The US, UN & Iraq III

dys, LOL.

Hiama, that is grand. Marvelous, in fact. Carefully crafted.

Why is it so damned important to be doing whatever the hell we are doing over there ....???

:: Monday, July 21, 2003 ::

U.S. Soldier, Iraqi Interpreter Killed

This is the fifth interpreter I hear about. Just like the policemen who were attacked almost two weeks ago, the interpreters are seen as ligitimate targets by Islamists and Ba'athists. A taxi driver was telling me the other day that those Iraqis who collaborate with the Americans are even worse than the americans "they are the devil hidden in saint's clothes".
The first interpreters I heard about were killed execution style, blind folded and had a sign saying "this is what happens to collaborators". There was something written about this in the NY Times [Iraqis Keep Working for Allies, But Danger Makes Them Fearful - you need to pay to read that, I haven't read it I only knew that someone has written about the subject].
The Iraqi interpreters in many cases end up as spokesmen for the American Forces, having to justify whatever mess they have created somewhere and why this or that person was arrested. Most people will not see them as just interpreters but they will start acussing them, it doesn't help to say that they only work for them. If Iraqi interpreters are afraid to work for the US/UK army they will operate in total darkness. and it is not only interpreters it is anyone who works with them on any sort of reconstruction effort.
:: salam 4:54 AM [+] ::
...

Fr
Al-Muajaha independent newspaper published in Baghdad


A New Kind of Democracy
By Hamsa Mohammed in Baghdad

As an Iraqi civilian, and after being through this war, and after listening to all that has been said and done, I want everyone to know that this war has just begun. This isn't the end. And everyone should know that the Iraqi people are ready to sacrifice their lives for Iraq, and only for Iraq - not for Saddam, and not for the Americans.

For years, most of the people have seen Iraq through Saddam We always tried to make people see them as two different things, but it was too hard. Now that Saddam is no more the question is-what will the world see?

The United States said, or to be more precise-George Bush said that they will enter Iraq as liberators not as occupiers, and that they are here to eliminate an aggressive regime, to destroy the weapons of mass destruction, to offer the Iraqi people freedom and independence, and to help Iraq regain a respected place in the world.

But will Iraq be just another American State?

From my place now we are not even respected in our own land. We don't have the right to say anything about what the Americans are doing. They hold the machine guns, and we don't. Is this the new, George Bush democracy?

We are calling for democracy. We want our voices to go out to the world with no fear. But that is not possible because we are not free. We are not free to move, especially at night. We are not allowed to film near any U.S. military (just like with Saddam!). Al-Jazeera TV was threatened and accused that they were not showing the right (American) viewpoint, and their live pictures of the war were not true, and so their office got bombed and one of their reporters were murdered because the American government was not pleased with their programs. Is this the new, George Bush democracy?

Voices in the Wilderness was banned from working at the Palestine hotel because they did some writing that showed part of this reality. So they had to be stopped. So where is the democracy? Where is the freedom?

We don't even have the right to protect ourselves and our families. We see crimes that are committed, and we can't stop them. We can't even say "no" to anything the American soldiers are doing, even if it is illegal.

For example, the weapons that they find now, in the city, they are destroying them in the middle of Baghdad - in the city where children, women, and men live, with no concern for what it might do to the properties of the people, and some of our people have lost their lives and houses because of those destructions. They don't have any other place to live. Who is responsible for that?

In addition to that, the pollution that these destructions are causing to the environment, and the diseases that might appear because of no clean water, and not enough medicines, threaten all of us.

Who is in charge of this? Who is responsible for all these crimes? Or this the new, George Bush democracy, where no one can say, "No!"?

-----
Hamsa Mohammed is a 22 year old Iraqi college student at Baghdad University, and captain of the women's volleyball team. She would like to be a writer.

a
Tartarin, Yep .... will justice prevail???

The avatar is my ex....... messy divorce .......... I gave her everything with the stipulation that she kept the triplets ....

Looks like its on to Iran and Syria! Invasion by October

a
Is anyone else starting to get a bit nauseous with the new honor and dignity in the White House?




White House Striking Back?
Former Ambassador Charges Mudslinging Over Statements
By Andrea Mitchell
NBC NEWS

Monday 21 July 2003

WASHINGTON - They were just 16 words in the State of the Union address - words that we now know were misleading. And this man, retired career diplomat Joe Wilson tried to warn the administration of just that nearly a year before the speech.

Now in an NBC News exclusive, Wilson says his family is the subject of a smear campaign. Wilson tells NBC News the White House deliberately leaked his wife's identity as a covert CIA operative, damaging her future career and compromising past missions after he criticized the administration on "Meet the Press" and in the New York Times.

He told me, "It's a shot across the bow to those who might step forward, those unnamed analysts who said they were pressured by the White House for example would think twice about having their own families names being dragged through this particular mud."

The White House strongly denies the charge. In fact, Wilson was only one of three experts who warned the administration a year before the State of the Union that the Niger information didn't check out.

As previously reported on NBC News, then-Ambassador to Niger Barbro Owens-Fitzpatrick reported it was false in February 2002. So did four-star Marine Gen. Carlton Fulford two months later. So the warnings came to the White House more than a year before the State of the Union.

Wilson reached his judgment without ever seeing the forged documents that led to the charge. We showed him the documents for the first time Monday: I asked, "This is the first you are seeing the documents?" Wilson answered, "Yes. This was never a legitimate piece of information."

ITALIAN CONNECTION

And in their first TV interview Monday, the Italian journalists who first gave the documents to the U.S. Embassy in Rome tell NBC News the documents didn't even pass an amateur's test. "The smell of these documents, since the beginning, I was not convinced," says Carlo Rosell. So, the Italian magazine never printed the Niger story.

But the CIA wasn't as careful. NBC News has learned that it sent at least two secret memos to the White House only days before the State of the Union recycling the Niger charge - even though the agency knew it was false.

NBC News has learned one memo said "fragmentary reporting" on the Iraqi attempts to procure uranium from Africa is "another sign of reconstitution of a nuclear program."

POLITICAL FALLOUT

The Senate Intelligence Committee is investigating. But the committee itself is at war: Republicans blame the CIA. Democrats say the White House is ultimately responsible.

Monday night the White House tells NBC News these memos show that the CIA did not do enough to protect the president - more ammunition in what is becoming a war between the White House National Security Council and the CIA.




------------------------------------------------------------------




Columnist Blows CIA Agent's Cover
By Timothy M. Phelps and Knut Royce
Newsday

Tuesday 22 July 2003

Washington - The identity of an undercover CIA officer whose husband started the Iraq uranium intelligence controversy has been publicly revealed by a conservative Washington columnist citing "two senior administration officials."

Intelligence officials confirmed to Newsday yesterday that Valerie Plame, wife of retired Ambassador Joseph Wilson, works at the agency on weapons of mass destruction issues in an undercover capacity - at least she was undercover until last week when she was named by columnist Robert Novak.

Wilson, while refusing to confirm his wife's employment, said the release to the press of her relationship to him and even her maiden name was an attempt to intimidate others like him from talking about Bush administration intelligence failures.

"It's a shot across the bow to these people, that if you talk we'll take your family and drag them through the mud as well," he said in an interview.

It was Wilson who started the controversy that has engulfed the Bush administration by writing in the New York Times two weeks ago that he had traveled to Niger last year at the request of the CIA to investigate reports that Iraq was trying to buy uranium there. Though he told the CIA and the State Department there was no basis to the report, the allegation was used anyway by President George W. Bush in his State of the Union speech in January.

Wilson and a retired CIA official said yesterday that the "senior administration officials" who named Plame had, if their description of her employment was accurate, violated the law and may have endangered her career and possibly the lives of her contacts in foreign countries. Plame could not be reached for comment.

"When it gets to the point of an administration official acting to do career damage, and possibly actually endanger someone, that's mean, that's petty, it's irresponsible, and it ought to be sanctioned," said Frank Anderson, former CIA Near East Division chief.

A current intelligence official said that blowing the cover of an undercover officer could affect the officer's future assignments and put them and everyone they dealt with overseas in the past at risk.

"If what the two senior administration officials said is true," Wilson said, "they will have compromised an entire career of networks, relationships and operations." What's more, it would mean that "this White House has taken an asset out of the" weapons of mass destruction fight, "not to mention putting at risk any contacts she might have had where the services are hostile."

Deputy White House Press Secretary Claire Buchan referred questions to a National Security Council spokesman who did not return phone calls last night.

"This might be seen as a smear on me and my reputation," Wilson said, "but what it really is is an attempt to keep anybody else from coming forward" to reveal similar intelligence lapses.

Novak, in an interview, said his sources had come to him with the information. "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," he said. "They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it."

Wilson and others said such a disclosure would be a violation of the law by the officials, not the columnist.

Novak reported that his "two senior administration officials" told him that it was Plame who suggested sending her husband, Wilson, to Niger.

A senior intelligence official confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked "alongside" the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger.

But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment. "They [the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story] were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising," he said. "There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some reason," he said. "I can't figure out what it could be."

"We paid his [Wilson's] air fare. But to go to Niger is not exactly a benefit. Most people you'd have to pay big bucks to go there," the senior intelligence official said. Wilson said he was reimbursed only for expenses.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

Having to watch this administration at work is like having a 24/7 sorting the nation's dirty laundry.

(Last night, on a talk show, I heard a chirpy caller with a comfortable southern accent protest all this "nastiness" about Bush, saying, My goodness, after eight years of shiftiness and outright lies, it's been so GOOD to have an honorable group in the White House...)

Not to change the subject but, would it make a difference if the two evil sons were executed ... as opposed to killed in battle?

Not a difference to any particular person but still ... a difference.

This administration (possibly reflecting the culture of the nation) like to be able to say they rode into town and did it with their bare hands, Gelis.

I just can't figure out the Americans. Why smash Saddam's sons into little pieces when the Iraqis want them captured tried and punished? And what about the 14 year old? Was he a war criminal too?
Killing them makes no sense unless you don't want them to speak. We are supposed to be in there looking for WMD. Uday knew where they were. Why kill him? The Americans blunder about smashing things up destroying trust betraying potential allies and turning the joy of liberation into resentment of occupation. And losing their own people daily. Why do they do it? They can't be as stupid as they seem. There must be a plan being implemented here, I just cant work it out.

Steve,

From a Baghdad blogger

:: Wednesday, July 23, 2003 ::

just to tell you that i would be really dissapointed if Uday and Qusay were really killed in Mosul. this is just the easy way out for them. they should have been humiliated in public, images of them handcuffed and being pushed around.
:: salam 9:31 AM [+] ::



Why did it take 100 men and 21 missiles 6 hours to defeat 3 men and a boy???????


How much was battle and how much was interrogation???

Geli

I don't know, I hope some useful information was extracted from them before they died. But slamming 10 TOW anti tank missiles into the building is an odd way of asking a question.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti coalition. I want to see a modern pro western democratic Iraq. But it seems to me that American forces are determined to thwart that objective by everything they do.

a
They add new definition to the term 'cluster fuc*

ABC Online

PM - Debate in Washington over the timing of release of Hussein brothers photograph

[This is the print version of story http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2003/s909596.htm]

PM - Thursday, 24 July , 2003 18:18:00
Reporter: Alison Caldwell
MARK COLVIN: In Washington, Bush administration officials are debating when, not if, they will release photos of the two dead Hussein brothers. It appears that at this stage tomorrow will be the day, but no one can say for sure.

The chief dilemma facing US officials appears to be which photos they should release - the grisly images taken immediately after the raid, or pictures taken after the bodies have been cleaned up.

The United States is coming under increasing pressure to present evidence of the deaths as soon as possible. The bodies are due to undergo an autopsy sometime today in Baghdad.

But some commentators argue that as well as the pictures, Iraqis will need a lot more evidence to be convinced that Saddam Hussein's regime is also well and truly dead.

Alison Caldwell reports.

ALISON CALDWELL: Despite the widespread media coverage of the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein, it's no wonder many Iraqis are still yet to be convinced that the two brothers really are dead. For decades, Iraqi citizens have grown accustomed to official lies and deceit, which is why proof is now so crucial.

IRAQI VOX POP: I want to see Uday and Qusay killed, but I don't (see it).

ALISON CALDWELL: Today in Washington the Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced Iraqis will get the proof they need.

DONALD RUMSFELD: There will be pictures released.

REPORTER: Can you tell us when sir?

DONALD RUMSFELD: We haven't decided.

REPORTER: Soon?

DONALD RUMSFELD: What's soon?

REPORTER: Today? Tomorrow?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Not today.

ALISON CALDWELL: From the word go, Defence Department officials were keen to release photographs of the bodies as proof that the two men are dead. In Washington though, the question is which pictures?

So called "grisly" photographs were taken immediately after the raid, but some are arguing the authorities should wait until the bodies have been cleaned up by a mortician, before photographs are taken and released.

The military's reluctance was obvious at this morning's press conference with the commanding officer in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez.

REPORTER: How are you going to convince the Iraqi people that you have in fact killed Uday and Qusay? We still haven't seen the bodies yet.

RICARDO SANCHEZ: Okay, in due time we will provide that to you.

ALISON CALDWELL: General Sanchez was reportedly carrying around a set of the photographs at today's briefing where he showed them to a group of reporters. According to the New York Times newspaper, the photographs show the battered bloodied heads and upper torsos of Uday and Qusay Hussein.

Uday is reported to have a five inch gash running up from his mouth along the side of his nose. The military is sensitive about appearing to be gloating, particularly after America and Britain took offence at the pictures of Iraqi soldiers interrogating coalition troops.

Speaking in Washington after his visit to Iraq, Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was non-committal when he was asked about the urgency of presenting photographs.

PAUL WOLFOWITZ: We are going to make sure the Iraqi people believe this at the end of the day and there are a lot of ways to do that. There are a lot of ways to do that. But I've heard speculation of the kind that says, well, in revenge for these attacks, there's going to be more attacks.

Well, there's not an unlimited number of these criminals and they're not getting more people coming over to their side, I can guarantee you.

ALISON CALDWELL: While Washington grapples over the photographs, some commentators believe that showing the pictures will only have a short term impact.

Retired US airforce Major General Don Shepherd.

DON SHEPHERD: We're going to have to find a way to convince the Iraqi people and just showing the pictures is not going to do it. It's going to take some time, it's going to take spreading security over the country and of course, if at all possible, capturing or killing Saddam Hussein.

ALISON CALDWELL: While those who desperately want to believe that Saddam Hussein's regime is dead will no doubt accept any evidence presented, the Pentagon is also aware that those who remain loyal to Saddam Hussein will always be sceptical.

Professor Amin Saikal is with the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University. He says the photographs could backfire on the Americans.

AMIN SAIKAL: Obviously quite a good number of Iraqis will feel overjoyed at what has really happened. On the other hand, it may also remind them of their own powerlessness and humiliation as occupied people.

There would be many Iraqis who will feel very much humiliated to see that the occupying powers are boasting about killing the people who, as horrible as they may have been, are first of all Iraqis. So in that sense the whole thing may rebound on Americans.

MARK COLVIN: Professor Amin Saikal, from the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University, with Alison Caldwell.


© 2003 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Copyright information: http://abc.net.au/common/copyrigh.htm
Privacy information: http://abc.net.au/privacy.htm

a
Charleston.Net > News > War on Terror




Story last updated at 6:44 a.m. Thursday, July 24, 2003

Raid details emerge, questions remain

After firefight by ground and air, soldiers learned Saddam's sons were inside house

Los Angeles Times

MOSUL, IRAQ-- Sheik Nawaf al-Zaydan had been looking a bit edgy lately, his neighbors said.

A well-connected building contractor in his 50s, he had complained to merchants in his affluent area of Mosul that he had been unable to sleep much, only about one or two hours a night. When the electricity went out a few weeks ago, he ran over in a panic and begged for an immediate line from a generator.

On Tuesday morning, the probable reason for al-Zaydan's anxiety was revealed.

"I've got Odai, Qusai and big, big problems," he is said to have told a neighbor, to whose home al-Zaydan had been spirited by U.S. troops.

It was an understatement. By that time, U.S. forces were already shooting 50-caliber machine-gun rounds through the front door of his house.

After nearly four hours of heavy fire, the Americans had killed Odai and Qusai Hussein -- the two most feared men in Iraq after their father, Saddam Hussein -- and a bodyguard.

Only one combatant inside the house remained alive: Qusai's 14-year-old son, Mustafa. The teenager fired a final burst from an AK-47 at the U.S. troops before he, too, was overwhelmed and killed.

The assault on al-Zaydan's imposing three-story home along a busy thoroughfare has been hailed as a turning point in the U.S. effort to win the peace in postwar Iraq. Over four hours of shooting -- U.S. officials originally said the battle lasted six hours -- the four men inside the home held back a U.S. force of about 200 soldiers aided by heavy weaponry and assault helicopters.

Based on statements by the U.S. military commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, and comments from neighbors and witnesses, a recounting of the day's events can be made.

It was a combination of speedy reaction to intelligence and overwhelming force that put an end to two brothers who, true to their family's mafia-like credo, chose to die together with guns in their hands rather than surrender.

After an unidentified Iraqi walked in unbidden Monday night to report that Odai and Qusai were inside house No. 6 in the prosperous al-Falah district, U.S. military commanders scrambled late into the night to craft a battle plan that would begin at 10 a.m.

Fueling the rumor that al-Zaydan was the tipster, neighbors said he had gone out about 6 a.m. Tuesday morning and taken his wife, son and four young daughters with him.

By the time al-Zaydan and his son returned about 9 a.m., without the female family members, American forces had already arrived outside al-Zaydan's house prepared to search it.

Al-Zaydan and his son, Shalan, were quickly taken into custody by the Americans.

Neighbors said that, for detainees, al-Zaydan and his son appeared to have received kid-glove treatment. The two were allowed to sit in an American car and then were taken into a nearby house where al-Zaydan made his remark about having Odai and Qusai in his home.

It was the first time neighbors realized whom the American troops were after.

One neighbor said al-Zaydan was heard urging the Americans not to enter his house because they would face fierce resistance.

After receiving no response to orders for the occupants to leave the house, the soldiers burst in and immediately faced small-arms fire, apparently from AK-47s aimed from the barricaded second floor, Sanchez said.

The first volley of gunfire wounded three Americans inside the house and a fourth outside. The Americans, special-operations troops from the 101st Airborne Division, pulled out to evacuate their casualties via helicopter and to ask for backup. Inside, the fugitives were lobbing grenades at U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers on the roof.

After the troops withdrew from the house, soldiers riddled it with Mark 19 grenades, AT4 antitank rockets and large Humvee-mounted 50-caliber machine guns, Sanchez said. Reinforcements from the 101st's 2nd Brigade arrived at 11:22 a.m.

Then, at 11:45 a.m., came Kiowa OH58D helicopters, firing 10 2.75-inch rockets. Two struck behind the house, two fell in a vacant lot next door and the rest were direct hits, neighbors said.

At noon, the soldiers burst through the doorway a second time. They cleared the first floor but withdrew, wary of the barricade at the top of the stairs. All four fugitives were believed to have survived a three-hour onslaught, Sanchez said.

Commanders considered destroying the house with Apache helicopters and A-10 Warthogs hovering nearby, but they feared heavy casualties among neighbors. Instead, at 1 p.m., they ordered a heavy volley of fire with 50-caliber machine guns, Mark 19s and, for the first time, TOW missiles fired from Humvees.

Odai, Qusai and the bodyguard were killed, Sanchez said.

At 1:21 p.m., the soldiers walked through the door for the third time. Moving cautiously up the stairs, they took no fire until they reached the top. Young Mustafa then fired his AK-47, Sanchez said. It was his final act.

For some, it seemed far too much firepower for three men and a teenage boy.

"Why did the Americans kill Odai and Qusai? We wanted them alive so they could be questioned," said Masin Ibrahim, a neighborhood resident who watched the scene unfold.

Military commanders in Iraq and Pentagon officials in Washington on Wednesday defended the decision to storm the house.

"The option to surround the house and wait out the individuals in the house was considered and rejected," Sanchez said Wednesday. "The commanders on the ground made the decision to go ahead and execute and accomplish their mission of finding, fixing, killing or capturing. That was the right decision."

Waiting out the two sons posed several risks, military officials said. Escape through a hidden tunnel was one risk.

"The key to success in an operation like that is speed and secrecy," the deputy defense secretary, Paul D. Wolfowitz, told reporters at the Pentagon. "That's the most important thing. I'd just hate to be up here asking the question, 'How come it took you three hours and they got away?' "

"Nobody is sitting around here second-guessing this one," said a senior administration official. "The important thing is that word spreads in Iraq that these guys are gone for good."

Al-Zaydan and his son apparently remained in the hands of American troops late Wednesday for their own protection.

If al-Zaydan was indeed the tipster, the family stands to be richer by $30 million, the reward on the heads of Odai and Qusai, and al-Zaydan's "big, big problems" may work out after all.

Why, why, why, indeed. Why weren't they captured and taken open court for the benefit of the Iraqi people? I haven't noticed any particular affection on the part of Bush & Co. for open courts. We do know that they prefer quick, dramatic "fixes" particularly when they're televisual and can wipe off the screens and the blank slate of the American mind nasty little boogers like "where are the WMD's" and "why did you lie".

Tartarin, I was thinking the same thing yesterday and wondering if I was the only person in the country who thought it would have been preferable to capture the sons and try them in court, showing the world our vaunted justice system, and seeing if we could prove the atrocities that they are accused of. What right do we have to kill someone and ask questions later?

Instead, we foolishly created two martyrs that the dissident elements in Iraq and other Arab countries can use to fire themselves up to kill Americans and Brits.

After our prevarications about the pretenses for war, why should anyone believe that the dead men are the Hussein sons? We have put ourselves in this position, and even DNA tests and photos (which can be easily manipulated on a computer) will not convince the doubters.

Well, Kara, of course that's the key question. The administration may be wrong that it can continue to hide or lie about unfavorable stuff. More and more people are asking, Yes, but...?

What do you guys expect from tihs cowboy? c.i.

The pictures have been released

Oh, goody. I need some good ole homespun poltical exhibitionism today.
It goes with the obvious political opportunism that California is becoming the world's pathetic example.