Iraq delays hand Cheney firm $1bn
· Key contract decisions postponed again
· Blair drawn into row over lack of 'level playing fields'
Oliver Morgan, industrial editor
Sunday December 7, 2003
The Observer
Halliburton, the engineering group formerly run by US vice-president Dick Cheney, has been given $1 billion worth of reconstruction work in Iraq by the US government without having to compete for it, thanks to repeated delays in opening up a key contract to competition.
The Houston-based company was controversially awarded a contract to repair Iraq's damaged oil infrastructure without competition in February.
The cost-plus contract means the amount spent by the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), which is running the work, is open-ended, rather than being fixed at the outset, because the scope of the damage was unknown. The USACE described the contract as a 'bridge to competition', but original plans to award the work competitively in August have repeatedly slipped. So far, $1.7bn has been made available to Halliburton for the work.
Figures obtained from the USACE by Democrat Congressman Henry Waxman indicate that on 21 August, around the time the contract should have been opened to competition, the amount made available to KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary involved, was $704m. Since then the total has risen by $1.011bn.
Waxman said: 'Since August, when the follow-on contracts were supposed to be awarded, the administration has obligated more than $1bn to Halliburton under the oil infrastructure contract. These inexplicable delays may be good for Halliburton; they are costing taxpayers a bundle.'
The figures have emerged as the UK Government and contractors reacted with dismay to news this week that competitive tendering had again been pushed back to between 15 December and 17 January. Previously it was delayed to mid-October, late October, then year-end.
One leading UK contractor, which made strong representations in Whitehall this week, said: 'We are very disappointed that it has been put back again,' adding that the longer the delay, the more KBR benefited.
Brian Wilson, the Prime Minister's special representa tive on reconstruction, wrote to Blair in advance of President Bush's recent visit, urging him to press for a level playing field in Iraq.
Wilson said: 'These are very important contracts for the future of the Iraqi oil industry.
Prime Minister Tony Blair's office declined comment on the newspaper report, which featured in early editions published late Saturday.
"We're not prepared to comment but we urge all those involved to provide the Iraq Survey Group with whatever information they believe they have," a spokeswoman for Mr Blair's office said late Saturday. The ISG is the coalition body searching for Saddam's alleged chemical or biological weapons.
No one was available at the Foreign Office to comment on aspects of the newspaper report regarding the MI6 foreign intelligence agency, which supplied information on Iraqi weapons before the war.
The only way to validate the assertion that Bush is so uptight about media control that he refuses to personally pay honor to those who died on his orders would be to dig further, see if we can find more recent examples. The only way to validate that this proves something would be then to compare with LBJ's times - did LBJ visit the families of those who fell? Did he enforce a stringent no-photographs-with-coffins policy? I must admit I'm not going to seek all that out ...
Recently, President Bush has been criticized for failing to attend the funerals of the soldiers killed in Iraq. Maureen Dowd noted sarcastically in a recent NYT column that the president had not even bothered to attend the funeral of Specialist Darryl Dent, a "21-year-old National Guard officer from Washington who died outside Baghdad in late August when a bomb struck his truck while he was delivering mail to troops," though the service took place at a church just "three miles from the White House."
Have presidents in the past attended the funerals of soldiers who died in combat? Have they taken note of the deaths of U.S. soldiers? The record is mixed, as can be seen below. It would appear that few presidents have ever actually attended military funerals, though many used the bully pulpit to draw attention to lives lost in the service of their country.
LBJ attended two funerals for soldiers who died during the Vietnam War. [..]
Richard Nixon does not appear to have attended the funerals of any soldiers killed in Vietnam. He did award posthumous medals of honor to the families of several soldiers [and] on Veterans day in 1971 he visited the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington Cemetery. [..]
Jimmy Carter attended a memorial service for the soldiers killed in the failed rescue of America hostages in Iran in 1980. [..]
Ronald Reagan attended memorial services on several occasions for American soldiers. [..]
President George Herbert Walker Bush does not appear to have attended any funerals for American soldiers. [..]
Bill Clinton attended a service in October 2000 in memory of the 17 sailors killed in the attack on the USS Cole. After the terrorist bombing the Murrah building in downtown Oklahoma City he publicly grieved with the families of the victims. [..]
They find no evidence that FDR attended military funerals [..] Lyndon Johnson attended two funerals out of tens of thousands under his watch in Vietnam. Richard Nixon attended none. [..] The first president Bush attended no military funerals. Neither did president Clinton.
the original Dover policy actually dates back to 1991. The only thing that's changed is that, a civil suit against the restrictions at Dover having been won by the government, it is now being enforced. It would have been enforced [before], else there's no reason to have instituted the policy at all, but for the suit.
What were the reasons fabricated by bin Laden, Perception?
My Muslim Brothers (particularly those of the Arab Peninsula): The money you pay to buy American goods will be transformed into bullets and used against our brothers in Palestine and tomorrow (future) against our sons in the land of the two Holy places. By buying these goods we are strengthening their economy while our dispossession and poverty increases.
Muslims Brothers of land of the two Holy Places:
He (Allah's Blessings and Salutations may be on him) also said: "the best of the martyrs are those who do NOT turn their faces away from the battle till they are killed. They are in the high level of Jannah (paradise). Their Lord laughs to them ( in pleasure) and when your Lord laughs to a slave of His, He will not hold him to an account". narrated by Ahmad with correct and trustworthy reference. And : "a martyr will not feel the pain of death except like how you feel when you are pinched". Saheeh Al-Jame' As-Sagheer. He also said: "a martyr privileges are guaranteed by Allah; forgiveness with the first gush of his blood, he will be shown his seat in paradise, he will be decorated with the jewels of belief (Imaan), married off to the beautiful ones, protected from the test in the grave, assured security in the day of judgement, crowned with the crown of dignity, a ruby of which is better than this whole world (Duniah) and its' entire content, wedded to seventy two of the pure Houries (beautiful ones of Paradise) and his intercession on the behalf of seventy of his relatives will be accepted". Narrated by Ahmad and At-Tirmithi (with the correct and trustworthy reference).
Those youths know that their rewards in fighting you, the USA, is double than their rewards in fighting some one else not from the people of the book.
Tough New Tactics by U.S. Tighten Grip on Iraq Towns
By DEXTER FILKINS
Published: December 7, 2003
BU HISHMA, Iraq, Dec. 6 ?- As the guerrilla war against Iraqi insurgents intensifies, American soldiers have begun wrapping entire villages in barbed wire.
In selective cases, American soldiers are demolishing buildings thought to be used by Iraqi attackers. They have begun imprisoning the relatives of suspected guerrillas, in hopes of pressing the insurgents to turn themselves in.
The Americans embarked on their get-tough strategy in early November, goaded by what proved to be the deadliest month yet for American forces in Iraq, with 81 soldiers killed by hostile fire. The response they chose is beginning to echo the Israeli counterinsurgency campaign in the occupied territories.
So far, the new approach appears to be succeeding in diminishing the threat to American soldiers. But it appears to be coming at the cost of alienating many of the people the Americans are trying to win over. Abu Hishma is quiet now, but it is angry, too.
In Abu Hishma, encased in a razor-wire fence after repeated attacks on American troops, Iraqi civilians line up to go in and out, filing through an American-guarded checkpoint, each carrying an identification card printed in English only.
"If you have one of these cards, you can come and go," coaxed Lt. Col. Nathan Sassaman, the battalion commander whose men oversee the village, about 50 miles north of Baghdad. "If you don't have one of these cards, you can't."
The Iraqis nodded and edged their cars through the line. Over to one side, an Iraqi man named Tariq muttered in anger.
"I see no difference between us and the Palestinians," he said. "We didn't expect anything like this after Saddam fell."
The practice of destroying buildings where Iraqi insurgents are suspected of planning or mounting attacks has been used for decades by Israeli soldiers in Gaza and the West Bank. The Israeli Army has also imprisoned the relatives of suspected terrorists, in the hopes of pressing the suspects to surrender.
The Israeli military has also cordoned off villages and towns thought to be hotbeds of guerrilla activity, in an effort to control the flow of people moving in and out.
American officials say they are not purposefully mimicking Israeli tactics, but they acknowledge that they have studied closely the Israeli experience in urban fighting. Ahead of the war, Israeli defense experts briefed American commanders on their experience in guerrilla and urban warfare. The Americans say there are no Israeli military advisers helping the Americans in Iraq.
Writing in the July issue of Army magazine, an American brigadier general said American officers had recently traveled to Israel to hear about lessons learned from recent fighting there.
"Experience continues to teach us many lessons, and we continue to evaluate and address those lessons, embedding and incorporating them appropriately into our concepts, doctrine and training," Brig. Gen. Michael A. Vane wrote. "For example, we recently traveled to Israel to glean lessons learned from their counterterrorist operations in urban areas." General Vane is deputy chief of staff for doctrine concepts and strategy, at the United States Army Training and Doctrine Command.
American officers here say their new hard-nosed approach reflects a more realistic appreciation of the military and political realities faced by soldiers in the so-called Sunni triangle, the area north and west of Baghdad that is generating the most violence against the Americans.
Underlying the new strategy, the Americans say, is the conviction that only a tougher approach will quell the insurgency and that the new strategy must punish not only the guerrillas but also make clear to ordinary Iraqis the cost of not cooperating.
"You have to understand the Arab mind," Capt. Todd Brown, a company commander with the Fourth Infantry Division, said as he stood outside the gates of Abu Hishma. "The only thing they understand is force ?- force, pride and saving face."
Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top military commander in Iraq, announced the get-tough strategy in early November. After the announcement, some American officers warned that the scenes that would follow would not be pretty.
Speaking today in Baghdad, General Sanchez said attacks on allied forces or gunfights with adversaries across Iraq had dropped to under 20 a day from 40 a day two weeks ago.
"We've considerably pushed back the numbers of engagements against coalition forces," he said. "We've been hitting back pretty hard. We've forced them to slow down the pace of their operations."
In that way, the new American approach seems to share the successes of the Israeli military, at least in the short term; Israeli officers contend that their strategy regularly stops catastrophes like suicide bombings from taking place.
"If you do nothing, they will just get stronger," said Martin van Creveld, professor of military history and strategy at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He briefed American marines on Israeli tactics in urban warfare in September.
The problems in Abu Hishma, a town of 7,000, began in October, when the American military across the Sunni triangle decided to ease off on their military operations to coincide with the onset of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
In Abu Hishma, as in other towns, the backing off by the Americans was not reciprocated by the insurgents. American troops regularly came under mortar fire, often traced to the surrounding orchards.
Meanwhile, the number of bombs planted on nearby roads rose sharply. Army convoys regularly took fire from a house a few miles away from the village.
The last straw for the Americans came on Nov. 17, when a group of guerrillas fired a rocket-propelled grenade into the front of a Bradley armored personnel carrier. The grenade, with an armored piercing tip, punched through the Bradley's shell and killed Staff Sgt. Dale Panchot, one of its crewmen.
The grenade went straight into the sergeant's chest. With the Bradley still smoldering, the soldiers of the First Battalion, Eighth Infantry, part of the Fourth Infantry Division, surrounded Abu Hishma and searched for the guerrillas. Soldiers began encasing the town in razor wire.
The next day, an American jet dropped a 500-bomb on the house that had been used to attack them. The Americans arrested eight sheiks, the mayor, the police chief and most members of the city council. "We really hammered the place," Maj. Darron Wright said.
Two and a half weeks later, the town of Abu Hishma is enclosed in a barbed-wire fence that stretches for five miles. Men ages 18 to 65 have been ordered to get identification cards. There is only way into the town and one way out.
"This fence is here for your protection," reads the sign posted in front of the barbed-wire fence. "Do not approach or try to cross, or you will be shot."
American forces have used the tactic in other cities, including Awja, the birthplace of Saddam Hussein. American forces also sealed off three towns in western Iraq for several days.
"With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to help them," Colonel Sassaman said.
The bombing of the house, about a mile outside the barbed wire, is another tactic that echoes those of the Israeli Army. In Iraq, the Americans have bulldozed, bombed or otherwise rendered useless a number of buildings which they determined were harboring guerrillas.
In Tikrit, residents pointed out a home they said had been bulldozed by American tanks. The occupants had already left, they said.
"I watched the Americans flatten that house," said Abdullah al-Ajili, who lives down the road.
American officers acknowledge that they have destroyed buildings around Tikrit. In a recent news conference, General Sanchez explained the strategy but ignored a question about parallels to the Israeli experience.
"Well, I guess what we need to do is go back to the laws of war and the Geneva Convention and all of those issues that define when a structure ceases to be what it is claimed to be and becomes a military target," General Sanchez said. "We've got to remember that we're in a low-intensity conflict where the laws of war still apply."
In Abu Hishma, residents complain that the village is locked down for 15 hours a day, meaning that they are unable to go to the mosque for morning and evening prayers. They say the curfew does not allow them time to stand in the daylong lines for gasoline and get home before the gate closes for the night.
But mostly, it is a loss of dignity that the villagers talk about. For each identification card, every Iraqi man is assigned a number, which he must hold up when he poses for his mug shot. The card identifies his age and type of car. It is all in English.
"This is absolutely humiliating," said Yasin Mustafa, a 39-year-old primary school teacher. "We are like birds in a cage."
Colonel Sassaman said he would maintain the wire enclosure until the villagers turned over the six men who killed Sergeant Panchot, though he acknowledged they may have slipped far away.
Colonel Sassaman is feared by many of Abu Hishma's villagers, who hold him responsible for the searches and razor wire around the town. But some said they understood what a difficult job he had, trying to pick out a few bad men from a village of 7,000 people.
"Colonel Sassaman, you should come and live in this village and be a sheik," Hassan Ali al-Tai told the colonel outside the checkpoint.
The colonel smiled, and Mr. Tai turned to another visitor.
"Colonel Sassaman is a very good man," he said. "If he got rid of the barbed wire and the checkpoint, everyone would love him."
"You have to understand the Arab mind," Capt. Todd Brown, a company commander with the Fourth Infantry Division, said as he stood outside the gates of Abu Hishma. "The only thing they understand is force ?- force, pride and saving face."
The way the Iraqis have been gettin' their face slammed in the dirt it wouldn't surprise me if Capt. Brown gets his blown off, not that I am hoping for that.
The Israelis have kept up thier knack of being hated. They have thousands of years of practice at it.
Coalition Strike in Afghanistan Kills 9 Children
By JOHN H. CUSHMAN Jr.
Published: December 7, 2003
ABUL, Afghanistan, Sunday, Dec. 7 ?- United States warplanes attacking a suspected member of the Taliban killed nine children in the southeastern province of Ghazni on Saturday, Afghan and American military officials confirmed Sunday morning. One man was also killed in the attack, they said.
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In a statement issued early on Sunday from the headquarters of the American-led military forces at Bagram Air Base near Kabul, the military said ground forces searching the area after the attack found the bodies of the children as well as the body of the suspect.
"Coalition forces regret the loss of any innocent life," the statement said. It said the troops remaining in the area "will make every effort to assist the families of the innocent casualties and determine the cause of the civilian deaths."
The statement said a commission was being set up to investigate the incident. It did not describe the air attack in any detail.
Maj. Christopher E. West, an Army spokesman at Bagram, said the aircraft involved was an A-10 attack jet, a type that flies low and fires guns and rockets in support of infantry. A-10's are frequently in action over Afghanistan.
Haji Masud, an official in the governor's office in Ghazni, confirmed the attack and said it had been aimed at Mullah Wazir, a former member of the Taliban movement. "They bombed Mullah Wazir's house and civilians were also killed," he said in a telephone interview on Sunday morning. He gave no further details and said an official Afghan delegation had gone to the area to investigate.
A spokesman for President Hamid Karzai in Kabul said that when first reports arrived from the region, the American military had denied that the attack occurred. Mr. Karzai has frequently asked the United States military to take greater care with bombing raids on civilian areas and with they intelligence it receives, which has often proved erroneous. There have been hundreds of civilian casualties from bombing raids during the past two years. At least 48 people were killed in July 2002 when American planes fired on a village where a wedding party was in progress.
In another incident, eleven people from one family were killed when a bomb landed on their house near the Pakistani border in Paktika Province. The United States military quickly acknowledged the mistake, saying the attack was aimed at a group of militants whe were trying to escape across the border.
On Oct. 30. American planes bombed a village in the northern province of Nuristan, killing six members of one family, most of them women and children, and two religious students in the village mosque. The military has not yet confirmed that its planes were in the area that night.
In their statement, the United States military said it the targeted man had been involved in the killings of two contractors working on Afghanistan's main highway connecting the capital with the cities of Kandahar and Herat. There have been no reported killings of contractors. Several Afghan security policemen were killed in an attack on the road in September.
An officer at the main headquarters of Central Command in Tampa, which runs the military operations in Afghanistan as well as Iraq and elsewhere in the region, referred questions to the Bagram headquarters.
American and allied forces in Afghanistan "follow stringent rules of engagement to specifically avoid this type of incident while continuing to target terrorists," the statement said.
The aircraft opened fire on the suspect in what whas described as "an isolated rural site" south of the town of Ghazni, the statement said.
The attack came about 10:30 on Saturday morning. Ghazni is about 80 miles southeast of Kabul on the road to Kandahar, the former stronghold of the Taliban movement that governed Afghanistan before the United States and Afghan opposition forces overthrew it two years ago.
The military said the strike on Saturday was carried out "after developing extensive intelligence over an extended period of time" that determined the suspect's whereabouts.
Carlotta Gall reported from Kabul and John H. Cushman, Jr. from Washington.
