. The country is entering a critical political period that will see a deeply divisive referendum on the constitution on 15 October, the trial of Saddam four days later and an election for the National Assembly on 15 December. The Sunnis fear the constitution means the break up of Iraq and their own marginalisation.
The meeting, in a heavily guarded hall close to the Tigris, was called by General Wafiq al-Sammarai, a former head of Iraqi military intelligence under Saddam who fled Baghdad in 1994 to join the opposition. He is now military adviser to President Jalal Talabani.
His eloquent call for support for the government in his fight against terrorism did not go down well. He sought to reassure his audience that no attack was planned on the Sunni Arab cities of central Iraq such as Baquba, Samarra and Ramadi, as the Iraqi Defence minister had threatened. He said people had been fleeing the cities but "there will be no attack on you, no use of aircraft, no bombardment by the Americans". The audience was having none of it.
General Salam Hussein Ali sprang to his feet and bellowed that there was "no security, no electricity and no clean water and no government". The only solution was to have the old Iraqi army back in its green uniforms, not those supplied by the Americans. He was dubious about how far Iraq was a democratic country, since nobody paid attention to the grievances of the people.
General Sammarai had called for criticism but seemed dismayed at its ferocity, at one moment exclaiming "this is chaos," though he later apologised and said he supposed it was democracy. He said most of the trouble in Iraq was caused by foreign terrorists such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, prompting another officer to mutter: "I don't think Zarqawi will threaten us because we are against occupation."
The meeting was important because the officer corps of the old Iraqi army consider themselves as keeper of the flame of Iraqi nationalism. One of them asked General Sammarai to stop using the American word "general" and use the Arabic word lewa'a instead.
In conversation, the officers made clear that they considered armed resistance to the occupation legitimate. General Sammarai told The Independent that he drew a distinction between terrorists blowing up civilians and nationalist militants fighting US troops.
The past three years have been a disaster for the old Iraqi army. The US viceroy, Paul Bremer, disbanded the army and security forces in May 2003. In a single stroke, hundreds of thousands of professional soldiers were out of a job. Some were reduced to driving taxis. General Hassan Kassim said he was now receiving a pension of just $40 a month.
Everybody at the meeting said there must be no distinction between Sunni, Shia and Kurd. But as they spoke it became evident that the officers are frightened of being persecuted as Sunni. One said there were random arrests in Adhamiyah, a Sunni strong-hold. Another asked why all the talk was about Zarqawi when people were being killed by the Badr Brigade, a powerful Shia militia.
Sheikh Ahmed al-Sammarai, the imam of the Sunni mosque of the Umm al-Qura, the headquarters of the powerful Muslim Scholars Association, first called for Sunni and Shia solidarity. But he added that he had just spoken to a Sunni from Ramadi who was arrested by the police and tortured. The imam claimed the police had said: "For every Shia killed in Fallujah or Ramadi, a Sunni would be killed in Baghdad."
General Sammarai concluded: "All the officers are against the American occupation. But when they come to my office they say that if the Americans leave there will be civil war."
* An Iraqi female suicide bomber blew herself up outside a US military office in the northern Iraqi town of Tal Afar yesterday, killing herself and at least five others and wounding 53, police said. It was believed to be the first attack by a female suicide bomber in Iraq since the insurgency began. The US said the bomb targeted civilians at a civil military operations centre while they were filing for compensation over lost relatives or damaged property.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Citation:
Patrick Cockburn, "Ex-army officers attack 'chaos' of Iraqi regime", The Independent, 29 September 2005.
The Independent
29 September 2005
It was meant to be a moment of reconciliation between the old regime and the new, a gathering of nearly 1,000 former Iraqi army officers and tribal leaders in Baghdad to voice their concerns over today's Iraq. But it did not go as planned.
General after general rose to his feet and raised his voice to shout at the way Iraq was being run and to express his fear of escalating war. "They were fools to break up our great army and form an army of thieves and criminals," said one senior officer. "They are traitors," added another.
The sense of hatred felt by these influential men, mostly Sunni Arabs, towards the new order installed by the US since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 is palpable and it bodes ill for Iraq. The country is entering a critical political period that will see a deeply divisive referendum on the constitution on 15 October, the trial of Saddam four days later and an election for the National Assembly on 15 December. The Sunnis fear the constitution means the break up of Iraq and their own marginalisation.
The meeting, in a heavily guarded hall close to the Tigris, was called by General Wafiq al-Sammarai, a former head of Iraqi military intelligence under Saddam who fled Baghdad in 1994 to join the opposition. He is now military adviser to President Jalal Talabani.
His eloquent call for support for the government in his fight against terrorism did not go down well. He sought to reassure his audience that no attack was planned on the Sunni Arab cities of central Iraq such as Baquba, Samarra and Ramadi, as the Iraqi Defence minister had threatened. He said people had been fleeing the cities but "there will be no attack on you, no use of aircraft, no bombardment by the Americans". The audience was having none of it.
General Salam Hussein Ali sprang to his feet and bellowed that there was "no security, no electricity and no clean water and no government". The only solution was to have the old Iraqi army back in its green uniforms, not those supplied by the Americans. He was dubious about how far Iraq was a democratic country, since nobody paid attention to the grievances of the people.
General Sammarai had called for criticism but seemed dismayed at its ferocity, at one moment exclaiming "this is chaos," though he later apologised and said he supposed it was democracy. He said most of the trouble in Iraq was caused by foreign terrorists such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, prompting another officer to mutter: "I don't think Zarqawi will threaten us because we are against occupation."
The meeting was important because the officer corps of the old Iraqi army consider themselves as keeper of the flame of Iraqi nationalism. One of them asked General Sammarai to stop using the American word "general" and use the Arabic word lewa'a instead.
In conversation, the officers made clear that they considered armed resistance to the occupation legitimate. General Sammarai told The Independent that he drew a distinction between terrorists blowing up civilians and nationalist militants fighting US troops.
The past three years have been a disaster for the old Iraqi army. The US viceroy, Paul Bremer, disbanded the army and security forces in May 2003. In a single stroke, hundreds of thousands of professional soldiers were out of a job. Some were reduced to driving taxis. General Hassan Kassim said he was now receiving a pension of just $40 a month.
Everybody at the meeting said there must be no distinction between Sunni, Shia and Kurd. But as they spoke it became evident that the officers are frightened of being persecuted as Sunni. One said there were random arrests in Adhamiyah, a Sunni strong-hold. Another asked why all the talk was about Zarqawi when people were being killed by the Badr Brigade, a powerful Shia militia.
Sheikh Ahmed al-Sammarai, the imam of the Sunni mosque of the Umm al-Qura, the headquarters of the powerful Muslim Scholars Association, first called for Sunni and Shia solidarity. But he added that he had just spoken to a Sunni from Ramadi who was arrested by the police and tortured. The imam claimed the police had said: "For every Shia killed in Fallujah or Ramadi, a Sunni would be killed in Baghdad."
General Sammarai concluded: "All the officers are against the American occupation. But when they come to my office they say that if the Americans leave there will be civil war."
* An Iraqi female suicide bomber blew herself up outside a US military office in the northern Iraqi town of Tal Afar yesterday, killing herself and at least five others and wounding 53, police said. It was believed to be the first attack by a female suicide bomber in Iraq since the insurgency began. The US said the bomb targeted civilians at a civil military operations centre while they were filing for compensation over lost relatives or damaged property.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Citation:
Patrick Cockburn, "Ex-army officers attack 'chaos' of Iraqi regime", The Independent, 29 September 2005.
21 September 2005
As Rockets Strike, U.S. Hunts for Taliban Tied to Ambush
By Carlotta Gall
New York Times
31 March 2003
KABUL, Afghanistan, March 30 — A rocket slammed into the headquarters of the international peacekeeping force in central Kabul today, just hours after American military officials announced that they would expand operations in response to a sharp increase in Taliban activity in southern Afghanistan.
The rocket damaged a building but apparently injured no one, according to a spokesman. The compound is just across the road from the heavily guarded American Embassy here.
A second rocket landed on the eastern outskirts of the city, said an Afghan police official, Gen. Haroon Asif.
Rockets have sporadically been fired into Kabul over the last year, rarely hitting any target or doing serious damage, but they show that opponents to the international military presence are still active.
American officials said one goal of their expanded operations was to find those responsible for the ambush on a Special Forces team on Saturday afternoon that left two men dead and one critically wounded.
The ambush came a day after an armed group of Taliban in the same region pulled a foreign Red Cross worker from his car and shot him. The two attacks were signs of an "uptick" in rebel activity since the start of the war in Iraq, said Col. Roger King, a United States military spokesman.
Hundreds of local Afghan police and intelligence agents were deployed across the area of the southern province of Helmand today to search for the men responsible for the ambush on Saturday as coalition planes patrolled overhead.
Fighting continued in the adjoining province of Oruzgan as hundreds more Afghan forces and American Special Operations forces battled a large group of Taliban fighters believed to have been responsible for killing the Red Cross worker. Thirteen Taliban have been captured, including a senior Taliban member, and eight men have been killed, Khalid Pashtun, an aide to the governor of Kandahar, said today.
Hundreds of American and Romanian soldiers have also been scouring a mountain range farther east, near the Pakistani border, searching villages and confiscating weapons in one of the largest operations mounted in months.
Afghan officials said they believed that the men who attacked the Special Forces convoy were local Afghans and Taliban supporters, who they said covered their faces with turbans.
The deputy police chief of Helmand, Haji Muhammad Ayub, attributed the attacks on the Red Cross worker and on the American soldiers to a notoriously brutal Taliban commander, Mullah Dadullah, who boasted about killing Americans in an interview with the Pashto-language radio service of the British Broadcasting Company on Friday.
"Of course it is the people of Dadullah," Mr. Ayub said. "One day he says, `We are going to be active,' and the next day they launch an attack on Americans."
In the interview, Mullah Dadullah announced the start of a jihad, or holy war, against American forces in Afghanistan, and vowed to make the ground burn under their feet.
"The ground became hot for the Russians here, and so maybe the ground will also become hot for the Americans," he said.
"This is a new thing," Mr. Ayub said. "This is because of Iraq. Lots of people are against the war in Iraq, and they are getting training in Pakistan and coming from there to launch attacks. It's serious and dangerous."
The ambush in a remote hamlet called Hyderabad was well planned, he said. "It's just desert, a bore-well and two houses," he said. The attackers waited for the four-vehicle convoy to pass them and then hit the last car, before making their getaway on motorbikes, Mr. Ayub said.
----------------------------------
Citation: Carlotta Gall, "As Rockets Strike, U.S. Hunts for Taliban Tied to Ambush," New York Times, 31 March 2003.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/31/international/worldspecial/31AFGH.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
----------------------------------
New York Times
31 March 2003
KABUL, Afghanistan, March 30 — A rocket slammed into the headquarters of the international peacekeeping force in central Kabul today, just hours after American military officials announced that they would expand operations in response to a sharp increase in Taliban activity in southern Afghanistan.
The rocket damaged a building but apparently injured no one, according to a spokesman. The compound is just across the road from the heavily guarded American Embassy here.
A second rocket landed on the eastern outskirts of the city, said an Afghan police official, Gen. Haroon Asif.
Rockets have sporadically been fired into Kabul over the last year, rarely hitting any target or doing serious damage, but they show that opponents to the international military presence are still active.
American officials said one goal of their expanded operations was to find those responsible for the ambush on a Special Forces team on Saturday afternoon that left two men dead and one critically wounded.
The ambush came a day after an armed group of Taliban in the same region pulled a foreign Red Cross worker from his car and shot him. The two attacks were signs of an "uptick" in rebel activity since the start of the war in Iraq, said Col. Roger King, a United States military spokesman.
Hundreds of local Afghan police and intelligence agents were deployed across the area of the southern province of Helmand today to search for the men responsible for the ambush on Saturday as coalition planes patrolled overhead.
Fighting continued in the adjoining province of Oruzgan as hundreds more Afghan forces and American Special Operations forces battled a large group of Taliban fighters believed to have been responsible for killing the Red Cross worker. Thirteen Taliban have been captured, including a senior Taliban member, and eight men have been killed, Khalid Pashtun, an aide to the governor of Kandahar, said today.
Hundreds of American and Romanian soldiers have also been scouring a mountain range farther east, near the Pakistani border, searching villages and confiscating weapons in one of the largest operations mounted in months.
Afghan officials said they believed that the men who attacked the Special Forces convoy were local Afghans and Taliban supporters, who they said covered their faces with turbans.
The deputy police chief of Helmand, Haji Muhammad Ayub, attributed the attacks on the Red Cross worker and on the American soldiers to a notoriously brutal Taliban commander, Mullah Dadullah, who boasted about killing Americans in an interview with the Pashto-language radio service of the British Broadcasting Company on Friday.
"Of course it is the people of Dadullah," Mr. Ayub said. "One day he says, `We are going to be active,' and the next day they launch an attack on Americans."
In the interview, Mullah Dadullah announced the start of a jihad, or holy war, against American forces in Afghanistan, and vowed to make the ground burn under their feet.
"The ground became hot for the Russians here, and so maybe the ground will also become hot for the Americans," he said.
"This is a new thing," Mr. Ayub said. "This is because of Iraq. Lots of people are against the war in Iraq, and they are getting training in Pakistan and coming from there to launch attacks. It's serious and dangerous."
The ambush in a remote hamlet called Hyderabad was well planned, he said. "It's just desert, a bore-well and two houses," he said. The attackers waited for the four-vehicle convoy to pass them and then hit the last car, before making their getaway on motorbikes, Mr. Ayub said.
----------------------------------
Citation: Carlotta Gall, "As Rockets Strike, U.S. Hunts for Taliban Tied to Ambush," New York Times, 31 March 2003.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/31/international/worldspecial/31AFGH.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
----------------------------------
American Air Attack Mistakenly Kills 11 Afghans
By Carlotta Gall
New York Times
10 April 2003
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, April 9 — An American warplane mistakenly bombed a house in eastern Afghanistan today, killing 11 civilians and wounding one, a United States military spokesman said.
The spokesman, Douglas Lefforge, described the bombing as a "tragic incident" at a briefing at the American military headquarters at Bagram air base north of Kabul. He said a 1,000 pound laser-guided bomb that was aimed at escaping rebels hit the house instead, while those inside were sleeping. Seven of the dead were women.
The bombing occurred near the American Special Forces base at Shkin in eastern Afghanistan, close to the Pakistani border. The spokesman said 10 to 20 rebels attacked a checkpoint near the base shortly before midnight. Four Afghan government soldiers at the checkpoint were wounded in the rebel attack.
A rapid-reaction unit set out to pursue the rebels as they fled in two groups toward the Pakistani border. United States Marine Corps AV-8 Harrier jets were called in, firing their cannons at one group and aiming a 1,000-pound bomb at the other.
"That bomb missed its intended target and landed on the house," the spokesman said. "The circumstances of the bombing are being investigated."
"Coalition forces never intentionally target civilian locations," he added.
There were no casualties among the Special Forces, and it was not known whether the rebels suffered any, he said. The wounded Afghan soldiers and the wounded survivor from the house were evacuated and were in stable condition. At a news briefing at the Pentagon today, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, expressed the military's "sincere condolences" to the families of those killed. "We sincerely regret the incident," he said.
Muhammad Ali Jalali, the governor of eastern Paktika Province where Shkin is, condemned the killings, The Associated Press reported.
"They were neither Al Qaeda nor Taliban," said Mr. Jalali, who said he discussed the incident with American officials. "They were only innocent civilians."
United States forces have been aggressive in chasing down rebels who have increased attacks on American and Afghan positions in the three weeks since the war in Iraq began.
American forces have frequently called in air power against even small rebel groups in the mountains, sending a message to militants that the military will not lose focus in Afghanistan even while it is fighting in Iraq.
On Tuesday some 500 American and Afghan troops launched a large airborne assault in the southern province of Helmand, in search of the men who ambushed a Special Forces unit two weeks ago, killing two American servicemen and critically wounding a third.
Dad Muhammad Khan, the intelligence chief in Helmand, said in a telephone interview that the operation had resulted in the arrest of the police chief of Sangin district and three of his officers, as well as a fourth man.
Suspicion had fallen on the district police chief because the Special Forces unit had spent the day with him in Sangin discussing reconstruction projects for the area. It was during their return to their base in Gereshk that they were ambushed.
But Mr. Khan said he doubted the police chief was behind the ambush. "In my opinion, that's not true," he said. "I am 100 percent sure he is not a Taliban member, they have made a mistake."
Mr. Khan said his own investigation pointed to local men loyal to the former Taliban corps commander of Kandahar, Maulvi Akhtar Muhammad Usmani, who Mr. Khan said was living in the border town of Quetta in Pakistan.
"I know the people who attacked them and I told the Americans about them," Mr. Khan said. "They are Taliban and are with Maulvi Akhtar Muhammad Usmani."
Maulvi Usmani, who was one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban and very close to the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, had recently visited Sangin district and dispensed satellite telephones and money to supporters, he said.
Attacks by suspected Taliban have continued since the weekend. Gunmen attacked an Afghan police checkpoint in Zabul Province on Sunday, wounding three policemen.
International peacekeepers in Kabul stepped up security after finding that five fuel tankers destined for the international security force had been rigged with explosives.
--------------------------------
Citation: Carlotta Gall, "American Air Attack Mistakenly Kills 11 Afghans," New York Times, 10 April 2003.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/international/asia/10AFGH.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
-------------------------------
New York Times
10 April 2003
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, April 9 — An American warplane mistakenly bombed a house in eastern Afghanistan today, killing 11 civilians and wounding one, a United States military spokesman said.
The spokesman, Douglas Lefforge, described the bombing as a "tragic incident" at a briefing at the American military headquarters at Bagram air base north of Kabul. He said a 1,000 pound laser-guided bomb that was aimed at escaping rebels hit the house instead, while those inside were sleeping. Seven of the dead were women.
The bombing occurred near the American Special Forces base at Shkin in eastern Afghanistan, close to the Pakistani border. The spokesman said 10 to 20 rebels attacked a checkpoint near the base shortly before midnight. Four Afghan government soldiers at the checkpoint were wounded in the rebel attack.
A rapid-reaction unit set out to pursue the rebels as they fled in two groups toward the Pakistani border. United States Marine Corps AV-8 Harrier jets were called in, firing their cannons at one group and aiming a 1,000-pound bomb at the other.
"That bomb missed its intended target and landed on the house," the spokesman said. "The circumstances of the bombing are being investigated."
"Coalition forces never intentionally target civilian locations," he added.
There were no casualties among the Special Forces, and it was not known whether the rebels suffered any, he said. The wounded Afghan soldiers and the wounded survivor from the house were evacuated and were in stable condition. At a news briefing at the Pentagon today, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, expressed the military's "sincere condolences" to the families of those killed. "We sincerely regret the incident," he said.
Muhammad Ali Jalali, the governor of eastern Paktika Province where Shkin is, condemned the killings, The Associated Press reported.
"They were neither Al Qaeda nor Taliban," said Mr. Jalali, who said he discussed the incident with American officials. "They were only innocent civilians."
United States forces have been aggressive in chasing down rebels who have increased attacks on American and Afghan positions in the three weeks since the war in Iraq began.
American forces have frequently called in air power against even small rebel groups in the mountains, sending a message to militants that the military will not lose focus in Afghanistan even while it is fighting in Iraq.
On Tuesday some 500 American and Afghan troops launched a large airborne assault in the southern province of Helmand, in search of the men who ambushed a Special Forces unit two weeks ago, killing two American servicemen and critically wounding a third.
Dad Muhammad Khan, the intelligence chief in Helmand, said in a telephone interview that the operation had resulted in the arrest of the police chief of Sangin district and three of his officers, as well as a fourth man.
Suspicion had fallen on the district police chief because the Special Forces unit had spent the day with him in Sangin discussing reconstruction projects for the area. It was during their return to their base in Gereshk that they were ambushed.
But Mr. Khan said he doubted the police chief was behind the ambush. "In my opinion, that's not true," he said. "I am 100 percent sure he is not a Taliban member, they have made a mistake."
Mr. Khan said his own investigation pointed to local men loyal to the former Taliban corps commander of Kandahar, Maulvi Akhtar Muhammad Usmani, who Mr. Khan said was living in the border town of Quetta in Pakistan.
"I know the people who attacked them and I told the Americans about them," Mr. Khan said. "They are Taliban and are with Maulvi Akhtar Muhammad Usmani."
Maulvi Usmani, who was one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban and very close to the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, had recently visited Sangin district and dispensed satellite telephones and money to supporters, he said.
Attacks by suspected Taliban have continued since the weekend. Gunmen attacked an Afghan police checkpoint in Zabul Province on Sunday, wounding three policemen.
International peacekeepers in Kabul stepped up security after finding that five fuel tankers destined for the international security force had been rigged with explosives.
--------------------------------
Citation: Carlotta Gall, "American Air Attack Mistakenly Kills 11 Afghans," New York Times, 10 April 2003.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/international/asia/10AFGH.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
-------------------------------
U.S. Forces Fire Missiles at House Believed to Hide Afghan Rebels
By Carlotta Gall
New York Times
11 May 2003
KABUL, Afghanistan, May 10 — American helicopters and fighter jets fired missiles into a house in eastern Afghanistan late Friday after an American soldier was wounded and an Afghan soldier killed in an ambush, a United States military spokesman said today.
The men who carried out the ambush were thought to have taken refuge in the house, local Afghan officials said.
The ambush was the latest in a series of attacks by presumed Taliban supporters who are opposed to the American military presence in Afghanistan.
The ambush occurred late Friday in Khost Province, which borders Pakistan. Gunmen opened fire with rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles on a convoy of American and Afghan troops.
Fierce fighting ensued as the American and Afghan forces returned fire and chased the attackers to a house in the village of Lalmi, a spokesman for the governor of Khost Province told news agencies.
At dawn, helicopters and fighter jets attacked the house and compound, and a vehicle parked inside the compound exploded in a huge blast, suggesting that it was packed with explosives.
The latest violence came as 10 former Taliban fighters were released and brought home from detention in the Guantánamo Bay, the second such group in six weeks.
The detainees, who were held in Guantánamo for about a year, were never charged with any crime, and said they had been told by their American guards that they could go free and would not be arrested again.
Most of them had been fighting as members of the Taliban forces when they were captured by Afghan forces in 2001 and handed over to the American military.
Today they were being held in Kabul's central prison, pending a release order from the interior minister, and would be free to go home in a day or two, said the deputy police chief, Muhammad Khalil Aminzada.
Mr. Aminzada gathered the detainees in a visiting room at the entrance to their cellblock and gave them a short talk, warning them that if they took up arms again they swiftly would be back behind bars.
The American authorities, criticized for holding Afghan and other detainees in Guantánamo for so long without charging them, have begun releasing Afghan prisoners who do not appear to be of any further intelligence interest or to pose an immediate threat. Three men were released in October, then a group of 18 in March and now this group of 10.
Although Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld announced the end of major combat operations during a visit to Afghanistan last week, attacks by Taliban or other rebels are occurring almost daily on American and Afghan government soldiers.
A spokesman at the American military headquarters at Bagram, north of Kabul, Col. Rodney Davis, confirmed that Friday's ambush had taken place and gave casualty figures, but he declined to provide further details.
Rockets were fired at another American base further south, at Shkin, during the night, he said. The attackers were seen escaping across the border into Pakistan.
The Taliban threat remains a serious concern for President Hamid Karzai, but his government has extended an amnesty to all ordinary members of the Taliban on condition they do not take up weapons against the government.
Mr. Aminzada, the Kabul deputy police chief, warned the detainees who returned from Guantánamo today not to do any more damage to their country by continuing to fight their own people.
"They are Taliban, they were Taliban and they still are," he told reporters. "The only reason they are being released is because they were not closely connected to Al Qaeda." "The leaders of the Taliban and those who are still committed to fighting against civilization, will not get an amnesty," he said.
In his talk to the returning detainees, Mr. Aminzada said: "Fortunately the Americans found nothing against you. You will be freed and it is your choice if you sit at home or start fighting again. If you do fight, you will end up back inside here again."
"What happened in the past we will leave behind," he told them. "But you should not be deceived again. You allowed the foreigners to come into our country, and then they hit the tall buildings in New York and destroyed our country here. Whatever you do, the responsibility is yours. But if there is peace here and no fighting, the Americans will go."
------------------
Citation: Carlotta Gall, "U.S. Forces Fire Missiles at House Believed to Hide Afghan Rebels," New York Times, 11 May 2003.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/international/asia/11AFGH.html?ei=5062&en=154e5ef8841a78da&ex=1053230400&partner=GOOGLE&pagewanted=print&position=
-----------------
New York Times
11 May 2003
KABUL, Afghanistan, May 10 — American helicopters and fighter jets fired missiles into a house in eastern Afghanistan late Friday after an American soldier was wounded and an Afghan soldier killed in an ambush, a United States military spokesman said today.
The men who carried out the ambush were thought to have taken refuge in the house, local Afghan officials said.
The ambush was the latest in a series of attacks by presumed Taliban supporters who are opposed to the American military presence in Afghanistan.
The ambush occurred late Friday in Khost Province, which borders Pakistan. Gunmen opened fire with rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles on a convoy of American and Afghan troops.
Fierce fighting ensued as the American and Afghan forces returned fire and chased the attackers to a house in the village of Lalmi, a spokesman for the governor of Khost Province told news agencies.
At dawn, helicopters and fighter jets attacked the house and compound, and a vehicle parked inside the compound exploded in a huge blast, suggesting that it was packed with explosives.
The latest violence came as 10 former Taliban fighters were released and brought home from detention in the Guantánamo Bay, the second such group in six weeks.
The detainees, who were held in Guantánamo for about a year, were never charged with any crime, and said they had been told by their American guards that they could go free and would not be arrested again.
Most of them had been fighting as members of the Taliban forces when they were captured by Afghan forces in 2001 and handed over to the American military.
Today they were being held in Kabul's central prison, pending a release order from the interior minister, and would be free to go home in a day or two, said the deputy police chief, Muhammad Khalil Aminzada.
Mr. Aminzada gathered the detainees in a visiting room at the entrance to their cellblock and gave them a short talk, warning them that if they took up arms again they swiftly would be back behind bars.
The American authorities, criticized for holding Afghan and other detainees in Guantánamo for so long without charging them, have begun releasing Afghan prisoners who do not appear to be of any further intelligence interest or to pose an immediate threat. Three men were released in October, then a group of 18 in March and now this group of 10.
Although Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld announced the end of major combat operations during a visit to Afghanistan last week, attacks by Taliban or other rebels are occurring almost daily on American and Afghan government soldiers.
A spokesman at the American military headquarters at Bagram, north of Kabul, Col. Rodney Davis, confirmed that Friday's ambush had taken place and gave casualty figures, but he declined to provide further details.
Rockets were fired at another American base further south, at Shkin, during the night, he said. The attackers were seen escaping across the border into Pakistan.
The Taliban threat remains a serious concern for President Hamid Karzai, but his government has extended an amnesty to all ordinary members of the Taliban on condition they do not take up weapons against the government.
Mr. Aminzada, the Kabul deputy police chief, warned the detainees who returned from Guantánamo today not to do any more damage to their country by continuing to fight their own people.
"They are Taliban, they were Taliban and they still are," he told reporters. "The only reason they are being released is because they were not closely connected to Al Qaeda." "The leaders of the Taliban and those who are still committed to fighting against civilization, will not get an amnesty," he said.
In his talk to the returning detainees, Mr. Aminzada said: "Fortunately the Americans found nothing against you. You will be freed and it is your choice if you sit at home or start fighting again. If you do fight, you will end up back inside here again."
"What happened in the past we will leave behind," he told them. "But you should not be deceived again. You allowed the foreigners to come into our country, and then they hit the tall buildings in New York and destroyed our country here. Whatever you do, the responsibility is yours. But if there is peace here and no fighting, the Americans will go."
------------------
Citation: Carlotta Gall, "U.S. Forces Fire Missiles at House Believed to Hide Afghan Rebels," New York Times, 11 May 2003.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/international/asia/11AFGH.html?ei=5062&en=154e5ef8841a78da&ex=1053230400&partner=GOOGLE&pagewanted=print&position=
-----------------
Mix of Pride and Shame Follows Killings and Mutilations by Iraqis
By Jeffrey Gettleman
New York Times
02 April 2004
FALLUJA, Iraq, April 1 — As the rage cooled in Falluja on Thursday and the burned and beaten bodies of four American civilians were wrapped in white cloth, many townspeople said they were torn between pride in the attack and shame over the mutilations.
Many said they supported the killing of four security consultants because they were Americans and Americans are despised.
But some of those same people said they felt embarrassed when mobs tore the bodies apart afterward and dragged them through the streets, turning this town in the heart of the Sunni Triangle into a symbol not only of resistance but of barbarity. The macabre celebration was televised worldwide.
"This is a bad advertisement for everything we stand for," said Muhammad Khalifa, a spare-parts trader who closed his shop during the disturbance in a sign of disgust. "We may hate Americans. We may hate them with all our hearts. But all men are creatures of God."
In the morning, a team of American officials rushed to a meeting with Falluja's mayor and top clerics. American officials said the clerics promised to issue a fatwa, or religious edict, at Friday Prayer to condemn the ambush and the grisly aftermath. One of the gravest sins in Islam is desecrating the dead.
Meanwhile, military commanders acknowledged that the violence on Wednesday would make it more difficult for them to stick to their low- key approach.
"We were going to roll in there all quiet like the fog," said Col. J. C. Coleman, chief of staff for the First Marine Expeditionary Force. "Now these people are invigorated. They're all stirred up. They've gotten worldwide press. It makes our job harder."
Marines took over the Falluja area from the Army just last week and announced a shift away from aggressive tactics. They wanted to win friends by doling out $540 million in reconstruction projects. Now, commanders say, they will have to root out the insurgents.
In Washington, administration officials said that the attacks in Falluja could hamper the entire reconstruction effort by making it harder to persuade Spain and other countries to keep troops in Iraq or to convince allies like India and Pakistan to send forces.
"This raises the difficulty level for everything, including our ability to reach a political solution to the governance of Iraq," an official said.
Falluja has been one of the most difficult spots to occupy in Iraq, a place where support for Saddam Hussein runs strong. Mr. Hussein built a powerful network here, handing out choice jobs and privileges to tribal elders and powerful sheiks. At a traffic circle downtown, there are still signs that read, "Viva Saddam!" and "Long live Falluja, the cemetery for invaders."
Sometimes, it seems as if American overseers have few friends. But on Thursday, a group of clerics and policemen helped the American authorities recover the bodies of the four security consultants. After the four were shot, they were yanked from burning vehicles by a jeering mob and dragged to a bridge over the Euphrates River where at least two bodies were strung up by a rope and dangled over the water.
The families of three of the victims confirmed their identities. They were Jerry Zovko, 32, an Army veteran from Willoughby, Ohio; Michael Teague, 38, an Army veteran from Clarksville, Tenn.; and Scott Helvenston, a Navy veteran from Big Bear, Calif. The company the men worked for, Blackwater U.S.A. of Moyock, N.C., declined to identify them.
Neither American forces nor the Iraqi police responded to the chaos. More than 4,000 marines are stationed near Falluja, 35 miles west of Baghdad. Marine commanders on Thursday defended their decision not to intervene. "Should we have sent in a tank so we could have gotten, with all due respect, four dead bodies back?" said Col. Michael Walker, a civil affairs commander. "What good would that have done? A mob is a mob. All we would have done was provoke them."
An Iraqi policeman said he and his colleagues were united about what to do when the violence started. "We had to stay away," Muhammad al-Esawi said. "What happened was between Americans and insurgents. If we got involved, we would have been killed."
On Thursday, the violence continued. An Iraqi employed by the Marines was shot in the neck as he was leaving work. He was in critical condition Thursday night. Also on Thursday, a Marine Humvee was attacked — twice. First it was disabled by a roadside bomb, which wounded three marines. Then, after the marines abandoned the vehicle, a crowd set it on fire in a scene reminiscent of the blazing vehicles on Wednesday. A roadside bomb killed five soldiers on Wednesday.
American troops have pulled back to the outskirts of the city. American military commanders, though, said they were not retreating from Falluja.
In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld held a series of meetings at the Pentagon with his top advisers, including the commander in the Persian Gulf, Gen. John P. Abizaid, to discuss Iraq and how to deal with Falluja. The director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, also attended the meetings.
A senior military official said that American forces in Iraq were already planning an "appropriate response" to the grisly killings and overall violence in Falluja. "We're not getting panicky over this," the senior official said.
In Iraq, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy operations director for the occupation forces, said: "We will respond. It's going to be deliberate, it will be precise and it will be overwhelming."
He added, "We will pacify Falluja."
Since the war in Iraq began, Falluja has been a hot spot of resistance. Last April, American soldiers killed at least 15 civilians at a demonstration. In November, insurgents downed an Army helicopter, killing 16. In February, gunmen blasted their way into a Falluja jail, killing 15 police officers and freeing dozens of prisoners. Last week, marines fought with insurgents in a battle that killed a number of civilians.
Osama Nafaa, who sells tires, said the attack against the four American security consultants might have been revenge. "People were still talking about the civilians the Americans killed," Mr. Nafaa said.
On Thursday, several Falluja residents spoke of the attack against the Americans in admiring terms. "It was a very good ambush," said Mr. Khalifa, the spare-parts seller. He said he was driving to work in downtown Falluja around 10 a.m. on Wednesday when he passed some men alongside the road who frantically waved at him and said: "Go back! Go back! Something is about to happen."
Mr. Khalifa, 38, said the men, some wearing masks, some carrying guns, cleared the streets so that when the security consultants rolled into town in two sport utility vehicles, they were the only cars on the road.
It is not clear what the four Americans were doing in Falluja. Their company, Blackwater U.S.A., said their job was to provide security for food deliveries in the area. Many Falluja residents said they did not believe the men were civilians, insisting they were plainclothes soldiers or spies. More than 10 foreign civilians have been killed in the past month.
Within seconds, Mr. Khalifa said, the gunmen blasted the cars, killing the Americans, and melted back into the streets. Then the mobs came. Iraqi television crews caught the end of the mayhem. The images beamed worldwide were reminiscent of scenes from Somalia in 1993, when a mob dragged the body of an American soldier through the streets of Mogadishu.
Some of the Iraqis who approved of the killings expressed deep dismay over the mob's actions. "I know these men, these insurgents," Mr. Khalifa said. "Even they wouldn't accept dragging bodies."
Mazem Hazem, a 20-year-old engineering student, said killing the Americans was acceptable but what was done to their bodies was not.
"I am satisfied that we killed them — they are Americans and they are foreigners on our land," Mr. Hazem said. "But I don't agree with what they did with their bodies. It is haram," he said, using the Arabic word for forbidden. "It is an embarrassment. And people will remember Falluja for this for many years."
Iraqi employees of The Times's Baghdad bureau contributed reporting from Falluja for this article and a related one yesterday.
-----------------------
Citation: Jeffrey Gettleman, "Mix of Pride and Shame Follows Killings and Mutilations by Iraqis," New York Times, 02 April 2004.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/02/international/middleeast/02IRAQ.html?pagewanted=print&position=
-----------------------
New York Times
02 April 2004
FALLUJA, Iraq, April 1 — As the rage cooled in Falluja on Thursday and the burned and beaten bodies of four American civilians were wrapped in white cloth, many townspeople said they were torn between pride in the attack and shame over the mutilations.
Many said they supported the killing of four security consultants because they were Americans and Americans are despised.
But some of those same people said they felt embarrassed when mobs tore the bodies apart afterward and dragged them through the streets, turning this town in the heart of the Sunni Triangle into a symbol not only of resistance but of barbarity. The macabre celebration was televised worldwide.
"This is a bad advertisement for everything we stand for," said Muhammad Khalifa, a spare-parts trader who closed his shop during the disturbance in a sign of disgust. "We may hate Americans. We may hate them with all our hearts. But all men are creatures of God."
In the morning, a team of American officials rushed to a meeting with Falluja's mayor and top clerics. American officials said the clerics promised to issue a fatwa, or religious edict, at Friday Prayer to condemn the ambush and the grisly aftermath. One of the gravest sins in Islam is desecrating the dead.
Meanwhile, military commanders acknowledged that the violence on Wednesday would make it more difficult for them to stick to their low- key approach.
"We were going to roll in there all quiet like the fog," said Col. J. C. Coleman, chief of staff for the First Marine Expeditionary Force. "Now these people are invigorated. They're all stirred up. They've gotten worldwide press. It makes our job harder."
Marines took over the Falluja area from the Army just last week and announced a shift away from aggressive tactics. They wanted to win friends by doling out $540 million in reconstruction projects. Now, commanders say, they will have to root out the insurgents.
In Washington, administration officials said that the attacks in Falluja could hamper the entire reconstruction effort by making it harder to persuade Spain and other countries to keep troops in Iraq or to convince allies like India and Pakistan to send forces.
"This raises the difficulty level for everything, including our ability to reach a political solution to the governance of Iraq," an official said.
Falluja has been one of the most difficult spots to occupy in Iraq, a place where support for Saddam Hussein runs strong. Mr. Hussein built a powerful network here, handing out choice jobs and privileges to tribal elders and powerful sheiks. At a traffic circle downtown, there are still signs that read, "Viva Saddam!" and "Long live Falluja, the cemetery for invaders."
Sometimes, it seems as if American overseers have few friends. But on Thursday, a group of clerics and policemen helped the American authorities recover the bodies of the four security consultants. After the four were shot, they were yanked from burning vehicles by a jeering mob and dragged to a bridge over the Euphrates River where at least two bodies were strung up by a rope and dangled over the water.
The families of three of the victims confirmed their identities. They were Jerry Zovko, 32, an Army veteran from Willoughby, Ohio; Michael Teague, 38, an Army veteran from Clarksville, Tenn.; and Scott Helvenston, a Navy veteran from Big Bear, Calif. The company the men worked for, Blackwater U.S.A. of Moyock, N.C., declined to identify them.
Neither American forces nor the Iraqi police responded to the chaos. More than 4,000 marines are stationed near Falluja, 35 miles west of Baghdad. Marine commanders on Thursday defended their decision not to intervene. "Should we have sent in a tank so we could have gotten, with all due respect, four dead bodies back?" said Col. Michael Walker, a civil affairs commander. "What good would that have done? A mob is a mob. All we would have done was provoke them."
An Iraqi policeman said he and his colleagues were united about what to do when the violence started. "We had to stay away," Muhammad al-Esawi said. "What happened was between Americans and insurgents. If we got involved, we would have been killed."
On Thursday, the violence continued. An Iraqi employed by the Marines was shot in the neck as he was leaving work. He was in critical condition Thursday night. Also on Thursday, a Marine Humvee was attacked — twice. First it was disabled by a roadside bomb, which wounded three marines. Then, after the marines abandoned the vehicle, a crowd set it on fire in a scene reminiscent of the blazing vehicles on Wednesday. A roadside bomb killed five soldiers on Wednesday.
American troops have pulled back to the outskirts of the city. American military commanders, though, said they were not retreating from Falluja.
In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld held a series of meetings at the Pentagon with his top advisers, including the commander in the Persian Gulf, Gen. John P. Abizaid, to discuss Iraq and how to deal with Falluja. The director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, also attended the meetings.
A senior military official said that American forces in Iraq were already planning an "appropriate response" to the grisly killings and overall violence in Falluja. "We're not getting panicky over this," the senior official said.
In Iraq, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy operations director for the occupation forces, said: "We will respond. It's going to be deliberate, it will be precise and it will be overwhelming."
He added, "We will pacify Falluja."
Since the war in Iraq began, Falluja has been a hot spot of resistance. Last April, American soldiers killed at least 15 civilians at a demonstration. In November, insurgents downed an Army helicopter, killing 16. In February, gunmen blasted their way into a Falluja jail, killing 15 police officers and freeing dozens of prisoners. Last week, marines fought with insurgents in a battle that killed a number of civilians.
Osama Nafaa, who sells tires, said the attack against the four American security consultants might have been revenge. "People were still talking about the civilians the Americans killed," Mr. Nafaa said.
On Thursday, several Falluja residents spoke of the attack against the Americans in admiring terms. "It was a very good ambush," said Mr. Khalifa, the spare-parts seller. He said he was driving to work in downtown Falluja around 10 a.m. on Wednesday when he passed some men alongside the road who frantically waved at him and said: "Go back! Go back! Something is about to happen."
Mr. Khalifa, 38, said the men, some wearing masks, some carrying guns, cleared the streets so that when the security consultants rolled into town in two sport utility vehicles, they were the only cars on the road.
It is not clear what the four Americans were doing in Falluja. Their company, Blackwater U.S.A., said their job was to provide security for food deliveries in the area. Many Falluja residents said they did not believe the men were civilians, insisting they were plainclothes soldiers or spies. More than 10 foreign civilians have been killed in the past month.
Within seconds, Mr. Khalifa said, the gunmen blasted the cars, killing the Americans, and melted back into the streets. Then the mobs came. Iraqi television crews caught the end of the mayhem. The images beamed worldwide were reminiscent of scenes from Somalia in 1993, when a mob dragged the body of an American soldier through the streets of Mogadishu.
Some of the Iraqis who approved of the killings expressed deep dismay over the mob's actions. "I know these men, these insurgents," Mr. Khalifa said. "Even they wouldn't accept dragging bodies."
Mazem Hazem, a 20-year-old engineering student, said killing the Americans was acceptable but what was done to their bodies was not.
"I am satisfied that we killed them — they are Americans and they are foreigners on our land," Mr. Hazem said. "But I don't agree with what they did with their bodies. It is haram," he said, using the Arabic word for forbidden. "It is an embarrassment. And people will remember Falluja for this for many years."
Iraqi employees of The Times's Baghdad bureau contributed reporting from Falluja for this article and a related one yesterday.
-----------------------
Citation: Jeffrey Gettleman, "Mix of Pride and Shame Follows Killings and Mutilations by Iraqis," New York Times, 02 April 2004.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/02/international/middleeast/02IRAQ.html?pagewanted=print&position=
-----------------------
Suicide Bomber Kills 22 in Attack at an Iraq Bank
By Edward Wong
New York Times
15 June 2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 14 - A suicide bomber blew himself up on Tuesday in a crowd of retirees lining up to receive their pensions in the northern city of Kirkuk, killing at least 22 people and wounding 80 others, including women and children, police and hospital officials said.
The bombing took place at 10:30 a.m., as the retirees were waiting in front of the Rafidain Bank, said Maj. Gen. Shirko Shakir Hakim, a chief in the Kirkuk police force.
The main hospital in Kirkuk overflowed for hours with victims, and those with minor wounds were ushered out to make room for the more serious cases.
"Enough with terrorism and killings," said an elderly woman, who sat sobbing on the street near the debris of the blast site.
She said she did not know whether her son, who was selling children's toys near the bank, was alive or not. "We're tired and we want God to help us just as he helped his prophets," she said. "I beseech him to help the Iraqi people to stop the bloodshed."
Bombings of large groups of civilians have happened only sporadically in this war, and the Kirkuk assault aroused fears of a new and troubling phase of the violence.
Kirkuk, which sits atop some of Iraq's richest oil fields, is coveted by the country's major ethnic and sectarian groups, and for that reason is considered the most politically precarious city in Iraq.
The question of who will administer the city is expected to be one of the most contentious issues during the writing of the permanent constitution, and analysts say the city could descend into large-scale civil strife if political solutions are not carefully laid out.
The attack, the deadliest in Kirkuk since the toppling of Saddam Hussein's government, was the worst in a series of assaults on a particularly violent day in Iraq. Five Iraqi policemen were killed when a suicide bomber's car rammed into a checkpoint outside the city of Baquba, 35 miles northeast of the capital, a police official in Baquba said. The American military said a soldier was killed by a rocket-propelled grenade while on patrol in Baghdad on Tuesday, and two soldiers died from a roadside bomb explosion near the western provincial capital of Ramadi on Monday.
The Second Marine Division said marines accidentally killed five civilians and wounded four others on Tuesday after firing at two cars speeding toward a checkpoint near Ramadi. The cars had approached the checkpoint shortly after an insurgent had tried ramming into the checkpoint with a suicide car bomb, the Marines said in a written statement.
One of Baghdad's main hospitals reported that it received two groups of bodies on Monday night totaling 24 people who apparently had been executed. Seventeen were Iraqi truck drivers who transport goods to companies in the capital, an Interior Ministry official said. The other seven were also believed to be working in convoys, but included at least one Nepali man, the official said.
In a speech before the National Assembly on Tuesday, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Shiite Arab prime minister, said that the government was trying to solve the impasse over Kirkuk, but that it was difficult to balance the political demands of the city's Kurds and Arabs.
Most of those killed in the bombing on Tuesday were Kurds, police officials said.
The wounded flooded into hospital wards, and American soldiers and Iraqi policemen in blue uniforms tried to cordon off the blast site, stepping around pools of blood, shards of glass and charred metal wreckage.
Tens of thousands of Kurds who say they were displaced from Kirkuk during the rule of Mr. Hussein have moved back in droves and are threatening to force out the Arabs whom Mr. Hussein relocated there. At the same time, the Turkmens, an ethnic group originating in Central Asia, entertain notions of regaining political dominance of the city, which they held under the Ottoman Empire, when Turkish sultans appointed the Turkmens as their proxy rulers in the area.
Kirkuk lies within Tamim Province, which contains strong elements of the Sunni Arab-led insurgency. On June 7, three suicide car bombs exploded simultaneously at checkpoints ringing the rebel stronghold of Hawija, about 30 miles southwest of Kirkuk, killing at least 20 people and wounding 30 others.
Iraqi and American officials have said they fear the violence in Kirkuk could increase as the various political parties in the National Assembly begin to negotiate over the constitution. The Kurds are lobbying for Kirkuk to be brought under the administration of the Kurdistan regional government, while the dominant Shiite Arabs say Kirkuk must remain under the control of a central authority.
The fight over Kirkuk extends even beyond Iraq's border. The Turkish government, ever wary of Kurdish independence, is insisting that the city not fall under Kurdish control, giving the Kurds the oil revenues they need to become independent of the central state.
When he appeared before the National Assembly on Tuesday, Dr. Jaafari said he had tried to address those concerns in a recent conversation with Turkish officials.
But the very Kurdish returnees who cause the Turks such concern, by swinging the demographic balance in the Kurds' favor, were the victims of "political repatriation" under Mr. Hussein's rule, Dr. Jaafari said, pushed out and replaced by Arabs who were moved into the city by Mr. Hussein for "demographic reasons."
"There are two contradictory problems," Dr. Jaafari said.
Dr. Jaafari was speaking after the 275-member National Assembly had voted to approve his cabinet. Far to the north, in Iraqi Kurdistan, Massoud Barzani, a longtime militia leader, was sworn in as the head of the Kurdish regional government. At the ceremony, Kurdish officials vowed to retain broad autonomy for Kurdistan in the new Iraq and publicly promoted the right of the Kurds to govern Kirkuk.
Joost R. Hiltermann, director of the Middle East office of the International Crisis Group, a conflict-resolution organization, said in a recent interview that the White House should ensure that the national Iraqi government administer Kirkuk rather than the Kurds. Otherwise, he said, the potential for large-scale civil conflict will increase.
An Iraqi employee of The New York Times, whose name is being withheld for security reasons, contributed reporting from Kirkuk for this article.
Correction: June 22, 2005, Wednesday
A front-page article last Wednesday about a suicide bomb attack in Kirkuk, a city in northern Iraq riven by political and sectarian tensions, misstated the view of a conflict-resolution specialist on who should govern the city. The specialist, Joost R. Hiltermann, director of the Middle East office of the International Crisis Group, said the White House should ensure that Kirkuk has administrative autonomy, not that the central Iraq government should run it.
------------------------
Citation: Edward Wong, "Suicide Bomber Kills 22 in Attack at an Iraq Bank," New York Times, 15 June 2005.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/15/international/middleeast/15iraq.html?oref=login&pagewanted=print
-----------------------
New York Times
15 June 2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 14 - A suicide bomber blew himself up on Tuesday in a crowd of retirees lining up to receive their pensions in the northern city of Kirkuk, killing at least 22 people and wounding 80 others, including women and children, police and hospital officials said.
The bombing took place at 10:30 a.m., as the retirees were waiting in front of the Rafidain Bank, said Maj. Gen. Shirko Shakir Hakim, a chief in the Kirkuk police force.
The main hospital in Kirkuk overflowed for hours with victims, and those with minor wounds were ushered out to make room for the more serious cases.
"Enough with terrorism and killings," said an elderly woman, who sat sobbing on the street near the debris of the blast site.
She said she did not know whether her son, who was selling children's toys near the bank, was alive or not. "We're tired and we want God to help us just as he helped his prophets," she said. "I beseech him to help the Iraqi people to stop the bloodshed."
Bombings of large groups of civilians have happened only sporadically in this war, and the Kirkuk assault aroused fears of a new and troubling phase of the violence.
Kirkuk, which sits atop some of Iraq's richest oil fields, is coveted by the country's major ethnic and sectarian groups, and for that reason is considered the most politically precarious city in Iraq.
The question of who will administer the city is expected to be one of the most contentious issues during the writing of the permanent constitution, and analysts say the city could descend into large-scale civil strife if political solutions are not carefully laid out.
The attack, the deadliest in Kirkuk since the toppling of Saddam Hussein's government, was the worst in a series of assaults on a particularly violent day in Iraq. Five Iraqi policemen were killed when a suicide bomber's car rammed into a checkpoint outside the city of Baquba, 35 miles northeast of the capital, a police official in Baquba said. The American military said a soldier was killed by a rocket-propelled grenade while on patrol in Baghdad on Tuesday, and two soldiers died from a roadside bomb explosion near the western provincial capital of Ramadi on Monday.
The Second Marine Division said marines accidentally killed five civilians and wounded four others on Tuesday after firing at two cars speeding toward a checkpoint near Ramadi. The cars had approached the checkpoint shortly after an insurgent had tried ramming into the checkpoint with a suicide car bomb, the Marines said in a written statement.
One of Baghdad's main hospitals reported that it received two groups of bodies on Monday night totaling 24 people who apparently had been executed. Seventeen were Iraqi truck drivers who transport goods to companies in the capital, an Interior Ministry official said. The other seven were also believed to be working in convoys, but included at least one Nepali man, the official said.
In a speech before the National Assembly on Tuesday, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Shiite Arab prime minister, said that the government was trying to solve the impasse over Kirkuk, but that it was difficult to balance the political demands of the city's Kurds and Arabs.
Most of those killed in the bombing on Tuesday were Kurds, police officials said.
The wounded flooded into hospital wards, and American soldiers and Iraqi policemen in blue uniforms tried to cordon off the blast site, stepping around pools of blood, shards of glass and charred metal wreckage.
Tens of thousands of Kurds who say they were displaced from Kirkuk during the rule of Mr. Hussein have moved back in droves and are threatening to force out the Arabs whom Mr. Hussein relocated there. At the same time, the Turkmens, an ethnic group originating in Central Asia, entertain notions of regaining political dominance of the city, which they held under the Ottoman Empire, when Turkish sultans appointed the Turkmens as their proxy rulers in the area.
Kirkuk lies within Tamim Province, which contains strong elements of the Sunni Arab-led insurgency. On June 7, three suicide car bombs exploded simultaneously at checkpoints ringing the rebel stronghold of Hawija, about 30 miles southwest of Kirkuk, killing at least 20 people and wounding 30 others.
Iraqi and American officials have said they fear the violence in Kirkuk could increase as the various political parties in the National Assembly begin to negotiate over the constitution. The Kurds are lobbying for Kirkuk to be brought under the administration of the Kurdistan regional government, while the dominant Shiite Arabs say Kirkuk must remain under the control of a central authority.
The fight over Kirkuk extends even beyond Iraq's border. The Turkish government, ever wary of Kurdish independence, is insisting that the city not fall under Kurdish control, giving the Kurds the oil revenues they need to become independent of the central state.
When he appeared before the National Assembly on Tuesday, Dr. Jaafari said he had tried to address those concerns in a recent conversation with Turkish officials.
But the very Kurdish returnees who cause the Turks such concern, by swinging the demographic balance in the Kurds' favor, were the victims of "political repatriation" under Mr. Hussein's rule, Dr. Jaafari said, pushed out and replaced by Arabs who were moved into the city by Mr. Hussein for "demographic reasons."
"There are two contradictory problems," Dr. Jaafari said.
Dr. Jaafari was speaking after the 275-member National Assembly had voted to approve his cabinet. Far to the north, in Iraqi Kurdistan, Massoud Barzani, a longtime militia leader, was sworn in as the head of the Kurdish regional government. At the ceremony, Kurdish officials vowed to retain broad autonomy for Kurdistan in the new Iraq and publicly promoted the right of the Kurds to govern Kirkuk.
Joost R. Hiltermann, director of the Middle East office of the International Crisis Group, a conflict-resolution organization, said in a recent interview that the White House should ensure that the national Iraqi government administer Kirkuk rather than the Kurds. Otherwise, he said, the potential for large-scale civil conflict will increase.
An Iraqi employee of The New York Times, whose name is being withheld for security reasons, contributed reporting from Kirkuk for this article.
Correction: June 22, 2005, Wednesday
A front-page article last Wednesday about a suicide bomb attack in Kirkuk, a city in northern Iraq riven by political and sectarian tensions, misstated the view of a conflict-resolution specialist on who should govern the city. The specialist, Joost R. Hiltermann, director of the Middle East office of the International Crisis Group, said the White House should ensure that Kirkuk has administrative autonomy, not that the central Iraq government should run it.
------------------------
Citation: Edward Wong, "Suicide Bomber Kills 22 in Attack at an Iraq Bank," New York Times, 15 June 2005.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/15/international/middleeast/15iraq.html?oref=login&pagewanted=print
-----------------------
C.I.A. Report Suggests Iraqis Are Losing Faith in U.S. Efforts
By Douglas Jehl
New York Times
13 November 2003
WASHINGTON, Nov. 12 — A bleak top-secret report by the Central Intelligence Agency suggests that the situation in Iraq is approaching a crucial turning point, with ordinary Iraqis losing faith in American-led occupation forces and in the United States-appointed Iraqi Governing Council.
The report, sent to Washington on Monday by the C.I.A.'s Baghdad station chief, suggests that the situation is creating a more fertile environment for the anti-American insurgency. Officials said the report was adding to the sense of urgency behind the administration's reappraisal of its policies in Iraq.
The officials said that the report, dated Nov. 10, had been explicitly endorsed by L. Paul Bremer III, the top American official in Iraq, and that the warnings it spelled out had been a factor behind Mr. Bremer's abrupt return to Washington for consultations this week.
The C.I.A. and the White House refused even to confirm the existence of the report, which was first disclosed by The Philadelphia Inquirer. But government officials outside those agencies said its conclusions were among the darkest intelligence assessments distributed since the American-led invasion of Iraq in March.
"It says that this is an insurgency, and that it is gaining strength because Iraqis have no confidence that there is anyone on the horizon who is going to stick around in Iraq as a real alternative to the former regime," one American official said.
The latest C.I.A. report follows earlier intelligence assessments that warned American commanders in Iraq of increasing resentment among ordinary Iraqis. The picture those reports presented was very different from the public view presented by administration officials. In particular, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has repeatedly spoken of the opponents of the American-led occupation as "dead-enders, foreign terrorists and criminal gangs."
But the Nov. 10 situation report was described by the officials as reflecting a more formal assessment. They said Mr. Bremer's unusual endorsement was intended to give the document added credibility.
A second American official said the grim conclusions were based in part on a classified opinion poll conducted by the State Department's intelligence branch, which found that a majority of Iraqis now regard American troops as occupiers rather than liberators. The concern has been reinforced, another official said, by an increasing consensus among intelligence analysts that appointed Iraqi leaders do not appear to be capable of carrying out the task of governing or working toward elections.
"The trend lines are in the wrong direction," a third government official said. "I haven't seen anything in any of the intelligence reports that offers a hard and fast recipe for how to turn things around."
The officials would speak about the report only on condition of anonymity, and all refused to quote directly from the document because of its classified nature. They said they had been briefed about its findings, and were discussing them publicly because they believed the warnings should have wider circulation inside and outside government.
Among other concerns raised by the C.I.A. report, the officials said, was the danger that Iraqi Shiite Muslims, who represent a majority of the country's population, could soon join minority Sunni Muslims in carrying out armed attacks against American forces. The report also described what it portrayed as major obstacles to efforts by the United States and American-led Iraqi forces to halt a small but steady infiltration of foreign fighters from Syria and Iran.
--------------------------
Citation: Douglas Jehl, "C.I.A. Report Suggests Iraqis Are Losing Faith in U.S. Efforts," New York Times, 13 November 2003.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/13/politics/13INTE.html?pagewanted=print&position=
--------------------------
New York Times
13 November 2003
WASHINGTON, Nov. 12 — A bleak top-secret report by the Central Intelligence Agency suggests that the situation in Iraq is approaching a crucial turning point, with ordinary Iraqis losing faith in American-led occupation forces and in the United States-appointed Iraqi Governing Council.
The report, sent to Washington on Monday by the C.I.A.'s Baghdad station chief, suggests that the situation is creating a more fertile environment for the anti-American insurgency. Officials said the report was adding to the sense of urgency behind the administration's reappraisal of its policies in Iraq.
The officials said that the report, dated Nov. 10, had been explicitly endorsed by L. Paul Bremer III, the top American official in Iraq, and that the warnings it spelled out had been a factor behind Mr. Bremer's abrupt return to Washington for consultations this week.
The C.I.A. and the White House refused even to confirm the existence of the report, which was first disclosed by The Philadelphia Inquirer. But government officials outside those agencies said its conclusions were among the darkest intelligence assessments distributed since the American-led invasion of Iraq in March.
"It says that this is an insurgency, and that it is gaining strength because Iraqis have no confidence that there is anyone on the horizon who is going to stick around in Iraq as a real alternative to the former regime," one American official said.
The latest C.I.A. report follows earlier intelligence assessments that warned American commanders in Iraq of increasing resentment among ordinary Iraqis. The picture those reports presented was very different from the public view presented by administration officials. In particular, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has repeatedly spoken of the opponents of the American-led occupation as "dead-enders, foreign terrorists and criminal gangs."
But the Nov. 10 situation report was described by the officials as reflecting a more formal assessment. They said Mr. Bremer's unusual endorsement was intended to give the document added credibility.
A second American official said the grim conclusions were based in part on a classified opinion poll conducted by the State Department's intelligence branch, which found that a majority of Iraqis now regard American troops as occupiers rather than liberators. The concern has been reinforced, another official said, by an increasing consensus among intelligence analysts that appointed Iraqi leaders do not appear to be capable of carrying out the task of governing or working toward elections.
"The trend lines are in the wrong direction," a third government official said. "I haven't seen anything in any of the intelligence reports that offers a hard and fast recipe for how to turn things around."
The officials would speak about the report only on condition of anonymity, and all refused to quote directly from the document because of its classified nature. They said they had been briefed about its findings, and were discussing them publicly because they believed the warnings should have wider circulation inside and outside government.
Among other concerns raised by the C.I.A. report, the officials said, was the danger that Iraqi Shiite Muslims, who represent a majority of the country's population, could soon join minority Sunni Muslims in carrying out armed attacks against American forces. The report also described what it portrayed as major obstacles to efforts by the United States and American-led Iraqi forces to halt a small but steady infiltration of foreign fighters from Syria and Iran.
--------------------------
Citation: Douglas Jehl, "C.I.A. Report Suggests Iraqis Are Losing Faith in U.S. Efforts," New York Times, 13 November 2003.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/13/politics/13INTE.html?pagewanted=print&position=
--------------------------
Baathists, Once Reviled, Prove Difficult to Remove
By Susan Sachs
New York Times
22 November 2003.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 21 — Purging Iraq of the Baath Party, the backbone of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, has proved more difficult than many Iraqis had imagined.
In some provinces where the party's roots were deep, high-ranking party members kept their government jobs because local officials said they were afraid to make changes. In other cases, American Army commanders have intervened to keep senior Baathists on the official payroll, reasoning that firing people only feeds public resentment.
Even when there is the will to dismiss top Baathists, it has sometimes been difficult to find the way. In the chaotic weeks following the old government's collapse, computer records in many ministries were stealthily altered to effectively demote thousands of once privileged party bosses, said officials of Iraq's interim government.
"A lot of Baath Party members changed their ranks in the files during April and May, when the institutions of the state were empty," said the new minister of finance, Kamel al-Keilani, who is the paymaster of the huge public sector. "You'd think the only active Baathist was Saddam Hussein and all the rest were low-ranking nobodies."
The Baath Party's tentacles stretched to every university, school, ministry, hospital and city hall. Members benefited from preferential treatment in work and education, salary bonuses and a license to humiliate others, according to Iraqis who lived under its rule.
But membership was also a social passport, they say, a requirement for some positions as well as a means to demonstrate allegiance to a rule that severely punished disloyalty. When L. Paul Bremer III, the head of the American occupation authority, outlawed the party in May, some 2.5 million people, out of a total population of 25 million, were believed to be Baath Party members.
No one proposed firing all of them, but Mr. Bremer and the Iraqi Governing Council did decree that Baathists in the top three ranks of the party, an estimated 120,000 people, be removed from their government jobs. The council's resolution was issued in September. Two weeks ago, Mr. Bremer set out a procedure for investigating senior party officials, noting that, "the Iraqi people have suffered large-scale human rights abuses and deprivations over many years at the hands of the Baath Party."
But even the most adamant advocates of a purge now say that time, economics and pragmatic considerations have moderated their ambitions.
"We had hoped there would be a radical shake-up but as time has gone on, prudence has taken over," said Ali Alawi, the new trade minister and a former political exile who spent years polishing a plan to de-Baathify Iraq once Saddam Hussein was gone. "In the context of this country and its various upheavals, one has to be careful."
A good example of those reduced expectations is Mosul, Iraq's second largest city and the base of the 82nd Airborne Division, which controls the northern swath of the country.
The capital of Nineveh Province, Mosul is home to thousands of once senior party members, including 1,100 former Iraqi Army officers with the rank of brigadier general and above, according to the American military. At its university, 120 professors and other workers held high ranks in the party. In its public school system, 937 employees had climbed to Baath's top positions.
"Do you throw 900 teachers out of work and tell them they can never work in their field again, and then not expect them to turn against you?" asked Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the division commander.
Throwing people of authority and expertise onto the street, he said, would negate the mission of the occupation forces to subdue resistance and win friends. "To beat this you can't just kill the bad guys," the general added. "You've got to give people jobs."
At the crowded offices of the provincial education department, the new director general, Said Hamed, was more ambivalent but powerless to buck the American commander.
Mr. Hamed has worked for the school system for 22 years. He never joined the Baath Party, a choice that he said left him with a salary half that of subordinates who did join.
Senior party members in the system include teachers, schoolmasters and high-level bureaucrats. Mr. Hamed has no sympathy for them.
"They didn't get their jobs based on qualifications, but on their political activities," he said.
But it fell to Mr. Hamed to enforce the orders from the Governing Council and Mr. Bremer in Baghdad. Faced with firing 937 people and incurring the displeasure of the American commander, he said he had decided to demote the senior Baathists but keep them on the payroll.
"They know they made a mistake and they say that now all they want to do is provide for their families," he said. "Of course, they didn't care in the old days about other people's families. But now we are letting them work because we do care about their families — and we worry about what might happen to us. It's to avoid troubles."
The governor of Nineveh Province, a former Iraqi Army general who fell out of favor with Saddam Hussein 10 years ago, expressed similar misgivings.
"This just shouldn't hang in the air," said the governor, Ghanem al-Basso. "If they aren't taken care of, they could join the ranks of the enemies."
General Petraeus, who set up his base in a huge stone palace built by Mr. Hussein on a hill north of Mosul, has tried to take care of the problem in his own way. He created job programs for many of the people who were fired by Mr. Bremer and the council in their efforts to rid Iraq of its old security apparatus, centered on the army, the secret police and the Information Ministry. He strongly encouraged the University of Mosul to sort through the cases of professors who were high-level Baathists and was pleased when the school gave 65 percent of them a reprieve.
"I'm not saying that all these people by any means should be kept, but if you are going to tell people that they're never going to work again, you might as well throw them in jail," General Petreaus told Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the Governing Council's de-Baathification committee, last week.
Mr. Chalabi was less than sympathetic. "At least they can eat there," he said.
"You've made an enemy of their whole family, though," said the general. "If you could only see the record of the Baath Party," Mr. Chalabi replied. "People need to see justice done."
"Keep them on the job and you watch them, then," the general told him. "If they are anti-new Iraq, then you throw them in jail."
Most officials, whether they are eager to fire top Baathists or reluctant, said the ideal process would examine each individual, case by case, to sort out those members of the party elite who did harm and those who did not.
It would be a Herculean effort, said Mr. Alawi, the trade minister.
"Obviously those people who are in the top ranks must go," he said. "But the Baath has percolated so far into the structure of society that it's difficult to isolate. It's like pouring coffee into a sponge. It becomes intermingled."
----------------------
Citation: Susan Sachs, "Baathists, Once Reviled, Prove Difficult to Remove," New York Times, 22 November 2003.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/22/international/middleeast/22BAAT.html?ei=1&en=e6d0b3ad5f16231f&ex=1070516892&pagewanted=print&position=
-----------------------
New York Times
22 November 2003.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 21 — Purging Iraq of the Baath Party, the backbone of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, has proved more difficult than many Iraqis had imagined.
In some provinces where the party's roots were deep, high-ranking party members kept their government jobs because local officials said they were afraid to make changes. In other cases, American Army commanders have intervened to keep senior Baathists on the official payroll, reasoning that firing people only feeds public resentment.
Even when there is the will to dismiss top Baathists, it has sometimes been difficult to find the way. In the chaotic weeks following the old government's collapse, computer records in many ministries were stealthily altered to effectively demote thousands of once privileged party bosses, said officials of Iraq's interim government.
"A lot of Baath Party members changed their ranks in the files during April and May, when the institutions of the state were empty," said the new minister of finance, Kamel al-Keilani, who is the paymaster of the huge public sector. "You'd think the only active Baathist was Saddam Hussein and all the rest were low-ranking nobodies."
The Baath Party's tentacles stretched to every university, school, ministry, hospital and city hall. Members benefited from preferential treatment in work and education, salary bonuses and a license to humiliate others, according to Iraqis who lived under its rule.
But membership was also a social passport, they say, a requirement for some positions as well as a means to demonstrate allegiance to a rule that severely punished disloyalty. When L. Paul Bremer III, the head of the American occupation authority, outlawed the party in May, some 2.5 million people, out of a total population of 25 million, were believed to be Baath Party members.
No one proposed firing all of them, but Mr. Bremer and the Iraqi Governing Council did decree that Baathists in the top three ranks of the party, an estimated 120,000 people, be removed from their government jobs. The council's resolution was issued in September. Two weeks ago, Mr. Bremer set out a procedure for investigating senior party officials, noting that, "the Iraqi people have suffered large-scale human rights abuses and deprivations over many years at the hands of the Baath Party."
But even the most adamant advocates of a purge now say that time, economics and pragmatic considerations have moderated their ambitions.
"We had hoped there would be a radical shake-up but as time has gone on, prudence has taken over," said Ali Alawi, the new trade minister and a former political exile who spent years polishing a plan to de-Baathify Iraq once Saddam Hussein was gone. "In the context of this country and its various upheavals, one has to be careful."
A good example of those reduced expectations is Mosul, Iraq's second largest city and the base of the 82nd Airborne Division, which controls the northern swath of the country.
The capital of Nineveh Province, Mosul is home to thousands of once senior party members, including 1,100 former Iraqi Army officers with the rank of brigadier general and above, according to the American military. At its university, 120 professors and other workers held high ranks in the party. In its public school system, 937 employees had climbed to Baath's top positions.
"Do you throw 900 teachers out of work and tell them they can never work in their field again, and then not expect them to turn against you?" asked Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the division commander.
Throwing people of authority and expertise onto the street, he said, would negate the mission of the occupation forces to subdue resistance and win friends. "To beat this you can't just kill the bad guys," the general added. "You've got to give people jobs."
At the crowded offices of the provincial education department, the new director general, Said Hamed, was more ambivalent but powerless to buck the American commander.
Mr. Hamed has worked for the school system for 22 years. He never joined the Baath Party, a choice that he said left him with a salary half that of subordinates who did join.
Senior party members in the system include teachers, schoolmasters and high-level bureaucrats. Mr. Hamed has no sympathy for them.
"They didn't get their jobs based on qualifications, but on their political activities," he said.
But it fell to Mr. Hamed to enforce the orders from the Governing Council and Mr. Bremer in Baghdad. Faced with firing 937 people and incurring the displeasure of the American commander, he said he had decided to demote the senior Baathists but keep them on the payroll.
"They know they made a mistake and they say that now all they want to do is provide for their families," he said. "Of course, they didn't care in the old days about other people's families. But now we are letting them work because we do care about their families — and we worry about what might happen to us. It's to avoid troubles."
The governor of Nineveh Province, a former Iraqi Army general who fell out of favor with Saddam Hussein 10 years ago, expressed similar misgivings.
"This just shouldn't hang in the air," said the governor, Ghanem al-Basso. "If they aren't taken care of, they could join the ranks of the enemies."
General Petraeus, who set up his base in a huge stone palace built by Mr. Hussein on a hill north of Mosul, has tried to take care of the problem in his own way. He created job programs for many of the people who were fired by Mr. Bremer and the council in their efforts to rid Iraq of its old security apparatus, centered on the army, the secret police and the Information Ministry. He strongly encouraged the University of Mosul to sort through the cases of professors who were high-level Baathists and was pleased when the school gave 65 percent of them a reprieve.
"I'm not saying that all these people by any means should be kept, but if you are going to tell people that they're never going to work again, you might as well throw them in jail," General Petreaus told Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the Governing Council's de-Baathification committee, last week.
Mr. Chalabi was less than sympathetic. "At least they can eat there," he said.
"You've made an enemy of their whole family, though," said the general. "If you could only see the record of the Baath Party," Mr. Chalabi replied. "People need to see justice done."
"Keep them on the job and you watch them, then," the general told him. "If they are anti-new Iraq, then you throw them in jail."
Most officials, whether they are eager to fire top Baathists or reluctant, said the ideal process would examine each individual, case by case, to sort out those members of the party elite who did harm and those who did not.
It would be a Herculean effort, said Mr. Alawi, the trade minister.
"Obviously those people who are in the top ranks must go," he said. "But the Baath has percolated so far into the structure of society that it's difficult to isolate. It's like pouring coffee into a sponge. It becomes intermingled."
----------------------
Citation: Susan Sachs, "Baathists, Once Reviled, Prove Difficult to Remove," New York Times, 22 November 2003.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/22/international/middleeast/22BAAT.html?ei=1&en=e6d0b3ad5f16231f&ex=1070516892&pagewanted=print&position=
-----------------------
Hunt Finds Hint of How Iraqis Fill Power Void
By Judith Miller
New York Times
10 April 2003
MUHAWISH, Iraq, April 9 — Troops searching today for biological, chemical and radiation weapons in Iraq had another frustrating day as they toured four suspected sites in southern Iraq.
Although sensors registered the presence of chemical agents at what appeared to be an agricultural site in this town on the Euphrates, members of the Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha, as the weapons-hunting team is known, said the liquid sampled today was probably part of a class of chemicals called organophosphates, which are used in pesticides.
"Of course, we're disappointed that we didn't find a chemical agent," said Chief Warrant Officer Richard L. Gonzales of the 75th Exploitation Task Force who leads the mobile team. "But if we keep up this momentum, we will find it."
At the same time, the site visits revealed weaknesses in the military's methods of reporting sites where chemical, biological and other unconventional weapons might be hidden. The visits also provided hints of how the political power vacuum in Najaf and other Shiite Muslim towns in southern Iraq was being filled.
When the team arrived today to survey an abandoned Iraqi militia training school, it found a Shiite cleric supervising the removal of a giant water truck and cars. The cleric, clad in a traditional white turban and black robe, asked that he not be photographed or identified by name. But he said that the Shiite community here did not need American humanitarian or political assistance. He and others in the town had matters well in hand, he said.
While the fighting has more or less stopped here, American aid was nowhere to be seen.
Not all the sites visited today were referred to the mobile team by American troops in the field. Some visits were prompted by tips from Iraqis who said they wanted to help the Americans now that they believed Saddam Hussein was dead. For instance, people here urged the team today to inspect an abandoned office complex of Mr. Hussein's Baath Party. Team members found half-filled tea cups, uneaten food and the diary of a local official.
American military officials were initially optimistic today that chemical agents would be found here.
Maj. Brian Lynch, an officer with the 101st Airborne Division, said the agricultural site was first reported as suspicious on April 6, after soldiers became nauseated and noticed welts on their hands. But after three tests, the team concluded that the liquid in the barrels was probably an organophosphate, though a sophisticated detector showed the presence of a nerve agent. The detector, however, would probably show such a reading for organophosphates as well, experts on the team said.
Although posters and other materials suggested that the site was agricultural, the Iraqis had gone to great lengths to hide 11 or so 20-gallon drums and three 55-gallon drums of a thin clear liquid, said a team member who asked to be identified only as J. T.
Palm branches had been cut to cover the barrels in a deep trench lined with sandbags.
Despite the test results today, the team took at least two more samples from the barrels and then stored them in metal boxes and double bags and took them to an unidentified military base for further testing.
Officials said the surveys today highlighted the need to improve reporting by soldiers before weapons-hunting teams were deployed.
"What was reported and what we're seeing on the ground is sometimes totally out of sync," Mr. Gonzales said.
He cited a false report that some mortars found in an abandoned depot in Najaf had made people very sick.
The team members were also chagrined to find that the mortars had been moved to a brigade headquarters rather than secured at the site, as military rules require.
Site survey teams, which are supposed to make initial referrals to the mobile teams, are working at other places where most suspect sites are.
"Once the actual fighting stops, more forces and resources will become available to hunt for weapons of mass destruction," Mr. Gonzales said.
--------------------------
Citation: Judith Miller, "Hunt Finds Hint of How Iraqis Fill Power Void," New York Times, 10 April 2003.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/international/worldspecial/10CHEM.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
--------------------------
New York Times
10 April 2003
MUHAWISH, Iraq, April 9 — Troops searching today for biological, chemical and radiation weapons in Iraq had another frustrating day as they toured four suspected sites in southern Iraq.
Although sensors registered the presence of chemical agents at what appeared to be an agricultural site in this town on the Euphrates, members of the Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha, as the weapons-hunting team is known, said the liquid sampled today was probably part of a class of chemicals called organophosphates, which are used in pesticides.
"Of course, we're disappointed that we didn't find a chemical agent," said Chief Warrant Officer Richard L. Gonzales of the 75th Exploitation Task Force who leads the mobile team. "But if we keep up this momentum, we will find it."
At the same time, the site visits revealed weaknesses in the military's methods of reporting sites where chemical, biological and other unconventional weapons might be hidden. The visits also provided hints of how the political power vacuum in Najaf and other Shiite Muslim towns in southern Iraq was being filled.
When the team arrived today to survey an abandoned Iraqi militia training school, it found a Shiite cleric supervising the removal of a giant water truck and cars. The cleric, clad in a traditional white turban and black robe, asked that he not be photographed or identified by name. But he said that the Shiite community here did not need American humanitarian or political assistance. He and others in the town had matters well in hand, he said.
While the fighting has more or less stopped here, American aid was nowhere to be seen.
Not all the sites visited today were referred to the mobile team by American troops in the field. Some visits were prompted by tips from Iraqis who said they wanted to help the Americans now that they believed Saddam Hussein was dead. For instance, people here urged the team today to inspect an abandoned office complex of Mr. Hussein's Baath Party. Team members found half-filled tea cups, uneaten food and the diary of a local official.
American military officials were initially optimistic today that chemical agents would be found here.
Maj. Brian Lynch, an officer with the 101st Airborne Division, said the agricultural site was first reported as suspicious on April 6, after soldiers became nauseated and noticed welts on their hands. But after three tests, the team concluded that the liquid in the barrels was probably an organophosphate, though a sophisticated detector showed the presence of a nerve agent. The detector, however, would probably show such a reading for organophosphates as well, experts on the team said.
Although posters and other materials suggested that the site was agricultural, the Iraqis had gone to great lengths to hide 11 or so 20-gallon drums and three 55-gallon drums of a thin clear liquid, said a team member who asked to be identified only as J. T.
Palm branches had been cut to cover the barrels in a deep trench lined with sandbags.
Despite the test results today, the team took at least two more samples from the barrels and then stored them in metal boxes and double bags and took them to an unidentified military base for further testing.
Officials said the surveys today highlighted the need to improve reporting by soldiers before weapons-hunting teams were deployed.
"What was reported and what we're seeing on the ground is sometimes totally out of sync," Mr. Gonzales said.
He cited a false report that some mortars found in an abandoned depot in Najaf had made people very sick.
The team members were also chagrined to find that the mortars had been moved to a brigade headquarters rather than secured at the site, as military rules require.
Site survey teams, which are supposed to make initial referrals to the mobile teams, are working at other places where most suspect sites are.
"Once the actual fighting stops, more forces and resources will become available to hunt for weapons of mass destruction," Mr. Gonzales said.
--------------------------
Citation: Judith Miller, "Hunt Finds Hint of How Iraqis Fill Power Void," New York Times, 10 April 2003.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/international/worldspecial/10CHEM.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
--------------------------
Rumsfeld, in Talks in Iraq, Warns About Corruption
By Thom Shanker and Christine Hauser
New York Times
12 April 2005
SALAHUDDIN, Iraq, April 12 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld spent today in a whirlwind of travel that took him from Iraqi government compounds in Baghdad to "town hall" meetings with American troops outside the capital to a final stop here. In this Kurdish stronghold beneath snow-capped mountains, anti-Saddam Hussein forces plotted for years against the Iraqi dictator - and against other Kurds.
The defense secretary's agenda today required a certain balancing. He was here as the first Bush cabinet secretary to congratulate newly chosen Iraqi government officials in person, but he also came to express thanks to the outgoing prime minister who campaigned, but failed, to stay in office.
And Mr. Rumsfeld's repeated message of American steadfastness in the mission was laced with stern warnings to the Iraqi leadership about the dangers of political cronyism and partisan purges, especially as the effort to organize, equip and train a capable Iraqi security force is seen as reaching a critical juncture.
He cautioned against any plans that would delay writing a constitution by August, approving it by October and electing a new Iraqi government by December.
"We don't really have an exit strategy," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "We have a victory strategy."
The motto drew applause from a dining hall filled with troops of the Third Infantry Division, which is back in Iraq for a second deployment with almost half its troops veterans of the armored rush that seized Baghdad two years ago.
"What the United States wants to see is what the Iraqi people want to see, and that is an end to the insurgency, and the development of the Iraqi security forces to the point where they are capable of assuming responsible for security for the Iraqi people," Mr. Rumsfeld said later in the day.
"It isn't so much a matter of continuity as a matter of competence, capability. It's a matter of not causing undue turbulence in the Iraqi security forces and not setting back the important progress that has been achieved."
In their public comments after meetings with Mr. Rumsfeld, Iraqi leaders expressed agreement with the defense secretary's message.
"I don't deny there is a challenge," said Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the leader of a Shiite religious party who has been nominated to serve as prime minister, adding "But I am sure we are going to form very good ministries" populated by "good technocrats" from "diverse backgrounds."
Ayad Allawi, who had strong American support during his tenure as interim prime minister but thus far has lost out in the competition to keep the post, said the entire Iraqi leadership opposes any delay in the political process.
That view was echoed by Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish militia leader who is the new president. He pledged the government would battle corruption and had no plans to delay the constitution or the next round of elections.
Mr. Rumsfeld's last stop in Iraq was here, at Salahuddin in the north, where he thanked Massoud Barzani, the Kurdish Democratic Party leader, for the combat prowess his militiamen brought to the coalition offensive to topple Mr. Hussein.
But a more subtle message was of thanks for agreeing to compromises that, at present, leave him without a prestigious portfolio in the new government.
Mr. Barzani agreed that to build a democratic Iraq, national reconciliation "is a necessity," and that former Baathists with skills needed by the new government could be asked to serve - except for those who committed crimes against Iraqi people.
Mr. Rumsfeld also held a closed-door strategy session with Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the senior American commander in Iraq, who said the confidence of Iraqi security forces has significantly improved since the Jan. 30 election.
The biggest challenge facing the coalition military now as it trains Iraqi forces and begins handing off security responsibilities is forming a larger and more competent Iraqi command structure to lead the troops, he said. Today, he said, not enough Iraqi units can operate independently of American or coalition forces.
Military officials in Iraq said the number of American forces here would drop just below 138,000 by the end of the month, back to the levels before the January election.
-------------------
Citation: Thom Shanker and Christine Hauser, "Rumsfeld, in Talks in Iraq, Warns About Corruption," New York Times, 12 April 2005.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/12/international/middleeast/12cnd-rumsfeld.html?pagewanted=print&position=
------------------
New York Times
12 April 2005
SALAHUDDIN, Iraq, April 12 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld spent today in a whirlwind of travel that took him from Iraqi government compounds in Baghdad to "town hall" meetings with American troops outside the capital to a final stop here. In this Kurdish stronghold beneath snow-capped mountains, anti-Saddam Hussein forces plotted for years against the Iraqi dictator - and against other Kurds.
The defense secretary's agenda today required a certain balancing. He was here as the first Bush cabinet secretary to congratulate newly chosen Iraqi government officials in person, but he also came to express thanks to the outgoing prime minister who campaigned, but failed, to stay in office.
And Mr. Rumsfeld's repeated message of American steadfastness in the mission was laced with stern warnings to the Iraqi leadership about the dangers of political cronyism and partisan purges, especially as the effort to organize, equip and train a capable Iraqi security force is seen as reaching a critical juncture.
He cautioned against any plans that would delay writing a constitution by August, approving it by October and electing a new Iraqi government by December.
"We don't really have an exit strategy," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "We have a victory strategy."
The motto drew applause from a dining hall filled with troops of the Third Infantry Division, which is back in Iraq for a second deployment with almost half its troops veterans of the armored rush that seized Baghdad two years ago.
"What the United States wants to see is what the Iraqi people want to see, and that is an end to the insurgency, and the development of the Iraqi security forces to the point where they are capable of assuming responsible for security for the Iraqi people," Mr. Rumsfeld said later in the day.
"It isn't so much a matter of continuity as a matter of competence, capability. It's a matter of not causing undue turbulence in the Iraqi security forces and not setting back the important progress that has been achieved."
In their public comments after meetings with Mr. Rumsfeld, Iraqi leaders expressed agreement with the defense secretary's message.
"I don't deny there is a challenge," said Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the leader of a Shiite religious party who has been nominated to serve as prime minister, adding "But I am sure we are going to form very good ministries" populated by "good technocrats" from "diverse backgrounds."
Ayad Allawi, who had strong American support during his tenure as interim prime minister but thus far has lost out in the competition to keep the post, said the entire Iraqi leadership opposes any delay in the political process.
That view was echoed by Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish militia leader who is the new president. He pledged the government would battle corruption and had no plans to delay the constitution or the next round of elections.
Mr. Rumsfeld's last stop in Iraq was here, at Salahuddin in the north, where he thanked Massoud Barzani, the Kurdish Democratic Party leader, for the combat prowess his militiamen brought to the coalition offensive to topple Mr. Hussein.
But a more subtle message was of thanks for agreeing to compromises that, at present, leave him without a prestigious portfolio in the new government.
Mr. Barzani agreed that to build a democratic Iraq, national reconciliation "is a necessity," and that former Baathists with skills needed by the new government could be asked to serve - except for those who committed crimes against Iraqi people.
Mr. Rumsfeld also held a closed-door strategy session with Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the senior American commander in Iraq, who said the confidence of Iraqi security forces has significantly improved since the Jan. 30 election.
The biggest challenge facing the coalition military now as it trains Iraqi forces and begins handing off security responsibilities is forming a larger and more competent Iraqi command structure to lead the troops, he said. Today, he said, not enough Iraqi units can operate independently of American or coalition forces.
Military officials in Iraq said the number of American forces here would drop just below 138,000 by the end of the month, back to the levels before the January election.
-------------------
Citation: Thom Shanker and Christine Hauser, "Rumsfeld, in Talks in Iraq, Warns About Corruption," New York Times, 12 April 2005.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/12/international/middleeast/12cnd-rumsfeld.html?pagewanted=print&position=
------------------
Closer Look at Falluja Finds Rebuilding Is Slow
By Joel Brinkley
New York Times
14 April 2005
FALLUJA, Iraq, April 13 - Robert B. Zoellick, the deputy secretary of state, wanted to see Falluja for himself instead of relying on dry reports from the "interagency process," as he put it.
So midway through a trip otherwise focusing on Sudan, he stopped here Wednesday morning and sped downtown in an Army Humvee, squinting at the city through thick bullet-proof glass, then got out at an American base to speak to the new city council. He got an earful.
On the flight here, which was kept secret for security reasons, a State Department official shared a relatively rosy view of Falluja five months after the American military operation that largely rid the city of insurgents but also leveled a good part of it.
Ninety-five percent of Falluja's residents now have water in their homes, the official said, reading from a report. Eighty-five percent of people in northern areas that were not the focus of the American offensive have electricity. Three out of five medical clinics are now open.
But sitting with five members of Falluja's temporary city council, Mr. Zoellick asked the chairman, Sheik Khalid al-Jamily, "Do most people in Falluja have safe drinking water?"
The short answer was no.
"Two sewage pipes dump raw sewage into the river," he said. The Euphrates is an important source of drinking water. "The whole sewer system is in very bad shape."
Mr. Zoellick asked whether electricity and schools were functioning. "We brought in some tents and desks for schools," Mr. Jamily replied.
He and two of his council colleagues peppered Mr. Zoellick with complaints and requests, in a good-natured tone.
Mr. Jamily noted that "it has been four months, and there have been no violent incidents," as if to say: we have kept our part of the bargain. So now, he went on, "we can start reconstruction on a big scale."
Maj. Gen. Sabah Mahid, Falluja's police chief, said, "I would like you to think of some project you can contribute to the city." The vice chairman of the council, Qasim al-Jassam, asked Mr. Zoellick to "get involved with this and solve it as soon as possible."
Mr. Jamily did think of one quality-of-life improvement. Because only about a third of the residents have returned since the fighting in November, "the traffic is O.K."
Mr. Zoellick listened impassively, a slight smile on his face. As he was getting ready to leave, he told the councilmen he had "learned a great deal" and added, "When it comes to reconstruction, obviously we can help." But "to bring a city back to life," he said, "it has to be done by the people of the city."
Asked later about the meeting, he said, "They were engaged in the political process of making life better in Falluja."
Mr. Zoellick arrived in Iraq the day after Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld visited. But Mr. Zoellick is the most senior American civilian official to venture into downtown Falluja since the offensive.
"Frankly," he explained, a purpose of the visit "is to get a chance with the Iraqis and the Americans to answer some questions."
"I can do it through systems" at the State Department, "but it also helps to do a little bit on the ground."
He flew to Baghdad from Amman, Jordan, in an anonymous looking C-130 military transport with an Army-issue flak jacket and helmet at his side. From Baghdad, he traveled to the Army base on the outskirts of Falluja aboard a Black Hawk helicopter that flew fast, and so low that it almost clipped the trees.
Before climbing into the Humvee here, a military briefer noted that a small-scale insurgency was still going on, and that there had been activity by snipers. Whatever happens, do not get out of the car, Mr. Zoellick's party was warned.
Army officers say there has been a rash of visitors from Washington in recent weeks, as Falluja has begun the long slow climb back from a half-wrecked ghost town. Several legislators and others have taken a drive-through aboard Army Humvees, so many that military officers tell of worries that insurgents will attack a convoy.
For that reason, the convoy dashed through the city as rapidly as possible over the rutted roads, allowing Mr. Zoellick only quick glimpses of a scattering of people along the road, bombed-out rubble here and there, and scant visible reconstruction. Children waved at the convoy; adult men looked on sullenly.
Downtown Falluja, once crowded and thriving, did not exactly bustle. But dozens of people wandered among shops. Most were open. Two bakers were at work kneading dough in a bakery that had reopened with the help of a loan from the United States.
One problem the American military had faced here was that the city had no government, no one in authority the officers could talk to. So late last month the military encouraged some community leaders to stage a city council election. On April 3, Mr. Jamily and his colleagues were elected. They are considered temporary because once the new government takes full power in Baghdad, people here assume, it will have something to say about how local governments are formed.
In the meantime, Mr. Zoellick asked Mr. Jamily where the council got its money, because budget authority is power.
"We have no communications; we have no money, no vehicles, nothing," Mr. Jamily acknowledged. "But we were elected by all the people."
-------------------
Citation: Joel Brinkley, "Closer Look at Falluja Finds Rebuilding Is Slow," New York Times, 14 April 2005.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/14/international/middleeast/14zoellick.html?position=&adxnnl=1&oref=login&pagewanted=print&adxnnlx=1113494411-DG0OXTN9cRiZZ5E5xLUhGA
-------------------
New York Times
14 April 2005
FALLUJA, Iraq, April 13 - Robert B. Zoellick, the deputy secretary of state, wanted to see Falluja for himself instead of relying on dry reports from the "interagency process," as he put it.
So midway through a trip otherwise focusing on Sudan, he stopped here Wednesday morning and sped downtown in an Army Humvee, squinting at the city through thick bullet-proof glass, then got out at an American base to speak to the new city council. He got an earful.
On the flight here, which was kept secret for security reasons, a State Department official shared a relatively rosy view of Falluja five months after the American military operation that largely rid the city of insurgents but also leveled a good part of it.
Ninety-five percent of Falluja's residents now have water in their homes, the official said, reading from a report. Eighty-five percent of people in northern areas that were not the focus of the American offensive have electricity. Three out of five medical clinics are now open.
But sitting with five members of Falluja's temporary city council, Mr. Zoellick asked the chairman, Sheik Khalid al-Jamily, "Do most people in Falluja have safe drinking water?"
The short answer was no.
"Two sewage pipes dump raw sewage into the river," he said. The Euphrates is an important source of drinking water. "The whole sewer system is in very bad shape."
Mr. Zoellick asked whether electricity and schools were functioning. "We brought in some tents and desks for schools," Mr. Jamily replied.
He and two of his council colleagues peppered Mr. Zoellick with complaints and requests, in a good-natured tone.
Mr. Jamily noted that "it has been four months, and there have been no violent incidents," as if to say: we have kept our part of the bargain. So now, he went on, "we can start reconstruction on a big scale."
Maj. Gen. Sabah Mahid, Falluja's police chief, said, "I would like you to think of some project you can contribute to the city." The vice chairman of the council, Qasim al-Jassam, asked Mr. Zoellick to "get involved with this and solve it as soon as possible."
Mr. Jamily did think of one quality-of-life improvement. Because only about a third of the residents have returned since the fighting in November, "the traffic is O.K."
Mr. Zoellick listened impassively, a slight smile on his face. As he was getting ready to leave, he told the councilmen he had "learned a great deal" and added, "When it comes to reconstruction, obviously we can help." But "to bring a city back to life," he said, "it has to be done by the people of the city."
Asked later about the meeting, he said, "They were engaged in the political process of making life better in Falluja."
Mr. Zoellick arrived in Iraq the day after Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld visited. But Mr. Zoellick is the most senior American civilian official to venture into downtown Falluja since the offensive.
"Frankly," he explained, a purpose of the visit "is to get a chance with the Iraqis and the Americans to answer some questions."
"I can do it through systems" at the State Department, "but it also helps to do a little bit on the ground."
He flew to Baghdad from Amman, Jordan, in an anonymous looking C-130 military transport with an Army-issue flak jacket and helmet at his side. From Baghdad, he traveled to the Army base on the outskirts of Falluja aboard a Black Hawk helicopter that flew fast, and so low that it almost clipped the trees.
Before climbing into the Humvee here, a military briefer noted that a small-scale insurgency was still going on, and that there had been activity by snipers. Whatever happens, do not get out of the car, Mr. Zoellick's party was warned.
Army officers say there has been a rash of visitors from Washington in recent weeks, as Falluja has begun the long slow climb back from a half-wrecked ghost town. Several legislators and others have taken a drive-through aboard Army Humvees, so many that military officers tell of worries that insurgents will attack a convoy.
For that reason, the convoy dashed through the city as rapidly as possible over the rutted roads, allowing Mr. Zoellick only quick glimpses of a scattering of people along the road, bombed-out rubble here and there, and scant visible reconstruction. Children waved at the convoy; adult men looked on sullenly.
Downtown Falluja, once crowded and thriving, did not exactly bustle. But dozens of people wandered among shops. Most were open. Two bakers were at work kneading dough in a bakery that had reopened with the help of a loan from the United States.
One problem the American military had faced here was that the city had no government, no one in authority the officers could talk to. So late last month the military encouraged some community leaders to stage a city council election. On April 3, Mr. Jamily and his colleagues were elected. They are considered temporary because once the new government takes full power in Baghdad, people here assume, it will have something to say about how local governments are formed.
In the meantime, Mr. Zoellick asked Mr. Jamily where the council got its money, because budget authority is power.
"We have no communications; we have no money, no vehicles, nothing," Mr. Jamily acknowledged. "But we were elected by all the people."
-------------------
Citation: Joel Brinkley, "Closer Look at Falluja Finds Rebuilding Is Slow," New York Times, 14 April 2005.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/14/international/middleeast/14zoellick.html?position=&adxnnl=1&oref=login&pagewanted=print&adxnnlx=1113494411-DG0OXTN9cRiZZ5E5xLUhGA
-------------------
Iraq Tries to Complete Cabinet, but a Sunni Rejects Nomination
By Richard A. Oppel Jr.
New York Times
08 May 2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 8 - One of four Sunni Arabs picked over the weekend to join Iraq's new Shiite-controlled cabinet abruptly rejected the job today, saying he first learned of his selection from a television news report on Saturday night and adding that he felt his selection would further a quota system for Sunnis that would only make sectarian problems worse.
The political setback came as the United States military announced that insurgents had killed eight American servicemen over the weekend. In one ambush, insurgents took over a hospital in Haditha, a haven west of Baghdad for the militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and killed three marines and one sailor. The American military also said it had captured the mastermind behind both the large-scale attack on Abu Ghraib prison one month ago and the wave of car bombs that killed 40 Iraqis in greater Baghdad on April 29.
In the capital, the National Assembly approved six new cabinet ministers today, including the unwilling candidate, Hashim al-Shibli, who had been named human rights minister. But on a day when Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari had hoped to finally complete his cabinet and put to rest contentious political battles that delayed his government, the rejection dealt him another embarrassment.
One day earlier, Dr. Jaafari had declared at an afternoon news conference that all six names had already been approved by President Jalal Talabani and his two vice presidents. But Mr. Shibli, in an interview, said he did not formally learn that he had been picked until just before the confirmation vote today, leading him to believe his selection was more symbolism than substance.
"I heard about it watching TV," Mr. Shibli said. "No one talked to me or asked me about it before. This morning they called me and tried to congratulate me in my 'new job,' but I said no. I refused this because this is sectarianism, and I don't believe in sectarianism. I believe in democracy."
Insurgents have killed more than 300 people since Dr. Jaafari announced the majority of his cabinet 11 days ago, including more than 200 Iraqi police and troops. American and Iraqi officials say the attacks have been coordinated to undermine confidence in Dr. Jaafari's new administration as it tackles a revolt fought largely by Sunni Arabs loyal to Saddam Hussein, who favored Sunnis and brutally oppressed the Shiites and Kurds who dominate the new government. Sunni Arabs largely boycotted the Jan. 30 election, but some Sunni political leaders say they are angered by their limited role in Dr. Jaafari's new government.
The most important Sunni cabinet post went to a former officer in Mr. Hussein's feared General Security Directorate who fled Iraq and faced a death sentence if he returned. The man, Sadoon al-Dulaimi, left Iraq in the 1980's, became a sociologist in the United Kingdom and came back after Mr. Hussein was ousted two years ago.
Mr. Dulaimi is a native of Ramadi, a heartland city of the insurgency. He is a secular Sunni born into one of the most influential tribes in Iraq. After Mr. Hussein's fall, Mr. Dulaimi ran a think tank, the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies, which published polls last year showing that Iraqis were increasingly upset with the American occupation. Mr. Dulaimi himself was highly critical of the American-led occupation administration, the Coalition Provisional Authority.
The oil ministry went to Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, who served as oil minister under the C.P.A. and is the son of a prominent Shiite cleric. Mr. Uloum pledged to end gasoline shortages and boost oil exports to 1.75 million barrels per day, the level one year ago. Current exports are about 1.5 million barrels per day. With poor security ruling out most foreign investment, Iraq will rely on exports to finance the government. But so far production has lagged far behind expectations despite extensive United States-financed improvements.
In addition to the attack on Saturday in Haditha, another American marine was killed the same day by a homemade bomb in Karma. Today, two soldiers were killed by a homemade bomb near Khaldiya, west of Falluja. One soldier was also killed and another wounded today near Samarra, 70 miles north of the capital, when a homemade bomb struck their convoy, the military said.
Gunmen in Baghdad killed a senior Transportation Ministry official, Yasser Khudair Almaaini. He was shot to death along with his driver in the hostile Dora neighborhood at about 7 a.m. today, an Interior Ministry official said.
That attack followed a dual suicide car bomb strike on an American private security convoy on Saturday morning that killed two American security contractors and at least 22 Iraqis and wounded dozens, including girls from a nearby school. CTU Consulting of North Carolina identified the two American security contractors who were killed as Brandon Thomas and Todd Venette. Five other CTU employees were also wounded, and four have been treated and released, the company said.
The American military said soldiers had captured Amar Adnan Muhammad Hamzah al-Zubaydi, or Abu al-Abbas, a terrorist affiliated with Mr. Zarqawi and the "key planner" behind the April 2 attack on Abu Ghraib and the April 29 bombings. Officials said he was captured Thursday and had confessed to planning the assassination of a high-ranking Iraqi official.
"In addition to his involvement in assassination plans, Abu al-Abbas provided explosive devices, assisted in the preparation of vehicles, selected targets, coordinated for suicide bombers, facilitated foreign fighters into Iraq and orchestrated the execution of several bombing operations in recent weeks," the military said.
Mr. Abbas stole 300 to 400 rockets and more than 720 cases of plastic explosives from a ammunition dump in Yusufiya in early 2003 and buried the weapons at or near his farm, the military said. He provided some explosives to Umar al-Kurdi, described by the military as the bomber who orchestrated three out of every four car bombs in Baghdad before his capture on Jan. 15.
Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedy contributed reporting from Baghdad, Iraq, for this article.
---------------------------
Citation: Richard A. Oppel Jr., "Iraq Tries to Complete Cabinet, but a Sunni Rejects Nomination," New York Times, 8 May 2005.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/international/middleeast/08cnd-iraq.html?ei=5070&en=1ba7b9db68d3c5d4&ex=1116216000&pagewanted=print
---------------------------
New York Times
08 May 2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 8 - One of four Sunni Arabs picked over the weekend to join Iraq's new Shiite-controlled cabinet abruptly rejected the job today, saying he first learned of his selection from a television news report on Saturday night and adding that he felt his selection would further a quota system for Sunnis that would only make sectarian problems worse.
The political setback came as the United States military announced that insurgents had killed eight American servicemen over the weekend. In one ambush, insurgents took over a hospital in Haditha, a haven west of Baghdad for the militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and killed three marines and one sailor. The American military also said it had captured the mastermind behind both the large-scale attack on Abu Ghraib prison one month ago and the wave of car bombs that killed 40 Iraqis in greater Baghdad on April 29.
In the capital, the National Assembly approved six new cabinet ministers today, including the unwilling candidate, Hashim al-Shibli, who had been named human rights minister. But on a day when Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari had hoped to finally complete his cabinet and put to rest contentious political battles that delayed his government, the rejection dealt him another embarrassment.
One day earlier, Dr. Jaafari had declared at an afternoon news conference that all six names had already been approved by President Jalal Talabani and his two vice presidents. But Mr. Shibli, in an interview, said he did not formally learn that he had been picked until just before the confirmation vote today, leading him to believe his selection was more symbolism than substance.
"I heard about it watching TV," Mr. Shibli said. "No one talked to me or asked me about it before. This morning they called me and tried to congratulate me in my 'new job,' but I said no. I refused this because this is sectarianism, and I don't believe in sectarianism. I believe in democracy."
Insurgents have killed more than 300 people since Dr. Jaafari announced the majority of his cabinet 11 days ago, including more than 200 Iraqi police and troops. American and Iraqi officials say the attacks have been coordinated to undermine confidence in Dr. Jaafari's new administration as it tackles a revolt fought largely by Sunni Arabs loyal to Saddam Hussein, who favored Sunnis and brutally oppressed the Shiites and Kurds who dominate the new government. Sunni Arabs largely boycotted the Jan. 30 election, but some Sunni political leaders say they are angered by their limited role in Dr. Jaafari's new government.
The most important Sunni cabinet post went to a former officer in Mr. Hussein's feared General Security Directorate who fled Iraq and faced a death sentence if he returned. The man, Sadoon al-Dulaimi, left Iraq in the 1980's, became a sociologist in the United Kingdom and came back after Mr. Hussein was ousted two years ago.
Mr. Dulaimi is a native of Ramadi, a heartland city of the insurgency. He is a secular Sunni born into one of the most influential tribes in Iraq. After Mr. Hussein's fall, Mr. Dulaimi ran a think tank, the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies, which published polls last year showing that Iraqis were increasingly upset with the American occupation. Mr. Dulaimi himself was highly critical of the American-led occupation administration, the Coalition Provisional Authority.
The oil ministry went to Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, who served as oil minister under the C.P.A. and is the son of a prominent Shiite cleric. Mr. Uloum pledged to end gasoline shortages and boost oil exports to 1.75 million barrels per day, the level one year ago. Current exports are about 1.5 million barrels per day. With poor security ruling out most foreign investment, Iraq will rely on exports to finance the government. But so far production has lagged far behind expectations despite extensive United States-financed improvements.
In addition to the attack on Saturday in Haditha, another American marine was killed the same day by a homemade bomb in Karma. Today, two soldiers were killed by a homemade bomb near Khaldiya, west of Falluja. One soldier was also killed and another wounded today near Samarra, 70 miles north of the capital, when a homemade bomb struck their convoy, the military said.
Gunmen in Baghdad killed a senior Transportation Ministry official, Yasser Khudair Almaaini. He was shot to death along with his driver in the hostile Dora neighborhood at about 7 a.m. today, an Interior Ministry official said.
That attack followed a dual suicide car bomb strike on an American private security convoy on Saturday morning that killed two American security contractors and at least 22 Iraqis and wounded dozens, including girls from a nearby school. CTU Consulting of North Carolina identified the two American security contractors who were killed as Brandon Thomas and Todd Venette. Five other CTU employees were also wounded, and four have been treated and released, the company said.
The American military said soldiers had captured Amar Adnan Muhammad Hamzah al-Zubaydi, or Abu al-Abbas, a terrorist affiliated with Mr. Zarqawi and the "key planner" behind the April 2 attack on Abu Ghraib and the April 29 bombings. Officials said he was captured Thursday and had confessed to planning the assassination of a high-ranking Iraqi official.
"In addition to his involvement in assassination plans, Abu al-Abbas provided explosive devices, assisted in the preparation of vehicles, selected targets, coordinated for suicide bombers, facilitated foreign fighters into Iraq and orchestrated the execution of several bombing operations in recent weeks," the military said.
Mr. Abbas stole 300 to 400 rockets and more than 720 cases of plastic explosives from a ammunition dump in Yusufiya in early 2003 and buried the weapons at or near his farm, the military said. He provided some explosives to Umar al-Kurdi, described by the military as the bomber who orchestrated three out of every four car bombs in Baghdad before his capture on Jan. 15.
Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedy contributed reporting from Baghdad, Iraq, for this article.
---------------------------
Citation: Richard A. Oppel Jr., "Iraq Tries to Complete Cabinet, but a Sunni Rejects Nomination," New York Times, 8 May 2005.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/international/middleeast/08cnd-iraq.html?ei=5070&en=1ba7b9db68d3c5d4&ex=1116216000&pagewanted=print
---------------------------
Dozens of Sunnis Expected to Help Draft Iraq Constitution
By Edward Wong
New York Times
06 June 2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 5 - Sunni Arab leaders are expected to present by Thursday a list of 25 to 35 Sunni Arabs willing to help draft a permanent constitution, an official with a parliamentary committee overseeing the drafting said Sunday in an interview.
The 55-member committee, dominated by Shiite Arabs and Kurds, the two groups that won big in the January elections, would then work with those Sunni Arabs to write the constitution, said the official, Bahaa al-Aaraji, a follower of the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr. The additional Sunnis would not have formal voting power to approve or reject the draft, Mr. Aaraji said. But he added that the committee would agree to approve only a draft reached through a consensus with the Sunnis. The committee, which has only two Sunni Arab members, is trying to work out a way to be more inclusive during the constitution-writing process. Sunni Arabs, who ruled Iraq under Saddam Hussein and are leading the insurgency, largely boycotted the elections and are underrepresented in the National Assembly. The White House has been urging the new Iraqi government to ensure that Sunni Arabs have a fair say in the drafting of the constitution.
Last Thursday, members of the constitutional committee met in Baghdad with about 70 Sunni leaders to discuss Sunni participation. The meeting lasted four hours, and the Sunnis agreed at the end to come up with the list of 25 to 35 names within a week, Mr. Aaraji said. Sunni Arab officials at the meeting included members of the Iraqi Islamic Party, Muslim Scholars Association and the Sunni Endowment, all powerful groups that wield influence, though no single voice speaks for a majority of Sunnis.
A draft of the constitution is due by mid-August. The National Assembly has the option of pushing back the deadline, as well as elections for a full, five-year government, now set for December, by up to six months. But American officials say they are pressing the Iraqi government to keep the original timetable.
Getting Sunni Arabs involved in the political process is seen as crucial to taking the edge off the insurgency. Last month was one of the war's bloodiest, with 80 American troops and about 800 Iraqis killed.
Attacks continued across central and northern Iraq on Sunday. One man was killed in Buhruz, northeast of Baghdad, when gunmen drove up to a car carrying a police officer and opened fire, an Interior Ministry official said. The officer, Maj. Muhammad Azzawi, and another man in the car were wounded, and the driver was killed.
Early on Sunday, gunmen sprayed the car of a policewoman in Baghdad, killing her, a police colonel told The Associated Press. On Saturday, a suicide car bomb exploded outside Mosul in the north, killing two policemen and wounding four. When more police officers went to help their colleagues, a roadside bomb went off, wounding four additional officers. South of Baghdad, in the Euphrates River Valley area known as the Triangle of Death, Iraqi and American troops made raids in insurgent-friendly towns as part of the offensive called Operation Lightning. On Thursday, about 10,000 Iraqi and American troops sealed off towns in the area, including the insurgent stronghold Mahmudiya. The next day, troops began going house to house looking for insurgents.
By Sunday morning, more than 200 people had been arrested, Iraqi commanders said. Troops met virtually no resistance.
In Anbar Province, American troops used 300 pounds of plastic explosives to destroy a vast underground bunker system and weapons cache, said Capt. Jeffrey S. Pool, a spokesman for the Second Marine Division. The series of bunkers was discovered by marines on Thursday afternoon and had furnished living quarters, fresh food, showers and even a working air-conditioner. It was the largest insurgent underground lair found in the last year, if not during the entire war, Captain Pool said.
In Washington, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. said Sunday in a telephone interview that military commanders privately told a Congressional delegation visiting Iraq last Monday that it would take about two years before enough Iraqi security forces were sufficiently trained to allow the Pentagon to withdraw large numbers of American troops.
"No one said you can draw down significantly in less than two years," Mr. Biden, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said after returning from the visit to Iraq with half a dozen other lawmakers. "What these guys were saying to me was, 'We've got to level with the American people.' "
Mr. Biden said that military officials had told lawmakers that there were 107 Iraqi police or military battalions in uniform, about 160,000 men, but that only 3 were "fully operational," meaning able to perform largely independent operations. Twenty of the battalions were "partially operational," or able to perform missions in tandem with American units, while the rest were in various states of training, he said.
He added that American commanders had told him that the 139,000 American troops in the country were not enough to perform all the necessary missions in Iraq, including tightening the nation's porous borders, and that they were not expecting any sizable increases in American troop strength.
Addressing the readiness of the Iraqi forces, Brig. Gen. C. Donald Alston, the chief American military spokesman in Baghdad, said that "the Iraqi security forces have come a long way in a short time."
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington for this article, and Sabrina Tavernise from Mahmudiya.
------------------------------
Citation: Edward Wong, "Dozens of Sunnis Expected to Help Draft Iraq Constitution," New York Times, 6 June 2005.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/06/international/middleeast/06iraq.html?oref=login
------------------------------
New York Times
06 June 2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 5 - Sunni Arab leaders are expected to present by Thursday a list of 25 to 35 Sunni Arabs willing to help draft a permanent constitution, an official with a parliamentary committee overseeing the drafting said Sunday in an interview.
The 55-member committee, dominated by Shiite Arabs and Kurds, the two groups that won big in the January elections, would then work with those Sunni Arabs to write the constitution, said the official, Bahaa al-Aaraji, a follower of the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr. The additional Sunnis would not have formal voting power to approve or reject the draft, Mr. Aaraji said. But he added that the committee would agree to approve only a draft reached through a consensus with the Sunnis. The committee, which has only two Sunni Arab members, is trying to work out a way to be more inclusive during the constitution-writing process. Sunni Arabs, who ruled Iraq under Saddam Hussein and are leading the insurgency, largely boycotted the elections and are underrepresented in the National Assembly. The White House has been urging the new Iraqi government to ensure that Sunni Arabs have a fair say in the drafting of the constitution.
Last Thursday, members of the constitutional committee met in Baghdad with about 70 Sunni leaders to discuss Sunni participation. The meeting lasted four hours, and the Sunnis agreed at the end to come up with the list of 25 to 35 names within a week, Mr. Aaraji said. Sunni Arab officials at the meeting included members of the Iraqi Islamic Party, Muslim Scholars Association and the Sunni Endowment, all powerful groups that wield influence, though no single voice speaks for a majority of Sunnis.
A draft of the constitution is due by mid-August. The National Assembly has the option of pushing back the deadline, as well as elections for a full, five-year government, now set for December, by up to six months. But American officials say they are pressing the Iraqi government to keep the original timetable.
Getting Sunni Arabs involved in the political process is seen as crucial to taking the edge off the insurgency. Last month was one of the war's bloodiest, with 80 American troops and about 800 Iraqis killed.
Attacks continued across central and northern Iraq on Sunday. One man was killed in Buhruz, northeast of Baghdad, when gunmen drove up to a car carrying a police officer and opened fire, an Interior Ministry official said. The officer, Maj. Muhammad Azzawi, and another man in the car were wounded, and the driver was killed.
Early on Sunday, gunmen sprayed the car of a policewoman in Baghdad, killing her, a police colonel told The Associated Press. On Saturday, a suicide car bomb exploded outside Mosul in the north, killing two policemen and wounding four. When more police officers went to help their colleagues, a roadside bomb went off, wounding four additional officers. South of Baghdad, in the Euphrates River Valley area known as the Triangle of Death, Iraqi and American troops made raids in insurgent-friendly towns as part of the offensive called Operation Lightning. On Thursday, about 10,000 Iraqi and American troops sealed off towns in the area, including the insurgent stronghold Mahmudiya. The next day, troops began going house to house looking for insurgents.
By Sunday morning, more than 200 people had been arrested, Iraqi commanders said. Troops met virtually no resistance.
In Anbar Province, American troops used 300 pounds of plastic explosives to destroy a vast underground bunker system and weapons cache, said Capt. Jeffrey S. Pool, a spokesman for the Second Marine Division. The series of bunkers was discovered by marines on Thursday afternoon and had furnished living quarters, fresh food, showers and even a working air-conditioner. It was the largest insurgent underground lair found in the last year, if not during the entire war, Captain Pool said.
In Washington, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. said Sunday in a telephone interview that military commanders privately told a Congressional delegation visiting Iraq last Monday that it would take about two years before enough Iraqi security forces were sufficiently trained to allow the Pentagon to withdraw large numbers of American troops.
"No one said you can draw down significantly in less than two years," Mr. Biden, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said after returning from the visit to Iraq with half a dozen other lawmakers. "What these guys were saying to me was, 'We've got to level with the American people.' "
Mr. Biden said that military officials had told lawmakers that there were 107 Iraqi police or military battalions in uniform, about 160,000 men, but that only 3 were "fully operational," meaning able to perform largely independent operations. Twenty of the battalions were "partially operational," or able to perform missions in tandem with American units, while the rest were in various states of training, he said.
He added that American commanders had told him that the 139,000 American troops in the country were not enough to perform all the necessary missions in Iraq, including tightening the nation's porous borders, and that they were not expecting any sizable increases in American troop strength.
Addressing the readiness of the Iraqi forces, Brig. Gen. C. Donald Alston, the chief American military spokesman in Baghdad, said that "the Iraqi security forces have come a long way in a short time."
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington for this article, and Sabrina Tavernise from Mahmudiya.
------------------------------
Citation: Edward Wong, "Dozens of Sunnis Expected to Help Draft Iraq Constitution," New York Times, 6 June 2005.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/06/international/middleeast/06iraq.html?oref=login
------------------------------
The Spoils of War Coverage
By Frank Rich
New York Times
13 April 2003
SHOULD we never have watched at all?
So Barbara Bush had instructed us in a "Good Morning America" interview showcased the day before the war began. The president's mother told Diane Sawyer she would watch "none" of TV's war coverage because "90 percent" of it would be speculative. Mrs. Bush continued: "Why should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many, what day it's gonna happen? . . . It's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"
A beautiful mind is indeed a terrible thing to waste, but not having one, I took Mrs. Bush's words as the see-no-evil musings of a mom spinning for her son. Now that the fog of war begins to lift, however, I realize she was prescient. A Los Angeles Times poll last weekend found that 69 percent of Americans turned to the three cable news networks first for war coverage — with newspapers, local TV news, regular network news and the Internet trailing far behind. But to what end? If cable has taught us anything during "War in Iraq," it is this: battalions of anchors and high-tech correspondents can cover a war 24/7 and still tell us less about what is going on than the mere 27 predigital news hounds who accompanied the American troops landing in Normandy on D-Day.
Speculation, while rampant, has in some ways been the least of the coverage's ills. By this point we instinctively know that whenever a rent-a-general walks over to a map, it's time to take a latrine break. What has most defined this TV war on cable is the networks' insistence on letting their own scorched-earth campaigns for brand supremacy run roughshod over the real action in Iraq. The conveying of actual news often seems subsidiary to their mission to out-flag-wave one another and to make their own personnel, rather than the war's antagonists, the leading players in the drama. For anchors like Brian Williams and Wolf Blitzer, Kuwait City is a backdrop that lends a certain amount of gravitas (though not as much as it would have during the last Persian Gulf war), but couldn't they anchor just as well from New York City? It's not as if they're vying to interview the locals. While a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that reports from embedded journalists were 94 percent accurate, it also discovered that in only 20 percent of those reports did the correspondents share the screen with anyone else.
There's almost nothing in the war, it seems, that cannot be exploited as a network promo. Fox's anchors trumpeted an idle news-briefing remark by Gen. Richard B. Myers that "reporters just have to be fair and balanced, that's all" as an official endorsement of the network's "fair and balanced" advertising slogan. At CNN, a noble effort by Dr. Sanjay Gupta, an embedded medical reporter, to rescue an injured 2-year-old Iraqi boy by performing on-the-scene brain surgery was milked for live reports. Lest anyone not grasp the most important moral of this incident, Dr. Gupta himself declared that "it was a heroic attempt to try to save the child's life" after the child had died.
As for MSNBC — last in war, last in peace, last in the Nielsens with or without "Donahue" — the battles for Basra and Baghdad were mere bagatelles compared to its take-no-prisoners battle with Fox to emerge as the most patriotic news channel in the land. Who was the most "treasonous" villain in the war? According to MSNBC, it was Fox's Geraldo Rivera, who revealed American troop movements on camera. According to Fox, it was MSNBC's Peter Arnett, who gave an interview to Iraqi TV. As the two networks stoked the flames of this bonfire of the vanities, neither took time out from their proxy war to devote much (if any) coverage to an actual American serviceman who might have committed actual treason. That would be Sgt. Asan Akbar of the 101st Airborne, who was arrested (and subsequently charged with murder) in the fragging incident that led to the deaths of two soldiers and the wounding of at least 14 others at Camp Pennsylvania. How fleeting was his infamy.
But it's not only the Sergeant Akbar story that has vanished from view. Whatever happened to Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, the Israelis and the Palestinians? TV viewers are now on more intimate terms with Aaron Brown and Shep Smith's perceptions of the war than we are with the collective thoughts of all those soon-to-be liberated "Iraqi people" they keep apotheosizing. Iraqis are the better-seen-than-heard dress extras in this drama, alternately pictured as sobbing, snarling or cheering. Even Saddam Hussein remains a villain from stock, since the specific history of his reign of terror gets far less airtime than the tacky décor of his palaces and the circular information-free debates about whether he's dead or alive. When Victoria Clarke at the Pentagon says Saddam is responsible for "decades and decades and decades of torture and oppression the likes of which I think the world has not ever seen before," no one on Fox or MSNBC is going to gainsay her by bringing up Hitler and Stalin. To so much as suggest that the world may have seen thugs even more evil than Saddam is to engage in moral relativism — which, in the prevailing Foxspeak of the moment, is itself tantamount to treason.
In retrospect we can see that patriotism as a TV news marketing ploy was inevitable after Dan Rather took flak for interviewing Saddam in February. There was nothing either exceptional or un-American about Mr. Rather's interview; it showed us a calculating dictator spewing unalloyed propaganda, none of which earned him the sympathy of any American viewers. But the uproar that ensued, stoked by the White House, sent the clear message that news not upholding the administration's message was verboten during wartime (unless the critique is delivered by paid network military consultants).
The resulting mood has at times made American television seem to march in lockstep as much as state-controlled TV in Iraq. The tale of Pfc. Jessica Lynch is a powerful story of a brave soldier and an equally brave rescue mission. But as packaged on TV, and not just by the cable news networks, it was sometimes corrupted into a propagandistic epic at war with the facts. If journalism is the first draft of history, this mutant strain is at best the first draft of the made-for-TV movie. Private Lynch's father himself had to correct the record after reports of his daughter's gunshot and stab wounds repeatedly outpaced her doctors' findings — as if her genuine, serious injuries were not grave enough to justify the TV weight given to her ordeal. "Somebody in the Army is trying to turn her into Audie Murphy," a senior Defense Department official told The Daily News as the mediathon spiraled out of control. Meanwhile, The Los Angeles Times reported that Randy Kiehl of Comfort, Tex., the father of a soldier who was taken prisoner in the same ambush, had to surf the Web to find Al Jazeera images that might reveal what would turn out to be the tragic fate of his own son.
Such images were kept off American television. "It's a news judgment where we would of course be mindful of the sensibilities of our viewers," a CNN spokeswoman told The Wall Street Journal, explaining her network's decision to minimize the savagery and blood of warfare. All the American networks and much of print journalism have made a similar decision — even though some on-air correspondents, notably ABC's Ted Koppel, have questioned it. Of course, no reader or viewer should be inundated with gore. But when movies like "Saving Private Ryan" and "Black Hawk Down" arrived, they were widely applauded for the innovative realism of their battle scenes. Wouldn't it make sense that media depictions of an actual war at least occasionally adhere to the same standard? Is the decision to sanitize "War in Iraq" really a matter of "news judgment" or is it driven by business? Certainly, horrific images would make it tough, if not impossible, to sell commercials — which returned with accelerating frequency to the cable networks after the altruistic first few days of the war.
As a result, the prewar joke, that this war would be the ultimate reality show, has come true. Its life-and-death perils are airbrushed whenever possible in the same soothing style as the artificial perils of "Survivor." It may not be coincidence that BBC, which is commercial-free, refused to turn away when blood splashed on its camera lens late last Sunday night during its first-hand report on the friendly fire incident that killed 19 Kurds. Then again, the unsparing first-hand written accounts of battle in the major newspapers — Dexter Filkins of The New York Times described literal eye-for-an-eye combat near Baghdad last weekend — are not replicated by the verbal storytelling of many TV correspondents either.
Appearing recently on Jon Stewart's "Daily Show," Anthony Swofford, the former marine who wrote the best-selling "Jarhead" about his experience in the '91 gulf war, said that he had shut off his TV this time after three or four days and "stayed with the print." For all the TV pictures, he noted, "the actual experience of combat doesn't make it to the other side of the screen." He and Barbara Bush are not alone in tuning out. By late March, cable-news ratings had fallen roughly 20 percent from their early highs. Eventually a war presented with minimal battlefield realism, canned jingoism and scant debate is going to pall as television no less than it does as journalism. At this rate, it may be only days before SARS sends Iraq into the same cable memory hole currently occupied by the rest of the Middle East, assuming a resurgence of child abductions doesn't come along to trump them both.
-------------------------
Citation: Frank Rich, "The Spoils of War Coverage," New York Times, 13 April 2003.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/13/arts/television/13RICH.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
-------------------------
New York Times
13 April 2003
SHOULD we never have watched at all?
So Barbara Bush had instructed us in a "Good Morning America" interview showcased the day before the war began. The president's mother told Diane Sawyer she would watch "none" of TV's war coverage because "90 percent" of it would be speculative. Mrs. Bush continued: "Why should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many, what day it's gonna happen? . . . It's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"
A beautiful mind is indeed a terrible thing to waste, but not having one, I took Mrs. Bush's words as the see-no-evil musings of a mom spinning for her son. Now that the fog of war begins to lift, however, I realize she was prescient. A Los Angeles Times poll last weekend found that 69 percent of Americans turned to the three cable news networks first for war coverage — with newspapers, local TV news, regular network news and the Internet trailing far behind. But to what end? If cable has taught us anything during "War in Iraq," it is this: battalions of anchors and high-tech correspondents can cover a war 24/7 and still tell us less about what is going on than the mere 27 predigital news hounds who accompanied the American troops landing in Normandy on D-Day.
Speculation, while rampant, has in some ways been the least of the coverage's ills. By this point we instinctively know that whenever a rent-a-general walks over to a map, it's time to take a latrine break. What has most defined this TV war on cable is the networks' insistence on letting their own scorched-earth campaigns for brand supremacy run roughshod over the real action in Iraq. The conveying of actual news often seems subsidiary to their mission to out-flag-wave one another and to make their own personnel, rather than the war's antagonists, the leading players in the drama. For anchors like Brian Williams and Wolf Blitzer, Kuwait City is a backdrop that lends a certain amount of gravitas (though not as much as it would have during the last Persian Gulf war), but couldn't they anchor just as well from New York City? It's not as if they're vying to interview the locals. While a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that reports from embedded journalists were 94 percent accurate, it also discovered that in only 20 percent of those reports did the correspondents share the screen with anyone else.
There's almost nothing in the war, it seems, that cannot be exploited as a network promo. Fox's anchors trumpeted an idle news-briefing remark by Gen. Richard B. Myers that "reporters just have to be fair and balanced, that's all" as an official endorsement of the network's "fair and balanced" advertising slogan. At CNN, a noble effort by Dr. Sanjay Gupta, an embedded medical reporter, to rescue an injured 2-year-old Iraqi boy by performing on-the-scene brain surgery was milked for live reports. Lest anyone not grasp the most important moral of this incident, Dr. Gupta himself declared that "it was a heroic attempt to try to save the child's life" after the child had died.
As for MSNBC — last in war, last in peace, last in the Nielsens with or without "Donahue" — the battles for Basra and Baghdad were mere bagatelles compared to its take-no-prisoners battle with Fox to emerge as the most patriotic news channel in the land. Who was the most "treasonous" villain in the war? According to MSNBC, it was Fox's Geraldo Rivera, who revealed American troop movements on camera. According to Fox, it was MSNBC's Peter Arnett, who gave an interview to Iraqi TV. As the two networks stoked the flames of this bonfire of the vanities, neither took time out from their proxy war to devote much (if any) coverage to an actual American serviceman who might have committed actual treason. That would be Sgt. Asan Akbar of the 101st Airborne, who was arrested (and subsequently charged with murder) in the fragging incident that led to the deaths of two soldiers and the wounding of at least 14 others at Camp Pennsylvania. How fleeting was his infamy.
But it's not only the Sergeant Akbar story that has vanished from view. Whatever happened to Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, the Israelis and the Palestinians? TV viewers are now on more intimate terms with Aaron Brown and Shep Smith's perceptions of the war than we are with the collective thoughts of all those soon-to-be liberated "Iraqi people" they keep apotheosizing. Iraqis are the better-seen-than-heard dress extras in this drama, alternately pictured as sobbing, snarling or cheering. Even Saddam Hussein remains a villain from stock, since the specific history of his reign of terror gets far less airtime than the tacky décor of his palaces and the circular information-free debates about whether he's dead or alive. When Victoria Clarke at the Pentagon says Saddam is responsible for "decades and decades and decades of torture and oppression the likes of which I think the world has not ever seen before," no one on Fox or MSNBC is going to gainsay her by bringing up Hitler and Stalin. To so much as suggest that the world may have seen thugs even more evil than Saddam is to engage in moral relativism — which, in the prevailing Foxspeak of the moment, is itself tantamount to treason.
In retrospect we can see that patriotism as a TV news marketing ploy was inevitable after Dan Rather took flak for interviewing Saddam in February. There was nothing either exceptional or un-American about Mr. Rather's interview; it showed us a calculating dictator spewing unalloyed propaganda, none of which earned him the sympathy of any American viewers. But the uproar that ensued, stoked by the White House, sent the clear message that news not upholding the administration's message was verboten during wartime (unless the critique is delivered by paid network military consultants).
The resulting mood has at times made American television seem to march in lockstep as much as state-controlled TV in Iraq. The tale of Pfc. Jessica Lynch is a powerful story of a brave soldier and an equally brave rescue mission. But as packaged on TV, and not just by the cable news networks, it was sometimes corrupted into a propagandistic epic at war with the facts. If journalism is the first draft of history, this mutant strain is at best the first draft of the made-for-TV movie. Private Lynch's father himself had to correct the record after reports of his daughter's gunshot and stab wounds repeatedly outpaced her doctors' findings — as if her genuine, serious injuries were not grave enough to justify the TV weight given to her ordeal. "Somebody in the Army is trying to turn her into Audie Murphy," a senior Defense Department official told The Daily News as the mediathon spiraled out of control. Meanwhile, The Los Angeles Times reported that Randy Kiehl of Comfort, Tex., the father of a soldier who was taken prisoner in the same ambush, had to surf the Web to find Al Jazeera images that might reveal what would turn out to be the tragic fate of his own son.
Such images were kept off American television. "It's a news judgment where we would of course be mindful of the sensibilities of our viewers," a CNN spokeswoman told The Wall Street Journal, explaining her network's decision to minimize the savagery and blood of warfare. All the American networks and much of print journalism have made a similar decision — even though some on-air correspondents, notably ABC's Ted Koppel, have questioned it. Of course, no reader or viewer should be inundated with gore. But when movies like "Saving Private Ryan" and "Black Hawk Down" arrived, they were widely applauded for the innovative realism of their battle scenes. Wouldn't it make sense that media depictions of an actual war at least occasionally adhere to the same standard? Is the decision to sanitize "War in Iraq" really a matter of "news judgment" or is it driven by business? Certainly, horrific images would make it tough, if not impossible, to sell commercials — which returned with accelerating frequency to the cable networks after the altruistic first few days of the war.
As a result, the prewar joke, that this war would be the ultimate reality show, has come true. Its life-and-death perils are airbrushed whenever possible in the same soothing style as the artificial perils of "Survivor." It may not be coincidence that BBC, which is commercial-free, refused to turn away when blood splashed on its camera lens late last Sunday night during its first-hand report on the friendly fire incident that killed 19 Kurds. Then again, the unsparing first-hand written accounts of battle in the major newspapers — Dexter Filkins of The New York Times described literal eye-for-an-eye combat near Baghdad last weekend — are not replicated by the verbal storytelling of many TV correspondents either.
Appearing recently on Jon Stewart's "Daily Show," Anthony Swofford, the former marine who wrote the best-selling "Jarhead" about his experience in the '91 gulf war, said that he had shut off his TV this time after three or four days and "stayed with the print." For all the TV pictures, he noted, "the actual experience of combat doesn't make it to the other side of the screen." He and Barbara Bush are not alone in tuning out. By late March, cable-news ratings had fallen roughly 20 percent from their early highs. Eventually a war presented with minimal battlefield realism, canned jingoism and scant debate is going to pall as television no less than it does as journalism. At this rate, it may be only days before SARS sends Iraq into the same cable memory hole currently occupied by the rest of the Middle East, assuming a resurgence of child abductions doesn't come along to trump them both.
-------------------------
Citation: Frank Rich, "The Spoils of War Coverage," New York Times, 13 April 2003.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/13/arts/television/13RICH.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
-------------------------
Images of Victory Overshadow Doses of Realism
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
New York Times
4 April 2003
Either victory was at hand, or television had rewound news coverage back to the first, optimistic days of the war.
A confident George Bush, hand in hand with the first lady, paid tribute to cheering marines at Camp Lejeune, N.C., while on the road to Baghdad, soldiers from the advancing Third Infantry Division tossed Frisbees at eager Iraqi children.
Good news got even better: Pfc. Jessica Lynch shifted overnight from victim to teenage Rambo: all the cable news shows ran with a report from The Washington Post that the 19-year-old P.O.W. had been shot and stabbed yet still kept firing at enemy soldiers. In the hands of television, the story had instantly gelled into a heroic made-for-TV war movie, "Saving Meg Ryan." Later yesterday, her father said she had not been shot or stabbed.
Despite all the sobering lessons learned over the past week, there were few images of civilian casualties or dead American soldiers during yesterday's high. Viewers instead saw a quick-thinking officer head off a confrontation between Iraqis in Najaf who feared American troops were heading for their mosque by ordering his men to kneel. Excitement kept building: ABC News interrupted "All My Children," to break the news that coalition forces had taken Saddam International Airport at the edge of Baghdad; the report later proved to be only partly true, with the coalition taking over the runways, but Iraqis still holding the terminals.
The unexpectedly fierce resistance of Iraqi soldiers, which had framed coverage of the war until yesterday suddenly turned into unanticipated passivity: John McWethy, the ABC Pentagon reporter, told Peter Jennings that the defense of Baghdad's outskirts "was much weaker than many anticipated."
It was not a day to dredge up the risk of suicide bombings or American soldiers accidentally opening fire on a bus filled with women and children. Nor was television in any mood to dwell on the possibility of dangerous urban warfare still ahead. Government officials and reporters noted that there could be more fighting soon, but images on television suggested the war was already won. Mike Cerre of ABC, reported on 2,500 Iraqi men surrendering to the First Marine Division, and on CNN, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the medical correspondent, joined military doctors in an unsuccessful effort to save the life of a wounded Iraqi child. Ted Koppel, the diffident anchor of ABC's "Nightline," resisted the temptation to gush. He reported seeing "modestly enthusiastic onlookers" as he traveled toward Baghdad with the Third Infantry Division.
But it was not just television raising the national blood sugar. Perhaps to counter criticism and doleful field reports, the Bush administration also pumped up the volume.
President Bush has given several speeches around the country since ordering troops into battle. Yesterday, in stark contrast with his solemn, rather stiff presentation in Philadelphia on Monday, Mr. Bush felt loose enough to try out a Jay Leno-like punch line. "There's no finer sight, no finer sight, than to see 12,000 United States marines and corpsmen," the president said, "unless you happen to be a member of the Iraqi Republican Guard."
As television screens filled once again with stirring battle images, Washington did little to dampen soaring expectations. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has complained rather bitterly about armchair generals second-guessing the war plan and "media mood swings" that inflate small glimpses of combat into full-scale war — Agincourt one day, Guernica the next. Yesterday, Mr. Rumsfeld warned of "difficult days ahead," but even he could not suppress a little swagger. Coalition troops, he said, were "closer to the center of the Iraqi capital than most American commuters are to their downtown offices."
Commentators were careful, however, to warn viewers that fiercer fighting and more casualties could still lie ahead. Even Fox News, which has been the most steadfast cheerleader for the invasion, was wary of overconfidence. But those small doses of realism could not compete with the heady images of victory that poured out on every news channel.
And like in the first days of the war, television reporters traveling with the troops got their groove back. Bob Arnot of MSNBC narrated a noisy firefight, telling viewers, "bullets are literally whizzing over our heads." As television competed to deliver viewers the most riveting shots of action, and headlines like "Postwar Iraq" introduced reports about Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's trip to Brussels, viewers could be excused for thinking that peace had already broken out.
---------------------
Citation: Alessandra Stanley, "Images of Victory Overshadow Doses of Realism," New York Times, 4 April 2003.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/04/international/worldspecial/04WATC.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
----------------------
New York Times
4 April 2003
Either victory was at hand, or television had rewound news coverage back to the first, optimistic days of the war.
A confident George Bush, hand in hand with the first lady, paid tribute to cheering marines at Camp Lejeune, N.C., while on the road to Baghdad, soldiers from the advancing Third Infantry Division tossed Frisbees at eager Iraqi children.
Good news got even better: Pfc. Jessica Lynch shifted overnight from victim to teenage Rambo: all the cable news shows ran with a report from The Washington Post that the 19-year-old P.O.W. had been shot and stabbed yet still kept firing at enemy soldiers. In the hands of television, the story had instantly gelled into a heroic made-for-TV war movie, "Saving Meg Ryan." Later yesterday, her father said she had not been shot or stabbed.
Despite all the sobering lessons learned over the past week, there were few images of civilian casualties or dead American soldiers during yesterday's high. Viewers instead saw a quick-thinking officer head off a confrontation between Iraqis in Najaf who feared American troops were heading for their mosque by ordering his men to kneel. Excitement kept building: ABC News interrupted "All My Children," to break the news that coalition forces had taken Saddam International Airport at the edge of Baghdad; the report later proved to be only partly true, with the coalition taking over the runways, but Iraqis still holding the terminals.
The unexpectedly fierce resistance of Iraqi soldiers, which had framed coverage of the war until yesterday suddenly turned into unanticipated passivity: John McWethy, the ABC Pentagon reporter, told Peter Jennings that the defense of Baghdad's outskirts "was much weaker than many anticipated."
It was not a day to dredge up the risk of suicide bombings or American soldiers accidentally opening fire on a bus filled with women and children. Nor was television in any mood to dwell on the possibility of dangerous urban warfare still ahead. Government officials and reporters noted that there could be more fighting soon, but images on television suggested the war was already won. Mike Cerre of ABC, reported on 2,500 Iraqi men surrendering to the First Marine Division, and on CNN, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the medical correspondent, joined military doctors in an unsuccessful effort to save the life of a wounded Iraqi child. Ted Koppel, the diffident anchor of ABC's "Nightline," resisted the temptation to gush. He reported seeing "modestly enthusiastic onlookers" as he traveled toward Baghdad with the Third Infantry Division.
But it was not just television raising the national blood sugar. Perhaps to counter criticism and doleful field reports, the Bush administration also pumped up the volume.
President Bush has given several speeches around the country since ordering troops into battle. Yesterday, in stark contrast with his solemn, rather stiff presentation in Philadelphia on Monday, Mr. Bush felt loose enough to try out a Jay Leno-like punch line. "There's no finer sight, no finer sight, than to see 12,000 United States marines and corpsmen," the president said, "unless you happen to be a member of the Iraqi Republican Guard."
As television screens filled once again with stirring battle images, Washington did little to dampen soaring expectations. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has complained rather bitterly about armchair generals second-guessing the war plan and "media mood swings" that inflate small glimpses of combat into full-scale war — Agincourt one day, Guernica the next. Yesterday, Mr. Rumsfeld warned of "difficult days ahead," but even he could not suppress a little swagger. Coalition troops, he said, were "closer to the center of the Iraqi capital than most American commuters are to their downtown offices."
Commentators were careful, however, to warn viewers that fiercer fighting and more casualties could still lie ahead. Even Fox News, which has been the most steadfast cheerleader for the invasion, was wary of overconfidence. But those small doses of realism could not compete with the heady images of victory that poured out on every news channel.
And like in the first days of the war, television reporters traveling with the troops got their groove back. Bob Arnot of MSNBC narrated a noisy firefight, telling viewers, "bullets are literally whizzing over our heads." As television competed to deliver viewers the most riveting shots of action, and headlines like "Postwar Iraq" introduced reports about Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's trip to Brussels, viewers could be excused for thinking that peace had already broken out.
---------------------
Citation: Alessandra Stanley, "Images of Victory Overshadow Doses of Realism," New York Times, 4 April 2003.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/04/international/worldspecial/04WATC.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
----------------------