History > 2006 > USA > War > Iraq (V)

Ahamd Al-Rubaye/AFP -- Getty Images        no caption

Shiite Militia in Iraq Strike at Sunni Mosques        NYT        25.11.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/25/world/middleeast/25iraq.html

Bush Proclaims Support for Iraqi Premier

November 30, 2006
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

AMMAN, Jordan, Nov. 30 — President Bush today proclaimed Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki "the right guy for Iraq," and said the two had agreed to speed the turnover of security responsibility from American to Iraqi forces. But Mr. Bush dismissed a reported decision by an independent bipartisan panel to call for a gradual withdrawal of troops.

"I know there's a lot of speculation that these reports in Washington mean there's going to be some kind of graceful exit out of Iraq," the president said during a joint news conference with Mr. Maliki, referring to the panel's reports that are expected next week. "We're going to stay in Iraq to get the job done so long as the government wants us there."

Mr. Bush also said he and Mr. Maliki would oppose any plan to break up the country, which is riven by sectarian violence. The two appeared together after an hourlong breakfast meeting with aides at the Four Seasons Hotel here that was followed by a 45-minute one-on-one session.

"The prime minister made clear that splitting his country into parts, as some have suggested, is not what the Iraqi people want, and that any partition in Iraq would only lead to an increase of sectarian violence," Mr. Bush said, adding, "I agree."

The two leaders set no timetable for speeding up the training of Iraqi forces, which Mr. Bush described as evolving "from ground zero," and a senior administration official, who attended the breakfast and was granted anonymity to discuss it, said hurdles remain.

"This is not a simple process of passing the baton," the official said, adding, "This is not the United States and Iraq struggling for control of the steering wheel. This is the United States wanting Iraq to be firmly with the steering wheel in its hand, and the issue is, how do we get there as quickly as possible."

The news conference came against a backdrop of rising violence in Iraq and increasing tensions between the two leaders. On Wednesday evening, Mr. Maliki took the unusual step of backing out of a planned meeting with the president, an embarrassment to the White House that came on the heels of publication of a classified memo from National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley that raised doubts about Mr. Maliki's leadership.

Today, both men tried to tamp down any suggestion that the relationship was strained. Mr. Bush said yet again that he has confidence in the Iraqi prime minister.

"I've been able to watch a leader emerge," the president said, describing the threats Mr. Maliki said he had received since becoming prime minister, including shells being fired at his house.

The president added, "You can't lead unless you've got courage. He's got courage and he's shown courage over the last six months."

Mr. Maliki, for his part, dismissed any suggestion that he had cancelled the meeting out of pique, saying the meeting – which had been scheduled to include King Abdullah II of Jordan – was not necessary because the prime minister and the king had already had discussion earlier in the day. "So there's no problem," Mr. Maliki said.

The senior official said the Hadley memo did not come up during the breakfast, except for a few jokes about leaks to the media – a reference to The New York Times, which published the memo in Wednesday's editions. The official said Mr. Bush and Mr. Maliki seemed comfortable with one another.

"There's no cloud over the meeting in any fashion whatsoever," she said.

Still, tensions seemed to bubble just under the surface. The two leaders barely looked at one another during the news conference. And when Mr. Bush, at one point, asked the prime minister if he wanted to continue taking questions from reporters, the prime minister swiveled his head toward the president and shot Mr. Bush an incredulous look.

"We said six questions, now this is the seventh – this is the eighth – eight questions," Mr. Maliki said.

The high-profile summit and news conference underscored just how much pressure each man is facing to make changes in his relationship with the other.

In Mr. Bush's case, that pressure is coming both from the Democrats about to take control of Congress, who want a withdrawal of troops, and the independent Iraq Study Group led by former Secretary of State James Baker, which is expected to deliver a report next week that calls for a gradual troop withdrawal, without a specific timetable for pulling out.

In Mr. Maliki's case, the pressure is coming from Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric, who wants Americans to withdraw and whose followers said Wednesday that they would boycott the Iraqi government over Mr. Maliki's decision to meet with Mr. Bush. White House advisers want Mr. Maliki to reduce his reliance on the al-Sadr faction, but Mr. Maliki today sidestepped a question about whether, or how, he would do so.

"My coalition is not only with one entity," the prime minister said, speaking through an interpreter. He added, "Mr. Sadr and the Sadrists are just one component that participate in the parliament."

The president and the prime minister did not say specifically how they intend to speed the transfer of responsibility for security from American to Iraqi forces, and they did not announce any milestones or set goals by which to measure progress.

"As soon as possible," Mr. Bush said, when asked how quickly he expected the transfer to occur.

"I've been asked about timetables ever since we got into this. All the timetables mean is a timetable for withdrawal," he went on. "All that does is set people up for unrealistic expectations."

    Bush Proclaims Support for Iraqi Premier, NYT, 30.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/30/world/middleeast/30cnd-prexy.html?hp&ex=1164949200&en=c723bbdd129e52af&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Iraq Panel to Recommend Pullback of Combat Troops

November 30, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER and DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, Nov. 29 — The bipartisan Iraq Study Group reached a consensus on Wednesday on a final report that will call for a gradual pullback of the 15 American combat brigades now in Iraq but stop short of setting a firm timetable for their withdrawal, according to people familiar with the panel’s deliberations.

The report, unanimously approved by the 10-member panel, led by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, is to be delivered to President Bush next week. It is a compromise between distinct paths that the group has debated since March, avoiding a specific timetable, which has been opposed by Mr. Bush, but making it clear that the American troop commitment should not be open-ended. The recommendations of the group, formed at the request of members of Congress, are nonbinding.

A person who participated in the commission’s debate said that unless the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki believed that Mr. Bush was under pressure to pull back troops in the near future, “there will be zero sense of urgency to reach the political settlement that needs to be reached.”

The report recommends that Mr. Bush make it clear that he intends to start the withdrawal relatively soon, and people familiar with the debate over the final language said the implicit message was that the process should begin sometime next year.

The report leaves unstated whether the 15 combat brigades that are the bulk of American fighting forces in Iraq would be brought home, or simply pulled back to bases in Iraq or in neighboring countries. (A brigade typically consists of 3,000 to 5,000 troops.) From those bases, they would still be responsible for protecting a substantial number of American troops who would remain in Iraq, including 70,000 or more American trainers, logistics experts and members of a rapid reaction force.

As the commission wound up two and a half days of deliberation in Washington, the group said in a public statement only that a consensus had been reached and that the report would be delivered next Wednesday to President Bush, Congress and the American public. Members of the commission were warned by Mr. Baker and Mr. Hamilton not to discuss the contents of the report.

But four people involved in the debate, representing different points of view, agreed to outline its conclusions in broad terms to address what they said might otherwise be misperceptions about the findings. Some said their major concern was that the report might be too late.

“I think we’ve played a constructive role,” one person involved in the committee’s deliberations said, “but from the beginning, we’ve worried that this entire agenda could be swept away by events.”

Even as word of the study group’s conclusions began to leak out, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said two or three battalions of American troops were being sent to Baghdad from elsewhere in Iraq to assist in shoring up security there. Another Pentagon official said the additional troops for Baghdad would be drawn from a brigade in Mosul equipped with fast-moving, armored Stryker vehicles.

As described by the people involved in the deliberations, the bulk of the report by the Baker-Hamilton group focused on a recommendation that the United States devise a far more aggressive diplomatic initiative in the Middle East than Mr. Bush has been willing to try so far, including direct engagement with Iran and Syria. Initially, those contacts might be part of a regional conference on Iraq or broader Middle East peace issues, like the Israeli-Palestinian situation, but they would ultimately involve direct, high-level talks with Tehran and Damascus.

Mr. Bush has rejected such contacts until now, and he has also rejected withdrawal, declaring in Riga, Latvia, on Tuesday that while he will show flexibility, “there’s one thing I’m not going to do: I’m not going to pull the troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete.”

Commission members have said in recent days that they had to navigate around such declarations, or, as one said, “We had to move the national debate from whether to stay the course to how do we start down the path out.”

Their report, as described by those familiar with the compromise, may give Republicans political cover to back away from parts of the president’s current strategy, even if Democrats claim that the report is short on specific deadlines.

While the White House reviews its strategy options, Pentagon planners are also looking beyond the immediate reinforcements for Baghdad to the question of whether they will need to draw more on reserve units to meet troop requirements in the Iraqi capital, military officials said. In particular, the Army is considering sending about 3,000 combat engineers from reserve units.

The proposal would not increase the overall number of troops in Baghdad, but it is controversial because it would require sending units that had already been deployed to Iraq in recent years, a step National Guard officials have been trying to avoid.

The move has not been approved by the Bush administration, but the decision could be made in the coming weeks, and the first of the additional troops may begin arriving in Iraq by next spring, officials said.

American military officials said that the forces in Iraq that were being shifted to Baghdad were to take the place of the 172nd Stryker Brigade, which is returning to its base in Alaska, and that there would be no increase in American forces in the Iraqi capital. In fact, one officer said there might be a brief decrease until the adjustments were completed.

As the Iraq Study Group finished its meetings in Washington, it heard final testimony from Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, a Democrat who has urged a specific timeline for withdrawal, and Senator John McCain of Arizona, who has called for a significant bolstering of troops to gain control of the Iraqi capital. Two former secretaries of state, Henry A. Kissinger and George P. Shultz, also spoke to the group as it debated its final conclusions.

Although the diplomatic strategy takes up the majority of the report, it was the military recommendations that prompted the most debate, people familiar with the deliberations said. They said a draft report put together under the direction of Mr. Baker and Mr. Hamilton had collided with another, circulated by other Democrats on the commission, that included an explicit timeline calling for withdrawal of the combat brigades to be completed by the end of next year. In the end, the two proposals were blended.

If Mr. Bush adopts the recommendations, far more American training teams will be embedded with Iraqi forces, a last-ditch effort to make the Iraqi Army more capable of fighting alone. That is a step already embraced in a memorandum that Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, wrote to the president this month.

“I think everyone felt good about where we ended up,” one person involved in the commission’s debates said after the group ended its meeting. “It is neither ‘cut and run’ nor ‘stay the course.’ ”

“Those who favor immediate withdrawal will not like it,” he said, but it also “deviates significantly from the president’s strategy.”

The report also would offer military commanders — and therefore the president — great flexibility to determine the timing and phasing of the pullback of the combat brigades.

Throughout the debates, Mr. Baker, who served as secretary of state under Mr. Bush’s father and was the central figure in developing the strategy to win the 2000 Florida recount for Mr. Bush, was highly reluctant to allow a timetable for withdrawal to be included in the report, participants said.

Mr. Baker cited what Mr. Bush had also called a danger: that any firm deadline would be an invitation to insurgents and sectarian groups to bide their time until the last American troops were withdrawn, then seek to overthrow the government. But Democrats on the commission also suspected that Mr. Baker was reluctant to embarrass the president by embracing a strategy Mr. Bush had repeatedly rejected.

Committee members struggled with ways, short of a deadline, to signal to the Iraqis that Washington would not prop up the government with military forces endlessly, and that if sectarian warfare continued the pressure to withdraw American forces would become overwhelming. What they ended up with appears to be a classic Washington compromise: a report that sets no explicit timetable but, between the lines, appears to have one built in.

As one senior American military officer involved in Iraq strategy said, “The question is whether it doesn’t look like a timeline to Bush, and does to Maliki.”

In addition to Mr. Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman, the group includes two Democrats who are veterans of the Clinton administration, Leon E. Panetta and William J. Perry, and a Clinton adviser, Vernon E. Jordan Jr. Charles S. Robb, former Democratic governor of Virginia, and Alan K. Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming, are also on the panel, along with Sandra Day O’Connor, a former Supreme Court justice who was nominated by President Reagan.

Other members includes Edwin Meese III, who served as attorney general under Mr. Reagan, and Lawrence S. Eagleburger, a former secretary of state under Mr. Bush’s father. Mr. Eagleburger replaced Robert M. Gates, who resigned when he was nominated to be the next secretary of defense.

If confirmed he will have to carry out whatever change of military strategy, if any, Mr. Bush embraces.

Michael R. Gordon contributed reporting.

    Iraq Panel to Recommend Pullback of Combat Troops, NYT, 30.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/30/world/middleeast/30policy.html?hp&ex=1164949200&en=b95eba287d888001&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bush Adviser’s Memo Cites Doubts About Iraqi Leader

November 29, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON

WASHINGTON, Nov. 28 — A classified memorandum by President Bush’s national security adviser expressed serious doubts about whether Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki had the capacity to control the sectarian violence in Iraq and recommended that the United States take new steps to strengthen the Iraqi leader’s position.

The Nov. 8 memo was prepared for Mr. Bush and his top deputies by Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, and senior aides on the staff of the National Security Council after a trip by Mr. Hadley to Baghdad.

The memo suggests that if Mr. Maliki fails to carry out a series of specified steps, it may ultimately be necessary to press him to reconfigure his parliamentary bloc, a step the United States could support by providing “monetary support to moderate groups,” and by sending thousands of additional American troops to Baghdad to make up for what the document suggests is a current shortage of Iraqi forces. [Text, Page A10.]

The memo presents an unvarnished portrait of Mr. Maliki and notes that he relies for some of his political support on leaders of more extreme Shiite groups. The five-page document, classified secret, is based in part on a one-on-one meeting between Mr. Hadley and Mr. Maliki on Oct. 30.

“His intentions seem good when he talks with Americans, and sensitive reporting suggests he is trying to stand up to the Shia hierarchy and force positive change,” the memo said of the Iraqi leader. “But the reality on the streets of Baghdad suggests Maliki is either ignorant of what is going on, misrepresenting his intentions, or that his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into action.”

An administration official made a copy of the document available to a New York Times reporter seeking information on the administration’s policy review. The Times read and transcribed the memo.

The White House has sought to avoid public criticism of Mr. Maliki, who is scheduled to meet with Mr. Bush in Jordan on Wednesday. The latest surge of sectarian violence in Baghdad and the Democratic victories in the midterm elections are prompting calls for sharp changes in American policy. Such changes are among options being debated by the Iraq Study Group, the bipartisan panel led by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton.

A senior administration official discussed the memorandum in general terms after being told The New York Times was preparing an article on the subject. The official described the document as “essentially a trip report” and not a result of the administration’s review of its Iraq policy, which is still under way.

He said the purpose of the memo “was to provide a snapshot of the challenges facing Prime Minister Maliki and how we can best enhance his capabilities, mindful of the complex political and security environment in which he is operating.”

The American delegation that went to Iraq with Mr. Hadley included Meghan L. O’Sullivan, the deputy national security adviser, and three other members of the National Security Council staff. The memo, prepared after that trip, has been circulated to cabinet-level officials who are participating in the administration’s review of Iraq strategy.

There is nothing in the memo that suggests the Bush administration is interested in replacing Mr. Maliki as prime minister. But while Mr. Bush has stated that he has confidence in the Iraqi leader, the memo questions whether Mr. Maliki has the will and ability to establish a genuine unity government, saying the answer will emerge from actions he takes in the weeks and months ahead.

“We returned from Iraq convinced we need to determine if Prime Minister Maliki is both willing and able to rise above the sectarian agendas being promoted by others,” the memo says. “Do we and Prime Minister Maliki share the same vision for Iraq? If so, is he able to curb those who seek Shia hegemony or the reassertion of Sunni power? The answers to these questions are key in determining whether we have the right strategy in Iraq.”

In describing the Oct. 30 meeting between Mr. Hadley and Mr. Maliki, it says: “Maliki reiterated a vision of Shia, Sunni and Kurdish partnership, and in my one-on-one meeting with him, he impressed me as a leader who wanted to be strong but was having difficulty figuring out how to do so.” It said the Iraqi leader’s assurances seemed to have been contradicted by developments on the ground, including the Iraqi government’s approach to the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia known in Arabic as Jaish al-Mahdi and headed by Moktada al-Sadr.

“Reports of nondelivery of services to Sunni areas, intervention by the prime minister’s office to stop military action against Shia targets and to encourage them against Sunni ones, removal of Iraq’s most effective commanders on a sectarian basis and efforts to ensure Shia majorities in all ministries — when combined with the escalation of Jaish al-Mahdi (JAM) killings — all suggest a campaign to consolidate Shia power in Baghdad.”

Among the concerns voiced in the memo was that Mr. Maliki was surrounded by a small group of advisers from the Shiite Dawa Party, a narrow circle that American officials worry may skew the information he receives.

The memo outlines a number of short-term steps Mr. Maliki could undertake to establish control. The Iraqi leader has recently indicated his intention to take some of those steps, like announcing his intention to expand the size of the Iraqi Army and declaring that Iraq will seek an extension of the United Nations mandate that provides for the deployment of the American-led multinational force in Iraq. The United Nations Security Council voted on Tuesday to extend that mandate.

The memo also lists steps the United States can take to strengthen Mr. Maliki’s position. They include efforts to persuade Saudi Arabia to use its influence with the Sunnis in Iraq and encourage them to turn away from the insurgency and to seek a political accommodation.

Addressing Mr. Bush, the memo said one option was for the president to “direct your cabinet to begin an intensive press on Saudi Arabia to play a leadership role on Iraq, connecting this role with other areas in which Saudi Arabia wants to see U.S. action.” Although the memo did not offer specifics, this appeared to be an allusion to a more active American role in the Arab-Israeli peace process. Recently, Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has reached out to the Palestinians and has said he wants to move ahead with peace talks. But the memo’s authors also contemplate the possibility that Mr. Maliki’s position may be too tenuous for him to take the steps needed to curb the power of Shiite militias, to establish a more diverse and representative personal staff and to arrest the escalating sectarian strife.

In that case, the memo suggests, it may ultimately be necessary for Mr. Maliki to recast his parliamentary bloc, a step the United States could support by pressing moderates to align themselves with the Iraqi leader and providing them with monetary support.

The memo refers to “the current four-brigade gap in Baghdad,” a seeming acknowledgment that there is a substantial shortfall of troops in the Iraqi capital compared with the level needed to provide security there, in part because the Iraqi government has not dispatched all the forces it has promised. An American brigade generally numbers about 3,500 troops, though Iraqi units can be smaller. While Democrats have advocated beginning troop withdrawals as a means of putting pressure on Mr. Maliki, the memo suggests that such tactics may backfire by stirring up opposition against a politically vulnerable leader.

“Pushing Maliki to take these steps without augmenting his capabilities could force him to failure — if the Parliament removes him from office with a majority vote or if action against the Mahdi militia (JAM) causes elements of the Iraqi Security Forces to fracture and leads to major Shia disturbances in southern Iraq,” the memo says.

The memo lists a number of possible steps to build up Mr. Maliki’s capability. They include asking Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the senior American commander, to develop a plan to strengthen the Iraqi leader.

This could involve the formation of a new National Strike Force, significantly increasing the number of American advisers working with the Iraqi National Police, a force that has been infiltrated by Shiite militias, and putting more Iraqi forces directly under Mr. Maliki’s control.

In addition, the memorandum suggests that Mr. Bush ask the Pentagon and General Casey “to make a recommendation about whether more forces are needed in Baghdad.”

The administration appears to have already begun carrying out some of the steps recommended in the document. Among them were a trip over the weekend by Vice President Dick Cheney to Saudi Arabia as part of an effort to seek help from Sunni Arab powers in encouraging Sunni groups in Iraq to seek a political compromise with Mr. Maliki.

The senior administration official who agreed to discuss the memo would do so only on condition of anonymity. The official said some of the steps projected in the document were being carried out.

The official also stressed that the administration retains confidence in the Iraqi leader. “What we are seeing is that he had the right intentions and is willing to act,” the senior official said. “Our own review has opened a consultative process on where Maliki wants to take the government. A successful strategy has to be one that is driven by the Iraqis.”

    Bush Adviser’s Memo Cites Doubts About Iraqi Leader, NYT, 29.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/29/world/middleeast/29military.html?_r=1&hp&ex=1164776400&en=e26b5b9841cd9c54&ei=5094&partner=homepage&oref=slogin

In Amman Enemies, and Allies, Await Bush

November 29, 2006
The New York Times
By HASSAN M. FATTAH

AMMAN, Jordan, Nov. 28 — The ink on banners condemning American hegemony was still wet Tuesday as the details of a possible march were being worked out. DVDs of a British movie depicting the assassination of President Bush sold briskly in downtown Amman, while police cordoned off streets in preparation for a security nightmare.

When President Bush arrives here Wednesday to meet with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq, there will be no shortage of people seeking to make him feel unwelcome with a decidedly blunt message.

“We want to stress that America’s battle for the hearts and minds of Arabs has failed,” said Zaki Bani Rsheid, director general of the Islamic Action Front, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood here. “We are raising banners all over Jordan condemning Bush’s visit. It should be self-explanatory why.”

But as many here and throughout the Arab world prepared for Mr. Bush in the halls of power and on the streets of Amman, Iran was foremost on a lot of minds.

“I am here to make sure the mistakes of the past are not repeated,” said Sheik Dhari al-Jirba, of the Iraqi Shummar tribe, who sat in his hotel suite Tuesday pondering what strategy Mr. Bush would present to Mr. Maliki to pursue stability in Iraq.

“We keep hearing they want to bring Iran in, but Iran will come with conditions,” he said. “We don’t want Iran’s conditions to be met at the cost of Iraq and its Sunni neighbors. That is our great fear.”

Mr. Jirba said he planned to meet with Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Iraq, and hoped he would have an audience with the president himself. His first demand, he said, would be to say “no” to Iran.

A draft report by an American bipartisan commission studying new strategies for Iraq has urged that the United States open direct talks with Iran and Syria, according to American officials who have seen all or part of the document.

On Monday, the Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, said at a meeting in Iran that his country needed Iran’s help to bring about peace.

Mr. Bush, who will be accompanied by Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, is expected to try to enlist Arab leaders to help rein in the violence in Iraq by putting pressure on Sunni insurgents.

The United States wants moderate Arab governments like those of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan to help drive a wedge between Mr. Maliki and Moktada al Sadr, the anti-American Shiite cleric whose Mahdi Army has been behind many of the Shiite reprisal attacks in Iraq, senior administration official have said.

But that would require getting those governments to coax moderate Sunni Iraqis to support Mr. Maliki, a Shiite, boosting his ability to take on Mr. Sadr’s Shiite militias. The bipartisan commission would also open a line with Iran and Syria to help secure stability in Iraq.

Yet for many, a resurgent Iran, with or without a nuclear bomb, is a central concern. An opening with Iran, many analysts said, would amount to a loss of face for the Arabs and a striking boost for Iran.

“The one thing scarier to these guys than a powerful Iran is an American deal with Iran,” said Joost Hiltermann, Middle East project director at the International Crisis Group. “That would ratify Iran’s dominant position in the Persian Gulf. Iran wants to underscore it is the pre-eminent power in the region, and the U.S. would hand them that.”

Despite growing anti-Americanism, Arab governments have been eager to maintain an American presence in the region, fearing Iran would step in where the United States retreated. But a shift on Iran and Syria has caught many by surprise, as the Bush administration goes from “calling them the axis of evil, to considering them as an important element,” Emad Gad, a researcher at Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, said last week.

“The security and stability of the Persian Gulf cannot endure a shaken U.S. image,” Mr. Gad said. “When the big bodyguard leaves, they will have to succumb to the little bodyguard, and Iran has military power and has Shiites who could cause problems.”

In the Amman suburb of Ruseifa, Abu Mutasim, who described himself as a jihadi and would give only his nickname for fear of arrest, greeted a possible American opening with Iran with optimism. “Iran is the source of all the problems in the Middle East, and now they want to create problems here,” he said. “But including them would only be in the interest of the jihadis, because Iraq’s Sunnis would quickly shift to Al Qaeda. This would ultimately be in our interests, not against it.”

Suha Maayeh contributed reporting from Amman, Nada Bakri from Beirut and Mona el-Naggar from Cairo.

    In Amman Enemies, and Allies, Await Bush, NYT, 29.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/29/world/middleeast/29arab.html

Bush Declines to Call Situation in Iraq Civil War

November 29, 2006
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

RIGA, Latvia, Nov. 28 — On the eve of a high-profile trip to Jordan to meet Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq, President Bush on Tuesday dismissed suggestions that Iraq had descended into civil war, blamed Al Qaeda for the latest wave of sectarian violence and vowed not to withdraw troops “until the mission is complete.”

The president’s remarks, during a swing through the Baltics that took him from Tallinn, Estonia, on Tuesday morning to Riga for a NATO summit meeting, were his first on Iraq since a series of bombs killed more than 200 people in a Shiite district of Baghdad on Thursday. It was the deadliest attack since the American invasion in 2003, and it was followed by bloody Shiite reprisals.

At a morning news conference with President Toomas Hendrik Ilves of Estonia, Mr. Bush, making the first visit to Estonia by a sitting United States president, characterized talk of civil war in Iraq as “all kinds of speculation.” Foreshadowing his message to Mr. Maliki, he said he would press the Iraqi prime minister to lay out a strategy for stopping the killings.

“My questions to him will be: ‘What do we need to do to succeed? What is your strategy in dealing with the sectarian violence?’ ” Mr. Bush said. “I will assure him that we will continue to pursue Al Qaeda to make sure that they do not establish a safe haven in Iraq.”

Mr. Bush is in Riga to talk about the other war — Afghanistan — which tops the NATO agenda. The alliance, which was formed to protect Europe, now has 32,000 troops in Afghanistan. But Mr. Bush wants NATO to commit more troops to the southern region of that country, to fend off a resurgence by the Taliban. In a speech at Latvia University, the president warned that terrorists, drug traffickers and warlords “remain active and committed to destroying democracy in Afghanistan.”

Yet Iraq, not Afghanistan, is dominating the president’s time, casting as heavy a shadow here as it does at home. Democrats, who are about to take control of Congress after midterm elections that were widely viewed as a referendum on the war, are pressing for a phased withdrawal of troops, but Mr. Bush held firm against that.

“We’ll continue to be flexible, and we will make the changes necessary to succeed,” he said in Riga. “But there’s one thing I’m not going to do: I’m not going to pull the troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete.”

In part, Mr. Bush is laying the foundation to push back against a high-level bipartisan commission, which has been meeting in Washington behind closed doors to review Iraq strategy. Though the panel is reportedly divided on the issue of withdrawal, it is widely expected to recommend greater United States engagement with Iraq’s neighbors, Iran and Syria, two nations the White House has shunned.

Mr. Bush said Tuesday that he intended to leave such talks to Iraq, “a sovereign nation which is conducting its own foreign policy.”

On Wednesday, after lunch with his fellow NATO heads of state, Mr. Bush is scheduled to leave for Amman, Jordan, for two days of meetings with Mr. Maliki. Experts say that the president must walk a fine line, reassuring Mr. Maliki while making clear that American patience may wear thin if the prime minister does not tamp down the violence so Iraqis can assume greater responsibility for securing their country.

“They’re probably a little worried right now that if Maliki and others think maybe it’s only a matter of time before the administration gets out, the last thing they are going to do is go after militias, because the militias are what they need for protection,” said Dennis Ross, a former Middle East envoy for the Clinton and first Bush administrations.

But while Mr. Bush suggested he would lean on Mr. Maliki, White House officials were careful to say the president would not deliver any ultimatums.

“I think Maliki would be the first person to say he has not produced the kind of results he would like to have produced,” Stephen J. Hadley, the president’s national security adviser, told reporters, adding: “There is a lot of discussion about pushing Maliki. Maliki is doing a lot of pushing himself.”

The president and Mr. Maliki appear to be at odds on the cause of the recent bombings. Mr. Maliki has called them “the reflection of political backgrounds” and has said that “the crisis is political.” But instead of citing Shiite and Sunni militias on Tuesday, Mr. Bush placed blame on Al Qaeda.

“There’s a lot of sectarian violence taking place,” Mr. Bush said, “fomented in my opinion because of the attacks by Al Qaeda causing people to seek reprisal.”

As the cycle of violence continues, officials outside the United States are warning that Iraq is verging on civil war. King Abdullah II of Jordan told ABC News on Tuesday that “something dramatic” must be done, and Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, told reporters on Monday that the region would face civil war “unless something is done drastically and urgently to arrest the deteriorating situation.”

But Mr. Bush, well aware that a label of civil war would make the Iraq mission even more difficult to justify, brushed aside that question on Tuesday.

“There’s all kinds of speculation about what may or may not be happening,” he said in Estonia, adding, “No question, it’s tough.”

    Bush Declines to Call Situation in Iraq Civil War, NYT, 29.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/29/world/middleeast/29prexy.html

News Analysis

Deeper Crisis, Less U.S. Sway in Iraq

November 29, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN F. BURNS and KIRK SEMPLE

BAGHDAD, Nov. 28 — When President Bush meets in Jordan on Wednesday with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq, it will be a moment of bitter paradox: at a time of heightened urgency in the Bush administration’s quest for solutions, American military and political leverage in Iraq has fallen sharply.

Dismal trends in the war — measured in a rising number of civilian deaths, insurgent attacks, sectarian onslaughts and American troop casualties — have merged with growing American opposition at home to lend a sense of crisis to the talks in Amman. But American fortunes here are ever more dependent on feuding Iraqis who seem, at times, almost heedless to American appeals, American and Iraqi officials in Baghdad say.

They say they see few policy options that can turn the situation around, other than for Iraqi leaders to come to a realization that time is running out. It is not clear that the United States can gain new traction in Iraq with some of the proposals outlined in a classified White House memorandum, which was compiled after the national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, visited Baghdad last month.

Many of the proposals appear to be based on an assumption that the White House memo itself calls into question: that Prime Minister Maliki can be persuaded to break with 30 years of commitment to Shiite religious identity and set a new course, or abandon the ruling Shiite religious alliance to lead a radically different kind of government, a moderate coalition of Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish politicians.

The memo’s assessment of Mr. Maliki tracks closely with what his American and Iraqi critics in Baghdad say: that six months after taking office, he has still not shown that he is willing or capable of rising above Shiite sectarianism.

These critics say, in effect, that the 56-year-old Iraqi leader has failed, so far, to meet the test set by Mr. Bush when the two men met for the first time in Baghdad in June. At that meeting, the American leader told Mr. Maliki he had come to “look you in the eye” and determine if America had a reliable partner here.

Against these judgments, some key passages in the Hadley memo seem at odds with the reality on the ground, as if the steady worsening of America’s prospects here has driven the White House to reach for solutions that defy the gloomy conclusions of America’s diplomats and field commanders, not to mention some of Mr. Maliki’s closest political associates.

Even some powerful figures in the Shiite alliance have spoken recently of Mr. Maliki less as a possible leader of a parliamentary coup against the political movement that nurtured him than as an ineffective and ultimately dispensable figure, much like the man he succeeded in the prime minister’s office, Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

Shiites in Iraq are riven by factional rivalries, and there may be opportunities for the Americans to exploit those divisions to create parliamentary realignments. Indeed, some Iraqi leaders have started exploring new alliances to break the political logjam, possibly involving a parliamentary coup against Mr. Maliki. But if Grand Ayatollah Ali al- Sistani, Iraq’s most powerful Shiite cleric, has been clear about anything, it has been that the Shiites must subordinate their differences to the cause of consolidating Shiite power.

So it is hard to imagine Mr. Maliki approaching Ayatollah Sistani to win approval “for actions that could split the Shia politically,” as the Hadley memo suggests. Shiite leaders, who are tiring of Mr. Maliki, appear to be thinking of replacing him with another Shiite religious leader, and not of sundering the alliance and surrendering the power the Shiites have awaited for centuries.

But if recent interviews in Baghdad with senior American and Iraqi officials are a guide, a bigger problem for the Bush administration in effecting change here may be that the United States, in toppling Saddam Hussein and sponsoring elections that brought the Shiites to power, began a process that left Washington with ever-diminishing influence.

One reason for the declining American influence lies in policies that, for various reasons, alienated the political class, most of them former exiles like Mr. Maliki who rode back to Baghdad on the strength of American military power.

Many Shiite leaders resent the Americans for compelling them to share power in the new government with the minority Sunni Arabs — a policy, the Shiites say, that guaranteed paralysis for the government.

Sunni leaders still resent the American invasion, and the imposition of an electoral process that ended centuries of Sunni dominance. Just as much, they fume over the pervasive influence of neighboring Iran, which backs the Shiite parties.

And secular politicians, marginalized by the Shiite and Sunni Islamist politicians who dominate the government, say they, too, have lost faith in the Americans, for failing to protect Iraq’s secular traditions.

“Politically, their position is weaker in all aspects,” Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish leader, said of the Americans. “They just got weaker and weaker, and many more people who were supporting them are supporting them less.”

Meanwhile, the faltering of the latest effort to secure Baghdad has exposed the limitations of American ability to change the military equation. The White House memo raises the possibility of using additional American troops to fill what it calls “the four brigade gap” in troops committed to the Baghdad operation in August — a gap caused by Iraq’s new army committing only two of the six brigades it promised.

That shortfall left Americans providing about two-thirds of the 25,000 troops, halting by mid-October the sweeps to clear districts of insurgents and death squads.

But American commanders interviewed said that committing additional American troops could send a signal to Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds that they could continue to quarrel over their share of political and economic power behind an American military shield.

In recent days, Mr. Maliki has seemed to heed these American warnings, telling fellow Iraqi leaders on Sunday, three days after bombings that killed more than 200 Shiites in Sadr City, that they have to accept the blame for the surging violence.

“The crisis is political,” Mr. Maliki said, “and the ones who can stop the cycle of aggravation and bloodletting of innocent people are the politicians.”

Meanwhile, the political process has almost completely ground to a halt. Mr. Maliki’s “national reconciliation plan,” intended to reduce violence through dialogue and an amnesty program for militia fighters and insurgents, has stalled.

Political leaders have also made little progress on promises to review the new Constitution, a document resented by Sunnis, and a plan to draft a new law that will set terms for the future divisions of oil revenues that account for 90 percent of Iraq’s economy.

Saleh Mutlak, a Sunni legislator, was blunt in his assessment of the government: “Do you not recognize that it’s going backwards?”

Sectarian rifts between the nation’s political leaders have deepened. During a session of Parliament last week, prominent Sunni and Shiite legislators bitterly accused each other of sectarianism and promoting violence. President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, has warned fellow leaders about the possible collapse of the state. And even the Shiite leaders who control the government have taken to conspiring among themselves, with open jockeying for the succession if Mr. Maliki should fall.

At the crux of the most difficult decisions facing Mr. Maliki stands the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, whose control of one of the largest blocs in Parliament, several ministries and a large and restless militia, makes him arguably the most powerful politician in Iraq. Mr. Maliki is indebted to Mr. Sadr for providing the votes within the ruling Shiite alliance that made him prime minister.

But Mr. Sadr’s volatile militia, the Mahdi Army, is blamed for many of the Shiite revenge attacks against Sunnis. The White House memo suggests that Shiites might be willing to drop their support of the militia if the Americans continue their military pressure against Sunni insurgents. But Shiites see the militia as their last defense against decimation by Sunni insurgents.

For the Iraqi leader, the challenge presented by Mr. Sadr and the Mahdi Army amounts to a zero-sum game. If Mr. Maliki moves too fast against the militia, he risks losing Mr. Sadr’s support and splintering the Shiite bloc. If he moves too slowly, he will alienate the Sunni Arabs whose cooperation is crucial to any hope of reining in the insurgency.

Meanwhile, Mr. Maliki is in a vexed relationship with the United States. The Iraqi government needs the United States for the protection its 150,000 troops afford. At the same time, he has felt compelled to push back publicly against American pressures, partly to gain credibility among those in his power base who oppose the American presence, particularly the staunchly anti-American Mr. Sadr. Among other things, he has demanded effective control of Iraq’s new 140,000-man army, which remains under overall American command.

According to several Iraqi politicians, Mr. Bush may consent in Jordan to arrangements that give Mr. Maliki at least greater nominal authority over the Iraqi forces, something American commanders — and the White House memo — agree would be important to Mr. Maliki’s credibility.

But the Americans will be careful about the practical implications, because of concerns that the Iraqi police and army, overwhelmingly Shiite, could be used as a sectarian militia.

Iraqis are growing impatient. “The government should say they are going to take things into their own hands,” said Adel Abdul Mahdi, the Shiite vice president and one of Mr. Maliki’s rivals for prime minister.

“We don’t have enough time,” he continued. “Iraqis have to deliver. We have to show the world that there is a state.”

    Deeper Crisis, Less U.S. Sway in Iraq, NYT, 29.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/29/world/middleeast/29politics.html?hp&ex=1164862800&en=c89e4e3886247ec1&ei=5094&partner=homepage

U.S. Troops Kill 5 Girls in Assault on Insurgents

November 29, 2006
The New York Times
By EDWARD WONG

BAGHDAD, Nov. 28 — American troops killed five girls, including at least one baby, and what the military described as either a boy or a man, when the troops attacked a house Tuesday in volatile Anbar Province after they suspected insurgents of firing at them from the roof of the house.

Another person, which the military described in a written statement as either a girl or a young woman, was wounded in the attack and refused treatment by the Americans.

The military said the killings occurred after troops spotted two suspected insurgents before dawn near a roadside bomb in the town of Hamaniyah, west of Baghdad. The men fled to the roof of a nearby house. When troops began defusing the bomb, the suspected insurgents began shooting, the military said.

The military said the Americans returned fire with machine guns and small arms and rounds from the main gun of one or more tanks. After the firefight, the Americans discovered the six dead Iraqis in the house.

It was unclear what happened to the suspected insurgents, but the military said “it was reported” that one was injured in the fight and carried away by other insurgents.

“In a very tragic way, today reminds us that insurgents’ actions throughout Iraq are felt by all,” Lt. Col. Bryan Salas, a Marine spokesman, said in the statement. “Efforts are underway to coordinate and offer available assistance to surviving family members.”

Anbar Province, a vast swath of desert and Euphrates River towns stretching from Baghdad to Iraq’s western border, is the heartland of the Sunni Arab insurgency, which is battling to drive out the Americans and unseat the majority Shiites from the Iraqi government.

American troops in Anbar are fighting a holding action, unable to make any real headway against the insurgency while facing a mostly hostile civilian population. The pressures have already led to prominent incidents of civilian deaths — one unit of Marines is being investigated for whether it wrongfully killed 24 unarmed civilians in the town of Haditha last year.

In Baghdad, an Air Force spokesman, Brig. Gen. Stephen Hoog, said the military was still recovering parts from an F-16 fighter jet that crashed near the capital on Monday. It was unclear whether the jet and its pilot had been attacked, he said. Using an aerial drone, the military had observed insurgents in the area of the crash site, the general said.

The military said a marine died on Monday in Anbar from combat injuries.

Violence continued to roil Iraq one day before a scheduled meeting between President Bush and Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki in Amman. At least 30 bodies were discovered in Baghdad, an Interior Ministry official said. Four people were killed and 40 wounded when two car bombs exploded behind the morgue at Yarmouk Hospital in western Baghdad. A barrage of mortar rounds in the Sunni neighborhood of Ghazaliya injured at least 20 people.

At least 19 people were killed or found dead in Diyala Province, a police official said. In Kirkuk, at least one civilian was killed and 22 wounded when a suicide belt bomber exploded near a convoy carrying the governor of Tamim Province.

    U.S. Troops Kill 5 Girls in Assault on Insurgents, NYT, 29.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/29/world/middleeast/29iraq.html

Bush Blames Al Qaeda for Wave of Iraq Violence

November 28, 2006
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and JOHN O’NEIL

TALLINN, Estonia, Nov. 28 — President Bush today said Al Qaeda was to blame for the rising wave of sectarian violence in Iraq, which he refused to label a civil war. Mr. Bush said he would press Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, during meetings in Jordan later this week to lay out a strategy for restoring order.

“My questions to him will be: What do we need to do to succeed? What is your strategy in dealing with the sectarian violence?” said Mr. Bush. “I will assure him that we will continue to pursue Al Qaeda to make sure that they do not establish a safe haven in Iraq.”

The remarks, made at a press conference here with President Toomas Hendrik Ilves of Estonia, were Mr. Bush’s first on the situation in Iraq since a series of bombs exploded in a Shiite district of Baghdad last Thursday, killing more than 200 people. The bombing was the deadliest single attack since the American invasion.

The following day, Shiite militiamen staged a vengeful reprisal, attacking Sunni mosques in Baghdad and in the nearby city of Baquba.

The growing cycle of violence have prompted warnings from world leaders, including Jordan’s King Abdullah and Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary General, that the country is at the brink of civil war.

But Mr. Bush, who heads to Jordan on Wednesday for two days of meetings with Mr. Maliki, dismissed a question about whether a civil war has indeed erupted.

“There’s all kinds of speculation about what may or may not be happening,” he said, adding, “No question about it, it’s tough.”

Mr. Bush also had harsh words for Syria and Iran, and reiterated his stance that he does not intend to negotiate directly with them to enlist their help in ending the violence in Iraq. He said he would leave such talks to the government of Iraq, “a sovereign nation which is conducting its own foreign policy.”

The president acknowledged that there were high levels of sectarian violence in Iraq, but he put the blame for the disorder squarely on Al Qaeda.

“There’s a lot of sectarian violence taking place, fomented, in my opinion, because of the attacks by Al Qaeda, causing people to seek reprisal,” Mr. Bush said, adding that he planned to work with Mr. Maliki “to defeat these elements.”

Referring to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Al Qaeda leader in Iraq who was killed by American forces over the summer, he added, “The plan of Mr. Zarqawi was to foment sectarian violence.”

Mr. Bush’s remarks are at odds with statements made in recent weeks both by American military commanders and by Mr. Maliki.

While American military and intelligence officials credit Al Qaeda’s attack on a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February with having sparked waves of sectarian violence, more recently the officials have consistently described a more complicated picture. Earlier this month, Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples of the Defense Intelligence Agency characterized the situation before Congress as an “ongoing, violent struggle for power.”

That assessment was more in line with Mr. Maliki’s declaration after the recent bombings that such attacks are “the reflection of political backgrounds” and that “the crisis is political.”

In a televised briefing in Baghdad today, the senior spokesman for the American military in Iraq said that the already high levels of violence in the capital were likely to increase in the coming weeks in reaction to last week’s bombings.

In addition, the spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, said that mortar and rocket attacks between Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods were on the rise. A mortar attack followed the bombings last Thursday, and had been part of an attack earlier that day on the Health Ministry, which is controlled by Shiite parties. Shiite militias responded with their own mortar attacks, he said.

General Caldwell described Al Qaeda as having been “severely disorganized” by American and Iraqi efforts this year, but said it is still “the most well-funded of any group and can produce the most sensational attacks of any element out there.”

He summarized the continuing violence in Baghdad this way: Shiite militias conducting murders and assassinations in the city’s Sunni western section, and Sunni insurgents and Al Qaeda staging “high visibility casualty events” in the city’s predominantly Shiite east.

General Caldwell declined to say that the country was engulfed in a civil war, saying that Iraq’s government continues to function and that the conflict did not involve “another viable entity that’s vying to take control.”

The question of whether the fighting constitutes a civil war has becoming an increasingly sensitive one for the Bush administration, as Democrats cite agreement among a wide range of academic and military experts that the conflict meets most standard definitions of the term.

General Caldwell conceded that struggles for political and economic power were taking place on many levels throughout the country, including fights among Shiite groups seeking dominance in the south and among Sunni elements in Iraq’s west.

“The political parties need to start reining in their extremist elements,” he said.

At the same briefing, a spokesman for the Air Force said that the body of the pilot of an F-16 jet fighter that crashed northwest of Baghdad had not been found at the crash site. The spokesman said that it could not be determined from the position of the ejection seat whether the pilot had been able to get out before the crash, and said that DNA tests were being conducted on blood found at the scene.

Mr. Bush’s agenda today and tomorrow is supposed to focus on the spread of democracy in the Baltic nations and on Afghanistan, which will top the agenda at a N.A.T.O. summit in Riga, Latvia, where he arrived after his visit to Tallinn — the first trip to Estonia ever by a sitting United States president.

The alliance has committed 32,000 troops to Afghanistan, but many nations have imposed restrictions on the activities and deployment of their troops that N.A.T.O. commanders say are hampering the mission. Mr. Bush is expected to press for the lifting of those restrictions.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg reported from Estonia and John O’Neil reported from New York.

    Bush Blames Al Qaeda for Wave of Iraq Violence, NYT, 28.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/28/world/middleeast/28cnd-prexy.html?hp&ex=1164776400&en=b1465d36fd484434&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Op-Ed Contributors

The Wars of Perception

November 28, 2006
The New York Times
By DOMINIC JOHNSON and DOMINIC TIERNEY

IN January 1968, Americans turned on their televisions to find scenes of chaos and carnage as Vietnamese communists unleashed their surprise Tet offensive. It would go down in history as the greatest American battlefield defeat of the cold war.

Twenty-five years later, in December 1992, the United States began a humanitarian intervention in Somalia that would be viewed as the most striking failure of the post-cold-war era. Then, in March 2003, American tanks charged across the dunes into Iraq, beginning, in the eyes of many Americans, the worst foreign policy debacle of the post-9/11 world. Tet, Somalia and Iraq: the three great post-World War II American defeats.

Except that, remarkably, Tet and Somalia were not defeats. They were successes perceived as failures. Such stark divergence between perception and reality is common in wartime, when people’s beliefs about which side wins and which loses are often driven by psychological factors that have nothing to do with events on the battlefield. Tet and Somalia may, therefore, hold important lessons for Iraq.

The Tet offensive was an unmitigated disaster for the communists. Despite the advantages of surprise, the South Vietnamese insurgents, the Vietcong, failed to hold on to a single target in South Vietnam and suffered staggering losses. Of the 80,000 attackers, as many as half were killed in the first month alone, and the Vietcong never recovered. The United States had clearly won this round of the war.

Yet most Americans saw the Tet offensive as a failure for the United States. Approval of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s handling of the war slipped to a low of 26 percent. Before Tet, 58 percent of Americans described themselves as “hawks” who wanted to step up American military involvement in the war, while 26 percent described themselves as “doves” seeking to reduce it. Two months after Tet, doves narrowly outnumbered hawks.

How did perceptions become so detached from reality? A key factor was overblown expectations. In the months before Tet, Johnson had begun a “progress campaign” to convince Americans that victory in Vietnam was just around the corner. Reams of statistics showed that infiltration rates were down and enemy casualties were up. And it worked. Public confidence ticked upwards. But after Johnson’s bullish rhetoric, Tet looked like a disaster. The scale and surprise of the offensive sent a shock wave through the American psyche. As Johnson’s former aide, Robert Koner, later recalled, “Boom, 40 towns get attacked, and they didn’t believe us anymore.”

The illusion of defeat was heightened by two powerful symbolic events. First, the communists attacked the American Embassy in Saigon. It was one of the smallest-scale actions of the Tet offensive, but it captured America’s attention. The attackers had breached the pre-eminent symbol of the United States presence in South Vietnam: if the embassy wasn’t safe, nowhere was. News outlets reported that the embassy had been captured when in reality all of the attackers were soon lying dead in the courtyard.

Gen. William Westmoreland, the commander of the American forces in Vietnam, held a press conference at the embassy to announce that Tet was an American victory. But behind the general, dead Vietcong were still being dragged away from the blood-spattered lawn. Reporters could scarcely believe what they were hearing. Said one: “Westmoreland was standing in the ruins and saying everything was great.”

Second, Eddie Adams’s photograph of South Vietnam’s police chief executing a Vietcong captive in the street caused a sensation. After he fired the shot, the police chief told nearby reporters: “They killed many Americans and many of my men. Buddha will understand. Do you?” Back home in the United States, the image spoke powerfully of a brutal and unjust war. For some Americans, this image was the Tet offensive.

Finally, the American news media painted a picture of disaster in Vietnam. Even though communist forces incurred enormous losses, reporters often lauded their performance. As the Times war correspondent Peter Braestrup put it, “To have portrayed such a setback for one side as a defeat for the other — in a major crisis abroad — cannot be counted as a triumph for American journalism.”

A similar story later unfolded in Somalia. From 1992 to 1994, the American humanitarian intervention in Somalia saved the lives of more than 100,000 Somalis and cut the number of refugees in half, for the loss of 43 Americans. Back in the United States, however, this noble mission was widely viewed as the greatest foreign policy disaster since Vietnam. By October 1993, approval for President Bill Clinton’s handling of Somalia fell to 30 percent. Only 25 percent of Americans viewed the intervention as a success, and 66 percent saw it as a failure.

Like Tet, the mission in Somalia suffered from overblown expectations. Intervening in an anarchical, war-ridden country was bound to be difficult. But early efforts to provide food and security in Somalia went so well that the project looked deceptively easy. The American public and news media lost interest — until early October 1993, when American soldiers were killed in the infamous “Black Hawk Down” battle in Mogadishu.

With echoes of Saigon in 1968, powerful images of the Mogadishu battle pushed Americans towards a perception of defeat. Press coverage was dominated by pictures of the captured pilot, Michael Durant, and mutilated American corpses, often with the tagline of America’s “humiliation.” Journalists tended to ignore the bigger picture, in this case large pro-American demonstrations in Somalia and successful efforts to save lives and restore order outside of the capital.

Memories of Vietnam, and fears of getting bogged down in another messy quagmire, also promoted perceptions of failure. In October 1993, 62 percent of Americans thought that the intervention in Somalia “could turn into another Vietnam,” even after Mr. Clinton announced that America was pulling soldiers out of Somalia, and at a time when American casualties were a thousand times lower than in Vietnam.

What does this mean for Iraq? At the least, Tet and Somalia suggest we should be very careful before concluding that Iraq is a defeat. There is real evidence of failure, especially the escalating sectarian violence. But our perceptions are nevertheless easily manipulated. Iraq looks like a defeat in part because the Bush administration fell into the same trap as President Johnson: raising expectations of imminent victory by declaring “mission accomplished” before the real work had even begun. And as with Somalia, fighting shadowy insurgents in Iraq while propping up a weak government engenders negative memories of Vietnam.

Perceptions of success and failure can change the course of history. Reeling from the supposed disaster at Tet, the United States began to withdraw. Memories of “failure” in Somalia were a major reason — perhaps the major reason — that the United States did nothing to stop the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. If Iraq is perceived as a failure, it is only a matter of time before America pulls out, leaving who-knows-what behind. With the stakes so high, Americans must be certain that their perception of failure in Iraq is not a mirage.

Dominic Johnson, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton, and Dominic Tierney, an assistant professor of political science at Swarthmore, are the authors of “Failing to Win: Perceptions of Victory and Defeat in International Politics.”

    The Wars of Perception, NYT, 28.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/28/opinion/28johnson.html

Bush Asking Arab Friends for Iraq Help

November 28, 2006
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER

WASHINGTON, Nov. 27 — As President Bush and his top diplomats try to halt the downward spiral in Iraq and Lebanon, they seem intent on their strategy of talking only to Arab friends, despite increasing calls inside and outside the administration for them to reach out to Iran and Syria as well.

Mr. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are traveling to Jordan this week for talks that are to include Iraq’s prime minister and a number of Sunni Arab leaders but exclude the Iranians and Syrians, despite the influence they wield in Iraq and Lebanon.

Meanwhile, one of Ms. Rice’s most trusted aides, Philip D. Zelikow, announced Monday that he was resigning his post as State Department counselor. Mr. Zelikow, widely viewed as a voice of candor in the administration on the Iraq crisis, said in his resignation letter that he would return to teaching at the University of Virginia. He cited a “truly riveting obligation to college bursars” for his children’s tuition.

An administration official said Mr. Zelikow had been frustrated with administration policy on the Middle East, including Iraq, and North Korea.

There have been signs of strain within the administration, particularly at the State Department, where career Foreign Service officials have argued for increased dialogue with Iran and Syria to try to stem the violence in Iraq and Lebanon. “We’ve got a mess on our hands,” said a senior State Department official, who, like others discussing the subject, spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the subject publicly.

When Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice arrive in Amman on Wednesday, they will try to enlist help from Sunni Arab leaders to try to rein in the violence in Iraq by putting pressure on Sunni insurgents. That was part of Vice President Dick Cheney’s message to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia during a brief visit on Saturday, administration officials said, and Mr. Bush will repeat that entreaty with King Abdullah II of Jordan, as will Ms. Rice when she meets for talks with Persian Gulf foreign ministers at the Dead Sea on Thursday and Friday.

Specifically, the United States wants Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt to work to drive a wedge between the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, and the anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army has been behind many of the Shiite reprisal attacks in Iraq, a senior administration official said. That would require getting the predominantly Sunni Arab nations to work to get moderate Sunni Iraqis to support Mr. Maliki, a Shiite. That would theoretically give Mr. Maliki the political strength necessary to take on Mr. Sadr’s Shiite militias.

“There’s been some discussion about whether you just try to deal first with the Sunni insurgency, but that would mean being seen to be taking just one side of the fight, which would not be acceptable,” the administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity under normal diplomatic practice.

But getting Sunni Arab nations to urge Iraqi Sunnis to back Mr. Maliki in the hopes of peeling him away from Mr. Sadr is a tall order under any circumstances, and it was made even taller last week after the killing of more than 200 people by bombings in a Shiite district of Baghdad, the deadliest single attack since the American invasion. The attacks led to violent reprisals; vengeful Shiite militiamen attacked Sunni mosques in Baghdad and Baquba.

“We’re clearly in a new phase, characterized by this increasing sectarian violence,” Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, told reporters aboard Air Force One on the way to Estonia for a NATO summit meeting before Mr. Bush’s meeting with Mr. Maliki. “That requires us, obviously, to adapt to that new phase, and these two leaders need to be talking about how to do that and what steps Iraq needs to take and how we can support them.”

In return for helping on Iraq, the Sunni Arab countries have asked the Bush administration for a new push toward an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord. Mr. Bush has largely shied away from that longstanding demand, but things may be changing.

Ms. Rice may add two stops — Ramallah, in the West Bank, and Jerusalem — to her itinerary this week, administration officials said. While her schedule has not been made final, Ms. Rice is considering meeting with Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president.

Ms. Rice has argued in favor of stepping up work on the Israeli-Palestinian front, and several times this fall she has seemed to be on the verge of a major peace initiative, only to be overtaken by other crises.

A new cease-fire began Monday after Israeli and Palestinian leaders agreed to end five months of fighting in Gaza. The truce got off to a shaky start when Palestinian militants associated with Hamas and Islamic Jihad fired nine rockets into southern Israel, but American, Arab and European diplomats said this may be the most important chance in some time to end the fighting.

Mr. Olmert, in a speech on Monday, even suggested that the cease-fire could revive peace efforts. A visit by Ms. Rice to the region could further prod those efforts, American officials said.

“We have seldom seen the U.S. administration so focused on all of the constituent parts of putting the Middle East together as they are at this point,” a European diplomat said. “They seem to suddenly have got that this isn’t just about Iraq. It’s about a number of parts of the Rubik’s Cube that they have to put together again.”

Beyond Israel, another part of the puzzle is whether America will directly engage Iran and Syria, something the administration remains loath to do, despite indications that a bipartisan study group will recommend a regional diplomatic initiative to include both countries. The pressure to begin talks is rising, with former administration officials joining the call.

“The Syrians are saying, ‘We can negatively affect the situation in Lebanon and hurt your friends, we can negatively affect Iraq, but that’s all right, don’t talk to us,’ ” said Theodore H. Kattouf, President Bush’s former ambassador to Syria. “With diplomacy generally, if you’re not prepared to achieve your aims through warfare, then you have to engage in some horse-trading. Unfortunately, there isn’t much give-and-take between the U.S. and Syria right now.”

    Bush Asking Arab Friends for Iraq Help, NYT, 28.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/28/world/middleeast/28diplo.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Hezbollah Said to Help Shiite Army in Iraq

November 28, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and DEXTER FILKINS

WASHINGTON, Nov. 27 — A senior American intelligence official said Monday that the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah had been training members of the Mahdi Army, the Iraqi Shiite militia led by Moktada al-Sadr.

The official said that 1,000 to 2,000 fighters from the Mahdi Army and other Shiite militias had been trained by Hezbollah in Lebanon. A small number of Hezbollah operatives have also visited Iraq to help with training, the official said.

Iran has facilitated the link between Hezbollah and the Shiite militias in Iraq, the official said. Syrian officials have also cooperated, though there is debate about whether it has the blessing of the senior leaders in Syria.

The intelligence official spoke on condition of anonymity under rules set by his agency, and discussed Iran’s role in response to questions from a reporter.

The interview occurred at a time of intense debate over whether the United States should enlist Iran’s help in stabilizing Iraq. The Iraq Study Group, directed by James A. Baker III, a former Republican secretary of state, and Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic lawmaker, is expected to call for direct talks with Tehran.

The claim about Hezbollah’s role in training Shiite militias could strengthen the hand of those in the Bush administration who oppose a major new diplomatic involvement with Iran.

The new American account is consistent with a claim made in Iraq this summer by a mid-level Mahdi commander, who said his militia had sent 300 fighters to Lebanon, ostensibly to fight alongside Hezbollah. “They are the best-trained fighters in the Mahdi Army,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The specific assertions about Iran’s role went beyond those made publicly by senior American officials, though Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, did tell Congress this month that “the Iranian hand is stoking violence” in Iraq.

The American intelligence on Hezbollah was based on human sources, electronic means and interviews with detainees captured in Iraq.

American officials say the Iranians have also provided direct support to Shiite militias in Iraq, including explosives and trigger devices for roadside bombs, and training for several thousand fighters, mostly in Iran. The training is carried out by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, they say.

In Congressional testimony this month, General Hayden said he was initially skeptical of reports of Iran’s role but changed his mind after reviewing intelligence reports.

“I’ll admit personally,” he said at one point in the hearing, “that I have come late to this conclusion, but I have all the zeal of a convert as to the ill effect that the Iranians are having on the situation in Iraq.”

Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, offered a similar assessment in his testimony.

Neither General Hayden nor General Maples described Hezbollah’s role during the hearing.

In the interview on Monday, the senior intelligence official was asked for further details about the purported Iranian role.

“They have been a link to Lebanese Hezbollah and have helped facilitate Hezbollah training inside of Iraq, but more importantly Jaish al-Mahdi members going to Lebanon,” the official said, describing Iran’s role and using the Arabic name for the Mahdi Army.

The official said the Hezbollah training had been conducted with the knowledge of Mr. Sadr, the most influential Shiite cleric.

While Iran wants a stable Iraq, the official said, it sees an advantage in “managed instability in the near term” to bog down the American military and defeat the Bush administration’s objectives in the region.

“There seems to have been a strategic decision taken sometime over late winter or early spring by Damascus, Tehran, along with their partners in Lebanese Hezbollah, to provide more support to Sadr to increase pressure on the U.S.,” the American intelligence official said.

Some Middle East experts were skeptical about the assessment of Hezbollah’s training role.

“That sound to me a little bit strained,” said Flynt Leverett, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and a Middle East expert formerly on the National Security Council staff. “I have a hard time thinking it is a really significant piece of what we are seeing play out on the ground with the various Shiite militia forces.”

But other specialists found the assessment plausible. “I think it is plausible because Hezbollah is the best in the business, and it enhances their position with Iran, Syria and Iraq,” said Judith Kipper, of the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Mahdi Army and other militia fighters traveled to Lebanon in groups of 15 and 20 and some were present during the fighting between Hezbollah and Israel this summer, though there was no indication they had taken part in the fighting, the American intelligence official said.

Asked what the militia members had learned, the official replied, “Weapons, bomb-making, intelligence, assassinations, the gambit of skill sets.”

There is intelligence that indicates that Iran shipped machine tools to Lebanon that could be used to make “shaped charges,” sophisticated explosive devices designed to penetrate armor, American officials have said. But it is not known how the equipment was in fact used.

The officials said that because the Iraqi militia members went through Syrian territory, at least some Syrian officials were complicit. There are also reports of meetings between Imad Mugniyah, a senior Hezbollah member; Ghassem Soleimani of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards; and Syrian representatives to discuss ways of stepping up the pressure on the United States in Iraq.

The mid-level Mahdi commander interviewed this summer said the group sent to Lebanon was called the Ali al-Hadi Brigade, named for one of two imams buried at the Askariya Mosque in Samarra. The bombing of that shrine in February unleashed the fury of Shiite militias and accelerated sectarian violence.

According to the Mahdi commander, the brigade was organized and dispatched by a senior Mahdi officer known as Abu Mujtaba. It went by bus to Syria in July, and was then led across the border into Lebanon, he said. He said the fighters were from Diwaniya and Basra, as well as from the Shiite neighborhoods of Shoala and Sadr City in Baghdad.

“They travel as normal people from Iraq to Syria,” one of the militiamen said. “Once they get to Syria, fighters in Syria take them in.”

Among American officials, concern over the purported Iranian, Syrian or Hezbollah role grew recently when an advanced antitank weapon, an RPG-29, was used against an American M-1 tank in Iraq.

“The first time we saw it was not in Iraq,” Gen. John P. Abizaid, the head of the United States Central Command, told reporters in September. “We saw it in Lebanon. So to me, No. 1, it indicates an Iranian connection.”

American intelligence officials said the source of the weapon was still unclear.

General Abizaid also said it was hard to pin down some details of relationships between armed factions in the Middle East, adding: “There are clearly links between Hezbollah training people in Iran to operate in Lebanon and also training people in Iran that are Shia splinter groups that could operate against us in Iraq These linkages exist, but it is very, very hard to pin down with precision.”

Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting from Washington, and Hosham Hussein from Baghdad.

    Hezbollah Said to Help Shiite Army in Iraq, NYT, 28.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/28/world/middleeast/28military.html?hp&ex=1164776400&en=62594e5a560b87cf&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Editorial

Learning From Iraq

November 26, 2006
The New York Times

While politicians from both parties spin out their versions of Iraqs that should have been, could have been and just maybe still might be, the Army has taken on a far more useful project: figuring out why the Bush administration’s military plans worked out so badly and drawing lessons for future conflicts.

That effort is a welcome sign that despite six years of ideologically driven dictates from Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon, Army leaders remain usefully focused on the real world, where actual soldiers daily put their lives on the line for their country and where the quality of military planning goes a long way toward determining whether their sacrifices help achieve America’s national purposes.

Two hopeful examples are the latest draft of a new Army field manual that will be taught to officers at all levels beginning next year and a series of oral history interviews conducted with Iraqi and American officers involved in the disappointing efforts to establish and train Iraqi security forces. Last week, The Los Angeles Times published details of some of the major changes being incorporated into the new field manual, while The Washington Post reported on some of the lessons learned in the Iraqi training programs.

The field manual, the Army’s basic guidebook for war, peacekeeping and counterinsurgency, quietly jettisons the single most disastrous innovation of the Rumsfeld era. That is the misconceived notion that the size and composition of an American intervention force should be based only on what is needed to defeat the organized armed forces of an enemy government, instead of also taking into account the needs of providing security and stability for the civilian population for which the United States will then be responsible.

Almost every post-invasion problem in Iraq can be directly traced to this one catastrophic planning failure, which left too few troops in Iraq to prevent rampant looting, restore basic services and move decisively against the insurgency before it took root and spread.

Modern innovations in warfare make it possible for America’s technologically proficient forces to vanquish an opposing army quickly and with relatively few troops. But re-establishing order in a defeated, decapitated society demands a much larger force for a much longer time.

The new field manual will rightly call for stabilization efforts to start as soon as American troops arrive. And it will legally require American field commanders to request sufficient forces to successfully carry out these stability operations. That should short-circuit future debates about whether Pentagon policy makers are providing all the troops that the generals on the spot honestly feel they need.

Correcting deficiencies in American military training is also essential, since the biggest reason the United States has not been able to withdraw significant numbers of its own troops over the past three years has been the lack of adequately prepared and reliable Iraqi security forces.

Iraqi officers interviewed for the oral history complained that their American trainers were often junior officers without combat experience. American officers expressed unhappiness about how their own training teams had been selected and prepared. One major tellingly remarked that “I went there with the wrong attitude and I thought I understood Iraq and the history because I had seen PowerPoint slides, but I really didn’t.”

These are useful insights. But they can only go so far when a host government lacks the will to rid its security forces of sectarian militia fighters more intent on waging civil war than achieving national stability. That so far has been the biggest obstacle in Iraq.

Transforming American forces to fight 21st-century conflicts was the ubiquitous but largely empty slogan of the Rumsfeld era. Incorporating the hard lessons learned in Iraq into future military planning and training operations would constitute a far more practical variety of transformation.

    Learning From Iraq, NYT, 26.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/opinion/26sun1.html

News Analysis

A Matter of Definition: What Makes a Civil War, and Who Declares It So?

November 26, 2006
The New York Times
By EDWARD WONG

BAGHDAD, Nov. 25 — Is Iraq in a civil war?

Though the Bush administration continues to insist that it is not, a growing number of American and Iraqi scholars, leaders and policy analysts say the fighting in Iraq meets the standard definition of civil war.

The common scholarly definition has two main criteria. The first says that the warring groups must be from the same country and fighting for control of the political center, control over a separatist state or to force a major change in policy. The second says that at least 1,000 people must have been killed in total, with at least 100 from each side.

American professors who specialize in the study of civil wars say that most of their number are in agreement that Iraq’s conflict is a civil war.

“I think that at this time, and for some time now, the level of violence in Iraq meets the definition of civil war that any reasonable person would have,” said James Fearon, a political scientist at Stanford.

While the term is broad enough to include many kinds of conflicts, one of the sides in a civil war is almost always a sovereign government. So some scholars now say civil war began when the Americans transferred sovereignty to an appointed Iraqi government in June 2004. That officially transformed the anti-American war into one of insurgent groups seeking to regain power for disenfranchised Sunni Arabs against an Iraqi government led by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and increasingly dominated by Shiites.

Others say the civil war began this year, after the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra set off a chain of revenge killings that left hundreds dead over five days and has yet to end. Mr. Allawi proclaimed a month after that bombing that Iraq was mired in a civil war. “If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is,” he said.

Many insurgencies and ethnic or sectarian wars are also civil wars. Vietnam and Lebanon are examples. Scholars say the Iraq civil war has elements of both an insurgency — one side is struggling to topple what it sees as an illegitimate national government — and a sectarian war — the besieged government is ruled by Shiites and opposed by Sunni Arabs.

In Iraq, sectarian purges and Sunni-Shiite revenge killings have become a hallmark of the fighting, but the cycles of violence are ignited by militia leaders who have political goals. The former Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosovic, did this during the wars in the Balkans.

The civil strife in Iraq largely takes place in mixed Sunni-Shiite areas that include the cities of Baghdad, Mosul and Baquba. In Anbar Province, which is overwhelming Sunni Arab, much of the violence is aimed at American troops. Large swaths of Iraq have little violence, but those areas are relatively homogenous and have few people.

Governments and people embroiled in a civil war often do not want to label it as such. In Colombia, officials insisted for years that the rebels there were merely bandits.

Some Bush administration officials have argued that there is no obvious political vision on the part of the Sunni-led insurgent groups, so “civil war” does not apply.

In the United States, the debate over the term rages because many politicians, especially those who support the war, believe there would be domestic political implications to declaring it a civil war. They fear that an acknowledgment by the White House and its allies would be seen as an admission of a failure of President Bush’s Iraq policy.

They also worry that the American people might not see a role for American troops in an Iraqi civil war and would more loudly demand a withdrawal.

But in fact, many scholars say the bloodshed here already puts Iraq in the top ranks of the civil wars of the last half-century. The carnage of recent days — beginning with bombings on Thursday in a Shiite district of Baghdad that killed more than 200 people — reinforces their assertion.

Mr. Fearon and a colleague at Stanford, David D. Laitin, say the deaths per year in Iraq, with at least 50,000 reportedly killed since March 2003, place this conflict on par with wars in Burundi and Bosnia.

Iraq’s president and prime minister avoid using the term, but many Iraqis say extremists have thrust the country into civil war, even as moderates have struggled to pull back from the brink.

“You need to let the world know there’s a civil war here in Iraq,” said Adel Ibrahim, 44, a sheik in the Subiah tribe, which is mostly Shiite. “It’s a crushing civil war. Mortars kill children in our neighborhoods. We’re afraid to travel anywhere because we’ll be killed in buses. We don’t know who is our enemy and who is our friend.”

The spiraling bloodshed here bolsters arguments that this is a civil war. A United Nations report released Wednesday said at least 3,709 Iraqis were killed in October, the highest of any month since the American-led invasion. More than 100,000 Iraqis a month are fleeing to Syria and Jordan.

“It’s stunning; it should have been called a civil war a long time ago, but now I don’t see how people can avoid calling it a civil war,” said Nicholas Sambanis, a political scientist at Yale who co-edited “Understanding Civil War: Evidence and Analysis,“ published by the World Bank in 2005. “The level of violence is so extreme that it far surpasses most civil wars since 1945.”

Among scholars, “there’s a consensus,” Mr. Sambanis said. Scholars in the United States generally agree that there have been at least 100 civil wars since 1945. At the smaller end of the scale is the war in Northern Ireland. Measured by total killed, the largest modern civil wars were in Angola, Afghanistan, Nigeria, China and Rwanda.

However, there are some dissenting historians on the definition of civil war, and whether it applies to Iraq. John Keegan, the British writer of war histories, finds only five clear-cut cases, starting with the English civil war of the 17th century through to the Lebanese war of the 20th century. His criteria are that the feuding groups must be vying for national authority, have leaders who publicly announce what they are fighting for and clash in set-piece battles while wearing uniforms, among other things. He argues in the December issue of Prospect magazine that Iraq is therefore not in civil war.

On Friday, Scott Stanzel, a White House spokesman, insisted that the Iraq conflict was not civil war, noting that Iraq’s top leaders had agreed with that assessment. Last month, Tony Snow, the chief spokesman for President Bush, acknowledged that there were many groups trying to undermine the government, but said that there was no civil war because “it’s not clear that they are operating as a unified force. You don’t have a clearly identifiable leader.”

By contrast, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on Fox News in September that “a political solution is necessary to end the civil war in Iraq.”

In 2003, at the start of the Sunni-led insurgency, Bush administration officials called the guerrillas “dead-enders” and insisted their only goal was to sow chaos. Now, American commanders acknowledge that political dominance is at the heart of this conflict.

In Congressional testimony this month, Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples of the Defense Intelligence Agency characterized the situation as an “ongoing, violent struggle for power” and said the country was moving closer to a “significant breakdown of central authority.”

Many Iraqis and Americans who have tracked the insurgency say it has been strongly shaped by former Baath Party members who want to keep Shiites from taking power. Even the newer jihadist groups have articulated political goals on Web sites — most notably to establish a Sunni-ruled Islamic caliphate.

“There was a whole regime that ruled this country for 35 years,” said Mahmoud Othman, a senior Kurdish legislator. “Now they’ve gone underground. This is the main body of the resistance.”

Scholars say it is crucial that policy makers and news media organizations recognize the Iraq conflict as a civil war.

“Why should we care how it is defined, if we all agree that the violence is unacceptable?” asked Mr. Laitin, the Stanford professor. “Here is my answer: There is a scientific community that studies civil wars, and understands their dynamics and how they, in general, end. This research is valuable to our nation’s security.”

Reporting was contributed by Qais Mizher from Baghdad, and by Mark Mazzetti, Jim Rutenberg and Kate Zernike from Washington.

    A Matter of Definition: What Makes a Civil War, and Who Declares It So?, NYT, 26.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/world/middleeast/26war.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

47 Sunni Militants Die in Iraq Gunfights

November 26, 2006
The New York Times
By KIRK SEMPLE and OMAR AL-NEAMI

BAGHDAD, Nov. 25 — At least 47 Sunni Arab insurgents were killed Saturday during long gun battles with Iraqi security forces in and around Baquba, the capital of Diyala Province, a police spokesman in Baquba said.

In the largest and deadliest fight, scores of insurgents, using assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, laid siege to several government buildings in the center of the city, according to the spokesman. At least 36 of the Sunni Arab insurgents were killed in that clash, which raged for about four hours, according to the official, who said he did not yet know if any Iraqi security forces had been wounded.

Gun battles also broke out in Buhruz, a predominantly Sunni village just south of Baquba, when gunmen assaulted the main police station from three directions using mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles, the police spokesman in Baquba reported.

The gunmen began their attack using the cover of date palm orchards that surround the village and retreated after two hours of fighting, the official said. No immediate word of casualties on either side was available. After nightfall, clashes broke out between gunmen and Iraqi Army troops in the Al Tahrir neighborhood in Baquba, according to the police spokesman there. At least 11 insurgents were killed in the fighting, he said.

An American military spokeswoman in Baghdad also said there had been an attack in Buhruz, but had no details, and she was unable to confirm the Iraqi accounts of other gun battles.

Diyala has been an increasingly bloody battleground between Sunni and Shiite death squads vying for sectarian domination. Shiite militiamen have recently mobilized there in large numbers in defense of its Shiite inhabitants against the Sunni Arab-led insurgency, which has long made the province a redoubt in its campaign to topple the Iraqi government and drive American forces out of the country. American officials have accused the province’s police and military forces of siding with the Shiite militias.

The police in Baladruz, a rural village in Diyala, recovered the bullet-ridden corpses of 21 men who had been dragged from their homes by gunmen wearing Iraqi military uniforms and then abducted in pickup trucks, the Diyala police spokesman said. The men, all farmers, were from two extended Shiite families and were taken Friday evening from two neighboring houses in Baladruz, about 45 miles northeast of Baghdad, the police spokesman said. The motive for the attack remained unclear.

The Iraqi security forces have been accused of protecting sectarian death squads, though Iraqi officials have also contended that gunmen sometimes disguise themselves in military and police uniforms, which are readily available on the black market. Efforts to reach the spokesman for Iraq’s Defense Ministry were unsuccessful.

The United Nations’ special representative for Iraq, Ashraf Qazi, urged the Iraqi government on Saturday to stop the “cancer” of sectarianism from destroying the country and warned that a retributive cycle of violent revenge was “tearing apart the very political and social fabric of Iraq.”

“No country could tolerate such a cancer in its body politic,” Mr. Qazi said in a statement.

A series of car bombs killed more than 200 people in the Shiite enclave of Sadr City on Thursday and, in apparent retaliation, Shiite militiamen attacked Sunni mosques in Baghdad and Baquba on Friday. Four of the mosques were in the mixed Baghdad neighborhood of Hurriya, according to Iraqi officials.

But the United States military said on Saturday that Iraqi soldiers patrolling the Hurriya neighborhood found only one mosque that had been damaged during Friday’s violence.

Relatively little violence was reported in Baghdad on Saturday amid a curfew that was imposed here on Thursday after the car bombings.

Shiite and Sunni militants traded volleys of mortar fire on Saturday evening. A mortar shell exploded in Hurriya, killing a woman and wounding three other people, an Interior Ministry official said, and at least one mortar round fell in Sadr City, wounding a woman.

Later in the evening, several mortar rounds landed in the Shiite neighborhood of Al Mustansiriya in eastern Baghdad, wounding seven people, according to the ministry official, and five mortar rounds exploded in the predominantly Sunni Arab neighborhood of Ghazaliya, wounding five. At least 17 bodies with bullet holes in their heads were recovered in various places around the city, the official added.

Sheik Harith al-Dhari, the Sunni Arab leader who is under investigation by the Iraqi government for allegedly abetting the insurgency, accused the Shiite-led government of sectarian bias and of “trying to stir up the situation.”

Speaking at a televised news conference in Cairo, Mr. Dhari called on other Arab countries, the Arab League and the United Nations “to withdraw their support for Iraq’s government, otherwise there will be disaster in Iraq.”

The United States military command reported that American forces killed 22 insurgents and an Iraqi civilian, and destroyed a bomb-making factory during several operations north of Baghdad on Saturday. A marine assigned to Regimental Combat Team Five died Friday from wounds sustained in fighting in Anbar Province, the military said.

The Iraqi government announced the partial lifting of the curfew in Baghdad to permit pedestrians in the streets beginning Sunday and said the airport would reopen on Monday.

    47 Sunni Militants Die in Iraq Gunfights, NYT, 26.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/world/middleeast/26iraq.html

U.S. Finds Iraq Insurgency Has Funds to Sustain Itself

November 26, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN F. BURNS and KIRK SEMPLE

BAGHDAD, Nov. 25 — The insurgency in Iraq is now self-sustaining financially, raising tens of millions of dollars a year from oil smuggling, kidnapping, counterfeiting, connivance by corrupt Islamic charities and other crimes that the Iraqi government and its American patrons have been largely unable to prevent, a classified United States government report has concluded.

The report, obtained by The New York Times, estimates that groups responsible for many insurgent and terrorist attacks are raising $70 million to $200 million a year from illegal activities. It says $25 million to $100 million of that comes from oil smuggling and other criminal activity involving the state-owned oil industry, aided by “corrupt and complicit” Iraqi officials.

As much as $36 million a year comes from ransoms paid for hundreds of kidnap victims, the report says. It estimates that unnamed foreign governments — previously identified by American officials as including France and Italy — paid $30 million in ransom last year.

A copy of the seven-page report was made available to The Times by American officials who said the findings could improve understanding of the challenges the United States faces in Iraq.

The report offers little hope that much can be done, at least soon, to choke off insurgent revenues. For one thing, it acknowledges how little the American authorities in Iraq know — three and a half years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein — about crucial aspects of insurgent operations. For another, it paints an almost despairing picture of the Iraqi government’s ability, or willingness, to take steps to tamp down the insurgency’s financing.

“If accurate,” the report says, its estimates indicate that these “sources of terrorist and insurgent finance within Iraq — independent of foreign sources — are currently sufficient to sustain the groups’ existence and operation.” To this, it adds what may be its most surprising conclusion: “In fact, if recent revenue and expense estimates are correct, terrorist and insurgent groups in Iraq may have surplus funds with which to support other terrorist organizations outside of Iraq.”

Some terrorism experts outside the government who were given an outline of the report by The Times criticized it as imprecise and speculative. Completed in June, the report was compiled by an interagency working group investigating the financing of militant groups in Iraq.

A Bush administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed the group’s existence. He said it was led by Juan Zarate, deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism, and was made up of about a dozen people, drawn from the C.I.A., the F.B.I., the Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department, the Treasury Department and the United States Central Command.

The group’s estimate of the financing for the insurgency, even taking the higher figure of $200 million, underscores the David and Goliath nature of the war. American, Iraqi and other coalition forces are fighting an array of shadowy Sunni and Shiite groups that can draw on huge armories left over from Mr. Hussein’s days, and benefit from the willingness of many insurgents to fight with little or no pay. If the $200 million a year estimate is close to the mark, it amounts to less than what it costs the Pentagon, with an $8 billion monthly budget for Iraq, to sustain the American war effort here for a single day.

But other estimates suggest the sums involved could be far higher. The oil ministry in Baghdad, for example, estimated earlier this year that 10 percent to 30 percent of the $4 billion to $5 billion in fuel imported for public consumption in 2005 was smuggled back out of the country for resale. At that time, the finance minister estimated that close to half of all smuggling profits was going to insurgents. If true, that would be $200 million or more from fuel smuggling alone.

For Washington, the report’s most dismaying finding may be that the insurgency now survives off money generated from activities inside Iraq, and no longer depends on sums Mr. Hussein and his associates seized as his government collapsed. American officials said that as American troops entered Baghdad, Mr. Hussein’s oldest son, Qusay, took more than $1 billion in cash from the Central Bank of Iraq and stashed it in steel trunks aboard a flatbed truck. Large sums of cash were found in Mr. Hussein’s briefcase when he was captured in December 2003.

But the report says Mr. Hussein’s loyalists “are no longer a major source of funding for terrorist or insurgent groups in Iraq.” Part of the reason, the report says, is that an American-led international effort has frozen $3.6 billion in “former regime assets.” Another reason, it says, is that Mr. Hussein’s erstwhile loyalists, realizing that “it is increasingly obvious that a Baathist regime will not regain power in Iraq,” have turned increasingly to spending the money on their own living expenses. The trail to these assets “has grown cold,” the report adds.

The document says the pattern of insurgent financing changed after the first 18 months of the war, from the Hussein loyalists who financed it in 2003 to “foreign fighters and couriers” smuggling cash in bulk across Iraq’s porous borders in 2004, to the present reliance on a complex array of indigenous sources. “Currently, we assess that these groups garner most of their funding from petroleum-related criminal activity, kidnapping and other criminal pursuits within Iraq,” the report concludes.

One section of the report is dedicated to the role played by “sympathetic donors,” including Islamic charities and nongovernmental organizations. It says that “intelligence reporting” indicates that only 10 to 15 of the 4,000 nongovernmental groups support terrorist and insurgent groups, but that those few take advantage of lax Iraqi regulation to divert funds to insurgent and other armed groups and, in some cases, “to provide cover for insurgent recruitment and the transport of weapons and personnel.”

The possibility that Iraq-based terrorist groups could finance attacks outside Iraq appeared to echo Bush administration assertions that prevailing in the war here is essential to preventing Iraq from becoming a terrorist haven, as Afghanistan became under the Taliban. But that suggestion was one of several aspects of the report that drew criticism from Western terrorism and counterinsurgency experts working outside the government who were given the outline of the findings.

While noting that the report appeared to reflect a major effort by the administration to learn more about the murky world of insurgent financing in Iraq, the experts said the seven-page document appeared to be speculative, at least in its estimates of the funds available to the insurgent and terror groups. They noted the wide spread of the estimates, particularly the $70 million to $200 million figure for overall financing, the report’s failure to specify which groups the estimates covered and the absence of documentation of how authors had arrived at their estimates.

While such data may have been omitted to protect the group’s clandestine sources and methods — the document has a bold heading on the front page saying “secret” and a warning that it is not to be shared with foreign governments — several security and intelligence consultants said in telephone interviews that the vagueness of the estimates reflected how little American intelligence agencies knew about the opaque and complex world of Iraq’s militant groups.

“They’re just guessing,” said W. Patrick Lang, a former chief of Middle East intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency, who now runs a security and intelligence consultancy. “They really have no idea.” He added, “They’ve been very unsuccessful in penetrating these organizations.” He said he was equally skeptical about the report’s assertion that the insurgent and militant groups may have surpluses to finance terrorism outside Iraq. “That’s another guess,” he said.

“A judgment like that, coming from an N.S.C.-generated document,” he said, is not an analytical assessment as much as it is a political statement to support the administration’s contention that Iraq is a central front in the war on terrorism. “It’s a statement put in there to support a policy judgment,” he said.

Several analysts said that, except for the possibility that Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia might be transferring money to Qaeda factions elsewhere, the assertion that insurgent money might be flowing out of the country was doubtful considering the single-minded regional focus of most of the militants operating here.

Dr. Magnus Ranstorp of the Swedish National Defense College, an author of extensive studies of the Iraqi insurgency, said he doubted Iraqi groups were ready to finance terrorism outside the country. “There’s very little evidence that they’re preparing to export terrorism from Iraq to the West,” he said. “I think it’s much too early for that.”

The document tracing the money flows acknowledges that investigators have had limited success in penetrating or choking off terrorist financing networks. The report says American efforts to follow the financing trails have been hamstrung by several factors. They include a weak Iraqi government and its nascent intelligence agencies; a lack of communication between American agencies, and between the Americans and the Iraqis; and the nature of the insurgent economy itself, primarily sustained by couriers carrying cash rather than more easily traceable means involving banks and the hawala money transfer networks traditional in the Middle East.

“Efforts to identify key financial facilitators, funding sources and transfer mechanisms are yielding some results, but we need to improve our understanding of how terrorist and insurgent cells interact, how their financial networks vary from province to province or city to city and how they use their funds,” the report says. It also says the United States must help the Iraqi government “to excise corrupt officials from its law enforcement and security services and its ministries” and “to prevent smuggled Iraqi oil from being sold within their borders.”

Another challenge for the United States, the report says, was to persuade foreign governments to “stop paying ransoms.” It gives no details, but American officials have said previously that France paid a multimillion-dollar ransom for the release in December 2004 of two French reporters held hostage by an insurgent group. Italy, these officials have said, paid ransoms on at least two occasions, in September 2004 for the release of two women, both aid workers, and in March 2005, a reported $5 million for the release of Giuliana Sgrena, a journalist for the Rome newspaper Il Manifesto.

Several American security consultants, all former members of government intelligence agencies that deal with terrorism, said in interviews that the ineffectiveness of efforts to impede the revenues to the insurgents was reflected in the continuing, if not growing, strength of Iraq’s militants. “You have to look at what the insurgency is doing,” Mr. Lang said. “Are they hampered by a lack of funds? I see no evidence that they are.”

Jeffrey White, a defense fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, also a former Middle East analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency, agreed. “We’ve had some tactical successes where we’ve picked off a financier or whatever, but we haven’t been able to unravel a major component of the system,” he said. “I’ve never seen any indication that they’re strapped for cash, never seen any indication that they were short on weapons.”

He said the insurgency had demonstrated tremendous regenerative properties. “The networks fix themselves, they heal themselves,” he said. He pointed to the success of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia in withstanding the loss of hundreds of combatants and dozens of major leaders. “They keep coming back,” he said, “and I think the same thing has happened to the financial system.”

    U.S. Finds Iraq Insurgency Has Funds to Sustain Itself, NYT, 26.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/world/middleeast/26insurgency.html?hp&ex=1164603600&en=b8c1fef0b3565f6a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Splintered

In Search of the Fixers

November 26, 2006
The New York Times
By JAMES GLANZ

BAGHDAD

ARMED militias are stalking the streets of Iraq’s cities and towns, but that only begins to describe the problem that the United States faces here. As the violence on those streets increases, there seem to be more and more militias or armed gangs — smaller and more loosely controlled fragments of armed groups — than ever before, and in many ways that is the most serious part of the picture. It would be far easier for the United States if these groups, no matter how antagonistic they are to the Americans, had stuck together; then, at least, they could negotiate, make binding agreements and help knit together a nation.

In America, generals, congressmen and commentators across the political spectrum are embroiled in a debate over troop levels and exit timetables. But if the United States seeks to establish stability so its troops can leave, it must answer the question: whom does it talk to?

Which Sunni and Shiite militias, armed tribal groups and even criminal gangs need to be fought? Which can be bargained with? Which are potential allies as the United States seeks to break the increasingly chaotic cycles of attack, revenge and rivalry for turf and spoils?

Last week, it was Sunni militiamen who staged deadly attacks on the Shiite-led Health Ministry and Sadr City, presumably in retaliation for a mass kidnapping from the Sunni-dominated Higher Education Ministry the week before. Those kidnappings, in turn, were carried out by men in official uniforms who were thought to be Shiite militiamen who had infiltrated the army and police force. But, as always, it was unclear which militia was responsible, or whether the kidnappers were from a breakaway group.

The largest Shiite militia, led by Moktada al-Sadr and called the Mahdi Army, has been widely reported to be splintering. But there is also a growing profusion of other groups: in addition to longstanding rival Shiite militias like the Iranian-trained Badr Organization and the Fadhila militia, both of which are powerful in the south, there are Sunni fighters attached to tribal leaders, ex-Baathists or Al Qaeda cells; Iraqi private security contractors; quasi-government militias originally assembled to guard oil pipelines and power lines; criminal gangs; and neighborhood watch groups.

For the Americans, the disintegration of order has complicated any effort to deal with the armed groups, said Joost Hiltermann, Middle East project director of the International Crisis Group, an organization of experts on dealing with conflicts that is formulating its own last-ditch plan to salvage peace in Iraq. “Now you have purveyors of violence that are completely independent of everyone else,” Mr. Hiltermann said.

With one or two exceptions, he added, the politicians who nominally head some of the larger militias that are now splintering “don’t control anything.”

The most violent militia is the Mahdi Army, led by Mr. Sadr. Recent conversations with American military commanders in Iraq indicate that the United States ultimately may have to attempt to disarm it in its base in Baghdad — and it will be some time, if ever, before Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who needs Mr. Sadr’s support in Parliament, will be a willing partner.

But because there have been so many reports that freelance commanders have broken away from Mr. Sadr’s group and are operating on their own, carrying out their own kidnappings, executions and paramilitary operations, the impact of such an operation is difficult to calculate. For one thing, nobody knows exactly how much Mr. Sadr controls his group. For another, nobody knows to what extent commanders who have seemed to operate on their own might retain loyalty to Mr. Sadr in a major fight.

Some American commanders believe that Mr. Sadr retains influence over some groups he has declared to be renegades. If that were the case, the splinter groups would be functioning like the Salvadoran death squads of the 1980s; those operated quasi-independently and gave their government a measure of deniability even when it almost certainly had ordered killings.

If a similar situation applies here, it could lend credence to the arguments of American commanders who believe that the United States military may ultimately have to go in force to Mr. Sadr’s base of power, a place where it has trod lightly for the past three years, in order to disarm militiamen who remain defiant. Mr. Sadr’s base is a northeastern Baghdad slum populated with two million Shiite Arabs and named after his father.

But Iraqis mostly believe that such a step would be folly because it could inflame Shiites in general. No matter how unruly the groups in the Mahdi Army have or have not become, this argument goes, Mr. Sadr’s own popularity, as well as the number of men in the Mahdi Army, has soared throughout Baghdad and the south as the American military has worn out its welcome.

“This is actually very dangerous,” said Qasim Daoud, a former Iraqi national security advisor who is now a member of Parliament representing the southern holy city of Najaf. “It will go to a flare-up of the whole southern area.”

The roots of the problem with independent armed groups in Iraq trace back to when the United States invaded the country with the help of a strategically placed militia: the fighters who were loyal to two Kurdish clans in the north. In the aftermath, the United States had little appetite for disarming the Kurds, especially since their fighters are under the firm control of their leaders.

Less well known is that before the invasion, the United States also cozied up to some of the Shiite militias, who were then expatriates, with promises that they would not be immediately disbanded if they returned to Iraq, said Amatzia Baram, director of the Ezri Center of Iran and Gulf Studies at the University of Haifa in Israel. Before the invasion, when he was a scholar based in Washington, he warned of the dangers of letting the militias keep their arms.

The problem, Mr. Baram said, was that the most powerful of those groups, the Badr Organization, never really returned the warmth. The Badr leadership, Mr. Baram said, “never wanted to be engaged more than, ‘Yes, when you kick Saddam out, we will be there.’ They were very standoffish.”

With those precedents, the United States had little standing to disarm the other militias after the invasion, and they gained steadily in power.

There is, however, a temptation for American officials to see the possibility of working with some armed groups, even today. Travels with American military units and a reading of recent embassy initiatives in Iraq indicate that along with preparations for potential military activity against the Mahdi Army, the United States is stepping up efforts to identify militias associated with Iraqi tribes, political parties, geographic regions and even insurgent groups — to placate and co-opt those they can, and even play some off against each other.

In an indication of that strategy, some local American field commanders now give snap analyses of differences between the Janabi, Juburi and Duleimi tribes, an arresting shift from the early days of the conflict when words like those would have drawn blank stares in an American Humvee rumbling through the desert.

Such efforts have sometimes seemed promising. In September, 25 tribes in the Sunni-dominated Anbar province agreed to cooperate militarily in order to combat the local influence of Al Qaeda. But so far, that agreement seems to have had little influence on security; American and Iraqi troops continue to die at a disheartening rate in Anbar.

Looking forward, Representative Ike Skelton, the Missouri Democrat who is expected to become chairman of the House Armed Services Committee in January, says the cultural importance of guns in Iraqi society, combined with the practical need for Iraqis to protect themselves, makes it all but impossible for the prime minister to disarm the militias, despite his pledges to do so.

“I don’t know how he’s going to do it,” Mr. Skelton said.

Mr. Daoud, the former security adviser, said that a better strategy would be to absorb militias loyal to the elected government into the official armed forces and give the rest jobs under the civilian government if they take appropriate training courses.

“I prefer, really, to make a sort of evaluation of each single person,” Mr. Daoud said.

That approach, which would amount to absorbing many of the militias into the government, may bring less order than hoped, said Marina Ottaway, director of the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“The question is not whether the militias can rule much of the country, which I don’t think they can,” Ms. Ottaway said. “The question is whether they can make it impossible for anyone else to rule the country.”

    In Search of the Fixers, NYT, 26.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/weekinreview/26glanz.html

Now It’s Iraq on the Agenda for Mr. Fix-It of the G.O.P.

November 26, 2006
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, Nov. 25 — Everyone in Washington knows that President Bush has a lot riding on the Iraq Study Group, the bipartisan panel searching for a fresh strategy in Iraq. But so has the man whose name has become synonymous with the group: its Republican co-chairman, James A. Baker III.

The last time he dominated the news was in 2000, in Florida, when Mr. Baker — a former secretary of state who has been a friend and a tennis partner of the first President Bush since the current president was 13 years old — led the legal team that delivered the White House to its current occupant. That was Mr. Baker in partisan mode, cementing his reputation as Bush family confidant and Republican fix-it man.

Now, at 76, Mr. Baker is in high diplomat mode, on a mission, friends and supporters say, to aid his country and his president — and, while he is at it, seal his legacy in the realm of statesmen, a sphere he cares about far more than politics.

“I think he’d like to be remembered as a 21st-century Disraeli,” said Leon Panetta, a Democratic member of the group, referring to the 19th-century British statesman and prime minister. “I think deep down he is someone who believes that his diplomatic career, in many ways, helped change the world.”

On Monday, the 10 members of the Iraq Study Group — five Republicans and five Democrats — will convene in Washington for two days of deliberations, to try to produce a report by mid-December. The panel, formed at the urging of a bipartisan group in Congress, has a broad mandate to conduct an analysis of the situation in Iraq, including military, economic and political issues.

The group has conducted hundreds of interviews, but some question whether even the most thorough report can have any effect on the ground in Iraq, where sectarian violence is escalating.

The panel remains deeply divided over several critical issues, most notably whether to accede to calls by Democrats for a phased withdrawal of troops. Mr. Baker, who would not be interviewed for this article, has said he wants bipartisan consensus, but the panel’s Democratic co-chairman, Lee H. Hamilton, acknowledges it will be difficult.

“It’s not a guaranteed result,” Mr. Hamilton said. “There is a lot of focus on our work, and a lot of attention to it, and high expectation from it. I think Jim and I both feel that pressure.”

Mr. Baker is no stranger to world affairs; he presided over the end of the cold war, the 1991 invasion of Iraq (arguing famously against ousting Saddam Hussein) and was an aggressive dealmaker in the Middle East. He has always been “the quintessential pragmatist,” in Mr. Panetta’s words, a master at intertwining politics with diplomacy, at consulting everyone in the beginning so no one feels left out in the end.

That has been his modus operandi at the commission, where he has functioned almost as a shadow secretary of state, using his vast personal Rolodex to reach out to international figures the Bush administration has shunned — while testing the political waters at home.

He has made ample use of his Bush connections, dropping in on the president for private Oval Office tête-à-têtes. He led the study group on a mission to Baghdad, where they donned helmets and flak jackets to meet leaders of every political stripe. (“A lot of them knew him,” Mr. Panetta said.)

He has included Mr. Hamilton on every decision, going so far as to reject a photo shoot at Newsweek unless it included Mr. Hamilton, colleagues said. He insisted the report be released after the November election. He has let information slip out when it has suited him — like news of his quiet rendezvous with officials from Syria and Iran, rogue nations in the White House’s view — but has demanded absolute secrecy about the substance of the panel’s work.

“We’ve all been issued cyanide pills,” said Edward P. Djerejian, who is helping Mr. Baker write the draft and is director of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, a university Mr. Baker’s grandfather helped found.

As a two-time former cabinet secretary (at Treasury under President Ronald Reagan and the State Department under the first President Bush) and a two-time former White House chief of staff (Reagan and the first President Bush), Mr. Baker has been around Washington long enough to know how to play the expectations game. Right now, he is playing it to the hilt, putting out the word that Iraq 2006 is hardly Florida 2000.

“The expectations have gotten well beyond where he wanted them to get,” said one person close to Mr. Baker, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “You’re talking about a political equation as much as you are a strategic and diplomatic one. And one of the things that’s making the situation difficult is this image that Baker’s coming in, Baker’s riding to the rescue. There are some very smart and very strong Democrats on this panel, and they’re not going to do what Baker tells them to do.”

Nor will President Bush; his press secretary, Tony Snow, insisted that the White House would not “outsource this problem to the Baker commission.” The White House is already pushing back against the report, even before it is issued. The Pentagon is doing its own review of Iraq policy, and the White House has commissioned another. President Bush, meanwhile, is traveling to Jordan this week to meet Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq, where he is expected to reassure the prime minister that the United States is not pulling out anytime soon.

Mr. Baker’s relationship with the president is one of the great curiosities of Washington, and many here are trying to divine how he will use that tie to advance the Iraq Study Group. The two are not nearly as close as Mr. Baker is with Mr. Bush’s father; Mr. Baker’s recent autobiography, “Work Hard, Study and Keep Out of Politics,” suggests tension just under the surface.

Mr. Baker writes that he did not mind being left out of the current administration: “We had our turn. Now it was his.” Though people in Washington see a certain irony in his return to manage a new Iraq war gone wrong, he insists he is not “implicitly criticizing” Mr. Bush for the invasion. Yet Mr. Baker takes pains to point out, in a one-sentence footnote, that Mr. Bush is “an alumnus” of the “office boy pool” at Baker Botts, Mr. Baker’s law firm in Houston. In one scene from the elder Mr. Bush’s 1988 presidential campaign, he refers to “the ever-playful presidential son, George W.”

These days Mr. Baker refers to that son as “Mr. President.” The president calls Mr. Baker, 16 years his senior, “Jimmy.” Aides to both insist Mr. Baker has not used his private Oval Office meetings to tip the president off to the commission’s work. But then, Mr. Baker would never be that unsubtle.

“He’s treating the president just like he is everyone else, as somebody to be co-opted, and brought into the process,” said one outside adviser to the study group, who was granted anonymity to talk about the process.

Some Democrats consider that a good thing. “Baker has the great good possibility of success because he’s so close to the president,” said Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Delaware Democrat and incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “He’s able to give the president a way out, a way of saying, ‘I didn’t do what the Democrats said. I listened to Baker, my old buddy, Jim Baker.’ ”

By all accounts, Mr. Baker relishes his encore as elder statesmen.

“Look, he was certainly a very effective politician, a wise political strategist,” said Donald L. Evans, a close friend of Mr. Baker’s who served as commerce secretary in President Bush’s first term. “But that was a means to an end. He’s playing, I think, the role that he should be playing at this moment in life — the distinguished statesman that is there for leaders to go to, and listen to.”

The study group, formed in March, operated below radar for months. But the assignment just happened to overlap with Mr. Baker’s October book tour. Mr. Baker left no media outlet unturned, even appearing on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” (“Don’t think for one minute they don’t sell books,” he later told The Houston Chronicle.)

Mr. Baker used the appearances artfully, promoting the book and setting the stage for public acceptance of the Iraq Study Group. He made clear his differences with the White House, telling the ABC news program “This Week” that “it’s not appeasement to talk to your enemies” and that his panel would search for a middle ground between “ ‘stay the course’ and ‘cut and run.’ ”

The political landscape, though, has changed dramatically since then. If Mr. Baker can guide his group toward recommendations that are accepted by the White House and Democrats, and that yield real improvement in Iraq, he will be more than a Republican fix-it man. Mr. Evans, the former commerce secretary, said he would be remembered as “America’s fix-it man.”

But foreign policy experts and politicians alike say there is no miracle elixir for Iraq; if there were, someone would have thought of it already. Ivo Daalder, a scholar at the Brookings Institution, says the real test for Mr. Baker is to pull the White House “out of the quicksand” in a way that has lasting political effects at home and strategic effects in Iraq.

“This is an impossible job,” said Mr. Daalder, adding wryly: “Even God couldn’t meet those expectations. Perhaps Jim Baker can.”

    Now It’s Iraq on the Agenda for Mr. Fix-It of the G.O.P., NYT, 26.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/washington/26baker.html?hp&ex=1164603600&en=00e145bd3659e2e4&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Shiite Militia in Iraq Strike at Sunni Mosques

November 25, 2006
The New York Times
By EDWARD WONG

BAGHDAD, Nov. 24 — Defying a government curfew, Shiite militiamen stormed Sunni mosques in Baghdad and a nearby city on Friday, shooting guards and burning down buildings in apparent retaliation for the devastating bombings that killed more than 200 people the day before in the capital’s largest Shiite district, residents and police officials said.

Militia fighters drove through neighborhoods in Baghdad and the provincial capital of Baquba, firing at mosques with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades on the Muslim day of prayer.

The vengeance attacks unfolded while lawmakers loyal to the virulently anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr threatened to boycott the government if Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki met with President Bush next week in Jordan. Mr. Sadr controls one of the biggest blocs of seats in Parliament, and on Friday he reiterated his claim that the American presence was the root cause of the rising violence in Iraq.

But it was Mr. Sadr’s militia, the Mahdi Army, that Sunni residents blamed for the attacks on Friday. From morning until afternoon, at least four mosques were attacked in Hurriya, a mixed neighborhood in the capital. Two were destroyed, and at least 5 Sunnis were killed and 10 wounded, an Interior Ministry official said. A hard-line Sunni Arab group, the Muslim Scholars Association, said 18 people had been killed when one of the mosques burned down.

Iraqi security forces were absent, unwilling or unable to stop the attackers.

“I live near Akbar al-Mustafa Mosque, which came under attack by gunmen around 7 this morning,” said a man who gave his name as Abu Ruqaiya and lives in Hurriya. “Around 3 in the afternoon, those gunmen bombed this mosque and destroyed part of it. They left only after American and Iraqi soldiers arrived.”

Some fighting continued into the evening, as gunmen in the neighborhood battled the invading fighters, the Interior Ministry official said.

President Jalal Talabani urged calm at a news conference after an evening meeting of Iraq’s top leaders. He also said he was postponing a weekend trip to Iran because the government had shut down Baghdad International Airport.

White House officials ignored the Sadr bloc’s threats to withdraw from the government, and said there were no plans to cancel the president’s meetings with Mr. Maliki scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday. “Securing Baghdad and gaining control of the violent situation will be a priority agenda item when President Bush meets with Prime Minister Maliki in just a few days,” said Scott Stanzel, a White House spokesman. "These ruthless acts of violence are deplorable. It is an outrage that these terrorists are targeting innocent civilians in a brazen effort to topple a democratically elected government. These killers will not succeed.”

He also repeated the administration’s insistence that Iraq was not in a civil war. “We’re constantly asked that question, and while the situation is serious, Prime Minister Maliki and President Talabani have said they do not believe it is a civil war,” he said.

The bloodletting over the past 24 hours amounted to one of the worst spasms of violence since the Americans toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, raising fears that vengeance attacks could grow to the level of those after the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February. Then, over five days, hundreds of people were killed, with Shiite militiamen shooting Sunni imams, burning down mosques and stalking Sunni Arabs door-to-door in neighborhoods.

The attacks on Friday came despite a traffic ban the Iraqi government imposed across the capital starting Thursday evening. American troops stepped up patrols and operated checkpoints across much of the city, and most of the capital’s neighborhoods remained calm as residents heeded the curfew. In the downtown neighborhood of Karada, children could be seen playing soccer in the empty streets.

In the vast Sadr City district, where the Thursday bombings took place, an attack helicopter destroyed a rocket launcher seen firing into the nearby Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiya, the military said. An official from the Sadr office said at least three civilians had been wounded.

In the far north, two suicide bombers, one in a car and the other on foot, attacked an outdoor car market in the insurgent-rife city of Tal Afar, killing at least 20 people and wounding at least 42.

The violence comes at a politically fraught time for Mr. Maliki, particularly since he is preparing to meet Mr. Bush in Amman. Both men face increasing pressure from their publics to come up with a strategy for stemming the carnage in Iraq, and both are navigating rising tensions between their governments.

The announcement of a possible boycott by Mr. Sadr’s bloc further endangers Mr. Maliki’s political fortunes. Mr. Sadr effectively controls Sadr City, and the attacks on Thursday appeared to have strengthened his standing and emboldened him. Mr. Sadr has used attacks against Shiites as a justification for keeping his militia despite demands by the Iraqi and American governments that he disband it.

“The occupation forces should shoulder the full responsibility for these deeds, and we call for them to end their rule in Iraq by withdrawing or at least setting a timetable for withdrawal,” Salih al-Igaili, a Sadr legislator, said. “If the security situation does not improve, as well as basic services, and if the prime minister does not retreat from his intent to meet the criminal Bush in Amman, we will suspend our membership in the Iraqi Parliament and the government.”

Mr. Sadr, in a speech delivered at Friday sermons in the southern city of Kufa, did not mention the boycott threat, but did repeat his usual demand of a timetable for withdrawal from the Americans. He also called on a militant Sunni Arab cleric, Sheik Harith al-Dhari, to issue an edict forbidding the murder of Shiites.

Blocs in Parliament, including Mr. Sadr’s, have threatened to walk out before. Mr. Maliki, a conservative Shiite, relies on Mr. Sadr for political support against Shiite rivals, and a withdrawal of Mr. Sadr’s legislators from the 275-member Parliament could upend the power balance within the main Shiite political coalition. Mr. Sadr controls at least 30 seats in Parliament and three cabinet positions, including that of the Health Ministry, which was besieged for two hours on Thursday by Sunni Arab insurgents armed with mortars and assault rifles.

Some American officials also argue that Mr. Sadr’s engagement in politics is necessary for any hope of a peaceful disarmament of his militia, which has thousands of fighters and has twice rebelled against the American military. But at the same time, Mr. Sadr’s strong ties to Mr. Maliki make it difficult for the prime minister to crack down on the Mahdi Army. The mosque attacks on Friday underscored the dangers posed by the militias and highlighted the means by which they are ratcheting up, day by day, the violence here.

“My daughter lives near Mishhada mosque in this neighborhood, and she says gunmen killed and wounded some people there,” Abu Ruqaiya said in a phone interview. “There were clashes with the guards of the mosque.” Another resident of Hurriya said militiamen burned down the empty home of a former member of the Baath Party.

Fanned by fear, rumors spread quickly throughout the day. In the evening, a resident named Imad al-Hashemi said in a telephone interview on Al Jazeera, the Arab news network, that gunmen had doused some people with gasoline and set them on fire. Other residents contacted by telephone denied this.

In Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, gunmen opened fire on a Sunni mosque and battled with guards there, a police official said. Militants also shot at the provincial government center and the police headquarters. Insurgents destroyed the minaret of a Shiite mosque near the market with explosives or projectiles, the police official said.

The police in Baghdad discovered at least 31 bodies across the city on Friday, most showing signs of torture, The Associated Press reported.

The Interior Ministry official in Baghdad updated the death toll from the Sadr City bombings on Thursday to 202. At least 256 others had been wounded. In the morning, hundreds of mourners poured into the streets of the sprawling district to join processions of cars with wooden coffins strapped to their roofs. Women in black robes beat their chests while men waved pistols from car windows to clear the streets.

“I stayed up the entire night talking with friends and neighbors about what happened,” said Ghaith Qassim, 35, a clothing vendor at a funeral. “We’re so angry and sad over this. The people here blame the leaders of the government.”

In one corner of Sadr City, a three-minibus convoy wound its way through fetid streets, bound for the Shiite cemetery in the holy city of Najaf. The first two vehicles each had a single coffin strapped to its roof. The third had three, all with the bodies of victims from the same family.

Reporting was contributed by Omar al-Neami, Qais Mizher, Hosham Hussein and Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi from Baghdad, and Jim Rutenberg from Washington.

    Shiite Militia in Iraq Strike at Sunni Mosques, NYT, 25.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/25/world/middleeast/25iraq.html?hp&ex=1164517200&en=d5164551a290718a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Rumsfeld okayed abuses says former U.S. general

Sat Nov 25, 2006 11:45 AM ET
Reuters



MADRID (Reuters) - Outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized the mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the prison's former U.S. commander said in an interview on Saturday.

Former U.S. Army Brigadier General Janis Karpinski told Spain's El Pais newspaper she had seen a letter apparently signed by Rumsfeld which allowed civilian contractors to use techniques such as sleep deprivation during interrogation.

Karpinski, who ran the prison until early 2004, said she saw a memorandum signed by Rumsfeld detailing the use of harsh interrogation methods.

"The handwritten signature was above his printed name and in the same handwriting in the margin was written: "Make sure this is accomplished"," she told Saturday's El Pais.

"The methods consisted of making prisoners stand for long periods, sleep deprivation ... playing music at full volume, having to sit in uncomfortably ... Rumsfeld authorized these specific techniques."

The Geneva Convention says prisoners of war should suffer "no physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion" to secure information.

"Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind," the document states.

A spokesman for the Pentagon declined to comment on Karpinski's accusations, while U.S. army in Iraq could not immediately be reached for comment.

Karpinski was withdrawn from Iraq in early 2004, shortly after photographs showing American troops abusing detainees at the prison were flashed around the world. She was subsequently removed from active duty and then demoted to the rank of colonel on unrelated charges.

Karpinski insists she knew nothing about the abuse of prisoners until she saw the photos, as interrogation was carried out in a prison wing run by U.S. military intelligence.

Rumsfeld also authorized the army to break the Geneva Conventions by not registering all prisoners, Karpinski said, explaining how she raised the case of one unregistered inmate with an aide to former U.S. commander Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez.

"We received a message from the Pentagon, from the Defense Secretary, ordering us to hold the prisoner without registering him. I now know this happened on various occasions."

Karpinski said last week she was ready to testify against Rumsfeld, if a suit filed by civil rights groups in Germany over Abu Ghraib led to a full investigation.

President Bush announced Rumsfeld's resignation after Democrats wrested power from the Republicans in midterm elections earlier this month, partly due to public criticism over the Iraq war.

(Additional reporting by Diane Bartz in Washington)

    Rumsfeld okayed abuses says former U.S. general, R, 25.11.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2006-11-25T164527Z_01_L25726413_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-RUMSFELD.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C2-TopNews-newsOne-2

Army Expands Training for Advisers Who Will Try to Improve Iraq’s Security Forces

November 25, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON

FORT RILEY, Kan., Nov. 18 — This wind-swept stretch of Kansas has become the hub of a major new push by the United States Army to overhaul its effort to advise Iraq’s fledgling security forces.

Following a disappointing performance by many Iraqi units and complaints that earlier efforts to train American advisers had been handicapped by bureaucratic inertia, the Army has handed the mission to Maj. Gen. Carter F. Ham, who had a previous stint as a commander in Iraq.

Along with nearly 1,000 soldiers from his First Infantry Division, General Ham has sought to improve the training of the advisers as the Army has moved to upgrade the quality of these teams.

The revamped effort began with little fanfare this summer, but has gained prominence in recent weeks as experts inside and outside the government have recommended that the military expand the advisers’ ranks as part of a renewed push to strengthen the Iraqi security forces.

The Army is “transitioning from an endeavor that has been less than a high priority to one that is of the highest priority,” said Jack Keane, a retired four-star general who served as the Army vice chief of staff during the first months of the war. “And it is long overdue.”

Senior American military commanders calculate that strengthening the Iraqi forces, paired with efforts at political reconciliation by the Iraqi government, will enable the Iraqis to take more responsibility for their security and allow the United States to eventually begin withdrawing its forces.

But to date, the Iraqi Army has had trouble providing all the reinforcements American commanders have requested for the stepped-up security operation in Baghdad, even as the level of sectarian violence there soars. At the same time, Iraq’s government has yet to confront the country’s militias, some of which have significant sway over police units. It remains far from clear whether increasing the number and caliber of American advisers can provide enough of the security gains the United States is seeking.

Still, in recent exercises, the would-be advisers were confronted with an early dose of reality, in training that included some of the vexing scenarios they are likely to face in Iraq: an Iraqi battalion commander quarreling angrily with his Iraqi police counterpart, Iraqi troops who roughed up a detainee and an Iraqi crowd irate at the troops who had conducted a surprise raid.

The American Army has long experience in training and deploying military advisers, most notably in Vietnam. There, the Army began with an active advisory program before the fighting escalated into a major conflict. In Iraq, however, the war began with major combat; American advisers, now called “transition teams,” were introduced later, almost as an afterthought. “When we first started this transition-team business in both Iraq and Afghanistan, it was very much a hit-and-miss proposition,” said General Ham, who acknowledged that the program faced early problems. “The selection of individuals for duty on transition teams was probably more haphazard than any of us would have liked. The training was not standardized across the various training locations. It does not appear that it was well-resourced across the force.

“I think that was what led to some of the earlier criticisms, and in my view the criticism was fair and justified,” General Ham added. “We need to do it better, and this initiative that started the training here at Fort Riley is a part of that.”

There are currently more than 4,000 American troops organized into more than 430 teams to advise the Iraqi Army, police forces and border guards. General John P. Abizaid, the head of the United States Central Command, said recently that the United States planned to increase the size of the teams, which generally have 11 members, so that they can better train Iraqi battalions, which can have more than 700 soldiers. General Abizaid also said that the plan was to attach the advisers not only to Iraqi battalions but also at lower levels, to companies and possibly even platoons. Those ideas, however, have yet to be incorporated in the advisers’ training program.

General Ham worked with senior officers from two of his brigades to organize the program, which lasts a jam-packed 60 days. Soldiers practice a variety of combat skills, including how to counter the ever-present roadside bombs. They also receive some cultural training and, for those headed to Iraq, 50 hours of Arabic language instruction — enough to provide only the most rudimentary skills but more training than most advisers had previously received. There is additional training in Kuwait and at the sprawling American military base at Taji, Iraq.

According to General Ham, the advisory teams include more active-duty soldiers than during the early days of the program, when reservists were more commonly used. As a matter of Army policy, staffing the teams is now a higher priority for Army personnel officers than filling the empty slots in units on alert to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan.

According to current plans, Fort Riley will train the majority of the Army teams that are sent to advise the Iraqi Army, national police and border guards. The rest of the Army teams are to be drawn from units in Iraq. (The Marines train their own advisers separately.)

In the field, the teams are managed by Brig. Gen. Dana Pittard, an assistant division commander, who provides feedback to Fort Riley. The expectation is that American advisers will still be attached to Iraqi military and police units even after the withdrawal of American combat forces is under way.

“I feel like we’ll be the last men standing at the end of the U.S. presence here,” General Pittard observed in August.

Maj. Andrew Yerkes, who is leading a team that is to advise Iraq’s National Police, was thrust in a difficult situation during a recent exercise. A squabble broke out between a person playing the role of an Iraqi battalion commander and another acting as an Iraqi police captain over how to secure the town, a possible situation since Iraq’s army is largely Shiite and the police in Sunni areas are recruited from local communities. Within minutes, the Iraqi battalion commander stormed off, leaving Major Yerkes and his soldiers to ponder how they might better defuse tensions in the future.

“It showed my team a different piece of culture we have not been exposed to and forced us to think our way through a problem,” he said.

General Ham is still looking for ways to improve the training. For instance, he hopes to arrange for the teams of advisers to do some training with the American combat brigades they will work with in Iraq.

Another constraint is the absence of actual Iraqis, or in the case of teams being trained for Afghan duty, Afghan soldiers.

Qualified Iraqi commanders are needed far more urgently in Iraq, so the roles of commanders, interpreters and townspeople in the exercises are played by American soldiers and contractors who were born in Iraq or are of Arab descent. (The battalion commander in Major Yerkes’s exercise lives in San Diego and left Iraq many years ago.)

Even so, the trainees say the exercises are useful. Maj. William Cotty, one of a small number of Special Forces officers who have volunteered to serve as advisers, is leading an advisory team that will be assigned to an Iraqi Army unit. A seasoned officer who served in Colombia and Afghanistan, Major Cotty was put to the test during a raid he conducted with a mock Iraqi battalion commander.

Major Cotty helped the “Iraqis” plan a raid to capture a suspected insurgent in the fictional town of Surdash, speaking through an interpreter to the battalion commander, in this case an Arabic-speaking American soldier who was born in Sudan. In the exercise, the operation led to a firefight in which a suspected insurgent was killed. The “Iraqis” hauled away a captive and began to pummel him as an angry crowd began yelling at the Americans. In an effort to disperse the crowd, Major Cotty fired several blanks into the air.

At a review conducted immediately afterward, the advisers were cautioned to make sure the suspected insurgents they planned to capture had not been picked out by Iraqi units as part of a sectarian or personal vendetta.

Officers observing the exercise also suggested that the major might have taken other steps before firing warning shots, since the shots might encourage Iraqi soldiers to fire wildly. The Americans, for example, might have brought along a loudspeaker and used their interpreter to talk to the townspeople about the point of the raid. Major Cotty said the exercise was helpful.

“According to the book on direct action, I had speed, surprise and violence of action,” he said. “The number one thing I probably took away from this was the loudspeaker,” he said.

    Army Expands Training for Advisers Who Will Try to Improve Iraq’s Security Forces, NYT, 25.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/25/world/middleeast/25training.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Iraq Death Toll Rises; Shiite Bloc Threatens Boycott

November 24, 2006
The New York Times
By EDWARD WONG and KIRK SEMPLE

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 24 — As the death toll from a series of devastating car bombs in a Shiite district here rose today to more than 200, a powerful legislative bloc loyal to firebrand Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr threatened to boycott the government if Iraq’s prime minister attends a scheduled meeting with President Bush in Jordan next week.

The legislators met in an office in Sadr City, the neighborhood hit by the explosions on Thursday, and angrily denounced the American military, saying the presence of the foreign forces was galvanizing the violence roiling Iraq. Also today, in the far north, a suicide car bomber and a suicide belt bomber detonated their explosives in crowded areas in the volatile city of Tal Afar, killing at least 20 people and injuring at least 42.

The carnage over the 24-hour period amounted to one of the worst spasms of violence since the Americans toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003. Though the Iraqi government maintained a tight curfew across the capital today, apparently fearful that events could spiral into full-scale civil war, hundreds of mourners poured into the streets of Sadr City to join processions of minibuses and sedans carrying wooden coffins. Women in black robes beat their chests while men waved pistols from car windows to clear the streets.

“I stayed up the entire night talking with friends and neighbors about what happened,” said Ghaith Qassim, 35, a clothing vendor at a funeral. “We’re so angry and sad over this. The people here blame the leaders of the government.”

Sadr City is the stronghold of Mr. Sadr and his militia, and the Thursday attacks, presumably carried out by Sunni Arab militants against Mr. Sadr’s followers, appeared to once again strengthen his political standing.

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a conservative Shiite, relies on Mr. Sadr for political support against Shiite rivals, and a withdrawal of Mr. Sadr’s legislators from the 275-member Parliament could destabilize the government. American officials say that Mr. Sadr’s engagement in politics is necessary for any hope of a peaceful disarmament of his thousands-strong militia, the Mahdi Army, which is accused of involvement in waves of retaliatory killings of Sunni Arabs.

Saleh al-Igaili, a member of the Sadr parliamentary bloc, said in a speech at the main Sadr office in Sadr City that “if Maliki insists on going to meet Bush, we’ll walk out of Parliament and the government.”

Mr. Maliki is scheduled to meet with President Bush in the Jordanian capital of Amman on Wednesday to discuss the increasingly precarious situation in Iraq and the American strategy.

Mr. Sadr controls at least 30 seats in Parliament and three cabinet positions, including that of the health ministry, which was besieged by Sunni Arab insurgents right before the bombs went off in Sadr City on Thursday.

The gunmen, shooting from nearby buildings and surrounding streets, pelted the ministry with mortar shells and gunfire for two hours, though they fled when Iraqi troops and American military helicopters arrived, ministry officials and witnesses said.

Shiite revenge for the attacks on Thursday was swift. Shiite fighters fired about a dozen mortar shells into the predominantly Sunni Arab neighborhood of Adhamiya in northern Baghdad, wounding at least 10 people, an Interior Ministry official said. Five more mortar shells were aimed at the former Mother of All Battles Mosque commissioned by Saddam Hussein in Ghazaliya, according to the mosque’s imam, Sheik Mahmoud al-Sumaidaie.Political leaders held an emergency meeting after the attacks and later appeared together, Sunni, Shiite and Kurd, to broadcast an appeal for calm and national unity. Top clerics sent similar messages.

“In this painful tragedy, I call on everybody to practice self-restraint and stay calm,” Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said in a separate televised address. “I hope that all political and civic powers will stand together to protect the citizens from criminal action.”

The government imposed an indefinite curfew on the capital, banning all vehicles and pedestrians from the streets, and closed Baghdad International Airport as well as the airport and seaport in the southern city of Basra. The Iraqi military command put the army on high alert, beefed up checkpoints throughout the city and established a cordon around Sadr City, according to an Iraqi military spokesman.

The authorities seemed intent on avoiding a repeat of the violent fallout that followed the bombing of a major Shiite shrine in Samarra in late February. That attack set off the eruption of sectarian killings, which has gathered momentum during the year and has spun well beyond the control of Iraqi and American security forces.

The attacks on Thursday came at a critical time for the Iraqi and American governments, which have been struggling to figure out a political and military formula to curb the violence.

American and Sunni Arab officials have argued that a key to peace rests with the aggressive demobilization of the Shiite militias tied to the most powerful Shiite political parties. But Shiite leaders have insisted that the militias remain their final bulwark against the Sunni Arab-led insurgency. And Mr. Maliki, responding to his power base, has chosen a softer, negotiated approach to the militias, frustrating his American partners.

Thursday’s bombings will probably harden the Shiites’ position on militias and further complicate diplomacy between Mr. Maliki and President Bush, who are scheduled to meet in Amman next Wednesday to discuss strategies for stabilizing Iraq.

“We blame the government for the attacks,” said Said Adel al-Nuri, a representative of the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, echoing the general sentiment of frustration and anger in the working-class district, which has more than two million people. “We have no trust in the government or in the Americans. We have completely lost faith in the government.”

According to the police, the Sadr City assault began when a suicide car bomber blew himself up at about 3:15 p.m. at a checkpoint leading into the neighborhood. That blast was followed in quick succession by that of two other suicide car bombers and two unattended car bombs, which exploded at different locations along a main avenue crowded with commuters and shoppers, witnesses said. At least one mortar shell exploded in the neighborhood, the police said, and a sixth car bomb was discovered and defused.

The car bombings destroyed dozens of other vehicles, scattered charred and mangled bodies and sent flames and thick pillars of smoke into the air. Frenzied crowds clawed through the wreckage, pulling bloodied bodies from cars and minibuses and moving them out in wooden carts.

Residents and Shiite militiamen flooded the streets, firing assault rifles into the air, shouting epithets against Sunni Arabs, the American authorities and the Iraqi government, and vowing revenge. Gunmen of the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to Mr. Sadr, commandeered the district, setting up roadblocks and searching cars.

“The people don’t know what to do,” said Muhammad Ali Muhammad, a 27-year-old Shiite laborer in Sadr City. “They’re going to the hospital to give blood. Some are standing around shocked.”

Fighting flared at the Health Ministry earlier Thursday. The attack on the ministry headquarters began around midday when three mortar shells hit the main building, Lt. Ali Muhsin of the Iraqi Police told The Associated Press. Gunmen positioned on the upper floors of surrounding buildings then opened fire on the main building, pinning down hundreds of workers inside, ministry officials said. Ministry security guards with assault rifles fired back and managed to keep the insurgents at bay until Iraqi and American troops responded two hours later, the officials said.

Sabah Chalob, a ministry spokesman, said about 15 mortar shells hit the building over the course of the firefight.

“The employees stayed inside the ministry, away from the windows that were being targeted by the snipers,” said Hakim al-Zamili, a deputy health minister, in an interview on the state-run Al Iraqiya network. “We saw the masked men moving freely, and with no fear, in the streets.”

At least seven ministry guards were wounded, First Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razzaq of the Iraqi police told The A.P., though a military spokesman denied that report.

The attack on the Health Ministry building was the fourth against the ministry’s employees in less than a week. The health minister, Ali al-Shemari, is an associate of Mr. Sadr, and the ministry is widely perceived by Sunni Arabs as a bastion of Shiite favoritism.

On Nov. 19, gunmen kidnapped a deputy health minister from his home in northern Baghdad. The following day, another deputy health minister narrowly escaped an ambush when gunmen opened fire on his convoy, though two of his bodyguards were killed. On Wednesday, gunmen shot and killed an assistant director general from the ministry, Mr. Zamili said.

The violence had the aspect of sectarian revenge. On Nov. 14, Shiite militiamen raided a building belonging to the Sunni Arab-run Ministry of Higher Education and abducted scores of people, some of whom remain missing, officials said.

As dusk fell on Baghdad, and with Sadr City in turmoil, several top political officials held an emergency meeting, including President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd; Tariq al-Hashemi, a Sunni vice president; and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a Shiite leader. Afterward, they appeared together on television to deliver a joint statement that sought to reduce tensions.

“We call on people to act responsibly and to stand together to calm the situation,” said the joint statement, read by Mr. Hashemi.

The government’s spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, also appeared on television with what he said was an appeal from the reclusive Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

The ayatollah, he said, “denounced the evil attack against Sadr City and expressed his grief for the huge number of dead and injured people caused by the attack, and he is calling the people to control themselves and not to react outside the law.”

The American military said Thursday that three marines were killed Wednesday while fighting in Anbar Province, a stronghold of the Sunni Arab insurgency.

Omar al-Neami, John F. Burns, Hosham Hussein, Abdul Razzaq al-Saeidi and Joao Silva contributed reporting.

    Iraq Death Toll Rises; Shiite Bloc Threatens Boycott, NYT, 24.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/24/world/middleeast/24cnd-iraq.html?hp&ex=1164430800&en=c730b65295d60b9f&ei=5094&partner=homepage

This Thanksgiving, Bush Team and Iraq Leaders Face Range of New Realities

November 23, 2006
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, Nov. 22 — Three years ago this week, President Bush made a surprise Thanksgiving Day visit to Baghdad, where he told a group of stunned soldiers that the United States did not wage a bloody war to depose Saddam Hussein “only to retreat before a band of thugs and assassins.”

Mr. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will spend this Thanksgiving at Camp David, in part for a discussion about the meeting recently scheduled for next week between Mr. Bush and Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq, in Amman, Jordan. There, Mr. Bush and Mr. Maliki will have to contend with the thuggery and killing that continues to plague Iraq three years after that hopeful Thanksgiving Day visit.

White House officials said Wednesday that Mr. Bush and Mr. Maliki would discuss a range of issues — from giving the Iraqis more control over security forces to American frustrations with the pace of the disarmament of militias in Iraq to the new political realities facing the president with the newly elected Democratic Congress, many of whose members are calling for some sort of withdrawal from Iraq.

The meeting comes as the administration, fresh off Republican losses and its subsequent announced ouster of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, is considering a significant change in approach to the war in Iraq, which will surpass World War II in duration on Sunday. Officials acknowledge that the change that is in the air in Washington is causing unease for leaders in Iraq.

“It’s an important period we’re in with Iraq and for his government, and there is a lot of speculation going on,” said Dan Bartlett, the White House counselor. “The president will assure the prime minister that he’s the one who sets foreign policy for the country.”

Stephen J. Hadley, the president’s national security adviser, told reporters on Tuesday night that Mr. Bush would also discuss with Mr. Maliki the roles that Iran and Syria could play in helping to stabilize Iraq, rather than to inflame it.

But White House officials appeared to play down expectations for the meeting, with Mr. Hadley telling reporters, “We’re not looking for a big, bold announcement.”

In diplomatic circles, the visit was being taken as an attempt to send a clear signal that Mr. Bush was intensely focused on Iraq after a losing election that has been seen as a referendum on the war. The meeting comes as the Iraq Study Group, being led in part by James A. Baker III, his father’s longtime friend and adviser, is moving toward releasing a blueprint for a new approach to Iraq.

“I think after Nov. 7 they have to demonstrate that they’re seriously looking — turning every stone — for a strategy that will work,” said Ivo H. Daalder, a national security official for President Clinton and now a scholar at the Brookings Institution.

Mr. Daalder said the administration appeared in part to be trying to pre-empt the study group’s widely expected call for direct talks with the Iranians and the Syrians about the security situation in Iraq.

But two administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so that they could speak freely about internal matters, said in private conversations that it would be unlikely that the president would do anything that could be seen as pre-empting Mr. Baker’s report, though they bristled at its expected suggestion of direct talks between the United States and Iran and Syria on Iraq.

Speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, David M. Satterfield, the State Department coordinator for Iraq, said the United States was prepared “in principle” to enter a “direct dialogue” with Iran to speak about Iraq, but that the timing of such talks was undecided. Mr. Satterfield dismissed any similar consideration for Syria.

Officials have been trying to emphasize that there are regional allies other than Syria and Iran that can help stabilize Iraq. In announcing that the president would meet Mr. Maliki in Jordan, Mr. Hadley said, “Jordan has been very helpful and supportive of the unity government in Iraq.” The White House announced Wednesday that Vice President Dick Cheney would travel at the end of the week to Saudi Arabia, another key ally in the region. Mr. Hadley said that at the top of Mr. Bush’s agenda with Mr. Maliki would be the results of a joint commission they impaneled several weeks ago to study ways to transfer more control over security forces to Mr. Maliki’s government.

That is one of several studies under way, including the one being overseen by Mr. Baker — along with the former Democratic congressman Lee H. Hamilton — and reviews under way by the National Security Council and the Pentagon. Those reviews will give Mr. Bush an array of options beyond any that come from Mr. Baker’s group.

Speaking aboard Air Force One on Tuesday night, Mr. Hadley suggested that Mr. Bush would spend the holiday weekend going over reports from the administration reviews still in progress as he considers a new course in Iraq.

“There are many voices the president will want to listen to,” Mr. Hadley said, including those of the new Congress and Mr. Baker’s commission. But, Mr. Hadley said, what is no less important will be the opinion of Mr. Maliki, “who’s obviously been developing his own ideas on the way forward.”

Thom Shanker and Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting.

    This Thanksgiving, Bush Team and Iraq Leaders Face Range of New Realities, NYT, 23.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/23/world/middleeast/23policy.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Perfect Killing Method, but Clear Targets Are Few for Marines in Iraq

November 22, 2006
The New York Times
By C. J. CHIVERS

KARMA, Iraq, Nov. 16 — The sniper team left friendly lines hours ahead of the sun. They were a group of marines walking through the chill, hoping to be in hiding before the mullahs’ predawn call to prayer would urge this city awake.

They reached an abandoned building. Two marines stepped inside, swept the ground floor and signaled to the others to follow them to the flat roof, where they crawled to spots along its walls in which they had previously chiseled out small viewing holes.

Out came their gear: a map, spotting scopes, binoculars, two-way radios and stools. The snipers took their places, peering through the holes, watching an Iraqi neighborhood from which insurgents often fire. They were hoping an insurgent would try to fire on this day. The waiting began.

If the recent pattern was any indication, the waiting could last a long time. This was this sniper team’s 30th mission in Anbar Province since early August. They had yet to fire a shot.

More than three years after the insurgency erupted across much of Iraq, sniping — one of the methods that the military thought would be essential in its counterinsurgency operations — is proving less successful in many areas of Iraq than had been hoped, Marine officers, trainers and snipers say.

In theory, Western snipers are a nearly perfect method of killing Iraq’s insurgents and thwarting their attacks, all with little risk of damaging property or endangering passers-by. But in practice, the snipers say, they are seeing fewer clear targets than previously, and are shooting fewer insurgents than expected.

In 2003, one Marine sniper killed 32 combatants in 12 days, the snipers say, and many others had double-digit kill totals during tours in Iraq. By this summer, sniper platoons with several teams had typically been killing about a dozen insurgents in seven-month tours, with totals per platoon ranging from 3 to as high as 26.

The gap between the expectations and the results has many causes, but is in part a reflection of the insurgency’s duration. With the war in its fourth year, many of the best sniping positions are already well known to the insurgents, and veteran insurgents have become more savvy and harder to kill.

In some areas of Iraq, where the insurgents are less experienced or still fight frontally, snipers have had better rates of success, including the platoon with 26 kills. But many areas, the snipers say, have become maddening places in which to hide and hunt.

“A lot of Marine battalions have rotated through these same areas for six or seven months at a time,” said Staff Sgt. Christopher D. Jones, the platoon sergeant of the Scout Sniper Platoon in the Second Battalion, Eighth Marines. “But the insurgents live here. They know almost all the best places that have been used. Before we even get here, they know where we are going to go.”

Moreover, the insurgents have developed safeguards, using shepherds and children to look for snipers in buildings and heavily overgrown areas, and networks of informants to spread the word when a sniper team has taken up a new position. “These days we’re lucky if we can go 12 hours without getting compromised,” he said.

In the Marine Corps, snipers have long been a culture within the culture, a group of quiet, highly competent infantrymen selected for their field skills, self-discipline and shooting expertise.

Picked from the ranks, they are trained at a 10-week school that develops their skills in hiding, stalking and long-range marksmanship. Each infantry battalion has a platoon of snipers, who typically work in small teams apart from the rifle companies. They are considered elite.

But some snipers now worry that the difficulties they face have been compounded by rules and conditions placed on them by senior military leaders.

Marine snipers have customarily trained to work in two-man teams who hide and stalk for days, seeking targets a half-mile or more away. Often an area might be saturated with snipers, so they can support and protect one another while confusing an enemy force with different angles of fire.

This way, according to their thinking, they can kill more enemy combatants, and sow more fear.

Those two-man teams are not allowed in Iraq, in part because of the killings of two groups of snipers earlier in the war.

In the first episode, in 2004 in Ramadi, four Marine snipers were killed without firing a shot, apparently after being surprised in a shooting position in an urban area, known in sniper jargon as a hide. An investigation suggested that they had been overwhelmed and executed.

In 2005, a six-man sniper team from a Marine reserve unit was killed in Haditha. The insurgents videotaped a display of the slain team’s equipment, including a marine’s dog tags, and circulated the spectacle on the Internet.

The losses have made commanders hesitant to send out small teams, Marine officers said, a decision that many snipers said inhibits their work.

Snipers argue a counterintuitive point, saying that even though two-man teams have less firepower and fewer men, they are safer because they can hide more effectively.

Sgt. Joseph W. Chamblin, the leader of the battalion’s First Sniper Team, said the sniper community was suffering from an overreaction. “It’s sad that they got killed, but when you think about it, we’ve been here three years, going on four, and we’ve only had two teams killed,” he said. “That’s not that dramatic.”

Sergeant Chamblin killed for the first time on Nov. 10, shooting an insurgent who was putting a makeshift bomb beside a bridge near Saqlawiya, near Falluja, a spot where a similar bomb killed three marines and a translator this summer.

He said snipers were willing to assume the risk of traveling in pairs. “It’s a war,” he said. “People are going to die, and the American public needs to get over that. They need to get over that and let us do our job.”

Snipers also say that other force-protection issues are limiting their operations, including requirements to wear helmets and flak jackets, which slow snipers down and make hiding more difficult.

“You go to a 10-week sniper course and never in that course are you in Kevlar and a helmet,” Sergeant Jones said. “Then you come to Iraq and immediately you’re in your flak jacket and helmet, and you’ve got a huge pack of gear.”

Sergeant Chamblin agreed. “We are carrying way more stuff than we can be tactically sound with,” he said. “My arms are numb because my pack is so heavy. Sometimes, on my missions, my pack has weighed more than I have, and I weigh 150 pounds.”

The military has also tightened rules of engagement as the war has progressed, toughening the requirements before a sniper may shoot an Iraqi. Potential targets must be engaged in a hostile act, or show clear hostile intent.

The marines say insurgents know the rules, and now rarely carry weapons in the open. Instead, they pose as civilians and keep their weapons concealed in cars or buildings until just before they need them. Later, when they are done shooting, they put them swiftly out of sight and mingle with civilians.

With almost no Iraqi police officers available in Anbar Province to check loiterers and suspicious cars, the snipers said, the insurgents have moved freely, making it difficult to tell from afar which people are dangerous, even when they have been violating the law.

Although the teams are frustrated, Lt. Col. Kenneth M. DeTreux, the battalion’s commander, said they still influenced the insurgents, who tend to avoid areas that are watched. The presence of snipers can keep a road free of bombs, he said.

“Our scout sniper teams have a deterrent effect,” he said. “That’s not wishful thinking. The insurgents fear our snipers.”

Still, the snipers want to thin the insurgents’ ranks, not just deter them. Some of their difficulties were evident on the roof on a recent day, when the battalion’s Fourth Sniper Team sat, watching through holes in the wall.

Karma is a scene of frequent violence, and below them was a favored insurgent area. Once during the day they thought they had been spotted, and three marines swept the building below to make sure they were safe. They were.

They returned to peering through the holes. Other holes could be seen in buildings nearby — previous sniper positions, and a sign that insurgents probably knew the area is often watched.

“I’ve got a shady-looking guy,” Lance Cpl. Nathan D. Leach, the assistant team leader, said as he observed a suspicious man. “He’s got his hand behind him. Looks like he’s got something under his shirt.”

Lance Cpl. Keeghan O’Brien, the radio operator, interjected, “You see where that guy went?”

Cpl. Jason A. Dufault, the team leader, responded, “No, he walked behind a building and disappeared.” A few hours later, several shots were heard from the neighborhood, and rifle-launched grenades sailed through the air. They landed behind the snipers, near a platoon-sized Marine position, exploding with a series of thunderous cracks.

The snipers peered around, seeking a shot. Another sniper team was also in the area, watching over the Marine position, too. No one saw a thing.

The insurgents were within a few hundred yards, but had found a seam. Several hours later, in the blackness again, the team picked up and moved, still waiting for a target after more than three months in Iraq.

    Perfect Killing Method, but Clear Targets Are Few for Marines in Iraq, NYT, 22.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/22/world/middleeast/22sniper.html

U.N. says 3,709 Iraqi civilians killed in October, a new monthly high

Updated 11/22/2006 1:25 PM ET
AP
USA Today

GENEVA (AP) — The United Nations on Wednesday reported 3,709 Iraqi civilians were killed in October, the highest monthly toll of the 44-month-old war, as gunmen and bombers behind the plague of revenge-driven sectarian bloodshed increasingly targeted top politicians and professionals.

Assassins murdered a bodyguard of Iraq's parliament speaker on Wednesday, one day after a bomb exploded in the hot-tempered politician's motorcade as it drove into a parking lot in the fortified Green Zone, a major security breach in the heavily guarded central Baghdad compound that houses the U.S. and British embassies and the Iraqi government.

Security considerations also could have dictated U.S. President George W. Bush's decision to meet Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Amman, Jordan, next week rather than in Baghdad.

White House staff traveling with Bush as he returned from an Asian trip said the meetings would take place next Wednesday and Thursday and would focus "on current developments in Iraq, progress made to date in the deliberations of a high-level joint committee on transferring security responsibilities, and the role of the region in supporting Iraq."

Their meeting comes as various groups contemplate the direction of the U.S.-led war. A Pentagon committee and the congressionally chartered Iraq Study Group have been preparing reports for Bush, and Iran has asked the presidents of Iraq and Syria to meet President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran this weekend.

The speaker of Iran's parliament, Gholam Ali Haddad Adel, told the official Islamic Republic News Agency on Wednesday that the summit was designed to bring Iran, Syria and Iraq closer together. "We hope the summit will boost relations between the three countries," he said.

But Iranian analyst Ahmad Bakhshayesh said the government had more specific aims.

"Iran wants to increase its influence in Iraq," said Bakhshayesh, a professor of political science at Allameh University in Tehran, said. "It also wants to support the government in Iraq so it can stand on its own feet after the United States has withdrawn its forces."

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, Syrian leader Bashar Assad and Ahmadinejad were expected to gather in the Iranian capital on Saturday. Both Iran and Syria are deeply involved in supporting various factions involved in the killing in Iraq.

The U.N. death figure for October was more than three times the 1,216 tabulated by The Associated Press and nearly 850 more than the 2,867 U.S. service members who have died during all of the war.

The U.N. report said Iraq's heavily armed and increasingly brutal Shiite militias were gaining strength and influence and that torture was rampant, despite the Iraqi government's vow to address human rights abuses.

"Hundreds of bodies continued to appear in different areas of Baghdad — handcuffed, blindfolded and bearing signs of torture and execution-style killing," the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq report said. "Many witnesses reported that perpetrators wear militia attire and even police or army uniforms."

The two primary militias in Iraq are the military wings of the country's strongest Shiite political groups on which al-Maliki is heavily dependent. He has repeatedly shunned U.S. demands that he disband the heavily armed groups, especially the Mahdi Army of radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

The U.N. said its death figures were based on reports from the Iraqi Health Ministry, the country's hospitals and the Medico-Legal Institute in Baghdad. The previous monthly high was 3,590 for July.

"I think the type of violence is different in the past few months," Gianni Magazzeni, the UNAMI chief in Baghdad, told a news conference. "There was a great increase in sectarian violence in activities by terrorists and insurgents, but also by militias and criminal gangs."

He said "this phenomenon" has been typical since Sunni-Arab insurgents bombed a major Shiite shrine on Feb. 22 in Samarra, north of Baghdad.

UNAMI's Human Rights Office continued to receive reports that Iraqi police and security forces are either infiltrated or act in collusion with militias, the report said.

It said that while sectarian violence is the main cause of the civilian killings, Iraqis also continue to be the victims of terrorist acts, roadside bombs, drive-by shootings, cross fire between rival gangs.

Access to the U.N. news conference in the Green Zone was blocked for many because the main entrance was closed as U.S. forces checked for a bomb in the area, a U.S. military official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh called the U.N. report "inaccurate and exaggerated" because "it is not based on official government reports."

But when asked by AP in a telephone interview if there was such a government report, al-Dabbagh said one "was not available yet but it would be published later."

The bomb attack on the motorcade of Mashhadani, a hard-line Sunni Arab nationalist reviled by many Shiites, was the fourth attempt on the life of a high-ranking Iraqi government official in recent days.

Last summer, Shiite and Kurdish parties organized an unsuccessful bid to oust al-Mashhadani as parliament speaker after his comments about the insurgency and regional self-rule angered and embarrassed key political groups. He called the U.S. occupation of Iraq "the work of butchers."

On Nov. 1, al-Mashhadani had to be physically restrained from attacking a Sunni lawmaker. The speaker had been holding a nationally televised news conference when he lashed out at the legislator, Abdel-Karim al-Samarie, for alleged corruption and failure to attend sessions, calling him a "dog" — a deep insult in Iraq and other Arab societies.

Gunmen killed yet another journalist Wednesday, spraying Raad Jaafar Hamadi with bullets as he drove his car in the capital's Washash neighborhood, said police 1st Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razaq. Hamadi worked for the state-run al-Sabah newspaper.

At least 92 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led war began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count based on statistics kept by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

Also, 36 other media employees, including drivers, interpreters and guards, have been killed — all of them Iraqi except for one Lebanese.

The U.S. military reported the deaths of two U.S. soldiers, one killed by a roadside bomb and the other from a non-specified non-combat cause in Salahuddin Province, both on Tuesday. So far this month, 49 American service members have been killed or died.

At least 23 Iraqis were reported killed in violence, one of the lowest death tolls in weeks.

    U.N. says 3,709 Iraqi civilians killed in October, a new monthly high, UT, 22.11.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2006-11-22-iraqis-toll_x.htm

U.N. Reports Deadliest Month in Iraq

November 22, 2006
The New York Times
By SABRINA TAVERNISE

BAGHDAD, Nov. 22 — More Iraqi civilians were killed in October than in any month since the American invasion in 2003, a report released by the United Nations today said, a rise that underscored the growing cost of Iraq’s deepening civil war.

According to the report, 3,709 Iraqis were killed in October, up slightly from the previous all-time high in July, and an increase of about 11 percent from the number in September.

The figures, which include totals from the Baghdad morgue as well as hospitals and morgues across the country, have become a central barometer of the war here and a gauge of the progress of the American military as it tries to bring stability to this exhausted country.

A dangerous trend surfaced: Sixty-five percent of all killings in Baghdad were executions, the signature technique of militias, who kidnap, kill and throw away corpses at a rate that now outstrips the slaughter inflicted by suicide bombers.

“We have a situation in which impunity prevails,” said Gianni Magazzeni, head of the United Nations’ Human Rights Office in Baghdad, which compiled the report. “It’s critically important for the government to ensure that justice is done.”

The figures illustrate in stark percentages just how deeply the killing has sunk into Iraqi society. They had been a point of contention for the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, which suppressed them in September after criticizing them as inflated.

But the United Nations stands by the count, which tallies unclaimed bodies from Iraq’s six morgues and death certificates — required for burial and for inheritance procedures. If anything, the numbers appear to be lower than the actual figure. Figures from hospitals come from the Ministry of Health, which counts deaths only on the day of the attack. Victims who die a day later are not counted.

Deaths declined slightly in the capital, down 2 percent in September and October, from the total for July and August. The killing picked up in other areas, like in Diyalo, a mixed province north of Baghdad, and in Balad, a town where sectarian killings surged briefly in October.

After Baghdad, the highest death tolls were registered in the provinces of Salahuddin and Diyalo, the city of Mosul, and in a very distant fifth place, the city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq.

The cycle of violence here is one that American military commanders have made substantial efforts to try to break. Most recently, they conducted a broad series of sweeps in the capital this summer. But their task has become far more complicated since February, when Shiites began to fight back against attacks by Sunni Arab militants. Now the monthly totals of the dead in Baghdad are running about double what they were in 2005.

Nearly three-quarters of all the nation’s deaths in October occurred in Baghdad, home to a quarter of the country’s population and its political and economic heart.

That statistic crashed into the life of Sabah, a 41-year-old Shiite, who was returning from lunch with her Sunni Arab husband in northeastern Baghdad in late August, when men in plain clothes standing near a police car approached them at a traffic light. They asked to look at the couple’s national identification cards. Sabah’s husband, Issam al-Shekhli, has a last name that is obviously Sunni, and the men grabbed them both in front of a crowd.

“They put me in the trunk, in front of all the people,” said Sabah, her face intense yet distant, experiencing the pain of the memory. “That scene, I cannot forget it.”

    U.N. Reports Deadliest Month in Iraq, NYT, 22.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/22/world/middleeast/23iraqcnd.html?hp&ex=1164258000&en=47d1664586a9e6e6&ei=5094&partner=homepage

McCain Says More Troops Needed in Iraq

November 19, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:16 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sen. John McCain, a front-runner among GOP presidential contenders for 2008, said Sunday the U.S. must send an overwhelming number of troops to stabilize Iraq or face the possibility of more attacks in the region and on American soil.

''I believe the consequences of failure are catastrophic. It will spread to the region. You will see Iran more emboldened. Eventually, you could see Iran pose a greater threat to the state of Israel,'' said McCain, R-Ariz.

''We left Vietnam. It was over. We just had to heal the wounds of war,'' said McCain, who spent 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of war after his Navy plane was shot down in 1967. ''We leave this place, chaos in the region, and they'll follow us home. So there's a great deal more at stake here in this conflict, in my view, a lot more.

McCain said he based his judgment partly on the writings of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida leader in Iraq who was killed in a U.S. air raid, and of Osama bin Laden.

''The consequences of failure are so severe that I will exhaust every possibility to try to fix this situation. Because it's not the end when American troops leave. The battleground shifts, and we'll be fighting them again,'' McCain said. ''You read Zarqawi, and you read bin Laden. ... It's not just Iraq that they're interested in. It's the region, and then us.''

With about 141,000 U.S. troops in Iraq more than 3 1/2 years into the war, the American military has strained to provide enough forces while allowing for adequate rest and retraining between deployments.

Democrats poised to take control of the House and Senate are pressing for a substantial reduction of U.S. troops in Iraq and a timetable for their withdrawal.

''As a practical matter, there are no troops to increase with,'' said incoming House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md. ''Our objective was to remove Saddam Hussein and create an environment in which a democracy could be established. That has been done.''

But Hoyer said Democrats would continue funding the existing troop levels.

''That's not an option, of not supporting our troops in the field and making sure they're as safe as we can make them,'' he said. ''Very frankly, their lack of numbers exposes them on a daily basis to danger and death, unfortunately. But clearly, we're going to have discussions going forward as to how we change this policy and change it in the short term, not the long term.

Gen. John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander for the Middle East, told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week that believes troop levels should remain steady for now. He said it was possible to add 20,000 troops for a short time, but it would be unrealistic to raise troop levels as proposed by McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

Abizaid said the American military in Iraq is stretched too thin already, and sending over a bigger, more permanent presence would undercut efforts to force Iraqis to take on more responsibility.

McCain disagreed, saying it was time to use decisive force with a clear exit strategy.

''You've got to ask yourself some questions. One, are we winning? And I think the answer is no. The other is, what are the consequences of defeat?'' McCain said. ''Can we still win? Yes, I believe we can. It'll be tough, but we need to do it.''

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said he thinks U.S. general have been put ''in a a very, very difficult position.''

''What I don't have confidence in is the policy. And General Abizaid is giving us a diagnosis that is based on the current policy. But that policy has to change, and it can change.''

Kerry spoke on ''Fox News Sunday,'' while McCain and Hoyer appeared on ABC's ''This Week.''

    McCain Says More Troops Needed in Iraq, NYT, 19.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Iraq.html

Bomb Kills 22 in Attack on Day Laborers, Police Say

November 19, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:15 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A suicide bomber in a minivan lured day laborers to his vehicle with promises of a job Sunday morning then blew it up, killing 22 people and wounding 44 in the mainly Shiite southern city of Hillah, police said.

Attacks by suspected insurgents in other areas of Iraq killed 30 people and wounded 58, raising the country's death toll to 52 by midday Sunday.

In the capital, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem was expected to arrive Sunday, officials said, making him the highest ranking Syrian official to visit since U.S.-led forces ousted Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Syria and Iraq broke diplomatic relations in 1982, although trade ties have been restored.

The Bush administration is under growing pressure to ask adversaries such as Iran and Syria for help in trying to avoid the collapse of an increasingly violent Iraq.

Negotiating with the two countries would entail a major policy shift for President Bush, whose reluctance to talk to them -- and U.S. adversaries in general -- has come under increasing criticism.

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who advised Bush on the Iraq war, said military victory is no longer possible and joined calls for the U.S. government to seek help from Iraq's regional neighbors-- including Iran.

''If you mean, by 'military victory,' an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible,'' he said on the BBC's Sunday AM program.

In bombing in Hillah, a mostly Shiite town 60 miles south of Baghdad, the minivan approached the men and exploded as they gathered around it, said police Capt. Muthanna Khalid Ali.

Unemployment is high across Iraq, and men often struggle to feed their families by working jobs such as the construction work the Hillah residents were seeking. Sunday is a working day in mostly Muslim Iraq.

''The sudden explosion shook the whole area and shattered the windows of a store I was standing outside of nearby,'' said Muhsin Hadi Alwan, 33, one of the wounded day laborers. ''The ground was covered with the remains of people and blood, and survivors ran in all directions.''

''How will I feed the six members of my family when I return home without work and without money?'' Alwan said.

Another survivor, Mohammed Abbas Kadhim, 30, said: ''I was thrown a few meters (yards) by the blast and I couldn't see or hear for a few minutes as I was lying on the ground. People were racing everywhere looking for their missing sons, brothers, friends -- all of them shouting `God is great.'''

Crying and screaming Shiite women searched the scene for their sons. Some blamed Sunni Arab insurgents for the attack. Others said Hillah's police do not provide poor people such as day laborers with adequate security.

Firefighters wearing yellow rubber boots raced to the site to put out the burning vehicle. Some stepped over mud mixed with blood and large chunks of crumpled concrete as they moved toward the remains of the van, which was reduced to a blackened hulk of twisted metal.

The blast shattered windows and ripped holes in concrete stalls and storefronts nearby. Some business owners were using brooms to sweep away debris from the blast. Others stood nearby, surveying the damage as if in a daze.

Soldiers also gathered at the site, in part to guard the heavily damaged shops and stalls from scavengers. Some of the stalls were serving traditional breakfasts of boiled eggs and tea to the laborers when the explosion occurred.

Ambulances carrying the dead and wounded raced to nearby Hillah Hospital, which has its own morgue. As medics carried stretchers into the building, local residents lined up outside offering to donate blood.

Dr. Mohammed Dhiya, the hospital's manager, said all the city's doctors had been called to work and that operations were under way on severely wounded victims. As a large crowd of residents gathered at the hospital, he urged them to remain outside unless they were donating blood.

Hillah has been the site of many deadly bomb attacks.

In August, an explosives-rigged bicycle blew up near an army recruiting center in the city, killing at least 12 people. The attacker, who was posing as an army applicant, left the bike at the center as volunteers gathered outside.

In May, a car packed with explosives blew up at a dealership in Hillah, killing at least 12 people and wounding 32.

One of the worst bomb attacks in Iraq during the war also occurred in Hillah, when a suicide car bomber killed 125 national guard and police recruits in February 2005.

Elsewhere in Iraq, 24 civilians, five policemen and a soldier were killed and 58 Iraqis were wounded in a series of attacks by suspected insurgents in the cities of Baghdad, Mosul and Baqouba, police said.

U.S. and Iraqi forces also killed 12 insurgents, detained 11, and freed eight Iraqi hostages while conducting raids in Baqouba and two villages near Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, police said.

In Sunday's worst attack outside Hillah, a roadside bomb and two car bombs exploded one after another near a bus station in Mashtal, a mostly Shiite area of southeastern Baghdad, killing 11 civilians and wounding 51, police said.

''Innocent people were killed. Where is the government?'' one Iraqi woman shouted in response to the bombing. ''Women and children were killed. God is great, God is great.''

    Bomb Kills 22 in Attack on Day Laborers, Police Say, NYT, 19.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq.html?hp&ex=1163998800&en=b64bc966fd3ecf64&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Kissinger: Military victory no longer possible in Iraq

Posted 11/19/2006 7:07 AM ET
AP
USA Today

LONDON (AP) — Military victory is no longer possible in Iraq, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in a television interview broadcast Sunday.
In a wide ranging interview on British Broadcasting Corp. television, Kissinger presented a bleak vision of Iraq, saying the U.S. government must enter into dialogue with Iraq's regional neighbors — including Iran — if any progress is to be made in the region.

"If you mean by 'military victory' an Iraqi Government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible," he said on the BBC's Sunday AM breakfast show.

But Kissinger warned against a rapid withdrawal of troops, saying it could lead to "disastrous consequences," destabilizing Iraq's neighbors and causing a long-lasting conflict.

"If you withdraw all the forces without any international understanding and without any even partial solution of some of the problems, civil war in Iraq will take on even more violent forms and achieve dimensions that are probably exceeding those that brought us into Yugoslavia with military force," he said.

Iraq's neighbors, especially those with large Shia populations, would be destabilized should their be a quick withdrawal from Iraq, Kissinger said.

"So I think a dramatic collapse of Iraq — whatever we think about how the situation was created — would have disastrous consequences for which we would pay for many years and which would bring us back, one way or another, into the region," he said.

Kissinger, whose views have been sought by the Iraqi Study Group, led by former Secretary of State James Baker III, called for an international conference bringing together the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, Iraq's neighbors and regional powers like India and Pakistan to work out a way forward for the region.

He also said that the process would have to include Iran and that the U.S. must enter into dialogue with the country.

Asked if it was time for President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to change course, he responded: "I think we have to redefine the course, but I don't think that the alternative is between military victory, as defined previously, or total withdrawal.

    Kissinger: Military victory no longer possible in Iraq, UT, 19.11.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2006-11-19-kissinger-britain_x.htm

Iraqi Sheiks Assail Cleric for Backing Qaeda

November 19, 2006
The New York Times
By EDWARD WONG and KHALID AL-ANSARY

BAGHDAD Nov. 18 — Sunni Arab sheiks from volatile Anbar Province denounced a powerful Sunni cleric on Saturday, calling him “a thug” for supporting the terrorist group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and urging the Iraqi government to issue an arrest warrant against him.

The sheiks, the founders of a group called the Anbar Salvation Council, which they formed in September to resist foreign militants in Iraq, were reacting to statements that the cleric, Harith al-Dhari, had made in interviews last week in which he criticized Sunni tribal leaders who had recently decided to take a stand against Al Qaeda.

Anbar, a vast western desert province with Ramadi as its capital, is the heartland of the Sunni Arab insurgency, with various militant groups working to topple the Shiite-led government and end the American presence in Iraq. But as the fundamentalist members of Al Qaeda have tried imposing Taliban-like rule on areas of Anbar, some Iraqi tribes have turned against the group, leading to a further fracturing of what at least initially seemed to be a united resistance to the American invasion.

Mr. Dhari leads the Muslim Scholars Association, a group of conservative clerics that is outspoken in its criticism of the American occupation and the Iraqi government. In the interviews last week, he accused the Anbar council of trying to cozy up to the Iraqi government in return for money.

“We, on behalf of the Anbar tribes council, say to Harith al-Dhari: If there is a thug, it is you; if there is a killer and a kidnapper, it is you,” said Sheik Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, leader of the Rishawi tribe.

Sheik Rishawi spoke at a news conference at the Mansour Hotel in Baghdad.

Mr. Dhari’s statements have touched off outrage in the highest ranks of the Iraqi government. President Jalal Talabani said last Tuesday that Mr. Dhari was stirring up sectarian strife and that he was trying to enlist the aid of Sunni-led countries in the region to foment violence here. Mr. Dhari is in Amman, Jordan, and has been traveling widely across the Middle East.

On Thursday, Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani announced on television that he had issued an arrest warrant against Mr. Dhari. The next day, after some Sunni leaders expressed anger at that move, a spokesman for the office of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said that no warrant had been issued and that officials had just been investigating Mr. Dhari.

[In Baghdad on Saturday, gunmen killed a prominent Shiite politician, Reuters reported. Ali al-Adhadh of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or Sciri, was shot dead with his wife as he drove in mainly Sunni western Baghdad, said the police and a Sciri member, Adnan al-Obeidi. Mr. Adhadh had been preparing to become the Iraqi representative to the United Nations in Geneva, where he had long been the representative of Sciri.]

The American military said Saturday that Iraqi security forces and American trainers conducted a morning raid in the Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City, in eastern Baghdad, to look for people kidnapped earlier in the week. The abductees being sought were presumably among dozens of victims snatched from the headquarters of the Ministry of Higher Education last week by militiamen dressed in police commando uniforms.

In the south, British and Iraqi forces continued to search for four American security guards and their Austrian colleague who were kidnapped Thursday from a supply convoy by men in Iraqi police uniforms.

The Associated Press reported that Iraqi and American forces fought Sunni insurgents in an hours-long street battle on Saturday in Baquba. The city police said at least 18 people had been killed and 19 wounded. The Iraqi police and morgue officials said at least 53 people had died on Saturday in violence across Iraq.

    Iraqi Sheiks Assail Cleric for Backing Qaeda, NYT, 19.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/world/middleeast/19iraq.html

A Captain’s Journey From Hope to Just Getting Her Unit Home

November 19, 2006
The New York Times
By KIRK SEMPLE

BAGHDAD, Nov. 18 — Capt. Stephanie A. Bagley and the military police company she commands arrived in Iraq in December 2005 brimming with optimism about taking on one of the most urgent tasks in Iraq: building a new police force.

Now, as the 21st Military Police Company approaches the end of a deployment marked by small victories and enormous disappointments, Captain Bagley is focused on a more modest goal.

“I just want to get everyone home,” she said. In the past several weeks, Captain Bagley, 30, barred her troops from foot patrols in the most violent neighborhoods and eliminated all nonessential travel. “I’m just not willing to lose another soldier,” she said.

The local police force in her region, as in much of Iraq, remains undertrained, poorly equipped and unable to stand up to the rigors of this conflict. It offers little resistance to the relentless Sunni Arab-led insurgency and has at least partly come under the sway of wily Shiite militias. Casualties are high, morale is low and many police officers do not show up for work.

Captain Bagley, a West Point graduate and the daughter and granddaughter of military policemen, said she has come to realize just how little she and her unit knew when they arrived, and just how much was stacked against their success.

The company’s challenges crystallized in a moment late last month during a routine assignment. Some of her soldiers had gone to the Baya Local Police Station, one of 18 local stations in the troubled southern outskirts of Baghdad where her unit has worked this year. They were picking up a contingent of Iraqi policemen for a daily patrol of Dora, an especially violent neighborhood here in the capital.

On these patrols, the Americans, swaddled in Kevlar from head to hips, travel in Humvees and other armored vehicles. The Iraqis, wearing only bulletproof vests, ride in soft-skinned pickup trucks and S.U.V.’s, the only vehicles they have.

The Iraqi policemen begged the Americans not to make them go out. They peeled off their clothes to reveal shrapnel scars from past attacks. They tugged the armored plates from their Kevlar vests and told the Americans they were faulty. They said they had no fuel for their vehicles. They disappeared on indefinite errands elsewhere in the compound. They said they would not patrol if it meant passing a trash pile, a common hiding place for bombs.

The Iraqis eventually gave up and climbed into two S.U.V.’s with shattered windshields and missing side windows, and the joint patrol moved out. One Iraqi officer draped his Kevlar vest from the window of his car door for lateral protection. During a lunch break, the officers tried to sneak away in their cars.

Later in the day, back at her command center on a military base in southern Baghdad, Captain Bagley said the pleading and excuses were common. But she did not blame the Iraqis. They are soft targets for the insurgency, and scores of officers have been wounded or killed in her area during the past year. The police stations’ motor pools are so crowded with ravaged vehicles that they could be taken for salvage yards.

“I’d never want to go out in an Iraqi police truck,” the captain said. “But we still have to convince them. We’ve been given a job to train them.” But she also points out that her orders were to help train and equip a local force to deal with common crime, like theft and murder, not teach infantry skills to wage a counterinsurgency campaign.

Captain Bagley has spent most of her days this year shuttling from station to station, checking on her soldiers and meeting with the Iraqi commanders to discuss their problems over potent, sugary tea. Fresh-faced and fit, her long hair knotted under her helmet and a pistol strapped to her thigh, she has moved through this loud and overwhelmingly male world with a calm, understated authority that the Iraqi commanders have come to depend on.

The government’s sclerotic supply chain — clogged by bureaucracy, corruption and lack of money — has failed to provide the stations with the necessary tools of policing, from office supplies to weapons, uniforms and police cruisers. “Even something as simple as a pen, they have to get it for us,” said Maj. Muhammad Hassan Aboud, the commander of the Belat Al Shuwayda station in southern Baghdad, pointing to Captain Bagley. “If we lose them, we’re pretty much going nowhere.”

The captain said, “We’re holding their hands so much now.” If the Americans were not involved, she said, some senior commanders would not have the fortitude to confront the militias. “A lot of times I’m just the motivator,” she said. “I’m motivated because I’m going home soon. But what motivates them?”

Days earlier, she recalled, a death squad had killed the family of another of her station commanders. “Yet,” she continued, a tinge of exasperation in her voice, “you’re given the mission to motivate these guys to protect Iraqi citizens.”

At the beginning of her deployment, she hoped that by the end of the year the police would be able to respond to calls from any neighborhood without American help. But after the bombing of an important Shiite shrine in February incited a surge in sectarian violence, she decided that goal was unrealistic.

She decided to focus on developing the top officers, particularly the station commanders. “We realized that if we didn’t have a strong leader, the station won’t work,” she said.

But the Interior Ministry, which oversees the police force, has frequently changed commanders, often citing reasons of incompetence or death threats, sometimes offering no explanation at all. The Rashid station has had eight chiefs since it opened in late April. Absentee rates there have soared as high as 75 percent, though the rate had dropped to 25 percent by late last month, in large part because the latest chief was docking the pay of absent officers.

Over the course of the year, as sectarianism spread in the police force, Captain Bagley saw Shiite policemen balk at orders from Sunni shift commanders and Shiite station chiefs clash with their Sunni deputies.

She has also had to confront the creep of militia influence, as militia loyalists within the force used their leverage to avoid punishment or intimidate senior leadership. She intervened after a deputy station commander told her that his commander was being pressured by the militia of the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr to free several captured militiamen. The men remained in jail.

The job of inspiring her Iraqi and American charges alike has become increasingly difficult as the violence has escalated in Baghdad in recent months.

As part of the American military’s push to wrest control of the capital’s streets from insurgents and militias, she was ordered to move some of her soldiers out of the police stations and into the streets of Dora to conduct daily patrols. Following an effort by American and Iraqi troops to seal off and clear that neighborhood, violence there has risen sharply, and attacks on her joint patrols have become frequent.

On Oct. 2, her soldiers were accompanying Iraqi police officers on a patrol through the Dora marketplace when a sniper shot and killed Sgt. Joseph Walter Perry, a 23-year-old turret gunner from San Diego. He was one of at least eight American soldiers killed in Iraq that day. Numerous soldiers from Captain Bagley’s company had been wounded over the year; in April, a bomb destroyed a Humvee and tore off the driver’s left leg. But Sergeant Perry’s death was the company’s first here and it devastated Captain Bagley.

“People from other units will say, ‘You’ve only lost one?’ ” she said, her face tensing in indignation. “Only? We haven’t had it so bad as others, but I can’t minimize Perry’s death.” She paused. “I’m the one who sends them into the market.”

After the death, Captain Bagley started counting the days to the end of the tour and her company’s return to Fort Bragg in North Carolina. She found herself lying awake at night, thinking about how to keep her company alive amid a worsening war. She started micromanaging her soldiers’ movements. She tried to relax in the evenings by hanging out with her lieutenants or reading paperbacks that she describes as “trashy.” But the relief was always fleeting. “I’m in no-sleep mode,” she said.

As the death toll among American troops has risen in Baghdad, and the security plan has faltered, Captain Bagley’s soldiers say they have tried to resist the urge to question the larger American enterprise here, whether it was right or wrong to come to Iraq in the first place, whether and when American troops should leave. They are here to do a job, they say, and are duty-bound to complete it.

But Captain Bagley has asked herself those questions “all the time,” she said. She ponders whether it has all been worth her soldier’s leg or her soldier’s life. She wonders what the American command will do to turn things around.

Loyalty to the armed services is in her blood. Her father served in Vietnam, her grandfather in World War II. She grew up on military bases in the United States and Germany. Her sister is an Army nurse. She has served three other deployments since 1999, and, partly as a result, has two divorces behind her.

Her phone calls with her father sometimes touch on the faltering course of the war. “He asks, ‘Why the heck doesn’t it calm down?’ ” she said. She is at a loss to explain why.

Her discouragement is plain, but she keeps her deepest thoughts private, in part because she wants to protect her soldiers from doubt at this most critical time in their lives. She knows that their job is difficult enough without the suggestion that their sacrifices may have been in vain. “You can’t pass it along to your soldiers,” she said. “You can’t question it. It would lead to the destruction of the company. You got to keep it together.”

The company has done everything it could to help rebuild Iraq, she said, but now they want to go home. “It’s been a very frustrating year,” she said. “We all want to get out of here.”

    A Captain’s Journey From Hope to Just Getting Her Unit Home, NYT, 19.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/world/middleeast/19captain.html

Army Unit to Serve Third Tour in Iraq

November 18, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:50 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Army's 3rd Infantry Division, which helped lead the charge to Baghdad at the outset of the war, will return next year and become the first Army division to serve three tours in Iraq.

More than 3 1/2 years into the war, the Army and Marine Corps are straining to keep a steady flow of combat and support forces to Iraq while giving the troops sufficient time between deployments for rest and retraining.

Both services are far short of their goal of providing two years between deployments; the 3rd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry, for example, will have spent barely more than 12 months at home when it returns next year. The same is true for the division's 1st Brigade, which officials have said is scheduled to deploy again in January.

The 3rd Infantry, based at Fort Stewart, Ga., is among several units -- totaling 57,000 troops -- identified by the Pentagon on Friday for deployment in a fresh rotation of forces starting in January. The announcement does not presume any change in troop levels, nor is any major change expected for at least several months.

The announcement comes as some congressional Democrats, who are poised to take control of the House and Senate, continue to press for a substantial reduction of U.S. troops in Iraq, and a timetable for that drawdown.

There are about 141,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. Gen. John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander for the Middle East, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday that he believes troop levels ought to remain fairly steady for the time being, although he said all options are being considered, including a force increase.

Abizaid told the committee that the Army and Marine Corps are not big enough to sustain a substantial increase in Iraq, although he said adding 20,000 troops for a short period was possible.

The Army has managed to keep up its pace of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan in part by tapping brigades that have been newly created as part of a top-to-bottom reorganization of Army divisions. The 4th Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division, for example, is on the list of units scheduled to deploy to Iraq early next year. That brigade, based at Fort Riley, Kan., was created in recent months and is now at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., for an intensive round of final preparations for the Iraq deployment.

Also selected for the next troop rotation is the 173rd Airborne Brigade, based at Vicenza, Italy. Its paratroopers jumped into Iraq at the beginning of the war to open a northern front, and just last February and March the unit's two airborne infantry battalions returned from a full year of combat in Afghanistan.

The newly formed 4th Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division, from Fort Lewis, Wash., also is part of the next rotation, the Pentagon said, as is the 1st Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division, from Fort Bragg, N.C.

Combined, the Pentagon announced a combat force totaling 20,000 soldiers, including the 3rd Infantry Division headquarters. In addition, spokesman Bryan Whitman said a support force of 37,000 troops -- of whom 27,000 are active duty and 10,000 are National Guard and Reserve -- will also deploy in 2007.

They will replace a portion of the current force in Iraq. Additional replacements will be announced next year, Whitman said.

Also, about 1,500 soldiers from the South Carolina Army National Guard's 218th Brigade Combat Team have been told they will deploy to Afghanistan early next year to help train the Afghan army, Whitman said.

The Pentagon also announced Friday that a soldier killed in Baghdad on Tuesday was an Army colonel -- the first of that rank to be killed since the war began in March 2003. He was identified as Thomas H. Felts, Sr., of Sandston, Va. William W. Wood, 44, who was killed in Iraq in October 2005, had been approved for promotion to colonel, but at the time of his death he was a lieutenant colonel.

Felts, 45, was assigned to the Command and General Staff College at the School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and was in Baghdad as leader of a team advising the Iraqi army. He died of injuries suffered from a roadside bomb, along with Army Spc. Justin R. Garcia, 26, of Elmhurst, N.Y.

Relatively few U.S. military advisers have been killed in Iraq, although they may face greater dangers if the Pentagon follows through on a plan to expand the number of advisers working alongside Iraqi soldiers and police.

A Marine commander said Friday that he has already begun expanding adviser teams in his area of Iraq's western Anbar province.

Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon by videoconference from his headquarters in Fallujah, Col. Lawrence D. Nicholson said the teams have been doubled in size and he has proposed doubling them yet again.

''We think that is clearly the way ahead,'' he said, adding that the Iraqis have proven themselves to be good ''mimics,'' emulating the tactics and procedures used by the Americans to be more effective against insurgents.

-------

Associated Press Writer Lolita Baldor contributed to this report.

    Army Unit to Serve Third Tour in Iraq, NYT, 18.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Iraq.html

Military Analysis

A Shifting Enemy: U.S. Generals Say Civil War, Not Insurgency, Is Greatest Threat

November 18, 2006
The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 — In the fall of 2005, the generals running the Iraq war told the Senate Armed Services Committee that a gradual withdrawal of American troops from Iraq was imperative.

The American troop presence, Gen. John P. Abizaid and Gen. George W. Casey Jr. said at the time, was stoking the insurgency, fostering dependency among the Iraqi security forces and proving counterproductive for what General Abizaid has called “The Long War” against Islamic radicalism.

This week, General Abizaid, chief of the United States Central Command, told the same committee that American forces may be all that is preventing full-scale civil war in Iraq, so a phased troop withdrawal would be a mistake. What has changed, military experts and intelligence officials say, is that the insurgency of Baathists and foreign jihadists is no longer the greatest enemy the United States faces in Iraq. The biggest danger now, they say, is that violence between Shiites and Sunnis could destroy Iraq’s government and spill across the Middle East.

General Abizaid and other American commanders may continue to worry about the long-term consequences of keeping an American occupation force of more than 100,000 troops in an Arab country indefinitely.

But in his testimony to Congress on Wednesday, General Abizaid made it clear that he thought he had no option but to focus on the most immediate threat, the sectarian violence threatening to split Iraq apart.

The Pentagon, which long ago discarded the idea that it would be American troops that would defeat the Iraqi insurgency, has made the training of Iraqi security forces its primary mission in Iraq. But Iraqi forces are still far from capable of quashing sectarian violence, and that is the principal reason that American commanders say they believe that a substantial American troop presence is still needed.

On Wednesday, General Abizaid announced a plan to bulk up the number of trainers embedded with Iraqi troops, but few military experts believe that the capacity of Iraqi troops is likely to improve so much that a significant American troop reduction would be prudent in the short run.

“While it would make a great deal of sense to progressively turn things over to the Iraqis and reduce our presence, it is no more practical in the fall of 2006 than it was in the fall of 2005, and that’s the worrisome part,” said Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., a counterinsurgency expert and the executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Last fall, General Casey told the Senate that it was essential to cut the American presence in Iraq as a way of pushing more Iraqi troops onto the frontlines and reducing “dependency.” As late as this summer, he had been drawing up plans for a troop drawdown that would drastically cut the American presence in Iraq by the end of next year.

But these days, troop levels in Iraq are going up, rather than down.

A unit of about 2,200 marines that had been aboard naval warships in the Persian Gulf has begun moving into Anbar Province, the restive Sunni stronghold west of Baghdad. Some in the Pentagon have worried that Anbar Province — which includes the violent cities of Falluja and Ramadi — is particularly vulnerable with the American military currently focused on an offensive to secure the most violent neighborhoods of Baghdad, the capital.

On Friday, the Pentagon also announced a new set of deployment orders for troops that will enter Iraq early in 2007, most for yearlong combat tours.

American commanders had hoped by this point to be deploying fewer combat brigades into Iraq than the number rotating out, but the Pentagon is now planning to keep a base level of about 141,000 troops in the country, with the possibility of “surging” more troops as needed.

In his own testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, described how the spiraling violence would create new difficulties for American forces, whether in Baghdad or Falluja.

“The longer this goes on, the less controlled the violence is, the more the violence devolves down to the neighborhood level,” he said. “The center disappears, and normal people acting not irrationally end up acting like extremists.”

For his part, General Abizaid insisted that every commander running the Iraq war believed that the mission could ultimately succeed.

“It’s not a matter of personal pride,” he said. “It’s a matter of seeing that the enemy can’t win.”

General Abizaid, who has spoken eloquently in the past about what could be a decades long fight against Islamic radicalism, is also well aware that keeping such high troop levels in Iraq could also be the catalyst for a new generation of radicals committed to jihad.

Appearing shortly after General Abizaid, General Hayden said that the American presence in Iraq “gives life to Al Qaeda propaganda that they misuse and misrepresent to the larger Arab world.”

Pointedly, General Hayden declined repeatedly to characterize Iraq as “the central battlefront in the war on terror,” as senior Bush administration officials have described it.

Under questioning from Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, he referred to Iraq instead as an “absolutely critical battlefront.”

Thom Shanker contributed reporting.

    A Shifting Enemy: U.S. Generals Say Civil War, Not Insurgency, Is Greatest Threat, NYT, 18.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/18/world/middleeast/18military.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Allies Wage Raid in Iraq, Seeking Abducted Guards

November 18, 2006
The New York Times
By EDWARD WONG

BAGHDAD, Nov. 17 — American and British military forces battled gunmen in southern Iraq on Friday while searching for four American security guards and their Austrian colleague who were abducted from a supply convoy on Thursday by men wearing Iraqi police uniforms, American officials said.

The episode was the largest single kidnapping of Americans since the war began. It took place just north of the town of Safwan near the Iraq-Kuwait border, a Shiite-dominated area where violence between competing militias has worsened in the past year. A previously unknown group released a videotaped message shown on an Iranian-run TV station on Friday saying that it was holding the five men, but it offered no evidence.

“The scope of this hijacking took a significant amount of coordination,” said Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the spokesman for the American military command in Baghdad. “It was very well planned and orchestrated and deliberately conducted.”

The ambush was the latest in a string of audacious kidnappings that have undermined confidence in the Iraqi security forces and the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. Several of the abductions are thought to have been conducted by Shiite militiamen wearing police or army uniforms, underscoring fears that the security forces have sheltered sectarian fighters or are at least turning a blind eye to them.

The supply convoy, made up of 43 heavy trucks and six security vehicles, had driven into Iraq from Kuwait when it was stopped at what appeared to be a police checkpoint near Safwan on Thursday, said Michael McClellan, a spokesman for the United States Embassy in Baghdad. The armed men at the checkpoint seized 14 men from the convoy — the 5 Western security guards and 9 Asian drivers — and made off with 19 trucks and a security vehicle.

Within a half-mile of the ambush, the attackers released the nine drivers, said a spokesman for the Crescent Security Group, a Kuwait-based company that handled security for the convoy. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly by his company.

The spokesman confirmed a report on The Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s Web site on Friday that one of the kidnapped Americans was Paul Reuben, 39, a former police officer from the Twin Cities area who has a wife and twin daughters and has worked in Iraq for the past two years. The company would not identify the other guards.

The Associated Press reported Friday from Minneapolis that Mr. Reuben’s family said he had been increasingly concerned about the dangers of his work. His sister, Suzanne Reuben, told The AP that her brother had told her in a recent instant message that he was ready to return home. The report quoted her as saying, “This was going to be his last time over there.”

The police chief in St. Louis Park, Minn., where Mr. Reuben had worked, said he had “that classic teddy bear disposition that made people like and care about him.”

The chief added, “People here were pretty upset to hear the news.”

Foreign Ministry officials in Vienna declined to release the Austrian guard’s name, but said he was a 25-year-old security expert from the province of Upper Austria. He had previously served in a special operations unit of the Austrian Army.

Early on Friday, coalition forces conducted a search raid near Safwan. They did not find the guards, but got into a firefight with gunmen believed to have been involved in the ambush, killing two of them, General Caldwell said.

Local residents later described hearing intense gunfire as helicopters and fighter jets swooped through the skies. At least two civilians were wounded in that fighting and were taken to a local hospital.

The governor of Basra Province, Muhammad al-Waeli, told reporters on Friday that two of the security guards, one severely wounded and the other dead, had been found by the police. But the spokesman for the Crescent Security Group said the men were not among the kidnapped employees and instead had probably been security employees for a different company involved in a separate gun battle near Basra on Friday.

Lt. Cmdr. Mike Baker, a spokesman for the British military in southern Iraq, confirmed that such a clash had taken place, involving five British private security guards. One had been wounded and initially taken to the Zubayr hospital, and another had been killed, he said.

The convoy abductions took place along Highway 8, one of two main routes from Kuwait to Nasiriya, an Iraqi provincial capital north of Basra. It is surrounded by tomato fields, now nearing the harvest season, and is often used by farmers and American-contracted supply convoys.

The convoy was stopped about 12 miles south of Umm Inech, an area feared by convoy operators because of rampant banditry there. Truckers and companies running convoys often have to pay bribes to organized gangs and possibly even the Iraqi police.

Late on Friday, an Iranian-run Arabic-language satellite news station, Al Alam, showed a videotape of a man claiming to represent the group that had abducted the Westerners on Thursday. The man, who wore a white head scarf wrapped around his face, said in Arabic that he was from the Mujahedeen of Jerusalem Company and demanded the withdrawal of American forces and the release of all prisoners. The tape did not show the abductees or any evidence the group actually had them.

Jihadist groups in Iraq have rarely if ever released tapes to Al Alam. Most such groups are Sunni-led, while Iran is a mainly Shiite country. But Iran exerts great influence among militants in Shiite-dominated southern Iraq.

In Basra and many parts of the south, Shiite militias have unfettered control of crucial elements of the Iraqi police. British officials in Basra have tried investigating some Iraqi police units suspected in assassinations and kidnappings, but they have faced widespread resistance and dead ends. Last month, men in police uniforms abducted 17 Iraqis, most of whom worked as translators or trainers with the Basra police academy, from a minibus in Zubayr and killed all of them.

The fact that an increasing number of abductions have involved Shiite factions wearing official uniforms has alarmed American officials and the leaders of other sectarian groups in Iraq, who have put increasing pressure on Prime Minister Maliki to crack down on infiltration and corruption in the government security forces.

The outrage intensified after dozens of Iraqi employees of the Ministry of Higher Education, led by a Sunni Arab official, were abducted Tuesday from the ministry’s headquarters in Baghdad during office hours by militiamen dressed in police commando uniforms. Iraqi politicians have given contradictory accounts of how many were kidnapped and how many have been freed.

In a separate matter, a spokesman for Mr. Maliki tried to backtrack from a televised statement made Thursday by the interior minister, that the government had issued an arrest warrant for Sheik Harith al-Dhari, a powerful Sunni Arab cleric who is an outspoken critic of Shiite leaders and the American occupation.

The spokesman, Ali al-Dabagh, said in an interview on Friday with Al Arabiya, the Arab news network, that Iraqi security forces had begun an investigation of Mr. Dhari but that judges had not yet issued an arrest warrant.

Sheik Abdul Salaam al-Kubaisi, a spokesman for Mr. Dhari’s religious group, called for political parties to withdraw their participation from the national government. He was presumably referring to Sunni groups that took part in the elections of December 2005. But Ayad al-Samarraie, a legislator from the leading Sunni group, the Iraqi Islamic Party, said the party would not withdraw since Mr. Maliki had assured him personally that no arrest warrant had been issued.

Mr. Dhari is in Amman, Jordan, and has been traveling widely in Sunni-led countries to visit officials there.

Inquiry in Dutch Interrogations

PARIS, Nov. 17 — The Dutch government on Friday ordered an independent investigation into a news report that Dutch soldiers mistreated prisoners during interrogations in Iraq in 2003. The daily newspaper De Volkskrant said in its Friday edition that Dutch intelligence officers had abused prisoners by dousing them with water to keep them awake and exposing them to bright light and intense noise during “heavy-handed” interrogations.

The newspaper provided no sources for its prominent story, leading to speculation that it was leaked by critics of Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, a conservative who had supported the American invasion of Iraq. Mr. Balkenende is seeking a new term in general elections on Wednesday.

Defense Minister Henk Kamp, speaking to reporters hours after the publication of the report, said the government had been previously informed of “possible improper” treatment of prisoners. He said that an investigation by the Dutch military police established that in October 2003 interrogators with Dutch troops in Muthanna questioned 15 Iraqi suspects, but that no “punishable offenses had taken place.”

Reporting was contributed by Qais Mizher, Sabrina Tavernise, Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi and Khalid al-Ansary from Baghdad, Mark Landler from Frankfurt, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Safwan, Iraq.

    Allies Wage Raid in Iraq, Seeking Abducted Guards, NYT, 18.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/18/world/middleeast/18iraq.html?hp&ex=1163912400&en=67bd0e0845112a66&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Cheney says U.S. must not retreat from Iraq

Fri Nov 17, 2006 10:41 PM ET
Reuters
By Caren Bohan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney insisted on Friday that America must not turn its back on Iraq, even as the Bush administration considers a course change in the war after voters vented anger over it in this month's elections.

"Some in our country may believe in good faith that retreating from Iraq would make America safer. Recent experience teaches the opposite lesson," Cheney said in a speech to the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group.

Cheney was speaking publicly for the first time since the November 7 elections in which voter anger over Iraq helped oust President George W. Bush's Republicans from power in Congress.

He praised departing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as a reformer and "one of the great public servants of the age," drawing applause from the audience.

Cheney is a close ally of Rumsfeld. Some analysts believe Bush's announcement of the Pentagon chief's dismissal the day after the election may signal diminished influence for Cheney, seen by some historians as one of the most influential vice presidents in modern history.

Cheney made no mention of the man Bush nominated to succeed Rumsfeld, Robert Gates. Bush said he turned to Gates, who headed the CIA during the president's father's administration, because he wanted a "fresh perspective" on the war.

Underscoring his openness to a new approach in Iraq, Bush has also said he is eager to hear the recommendations of an independent panel led by former Secretary of State James Baker and ex-congressman Lee Hamilton that is weighing alternative strategies. The commission is expected to report its findings within the coming weeks, likely next month.

Cheney, echoing Bush, said adjustments in military tactics were always under review.

"We'll be flexible. We'll do all we can to adapt to conditions on the ground. We'll make every change needed to do the job," Cheney said, reiterating the current U.S. strategy of helping to train Iraqi forces with the aim of eventually turning over security to them.

WARNS ABOUT AL QAEDA

But the vice president said pulling out of Iraq would only embolden militant groups like al Qaeda, which he warned were aiming to find a safe haven to plot attacks against the United States.

"The notion that we can turn our backs on what happens in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, or any other possible safe haven for terrorists is an option that we cannot indulge after 9/11," Cheney said.

"To get out before the job is done would convince the terrorists, once again, that free nations will change our policies, forsake our friends, and abandon our interests whenever we are confronted with violence and blackmail," he added.

Democrats set to take over the House and Senate in January are trying to boost pressure on Bush to overhaul his strategy in Iraq, where 2,864 U.S. troops have died and sectarian violence is raging.

The incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin of Michigan, wants to see a phased pullout of troops beginning in four to six months.

The vice president, who attended post-election meetings hosted by Bush to find common ground with Democrats, made only a veiled reference to the November 7 vote, saying nothing had changed in the past two weeks to prevent Bush from pushing ahead with his aim of appointing conservative judges.

    Cheney says U.S. must not retreat from Iraq, R, 17.11.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-11-18T034108Z_01_N17434506_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-USA-CHENEY.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-politicsNews-3

Americans' approval of Bush's Iraq policy drops to lowest level yet

Updated 11/17/2006 4:34 PM ET
AP
USA Today

WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans' approval of President Bush's handling of Iraq has dropped to the lowest level ever, increasing the pressure on the commander in chief to find a way out after nearly four years of war.

The latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll found just 31% approval for Bush's handling of Iraq, days after voters registered their displeasure at the polls by defeating Republicans and handing control of Congress to the Democrats. The previous low in AP-Ipsos polling was 33% in both June and August.

Erosion of support for Bush's Iraq policy was most pronounced among conservatives and Republican men — critical supporters who propelled Bush to the White House and a second term in 2004. A month ago, approval of the president on the issue certain to define his presidency was 36%.

"I'm completely frustrated," Rep. Robin Hayes, R-N.C., said this week during a House Armed Services Committee hearing. Hayes' district includes part of Fort Bragg, and he supports the U.S. effort but favors pushing Iraqi troops to take more responsibility for the fighting.

Bush's low numbers underscore the high expectations for the report by the Iraq Study Group headed by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and one-time Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton. The demand for an exit strategy comes as the number of U.S. dead from the conflict exceeds 2,850.

Violence in Iraq, much of it between religious sects, continues unabated. Dozens of employees at Iraq's Higher Education Ministry were kidnapped this week and some were reportedly tortured before they were released; bombings and shootings claim Iraqi lives daily.

"Hopefully the Baker-Hamilton commission can offer a face-saving measure for the White House that can put the beginning of the end in sight," said Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., who is in line to become chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

Two options under discussion — greater cooperation with Iran and Syria, and a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops — would require a major policy shift by the Bush administration

Almost by default, the poll showed Bush approval on handling the economy his strongest issue — at 43%, according to the poll of 1,000 adults taken Monday through Wednesday.

The poll, which has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, also found:

•34% think the country is headed in the right direction; Democrats are more optimistic while Republicans are more pessimistic since the election.

•36% approve of the job being done by the president; this is close to the results in early October.

•26% approve of the job being done by Congress, also close to approval levels in early October.

The decline in support on Iraq was the most notable change. Anger about Iraq also was a strong theme for voters, according to exit polls taken for The Associated Press and the television networks on Election Day.

A majority of voters disapproved of the war in Iraq, thought the war had not made the United States more secure and wanted to see troops start coming home, those exit polls found.

"The president recognizes that the American people are understandably concerned about the violence in Iraq," said White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore. "He shares their concerns but believes that our policy in Iraq must be determined by victory in the war on terror, not public opinion polls."

Some people question whether victory is achievable.

"Now it's a total mess and I don't have the faintest idea how they're going to get out," said Arthur Thurston, a Democratic-leaning independent from Medina, Ohio. "Iraqis are fighting each other now. But the U.S. troops can't just walk out."

Bush has met with Democratic leaders since the election, though Senate leader Harry Reid of Nevada says he thinks the president will need to be pushed to change his stance on Iraq.

"I agree that we need to stay over there and finish what we started. I don't like that our people are over there dying. But if we don't finish it, it will come back over here," said Kelly Mangel, an independent from Sedalia, Mo.

The public divisions over the war have left the Iraq Study Group with a difficult job.

"If there's any hope," said a Democratic member of the blue-ribbon panel, Leon Panetta, "it's that our recommendations can help pull the country together — if Republicans and Democrats can agree on a common strategy."

Panetta said the group hopes to offer recommendations in December but "that will depend on when we reach consensus."

"We've certainly covered a great deal of territory," he said. "And now we're getting down to the hard work of looking at options."

    Americans' approval of Bush's Iraq policy drops to lowest level yet, UT, 17.11.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-11-17-iraq-poll_x.htm

Iraq Issues Warrant for Arrest of Sunni Cleric

November 17, 2006
The New York Times
By KIRK SEMPLE

BAGHDAD, Nov. 16 — The government issued an arrest warrant late Thursday for Sheik Harith al-Dhari, one of Iraq’s most prominent Sunni Arab clerics, on charges of inciting terrorism and violence, officials said.

Mr. Dhari, head of the influential Muslim Scholars Association, has been an outspoken critic of the foreign military presence in Iraq and has said he approves of the armed resistance in the absence of a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops. This stance has won him support among hard-line Sunni Arabs and respect among the rebels, and news of the arrest warrant raised concerns among many Iraqis that it could further inspire the insurgency.

Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani announced the warrant on state-run television, saying, “The government’s policy is that anyone who tries to spread division and strife between the Iraqi people will be chased by our security agencies.”

Mr. Dhari regularly travels throughout the Middle East and could not be reached for comment on Thursday. Mohammed Bashar al-Faidi, a spokesman for the Muslim Scholars Association, condemned the warrant on Al Jazeera television. “I don’t know how to describe it, but it represents the bankruptcy of the sectarian government following one scandal after the other,” he said.

Rampant sectarian violence and growing acrimony between political leaders have pushed Iraq to the brink of all-out civil war.

On Thursday, President Jalal Talabani called for an emergency meeting of Iraq’s political leaders, portraying it as an effort to stave off the complete collapse of the government, an official in the presidency said Thursday.

“In a bid to save the political process, he has suggested having a summit of the political parties to try to put an end to the current divisions,” said the official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the matter.

Mr. Talabani floated the idea of an emergency summit meeting on Tuesday during a meeting of a government committee for national security. The meeting had devolved into “a shouting match” between Sunni and Shiite participants, according to an Iraqi official who attended. The president, alarmed by the rancor, announced, “We have to decide if we want a state or not.”

The country’s major blocs and political parties have agreed “in principle” to the meeting and have formed a committee to draft an agenda, the official in the presidency said.

The security challenges facing the government were underscored on Tuesday by the daytime kidnapping of dozens of people from a Ministry of Higher Education building in central Baghdad. Since then, the government’s response to the crisis has been undermined by public disagreements among senior government officials over the fate of the captives.

The minister of higher education, Abed Thiab al-Ajili, said Thursday that about 70 captives had been released but that another 70 or so were still missing. Some of those freed said they had been beaten and tortured by their captors, and they told ministry officials that others had been killed, the minister said, adding that he had not confirmed the reports of killed captives.

One victim “was almost crying when he described what he was subjected to,” Mr. Ajili said. “It was as if they died a hundred times because of the severe torture.”

But Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the government’s national security adviser, said in an interview on Thursday that all the captives had been freed and that none had been killed. “The minister is overreaching,” he said. A statement issued by the office of the government’s spokesman said 50 people had been kidnapped.

Mr. Rubaie said the mass abduction was committed by “rogue elements of a militia.” He refused to identify the group, but other government officials said it appeared to be a component of the Mahdi Army, the militia that follows the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, a mainstay of the ruling Shiite alliance.

Mr. Rubaie said the kidnappers, who were wearing the uniforms of a government police force, appeared to have infiltrated the Interior Ministry, which oversees Iraq’s police forces. The motive for the kidnapping remained unclear on Thursday. Mr. Rubaie said the kidnappers were trying to embarrass the administration of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. For his part, Mr. Maliki has attributed the kidnapping to a rivalry between militias.

ABC News reported on Thursday that 14 people had been kidnapped, including four Americans, in a convoy of contractors near Nasariya, attributing the report to defense officials. Reuters quoted Sgt. Matthew Roe, an American military spokesman in Baghdad as saying, “We can confirm that an incident happened in Nasiriya that resulted in kidnappings.” Much of the blame for the government’s disarray, its inability to curb the raging sectarian violence and its failure to improve public services significantly has fallen on Mr. Maliki. American officials and some Iraqi leaders say he has failed to move decisively to confront Iraq’s myriad problems, and they now wonder if he has the political muscle or will to help pull the government together.

In the interview on Thursday, Mr. Rubaie defended Mr. Maliki, saying the prime minister had “an unfettered commitment” to peace and democracy in Iraq. “We are working very, very hard to reduce the level of violence, especially the sectarian violence,” he said.

He also discounted the notion that a politician other than Mr. Maliki could do a better job of running the country. “I don’t believe we have any other option than Maliki,” Mr. Rubaie said.

The American military command announced that four American soldiers had been killed. One was killed on Tuesday by small-arms fire in Baghdad, the military said. The other three were killed on Wednesday in Diyala, two when a bomb exploded near their vehicle and one by small-arms fire. At least 44 American soldiers have been killed this month.

Khalid al-Ansary and Khalid W. Hassan contributed reporting.

    Iraq Issues Warrant for Arrest of Sunni Cleric, NYT, 17.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/17/world/middleeast/17iraq.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

U.S. Searching for Americans Abducted in Southern Iraq

November 17, 2006
The New York Times
By EDWARD WONG

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 17 — American and British military forces scoured farmland in southern Iraq today looking for four American security contractors and their Austrian colleague, who were abducted from a supply convoy on Thursday afternoon at a checkpoint operated by men in Iraqi police uniforms, American officials said.

The highly organized ambush was the largest and most brazen kidnapping of Americans in recent memory, and it highlighted the rapid disintegration of security in southern Iraq, once thought to be under the control of British-led forces.

The gunmen made off with a total of 14 kidnap victims, 19 trucks and one security vehicle, said a spokesman for the American embassy in Baghdad. Nine of the abductees were later released, Iraqi officials said.

Residents of the area where the abduction took place — near Safwan, a town on the Iraq-Kuwait border — reported hearing gunfire today as military helicopters swooped through the skies. It was unclear exactly where the clashes were taking place or who was involved.

A provincial government spokesman said this afternoon that a local hospital had received two of the kidnap victims, one of whom was dead and the other seriously wounded. Details were vague. The Associated Press cited an unnamed police officer saying that the Austrian had been killed, and that the injured man was an American.

The convoy, made up of 43 heavy trucks and six security vehicles, had driven into Iraq from Kuwait when it was stopped at what appeared to be a police checkpoint near Safwan, said Michael McClellan, a spokesman for the American embassy in Baghdad. The armed men kidnapped the four Americans, the Austrian and nine drivers, most of them from south and southeast Asian countries.

The security contractors work for Crescent Security Group, one of a constellation of Western-owned companies that reap vast revenues by protecting convoys, buildings and officials across the country.

The drivers were released today, said Abbas Fayadh, a spokesman for the governor’s office in Basra, the large port city near the ambush site.

The highway runs through farm country, with lush tomato fields blanketing patches of the otherwise flat, empty landscape. The kidnapping took place about 12 miles south of an area called Um Inech that is infamous for banditry. Truckers passing through often have to pay bribes to organized gangs to get safe passage to continue.

The fact that the kidnappers wore police uniforms underscores concerns about the abilities and trustworthiness of the Iraqi security forces at a time when the military strategy pursued by the Bush administration and American commanders is undergoing intense scrutiny by the Democrats who will take control of Congress next year.

President Bush and his top generals have pegged any hope of success in this war — and consequently any significant withdrawal of American troops — on the Iraqi forces taking on ever more of the security burden. But there is ample evidence that the ranks of the Iraqi police and, to a lesser extent, the Iraqi Army are full of militiamen, criminals and fighters with deeply rooted sectarian loyalties, and that the highest echelons of the Iraqi government are either actively promoting the sectarian war or are helpless to stop it.

In Basra and many parts of southern Iraq, Shiite militias now have unfettered control of crucial elements of the Iraqi police. British officials in Basra have tried to investigate some Iraqi police units suspected in assassinations and kidnappings. Last month, for example, in the town of Zubayr, east of Basra, men in police uniforms abducted 17 Iraqis from a minibus — most working as translators or trainers with the Basra police academy — and killed all of them.

Highway 8, the two-lane expressway used by the ambushed convoy, is one of two main routes from Kuwait to Nasiriya, a provincial capital. It is smaller than the other route, but it is preferred by foreign convoys because it does not pass through Basra. Military vehicles often travel its length.

The American military is still desperately searching for an American soldier who was abducted last month when he left the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad to visit an Iraqi woman whom he had married. American forces cordoned off the vast Shiite slum of Sadr City in an effort to locate the soldier, an Iraqi-American who worked as a translator, but the operation was abandoned at the orders of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. Mr. Maliki is a conservative Shiite who relies on the radical cleric Moktada al-Sadr for political backing, and Mr. Sadr’s militia, the Mahdi Army, controls Sadr City, as well as large swaths of southern Iraq.

In Baghdad today, a spokesman for Mr. Maliki tried to downplay reports that the government had issued an arrest warrant for Harith al-Dhari, a hard-line Sunni cleric who is an outspoken critic of Shiite leaders and the American presence.

The spokesman, Ali al-Dabagh, said in an interview with Al Arabiya, the Arab news network, that Iraqi security forces had begun an investigation of Mr. Dhari, but that judges had not yet issued an arrest warrant. The Interior Minister, Jawad al-Bolani, said on television on Thursday night that the government had in fact issued a warrant.

A cleric close to Mr. Dhari said in a telephone interview that Mr. Dhari’s group, the Muslim Scholars Association, was calling for Sunni political parties to withdraw from the Shiite-led government of national unity. It was unclear today whether any parties would heed the call.

Mr. Dhari is in Amman, Jordan, and has traveled widely in Sunni-led countries in recent months.

Reporting was contributed by an Iraqi employee of The New York Times in Safwan and by Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi in Baghdad.

    U.S. Searching for Americans Abducted in Southern Iraq, NYT, 17.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/17/world/middleeast/18iraqcnd.html?hp&ex=1163826000&en=49cf070787d15847&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Kidnappings Stir Political Dispute in Iraq

November 16, 2006
The New York Times
By KIRK SEMPLE

BAGHDAD, Nov. 15 — A dispute erupted Wednesday between Iraqi officials over the fate of dozens of captives abducted from a government building, undermining an effort by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to project an image of authority during the crisis.

A spokesman for Abed Dhiab al-Ajeeli, the minister of higher education, said nearly 100 of about 150 captives were still being held a day after the kidnapping, at the ministry’s compound. But the government’s chief spokesman, Ali Dabbagh, contended that only 39 people had been kidnapped and that all but 2 had been released. Both men angrily dismissed the other’s comments as false.

Late Wednesday, Mr. Dhiab, one of the few Sunni Arabs in Mr. Maliki’s Shiite-dominated cabinet, announced that he was stepping down from his post until all the captives had been rescued. In a written statement, apparently directed at the Maliki administration, he said that any effort to make the kidnapping “a political issue” would be “unacceptable behavior.”

The disagreements emerged as Mr. Maliki and his aides sought to convey a sense of governmental cohesion and resolve in response to the abductions. Mr. Dabbagh attributed the releases to an aggressive series of overnight raids and persistent pressure on the kidnappers by Iraqi security forces. Mr. Maliki told an audience at the University of Baghdad that he would bring the kidnappers to justice.

Mr. Maliki has been accused by American officials and some Iraqi leaders of failing to act decisively to curb surging violence, eliminate rampant corruption and improve public services. In particular, he has been criticized for his inability, or unwillingness, to dismantle Shiite militias linked to the governing Shiite parties yet responsible for staging sectarian attacks in cooperation with Iraqi security forces or with access to government uniforms and vehicles.

Mr. Maliki and other Shiite leaders have tried to deflect attention away from the militias, insisting that the greatest threat to public security still remains the insurgency, led by Sunni Arabs, which is responsible for the vast majority of casualties inflicted on American and Iraqi government forces. At the same time, the prime minister has pressed American officials to give him more authority over the country’s security.

But the mass kidnapping on Tuesday, conducted inside a government building during office hours, underscored the profound weaknesses of Iraq’s security forces and put further strain on Mr. Maliki’s relationships with the Americans and his Sunni Arab critics.

The kidnapping, by gunmen wearing Iraqi police commando uniforms and driving more than 20 vehicles with Interior Ministry markings, was similar in style to several other mass abductions this year. The captives, who included Shiites, Sunni Arabs, Kurds and Christians, were driven to a predominantly Shiite area of eastern Baghdad, officials said, probably passing through numerous police checkpoints unimpeded.

Hours after the abduction, the Interior Ministry, which oversees the nation’s police forces, arrested several police commanders in charge of the area where the ministry site is. And late Tuesday, Mr. Maliki, in an appearance on state-run television, said he had ordered an intensive search for the kidnapping victims.

But the identity of the kidnappers remained unclear on Wednesday, as did their motive.

Mr. Dabbagh said the kidnapping had been conducted by a “gang of criminals that belongs to a certain militia,” and was intended to foment sectarian tensions, but he did not identify the militia. He said he could not explain why the kidnappers had attacked the Ministry of Higher Education. The attackers were “trying to break the stability between the Shiites and Sunnis,” he said in a telephone interview.

The ministry has long been viewed as a Sunni Arab bastion. During Saddam Hussein’s rule, it was known mockingly among non-Sunnis as “the Ministry of Al Ani and Al Rawi,” after two towns in the overwhelmingly Sunni Arab province of Anbar, said Dr. Abdullah Kendoush, a longtime physicist in the Ministry of Science and Technology who recently left Iraq to take a temporary post at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

In the argument over numbers, Basil al-Khateeb, the spokesman for the Ministry of Higher Education, said late Wednesday that “about 150 people” had been kidnapped and 52 of them had been released. He said the ministry had arrived at its tallies by debriefing witnesses and victims who were freed.

Mr. Dabbagh said that in all, 16 ministry employees, 18 guards and five visitors had been kidnapped from the building and that 37 had been released by late Wednesday under pressure from Iraqi security forces conducting operations in eastern Baghdad. He described Mr. Khateeb’s comments by saying, “That is not an official statement of the government.”

The American military command put the number of kidnapping victims at about 55.

Balal Hassan, a Sunni Arab who said his brother Walid worked for the ministry and was one of those kidnapped, said he and his relatives had been desperately trying to find out information about the kidnappings but had received no help from government officials. “So far they have done nothing,” he said in a telephone interview. “Hopefully they will do something significant.”

The United States military on Wednesday announced the deaths of six Americans. Three marines and one soldier were killed on Tuesday during combat operations in Anbar Province, the military said, and two soldiers were killed by a bomb in northwestern Baghdad.

[On Thursday morning, Reuters reported, gunmen opened fire on a bakery in eastern Baghdad, killing nine people and wounding two, the police said.]

A car bomb exploded on Wednesday at a gas station near the Interior Ministry, killing eight people and wounding 32, according to a ministry official. A suicide bomber joined a crowd of mourners at a funeral in Dora, in southern Baghdad, and detonated his explosives, killing three people and wounding 12.

Qais Mizher contributed reporting from Baghdad, and James Glanz from New York.

    Kidnappings Stir Political Dispute in Iraq, NYT, 16.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/16/world/middleeast/16iraq.html

The ‘Stay or Leave’ Debate in the U.S. Finds a Mirror in Baghdad

November 16, 2006
The New York Times
By SABRINA TAVERNISE

BAGHDAD, Nov. 15 — While Americans in a faraway land debate their fate, Iraqis have already decided on the cure. The only problem is that there is more than one set of Iraqis. Shiites want their country back. Sunni Arabs want a strongman. They cannot agree.

“We don’t want to see them in the streets,” a wiry man named Tariq said of American troops as he measured cloth in a tailor shop.

Saad Abdul Razzaq, a Sunni whose brother was killed by Shiite militiamen a week ago, was of the strongman school: “Democracy is not working. Only power can control Iraqis.”

As the United States grapples with difficult decisions over the war, Iraqis are also debating. But just when they need to band together, they have never been further apart. Their government has ground to a halt, paralyzed by disagreements between Sunni and Shiite parties. Militias are at the root of the security problem, but as long as the state remains helpless, many consider them its only solution.

The landscape is that of a country sliding into war, and Sunnis and Shiites, like Republicans and Democrats, desperately look for ways out.

Shiites agree with many Democrats: American soldiers should withdraw to their bases. Sunnis say total control by the Shiite-dominated government could mean massacres.

“It’s a disaster if the American forces stay in Iraq, but it’s also a disaster if they go,” said an elderly man named Ayad, who was discussing politics with friends in central Baghdad.

Abbas Fadhel, a college professor sitting in a social club in central Baghdad, spoke of the widening division and dim prospects for the future. “The seriousness of this is that the sectarianism has penetrated to the educated people,” he said. “They deny it, but when push comes to shove, you can see that they have become so.”

The mass kidnapping at a government ministry on Tuesday by gunmen in Iraqi military uniforms was symbolic of the breakdown. “It was really something humiliating,” said Husham al-Madfai, an architect who was sitting in his garden drinking beer Wednesday afternoon. “They went into a ministry and kidnapped tens of people. That means the government does not exist.”

But the kidnapping was interpreted in different ways. Sunnis laid much of the blame with the government. Reflecting a broad shift that has taken place among Shiites, Sunnis had more sympathy for what they saw as the government’s plight. Militias, they said, were like parasites that the government would not be able to get rid of until it gained more control over security tasks now handled by Americans.

“It’s like organized crime,” said Tariq, gesturing animatedly with a thimble on one finger. “If the government had sovereignty, it could combat all these things that are going on.”

Violence that many see as having been carried out by Sunnis has hardened attitudes. Muhammad Faisal, a Shiite whose brother and seven friends were shot to death in southern Baghdad on Sept. 23 while they were putting up a poster of a Shiite cleric, said the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki was like “a surgeon without his instruments.”

Meanwhile, militias are seen as a necessary protection against aggression by the other side.

As Shiites have risen to power and filled the ranks of the security forces, Sunnis, who used to condemn the American forces, now often see them as a primary safeguard against Shiite violence. They do not trust the government, a concern that was underscored by Tuesday’s kidnapping.

The sheer magnitude of the violence since Mr. Maliki took office in the spring has swept away what trust they had. In all, five members of Mr. Abdul Razzaq’s extended family have died in violence since 2003.

He would like to see a military coup, to be headed by a strongman, possibly Ayad Allawi, the former prime minister and secular Shiite with a past tied to the Baathists, the ruling party under Saddam Hussein.

“He worked with Saddam,” Mr. Abdul Razzaq said. “He knows his way.”

Mr. Madfai, the architect, disagreed. A coup would not work. The new government would be besieged. “All those militias will turn to fight against them,” he said, speaking by telephone.

He paused as two helicopters thundered overhead. The beer was running out, he said, a problem he blamed on the Americans. All the alcohol sellers in his area, Mansour, have been killed, and most shops are now closed.

“Who’s responsible for that? Rumsfeld,” he said. “He should send us some beer.”

Alcohol, a target of some of the Islamic militias, was not in short supply at the social club, where Shiek Mazin al-Khalaf, an Iraqi Sunni who speaks British-accented English, was enjoying a vodka. Iraqis are destined to fight, he said, because after years of abuse, they are capable only of abusing.

“Iraqis have been in prison since 1958,” the year the monarchy was overthrown, he said. “The prisoners got out, they smelled the air, saw cars and cellphones. But they are criminals.”

A Shiite sitting on the other side of the table took issue with the description. “Victims, not criminals,” he hissed, after Mr. Khalaf left the table.

A Shiite sheik from Amara, Abd al-Karim al-Muhammadawi, offered an extreme prescriptive. He said the only solution would be to ban the major political parties, declare martial law and begin again.

The alternative, he said, is for the American military to leave Iraq completely and let the Iraqis begin a full-on civil war. “This is better than the Iraqi condition now,” he said.

Faaz, a student in Sadr City, the largest Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad, agreed. “I’d prefer to have what they had in Lebanon — a declared civil war,” he said. “There is a lot of killing, but no one confesses what he is really doing.”

Sabah, a Shiite whose husband, a Sunni, was killed by Shiites in early September, said a full-scale pullout would be a disaster. “If the American forces leave Iraq, we will walk on bodies,” she said, sitting in her tiny living room in Karada, in central Baghdad. “The war would be face to face.”

For Tariq, all this talk of sects was irritating. It is bad manners in Iraqi society to ask somebody’s sect. His response, when asked on Wednesday, was simply, “Muslim.”

But the clunky yellow-stone building across the street, the ministry where the employees were kidnapped Tuesday, seemed a looming reminder that in Iraq, more and more often, sects count.

He was relieved to know that one of the kidnapped employees, a senior official and a wearer of his suits, had been released. The man, he said, was a Shiite.

Qais Mizher contributed reporting.

    The ‘Stay or Leave’ Debate in the U.S. Finds a Mirror in Baghdad, NYT, 16.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/16/world/middleeast/16voices.html

General Warns of Risks in Iraq if G.I.'s Are Cut

November 16, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 — The top American military commander for the Middle East said Wednesday that to begin a significant troop withdrawal from Iraq over the next six months would lead to an increase in sectarian killings and hamper efforts to persuade the Iraqi government to make the difficult decisions needed to secure the country.

The commander, Gen. John P. Abizaid, made it clear that he did not endorse the phased troop withdrawals being proposed by Democratic lawmakers. Instead, he said the number of troops in Iraq might be increased by a small amount as part of new plans by American commanders to improve the training of the Iraqi Army.

General Abizaid did not rule out a larger troop increase, but he said the American military was stretched too thin to make such a step possible over the long term. And he said such an expansion might dissuade the Iraqis from making more of an effort to provide for their own security.

“We can put in 20,000 more Americans tomorrow and achieve a temporary effect,” he said. “But when you look at the overall American force pool that’s available out there, the ability to sustain that commitment is simply not something that we have right now with the size of the Army and the Marine Corps.”

General Abizaid also publicly said for the first time that the American position in Iraq had been undermined by the Bush administration’s decision not to deploy a larger force to stabilize the country in 2003. That decision was made after Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, the Army chief of staff at the time, told Congress that several hundred thousand troops would be needed. His testimony was derided by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, and the general was ostracized at the Pentagon before his retirement a few months later.

“General Shinseki was right that a greater international force contribution, U.S. force contribution and Iraqi force contribution should have been available immediately after major combat operations,” General Abizaid said. “I think you can look back and say that more American troops would have been advisable in the early stages of May, June, July.”

The testimony, given to the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, was the first by the American commander since August, and it followed several months of setbacks in Iraq that helped to fuel the Democratic victories in last week’s election. Skepticism among lawmakers from both parties was palpable, and the concerns of the lawmakers were reinforced by intelligence officials who testified later in the day and who painted a more pessimistic portrait of the violence in Iraq than General Abizaid did.

Among the Iraq policy reviews now under way is an effort by the Iraq Study Group, led by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, and a separate administration study ordered by President Bush.

Under the immediate initiative that General Abizaid described, the number of American military advisers working with Iraqi forces will be increased, with advisers to be assigned even to small Iraqi units with fewer than 200 soldiers.

“We need to put more American capacity into Iraqi units to make them more capable in their ability to confront the sectarian problem,” General Abizaid told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “It is possible that we might have to go up in troop levels in order to increase the number of forces that go into the Iraqi security forces, but I believe that’s only temporary.”

The next steps in Iraq were very much on the mind of lawmakers on Wednesday. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, cited the concerns of Marine Corps officers in Anbar Province in complaining that General Abizaid had not dispatched enough forces to defeat the insurgency there. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, said the Iraqi government was not taking the steps needed to win the trust of the population and improve security.

In their testimony on Wednesday, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said they agreed with General Abizaid that American forces were one of the few elements keeping a lid on violence in Iraq and that withdrawing troops would only increase sectarian violence.

But General Maples said that the violence continued to increase in “scope, complexity and lethality” and that it was “creating an atmosphere of fear and hardening sectarianism, which is empowering militias and vigilante groups.”

In all of Iraq, attacks against allied troops last month averaged 180 per day, up from 170 per day in September and 70 per day in January, General Maples said in written testimony. Daily attacks on Iraqi civilians averaged roughly 40 per day last month, four times higher than the average in January. General Maples also noted that recent operations in Baghdad had achieved only a moderate success, because after American officials had turned neighborhoods over to the Iraqis, “attacks returned to and even surpassed preoperational levels.”

Reinforcing this view, General Hayden said the C.I.A. station in Baghdad assessed that Iraq was deteriorating to a chaotic state, with the political center disintegrating and rival factions increasingly warring with each other. “Their view of the battlefield is that it is descending into smaller and smaller groups fighting over smaller and smaller issues over smaller and smaller pieces of territory,” he said.

The two intelligence officials said Wednesday that there were only an estimated 1,300 foreign fighters in the country and that the number of Sunni Arab insurgents actively planning and carrying out attacks on American forces was probably more than 10,000.

Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, asked General Abizaid how much time the United States had to bring down the violence in Baghdad before events there were beyond the control of the Iraqi government. General Abizaid said the answer was four to six months.

Securing Baghdad, the general said, was the main effort. But there are other difficult missions ahead, he said. One is supporting an Iraqi-led effort to disarm the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia nominally loyal to the cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

Another is securing Anbar Province, the seat of the Sunni Arab insurgency. General Abizaid said that to try to hold the line there, he had decided to dispatch a 2,200-strong Marine Expeditionary Unit. “Al Anbar Province is not under control,” General Abizaid said.

Many experts have advocated talking directly to Iran and Syria to help stabilize Iraq, an approach the Iraq Study Group is expected to endorse. General Hayden said that Iran’s ambitions inside Iraq seemed to be expanding and that Iran had been conducting a foreign policy of “dangerous triumphalism.”

David M. Satterfield, the State Department’s coordinator for Iraq, told the Senate committee that the United States was prepared “in principle” to discuss the situation in Iraq with Iran, but the timing was uncertain.

“We are prepared in principle to discuss Iranian activities in Iraq,” Mr. Satterfield said. “The timing of such a direct dialogue is one that we still have under review.”

    General Warns of Risks in Iraq if G.I.'s Are Cut, NYT, 16.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/16/world/middleeast/16policy.html?hp&ex=1163739600&en=6e400b239fe17623&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Start U.S. Iraq Withdrawal in 4 - 6 Months: Democrats

November 12, 2006
By REUTERS
Filed at 9:52 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats, who won majorities in the U.S. Congress in last week's elections, said on Sunday they will push for a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq to begin in four to six months.

``The first order of business is to change the direction of Iraq policy,'' said Sen. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who is expected to be chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee in the new Congress.

Levin, on ABC's ``This Week,'' said he hoped some Republicans would emerge to join Democrats and press the administration of President George W. Bush to tell the Iraqi government that U.S. presence was ``not open-ended.''

Bush has insisted that U.S. troops would not leave Iraq until the Iraqis were able to take over security for their country.

``We need to begin a phased redeployment of forces from Iraq in four to six months,'' Levin said.

Speaking on the same program, Sen. Joseph Biden, a Delaware Democrat who is expected to head the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he supported Levin's proposal for a withdrawal.

    Start U.S. Iraq Withdrawal in 4 - 6 Months: Democrats, NYT, 12.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/washington/politics-iraq-usa-democrats.html

Bush, Team to Meet With Iraq Study Group

November 12, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:45 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush's chief of staff said Sunday ''nobody can be happy with the situation'' now in Iraq and the White House would consider the idea of U.S. talks with Syria and Iran if a blue-ribbon commission recommended that.

President Bush and his national security team planned to meet Monday with the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which is trying to develop a new course for the war.

''We're looking forward to the recommendations,'' said Josh Bolten, Bush's top aide. With Democrats seizing majorities in the House and Senate in last week's elections and urging a change in Iraq policy, Bolten said the White House is ''looking forward to a dialogue with bipartisan leaders in Congress.''

''Everybody's objective here is to succeed in Iraq. I think that's true of Democrats as well as Republicans. But the president has said we need to get fresh eyes on the problem. We need a fresh perspective,'' Bolten said.

Already, military commanders are re-evaluating strategy to determine what changes are needed ''to get ourselves more focused on the correct objectives,'' the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman said last week.

The administration, Bolten said, ''has always been ready to make a course adjustment'' in Iraq.

''Nobody can be happy with the situation in Iraq right now. Everybody's been working hard, but what we've been doing has not worked well enough or fast enough,'' Bolten said. ''So it's clearly time to put fresh eyes on the problem. The president has always been interested in tactical adjustments. But the ultimate goal remains the same, which is success in Iraq.''

Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group with ex-Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton of Indiana, has questioned the administration's policy of not talking to the Iranians or Syrians, whom the United States has accused of helping terrorism, about cooperating on a way to end the violence in Iraq and stabilize the country.

Bolten, asked in an interview with CNN's ''Late Edition'' whether the administration was open to talking to Iran and Syria, said ''nothing is off the table. All the options will be considered'' from the commission.

''There's been lots of talking with Iran and Syria over the years ... The important thing is what do the Iraqis want,'' he said.

''The problem hasn't been a lack of communication. But we'll look at whatever the Baker-Hamilton commission come up with because there are a lot of good smart people there and see what they're recommendations are,'' Bolten said.

Iran's hard-line Shiite theocracy maintains close ties to Iraqi Shiites, who make up about 60 percent of Iraq's population and dominate the government. Iraq's Sunnis are highly suspicious of such ties.

The U.S. has accused Syria of facilitating the movement of foreign fighters into Iraq.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who plans to speak to the commission via video link on Tuesday, reportedly will urge the administration to open talks with Syria and Iran and push for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a way of defusing Mideast tensions.

Bolten was whether the administration was ready to make a new effort to get involved in negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians. ''We'll see. The timing has to be right and it has to be something that both the Israelis and the Palestinians want,'' he said.

    Bush, Team to Meet With Iraq Study Group, NYT, 12.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Iraq.html

Ore. unveils Afghan-Iraqi war memorial

Posted 11/12/2006 5:35 AM ET
AP
USA Today

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — An Afghan-Iraqi war memorial that has drawn criticism for its design and its timing was unveiled Saturday before a crowd of veterans and slain troops' relatives.

There was little hint of the controversy at the ceremony, which capped a two-year effort by a family whose son died in Iraq to raise private donations for the memorial.

Gov. Ted Kulongoski called the memorial "a place of prayer, contemplation and reflection ... a place where we can remember the brave hearts that we lost."

The monument at the Capitol Mall features a large fountain and a bronze statue of a kneeling soldier with an outstretched hand. It includes a granite wall inscribed with the names of 74 soldiers or Marines with Oregon ties who have died in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Some have questioned whether a memorial is appropriate while the fighting is still underway.

"It seems a little premature," said John Theodore, 74, a Korean War veteran, who said he nevertheless came to the ceremony to show respect for the state's fallen soldiers.

Many in attendance praised the new monument and its timing.

"It's a healing place," said Betsy Jeffries, 23, whose husband, Joseph, a member of the U.S. Army Reserve, was killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. "It's been more than two years since my husband died. For me, that's a long enough wait."

Some state lawmakers who voted for the memorial now believe its approval process was flawed. And several architects have said the 40-foot-wide fountain could upstage other memorials at the Mall.

Jim Willis, head of the Oregon Department of Veterans' Affairs, said the controversy reflects the public's feelings about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

"People are conflicted about the war," Willis said. "And there are some people who are still coming to grips with the loss of a loved one, and they are not ready for a memorial like this."

    Ore. unveils Afghan-Iraqi war memorial, UT, 12.11.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-11-12-oregon-memorial_x.htm

Suicide Bomber Kills 33 in Baghdad

November 12, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:09 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A suicide bomber blew himself up outside a police recruiting center in Baghdad early Sunday, killing at least 33 people and wounding 56, police said.

Crowds of recruits were gathering outside the center in western Baghdad's Nissur Square when the bomber detonated explosives strapped to his body, police Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razaq said.

He said the death toll was expected to rise because many of the injuries were extremely serious.

The attack was one of several on Sunday in the capital, where sectarian violence kills scores each week. Just south of the city, police were searching for gunmen who killed 10 Shiite travelers and kidnapped about 50 others Saturday night along a notoriously dangerous stretch of highway.

Earlier Sunday, a pair of roadside bombings targeting police patrols in Baghdad killed at least six civilians and wounded six others, said police Cap. Mohammed Abdul-Ghani.

A car bomb outside a market in Baghdad's primarily Shiite downtown Karradah killed at least one person and wounded five others, while a similar bomb killed two people and injured 13 in the mainly Sunni neighborhood of Radhwaniyah, Police 1st. Lt. Thaer Mahoud said.

Unknown gunmen also shot and killed police Brig. Abdul-Mutalib Hassan as he was leaving his Karradah home for work. Hassan had been head of a police unit in charge of registering vehicles that is widely seen as a source of corruption.

Five people were killed in drive by shootings in different parts of Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. The victims included a teacher, taxi driver, laborer, truck driver and phone company worker, provincial police said.

Patrols were looking for the Sunni gunmen who ambushed a convoy of minibuses at a fake checkpoint near the volatile town of Latifiyah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad in the so-called Triangle of Death.

The gunmen murdered 10 Shiite passengers before taking their captives to an unknown location, said the spokesman, who asked that his name not be used because he wasn't authorized to speak to media.

A leading Shiite politician warned that local tribes had armed themselves and were headed to the area to join in the search, a move likely to set off even greater bloodshed.

In an address to parliament, Abdul-Karim al-Anzi said the kidnappers had worn Iraqi army uniforms. He complained that security forces were doing little to capture the hostages.

''We demand that the government take quick action to send troops there in order to know the fate of those kidnapped,'' al-Anzi said.

Along with those killed, five bodies -- all blindfolded and bound at the wrists and ankles -- had also been recovered in various parts of eastern Baghdad early Sunday, police said. All had been mutilated by torture, marking them as victims of death squads that regularly kidnap rivals from Iraq's Muslim Sunni and Shiite sects.

Three more bodies were pulled from the Tigris River in Suwayrah, 25 miles south of Baghdad, morgue official Maamoun al-Ajili said.

U.S. forces, meanwhile, said they detained 10 people suspected of having links to al-Qaida in a raid in Baghdad early Saturday.

The military said no one was killed or wounded in the raid, and that those detained were ''associated with terrorists who are involved in the housing, movement and enabling of foreign fighters, to include the organization of suicide operations within Baghdad.''

    Suicide Bomber Kills 33 in Baghdad, NYT, 12.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq.html?hp&ex=1163394000&en=972024f04ded99f4&ei=5094&partner=homepage

U.S. Offers Reward for Help in Finding Missing Soldier

November 12, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL LUO

BAGHDAD, Nov. 11 — The American military on Saturday announced a $50,000 reward for anyone with information leading to the recovery of an American soldier who was captured nearly three weeks ago outside the heavily protected Green Zone.

Iraqi and American soldiers conducted another raid in the impoverished Shiite district of Sadr City on Friday, looking for a “top-level death squad leader” as part of efforts to find the soldier, military officials said Saturday.

Also on Saturday, Sunni Arab gunmen pulled over a group of minibuses carrying Shiites traveling through a volatile region just south of here, killing 10 and kidnapping dozens, Iraqi state television said. And in one of several deadly attacks here in the capital, a pair of car bombs tore through a popular downtown shopping area just after noon, killing at least six people and injuring 32 others, an Interior Ministry official said.

A roadside bomb near Kut, about 100 miles southeast of Baghdad, killed one Polish and one Slovak soldier late on Friday, The Associated Press said.

The missing American soldier, identified by the military as Specialist Ahmed Kousay al-Taie, 41, an Iraqi-American translator from Ann Arbor, Mich., disappeared Oct. 23 after he left the Green Zone without permission to visit his Iraqi wife at her home nearby. Armed men handcuffed him and took him away, his relatives and the military said.

Since then, he has been the subject of a hunt that has involved some 2,000 American troops and 1,000 Iraqi security officers, who flooded the middle-class Karada neighborhood outside the Green Zone and surrounded Sadr City, where the military and his relatives said they believed he had been taken.

Last week, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki demanded that American troops lift the security cordon that they had placed around Sadr City. The checkpoints were quickly removed, and little has been heard since about progress in the search.

The case took a turn late last week when Entifad Qanbar, an associate of Ahmad Chalabi, the influential Iraqi politician, identified himself as the soldier’s uncle and said that the kidnappers had issued a $250,000 ransom demand. American officials had been meeting with an intermediary trusted by those who had captured his nephew, he said. Mr. Qanbar said that he had asked for proof from the captors that his nephew was still alive, setting a deadline of noon last Saturday.

But he has not had any contact with the kidnappers or their representatives since then, Mr. Qanbar said Saturday.

Several people who claim to know the captors have contacted family members, indicating that he is still alive, he said. The family has also reached out to people on their own, who have given them assurances about his well-being, he said. “God willing, I hope he is alive.” .

Relatives believe a notorious Mahdi Army militia commander named Abu Rami who lived near the wife’s home in Karada took Specialist Taie. Mr. Qanbar said Saturday that he had been told that the commander operated a well-organized criminal ring that functioned independently from the militia, whose members ostensibly claim loyalty to Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric.

American and Iraqi troops have followed up on some 335 tips from Iraqi citizens about Specialist Taie’s disappearance, leading to 53 missions, said Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a military spokesman. The most recent mission took place in Sadr City on Friday, in which five men were detained, he said.

The soldiers in the raid were looking for a death squad leader who “controls the actions of multiple cells, with hundreds of cell members, that conduct sectarian murder and torture, kidnappings, improvised explosive devices attacks and other attacks and crimes against Iraqi civilians and Iraqi security forces,” the military said in a statement.

The soldiers seized six makeshift bombs and an array of Iraqi Army uniforms, the statement said. Military officials declined to identify the specific target of the raid, but confirmed it was part of its efforts to find Specialist Taie.

In all, 38 people have been arrested and held for questioning in connection with Specialist Taie’s capture, Colonel Garver said.

The attack Saturday on the minibuses took place near Latifiya in the so-called Triangle of Death, an area plagued by Sunni insurgents. The bus had been on its way from the mainly Shiite southern city of Diwaniya to Baghdad, Iraqi state TV reported.

The twin car bombs that killed six people in the capital struck Hafud al-Qadi Street near the Shurja market, an area crowded with stores.

Earlier in the day, another roadside bomb exploded in eastern Baghdad, killing at least one person and wounding five others, an Interior Ministry official said. Another concealed bomb that detonated Saturday evening in the western Baghdad Sunni neighborhood of Amariya killed three people and wounded three others, the official said.

The police also discovered the bodies of 25 people dumped across the city on Saturday, the official said.

3 Iraqi Officers Missing in Norway

OSLO, Nov. 11 (Agence France-Presse) — Norway’s Defense Ministry on Saturday said that three Iraqi military officers attending a NATO training course here had been reported missing.

“The three officers didn’t show up for their first lesson on Monday,” said a spokeswoman for the Defense Ministry. “The police have been looking for them ever since.”

The three officers were part of a group of 25 Iraqi military and police personnel attending a weeklong NATO training session on international law. The group arrived in Norway a week ago and its members were believed to have had visas that were valid for the duration of the session. The others in the group returned to Iraq on Friday, the spokeswoman said.

Qais Mizher contributed reporting.

    U.S. Offers Reward for Help in Finding Missing Soldier, NYT, 12.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/12/world/middleeast/12iraq.html

Sectarian Rifts Foretell Pitfalls of Iraqi Troops’ Taking Control

November 12, 2006
The New York Times
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.

BAQUBA, Iraq — It did not take long for Col. Brian D. Jones to begin to have doubts about the new Iraqi commander.

The commander, Brig. Gen. Shakir Hulail Hussein al-Kaabi, was chosen this summer by the Shiite-led government in Baghdad to lead the Iraqi Army’s Fifth Division in Diyala Province. Within weeks, General Shakir went to Colonel Jones with a roster of people he wanted to arrest.

On the list were the names of nearly every Sunni Arab sheik and political leader whom American officers had identified as crucial allies in their quest to persuade Sunnis to embrace the political process and turn against the powerful Sunni insurgent groups here.

“Where’s the evidence?” Colonel Jones demanded of General Shakir. “Where’s the proof? What makes us suspect these guys? None of that stuff exists.”

To that, Colonel Jones recalled, the Iraqi commander replied simply, “I got this from Baghdad.”

The incident was one of many that alarmed Colonel Jones, who just completed a yearlong tour as commander of American forces in Diyala. In the end, he said, he concluded that the Iraqi general’s real ambition was to destroy the Sunni political movement here — possibly on orders from Baghdad.

“I believe this is a larger plan to make Diyala a Shia province, rather than a Sunni province,” he said.

Diyala is known as “little Iraq,” because of its volatile mix of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. With its lush groves of date palms and abundant oil reserves, it is emerging as a crucial strategic territory in the sectarian struggle now gripping the country.

Long a stronghold of the insurgency — Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, was killed in a house only miles from here — Diyala is now teeming with Shiite militiamen who have rushed in from Baghdad in recent months to protect the Shiite population from attacks. Once considered by American officials to be relatively pacified, it has become a cauldron of violence carried out by insurgents and militias, intensified by sectarian-influenced security forces.

As pressures for a phased United States withdrawal build, the experiences of American commanders over the past year in Diyala provide a window on the possible consequences of ceding authority to the Iraqi Army.

And with the civilian homicide rate in Diyala now running at about 10 killings a day, according to United States officials, compared with 4 a day in April, the commanders’ experiences form a cautionary tale.

In July, the United States turned over “lead responsibility” for security in Diyala to the Iraqi Fifth Army Division. But within months, facing heavy violence and evidence of sectarian activities by the Iraqi Army, American commanders shelved plans to turn over full operational control of the Fifth Division to the Iraqi government on Oct. 1. “Recent operations conducted by the Fifth Iraqi Army seem to be focused strictly on the Sunnis,” said Maj. Gen. Benjamin R. Mixon, division commander for northern Iraq.

American commanders are now hoping for a spring transfer of control, General Mixon said, adding that they are conducting a wide-ranging investigation into allegations of death squad involvement and other activities by the Fifth Division under General Shakir. The Iraqi general denies treating Sunnis unfairly and says he has no knowledge of death squads in Diyala. “We don’t favor one side,” he said.

General Mixon said: “He’s either failing to supervise closely enough to know what’s going on, or he’s directly involved in it. One or the other. There can’t be any in between.”

A Contagion of Violence

Much of Baquba, a provincial capital of 400,000, is now dusty and lifeless, with boarded-up stores and charred wrecks of cars and trucks strewn about.

“Baquba is a dead city, controlled by Al Qaeda,” said Sameerah Shibli, a Diyala journalist. “They stop all life.”

Security has sharply deteriorated in this province of 1.4 million people in the past year, for reasons that go well beyond the sphere of General Shakir. The sectarian violence that exploded in Baghdad, after the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February, has spread like a contagion to other regions.

Shiite death squads in Baghdad have forced many Sunnis to flee to Baquba, 35 miles to the north, where some have joined the insurgency and have begun attacking Shiites.

“The Sunni have driven the Shia out of Baquba,” said Lt. Col. Thomas Fisher, commander of the 1-68 Combined Arms Battalion, which left Baquba in early November after a yearlong deployment. “They have come from Baghdad, driven out by Shiites there.”

Many Shiites are completing the circle, he said, fleeing to Baghdad or farther south.

Sunnis in Baquba now slaughter Shiites simply to avenge the killings of Sunnis in Baghdad, said Baquba’s mayor, Khalid al-Sinjari, a Sunni. “They kill in Baghdad, we kill in Baquba,” he said.

But now the Shiites also kill in Baquba. The Mahdi Army, a militia allied with the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, has 6,000 to 8,000 members in Diyala, said Ali Khazim al-Hamdan, an official in Mr. Sadr’s Diyala political office. That includes social service workers as well as armed fighters, mostly in the cities of Muqdadiya, about 25 miles northeast of Baquba, and Khan Bani Saad, 12 miles south of Baquba, where the threats are greatest, he said.

“Their goal is to protect Shia in Diyala,” he said. “If my brothers are killed, we have to react to that.”

The growing militia presence combined with the sectarian turn by Iraqi commanders will increasingly leave the Sunnis with only one source of protection, Colonel Jones said: terrorist groups like Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and Ansar al-Sunna.

“We are really painting them into a box here,” he said. “If you want to have a fight for the next 20 years, it’s here. I can’t imagine anybody who has seen war who wants that to happen. It’s the innocents, it’s these farmers out here, it’s these kids who pay the price. But these interests are colliding and they don’t care about that. Power is what they’re going after, consolidated and uncontested political power.”

“I think the sectarian war is coming this way,” he added.

Sectarian Harassment

Despite a population that is 50 percent Sunni Arab, Diyala has a Shiite-dominated government, because many Sunnis boycotted provincial elections last year. Now, much of the provincial police leadership appears to be allied with Shiite militias, American commanders say.

The Diyala police chief, Ghassan al-Bawi, “is stacking the deck in a sectarian manner,” Colonel Jones said. “We believe there are death squads that are operating, if not sponsored by the police, certainly with the knowledge of the police.”

In recent months, American commanders say, the most senior Iraqi Army and police leaders have ignored growing Shiite militia activity, provoking retaliatory attacks by Sunni insurgents, like the ambush and killing of 35 police officers in October in attacks near the city of Khan Bani Saad.

And General Shakir continued to harass Sunnis, the Americans said. In late September, troops led by General Shakir arrested 400 people, nearly all of them Sunnis, during raids in Baquba. Colonel Fisher estimated that there was reasonable justification to detain perhaps 10 percent of them.

He said the raids, which enraged the Sunni community, prompted American commanders to require General Shakir to clear all operations with them — a step back from the July 3 transfer of “lead” authority to the Iraqis. Nevertheless, while the Iraqi Fifth Division remains under the United States chain of command, American officers say that General Shakir is not fully complying with their instructions.

On Oct. 14, for example, commanders got word of what they said was a rogue Iraqi operation aimed at a Sunni sheik who had become an ally of the Americans in Khan Bani Saad. General Shakir never received approval for the operation, but ordered it anyway, Colonel Jones said.

After learning of the raid, American officers sent troops to force the Iraqis to return to base. When Sunni fighters saw the Americans arrive in the same sort of Humvees that the Iraqi soldiers use, they opened fire, Colonel Fisher said. The Americans returned fire and killed seven insurgents, he said.

General Shakir said he was not aware of the firefight.

American commanders also say the security forces are intimidating and arresting Sunnis who could be contenders for high political office — perhaps with an eye to welding Diyala eventually into a Shiite-dominated autonomous region under Iraq’s new federalism law. That law would allow provinces to form into semi-independent states with wide powers over internal security.

“It just seems to be a deliberate attempt to make sure that the Sunnis are unable to organize politically here and represent themselves well in the next round of elections,” Colonel Jones said, “because there is an awful lot at stake in this province.”

General Shakir sought the arrest of Sheik Atta Hadi al-Sadoun, a general under Saddam Hussein, immediately after the sheik began to talk about running for governor, said Lt. Col. Frank Muggeo, who commanded a team advising an Iraqi Army brigade in Baquba.

Recently, Iraqi Army officials lured Sheik Atta to a meeting, where they arrested him. General Shakir was preparing to transfer the sheik to Baghdad when Colonel Jones intervened, he said, ordering the sheik into American custody because he feared he would be killed in Baghdad. “We saved his life,” he said.

The Americans released the sheik for lack of evidence, Colonel Fisher said. But the sheik’s nephew, who drove his uncle to the meeting and was seen leaving with General Shakir’s men, is missing and feared dead, he said.

General Shakir said Sheik Atta remained a Saddam Hussein loyalist and had threatened Shiites. “One of my officers says Atta is worse than Zarqawi,” he said.

Four Sunni police commanders and two key lieutenants have been killed in the past eight weeks, Colonel Jones said. A Sunni deputy police chief, he said, refuses to come to work because he believes “they’re going to kill him.”

Reports of detainee abuse in Iraqi Army facilities soared after General Shakir took over, Colonel Jones added, saying evidence shows some detainees were beaten and subjected to electrical shocks.

What is particularly disappointing for American officers is that there were two highly capable and even-handed brigade commanders serving directly under General Shakir — Brig. Gen. Rahman Challab al-Janabi in Muqdadiya and Brig. Gen. Saman Talabani in Baquba.

General Rahman was fired by General Shakir in late October, and General Talabani, who said he was frustrated with serving under General Shakir, has told United States officers that he expects that he will have to give up his command. During a recent operation he grabbed a radio and, in a reference to the militia led by Mr. Sadr, screamed at General Shakir, saying that he was not an Iraqi commander but a “Mahdi Army commander.”

General Talabani, a Kurd, said he believed that General Shakir took orders from Mr. Sadr. “He’s working for Moktada,” he said. “He’s working just for the Shia people.”

He also said aides to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite who to a great extent owes his position to backing from Mr. Sadr, had made it clear that they supported General Shakir.

In an interview, General Shakir — recently promoted by Baghdad to major general despite the American inquiry into his activities — said he was committed to fighting terrorists anywhere in Iraq, regardless of their sect.

He insisted that he pursued Shiite outlaws as aggressively as he pursued Sunnis. If he is given the names of Shiite militiamen, he said, he will order troops to seize them.

General Mixon said senior American commanders had told Iraqi officials of their grave concerns about General Shakir. Nevertheless, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry insisted that it had “received no complaints against him, nor have we had any bad indications.”

Officials are “pleased” with General Shakir, and the descriptions by United States commanders in Diyala are incorrect, said the ministry spokesman, Mohammed al-Askari.

Tension Between Partners

During a recent joint American-Iraqi raid in a Shiite neighborhood of Abu Sayda, near Baquba, Iraqi troops stood around when they were supposed to be charging into homes. American soldiers, frustrated that the mission to apprehend men involved in sectarian violence was lagging, screamed and cursed at the Iraqis.

“Shoot them in the butt! Shoot them in the butt!” one yelled. “They’re not motivated.”

A 22-year-old platoon leader, Second Lt. Andrew Graziano, stepped up, barking orders and showing the Iraqis how to pound on doors.

After the raid some American officers said the Iraqi soldiers did not want to search Shiite homes. Lieutenant Graziano defended the Iraqis, saying their performance improved after a “stumble.” But he conceded that a pullout of United States troops would leave Diyala in grave peril.

“It would be real bad,” he said. “We all know that.”

Lieutenant Graziano’s unit, the Second Squadron of the Ninth Cavalry Regiment, put together evidence linking Iraqi officers to death squads after the squadron took over a base in August near Muqdadiya.

Led by Lt. Col. Louis Lartigue, the squadron detained the current and former commanders of the major crimes unit of the Muqdadiya police force and accused them of running death squads. They also arrested an Iraqi Army battalion commander in connection with death squad activity.

Troops also identified an Iraqi captain, now on the run and thought to be in Basra, who Colonel Jones said had been placed in his army job by General Shakir and is now believed to have led death squads in Muqdadiya.

“As we got into it, there were guys more than just partial to the Shia,” Colonel Lartigue said. “They were criminals.” He said General Shakir should be removed for “poor generalship,” if nothing else. “It would be a little like getting Al Capone on tax evasion,” he said.

But it is not clear whether anyone other than the Iraqi leaders can remove a commander of his rank, and even that would still leave Diyala with abundant problems.

“The U.S. Army is past the point where we say, ‘Fire this guy,’ ” Colonel Jones said. “All we can say is, ‘Hey, this guy is bad. Iraqi government, what are you going to do about it?’ ”

“We’re going out on a low note,” added Colonel Jones, whose unit, the Third Heavy Brigade Combat Team of the Fourth Infantry Division, is returning to Fort Carson, Colo. “We are very frustrated because we were so close to getting this thing moving in what we thought was the right direction. Now, the army and I believe the police are moving against this direction.

“This is a tipping point. If we demonstrate to the Sunnis that we are not going to remove Shakir and that we are going to allow him to do business as usual, then they’re going to lose faith in us and faith in the reconciliation process. And this thing is going to go kinetic in a big way.”

    Sectarian Rifts Foretell Pitfalls of Iraqi Troops’ Taking Control, NYT, 12.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/12/world/middleeast/12diyala.html?hp&ex=1163394000&en=d3ec263125cbdbd7&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Mortars Become Weapon of Choice in Iraq

November 11, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 5:25 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- They're not very accurate, but they're portable, easy to fire and can cause plenty of death and destruction. Mortars are quickly becoming the weapon of choice as Sunnis and Shiites fight it out in Baghdad. Having mortar rounds fall like rain is now a daily occurrence in some parts of the Iraqi capital.

Throughout Baghdad and in towns and villages within a 50-mile radius, whole populations have shifted as Shiite and Sunni flee violence from death squads and suicide bombers to the safety of places where their Islamic sect is the majority.

But as this physical separation between Sunni and Shiite grows, the mortars cut that gap, allowing sectarian fighters to fire into a district from a distance.

Mortars can be quickly pulled from the trunk of a car and fired over several miles, causing death and destruction without the dangers of close-quarters combat or the sacrifice of a suicide bomber.

The weapon isn't limited to sectarian violence. On Saturday, the U.S. government's office in Hillah, 60 miles south of Baghdad, came under mortar fire, an attack that sparked a blaze in part of the complex, Iraqi police said. There was no immediate word on damage or casualties.

For Arkan Maher, a 28-year-old electrician and father, it was just another workday this week when mortar rounds crashed to earth in a market in the Sunni enclave of Azamiyah. He fell wounded in both legs, an eye and one arm.

Maher was near the Abu Hanifa mosque, Sunni Islam's holiest shrine in Iraq and a regular target of Shiite mortar teams.

''I saw dozens of wounded people on the ground around me,'' he said, sitting in his house with bandages on his arm and legs. ''Azamiyah has been hit with mortars every day for a week now.''

Across the Tigris River, in the Kazimiyah neighborhood -- site of the most important Shiite shrine in Baghdad -- retaliatory mortar rounds have struck daily as well.

Other Shiite strongholds in eastern Baghdad, the Shaab neighborhood and Sadr City, are regularly bombarded as is the dangerous Sunni stronghold of Dora, in south Baghdad.

The attacks that have driven the two Muslim sects away from each other in the capital skyrocketed after the Feb. 22 bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra, north of Baghdad.

The destruction of the golden-domed mosque enraged Shiites, particularly members of the Mahdi Army militia. The militia, loyalists of anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, stormed out of their Sadr City stronghold and have been on a rampage of revenge killing ever since. Sunnis have fought back with equal vengeance.

The Mahdi Army and the larger, Iranian-trained Badr Brigade of Iraq's largest Shiite political bloc, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, also have sunk deep roots in the country's police and security forces.

The militia members and offshoot death squads have been largely responsible for running Sunnis from neighborhoods where they were a minority. Sunni insurgents, meanwhile, have been attacking Shiites throughout Iraq, including in Sunni-dominated neighborhoods, in what looks increasingly like a successful bid to ignite a civil war.

Iraq's Immigration Ministry says about 1.5 million people are internal refugees, while the United Nations says a similar number of Iraqis have fled the country altogether. That would be about 12 percent of Iraq's prewar population of 26 million, and both figures are probably low estimates.

Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Gen. Abdel-Karim Khalaf -- a Shiite as is his boss, Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani -- sought to blame the mortar campaign solely on Sunni insurgents, claiming it was the work of Saddam Hussein loyalists and extremists of al-Qaida in Iraq.

''Al-Qaida is facing a major failure, and Baathists are trying to prove something after Saddam was sentenced to death'' last week, Khalaf said in a telephone interview. ''These are terrorist, cowardly and dirty acts caused by their failure against Iraqi security forces. Now they fire on civilians from a distance, then flee.''

Sunnis in Azamiyah blame the Shiites.

Khaled al-Waleed said mortar attacks on the neighborhood started after Shiite militias were pushed back in recent bids to invade the district.

''If they ever decide to enter Azamiyah again, they will be committing suicide,'' al-Waleed said. He claimed that the mortars falling on the neighborhood are fired from the Shiite neighborhoods of Oteifiyah, Qahira and Ur.

The exchange of mortar fire began in earnest this month when four mortar rounds poured down near Azamiyah's Abu Hanifa Mosque, killing at least five people. The next day three more people were killed in rocket and mortar attacks in the same neighborhood. Two other civilians were killed by mortars in Dora.

Mortars also fell on both Sunni Azamiyah and Shiite Kazimiyah over the following days. The Sunni-operated Baghdad Television urged the Shiite-dominated government to intervene.

On Tuesday, in apparent retaliation for mortar attacks on Sunni areas, a suicide bomber struck a coffee shop in Kazimiyah, killing 21 people and wounding 25. The next day, a pair of mortar rounds slammed into a field in the Shiite district of Sadr City, killing eight soccer players and fans.

Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki declared Wednesday night that both neighborhoods were being targeted by ''Saddamist'' and Sunni extremists firing from Taji, 10 miles north of the capital.

Sadr City resident Wissam Jabr, 28, pleaded with the government to stop these ''terrible acts that target innocent civilians.''

But Sunnis claim the attacks on their neighborhoods are fired from Shiite districts, a sentiment that percolated to the surface during Friday prayers at the Abu Hanifa mosque.

''Azamiyah will remain a stick in the eyes of those who hate us, regardless of mortar bombings and the lack of services,'' Sunni Sheik Sameer al-Obeidi told worshippers. ''We will remain steadfast.''

    Mortars Become Weapon of Choice in Iraq, NYT, 11.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq-Mortar-War.html

At Dusty Outpost in Iraq, Cake Is Cut for Marines Young and Not So Young

November 11, 2006
The New York Times
By C. J. CHIVERS

OUTPOST VIKING, Iraq, Nov. 10 — Capt. James W. Mingus faced another platoon of his marines. They stood in their fire-retardant uniforms, wearied and hungry, weapons slung across their chests and backs.

A birthday cake was on the table in front of them. One piece had been cut out with a bayonet.

The captain, 37 and the oldest marine in the rifle company he commands, had just given that piece to the platoon’s youngest marine, Lance Cpl. T. J. McDowell, who is 20.

“Two hundred and thirty-one years,” the captain said.

“Tradition. This is what makes us different. This is what sets us apart.”

The Marine Corps celebrated its 231st birthday on Friday, an event that passes with little notice outside the corps’s insular ranks, but is an essential ritual within, especially now, as the policies guiding the war seem certain to change and the reasons that brought the marines here are less clear.

No matter the changes in Washington, here in this forward base in Anbar Province, Company F, Second Battalion, Eighth Marines marked the day with the same insistence on ceremony that surrounds marines from their first seconds before an enraged drill instructor to the folded flag at the grave.

As each platoon came in from their duties on patrol or manning posts at Outpost Viking’s walls, a ceremony repeated itself: a reading of a traditional birthday message from 1921, a reading of a message from the current commandant and then the cake, passed symbolically from one generation to the next.

“When were you born, Graham?” a marine called out, just before one platoon’s cake-cutting ceremonies began.

Cpl. Jeremy L. Graham, who had hit four bombs in three months while riding in vehicles, and who was blasted once more on a foot patrol, answered without a pause: “1775,” he said, using the year that the Marine Corps first took up arms, in a Pennsylvania tavern.

Every year, and everywhere, it is the same, even now.

The graying marines remind marines who are new to shaving: You are part of an outfit, storied and bloodied, that is older than the nation it serves. You are one of us. Pass it on.

In peacetime it can be poignant, as the ceremony, held in veteran halls and bases, invariably attracts veterans from several generations and wars.

In Outpost Viking, which is little more than a sandbagged fortress ringed by an insurgency that hounds the marines at each turn, Captain Mingus and his noncommissioned officers needed few words. The youngest marines here already know much of what veterans tell; there are 22-year-olds on their third combat tours.

Second Battalion, Eighth Marines has been in Iraq on this rotation for a little more than three months.

Nearly 15 percent of the battalion’s marines have been wounded. Five marines and one of their interpreters have been killed and 31 marines have been wounded seriously enough to require evacuation back to the states.

Each week, the number of wounded climbs. On Thursday, an improvised explosive struck a vehicle in the battalion’s Weapons Company, sending shrapnel into the right leg of Lance Cpl. William J. Thorpe and shattering Lance Cpl. Daniel B. Nicholson’s face.

(The week before, Lance Corporal Nicholson had said a prayer for the recovery of another marine, Lance Cpl. Colin Smith, who had been shot through the head. Now, Lance Corporal Nicholson was in a military hospital in Germany, with the others praying for him.)

Captain Mingus told the marines to observe this day every year, no matter where they were. “If you have two marines in a fighting hole somewhere, find a Twinkie, cut it in half and say, ‘Happy birthday, marine,’ ” he said.

The hearty greetings belied an underlying unease that these men confront each day, and it was noticeable in what was left unsaid. There was little talk on Friday of saving Iraq. And there was a message implicit in the older marine’s words.

Gradually, as months and tours have passed here, blending into years inside a country that has slipped out of everyone’s control, the list of reasons for fighting has changed. First it shifted from finding weapons of mass destruction to removing a dictator to building a stable, democratic Iraq.

Eventually, when talk of stability in Iraq gave way to questions of whether the spasms of sectarian violence could be properly called a civil war, the marines’ reasons for fighting shrank further, down to more basic things.

The captain and the others who spoke steered wide of politics, but that wide steer was noticeable. They spoke instead of fundamental sentiments, those that have always been first and last on a marine’s list of reasons to fight.

Five years after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, and almost four years after the troops prepared to invade Iraq, many of the marines in the battalion, in their quiet times in the weeks before this day, have said they fight for two things: the corps’s tradition and reputation, and for the man on their left and right.

Their Iraq is a land of dangers and deceptions, an endless test and a daily set of deadly traps. Each marine’s own future can feel like an abstraction when a patrol is heading out. It is difficult to see the hidden bombs. It is harder still to see the future of Iraq, or how any of this might end.

Friday was the birthday. Each of the marines stepped into the line, just as they always do.

Five times, the cakes were cut with bayonets and pieces handed out. Then the marines filed through a field kitchen and were served lobster, steak, crab legs and shrimp. Even the exhausted smiled, leaning against blast walls designed to keep out the frequent mortar fire.

Many were bedecked with charms, a collection that provided a measure of how deeply into the combat culture these young marines had already passed. The charms were small keepsakes, often not obvious, taken from churches, homes or firefights and designated as talismans of luck.

Lance Cpl. Elijah D. Henry, from North Carolina, came for his cake. He wore a big knife. Its handle was carved from the antlers of the first deer he killed, a six-point whitetail he shot at his uncle’s deer camp in southern Georgia.

He is half Irish and half Cherokee. In his pocket was a small leather bag with more charms, 100-year-old tobacco — grown by the oldest living Cherokee, he said — along with a pinch of sage, a ruby, dirt from every country he has ever visited and a shell from the 21-gun salute for his late grandfather, who was a P.O.W. in World War II.

“I guess you heard about my squirrel tails?” he said.

“I get them blessed and hand them out to my friends.”

So far, he said, he had handed out five.

Cpl. Daniel M. Greenwald, from Rockland County, N.Y. passed through the line. He had threaded a dog-tag chain through the mangled remains of a Kalashnikov bullet, which on Sept. 2 hit him on the helmet and knocked him flat.

His head was soaked in blood from the impact of the helmet on his forehead, but the Kevlar kept the bullet out. Now he carries the broken bullet wherever he goes, hoping that bullets, like proverbial lightning, will not strike twice.

The battalion commander arrived and said that the battalion’s snipers had just shot three Iraqi men who were burying a bomb beside a bridge near Saqlawiya, a town not far away.

One of the insurgents was killed instantly, he said.

The other two had been wounded, and had stumbled off into the marsh and reeds. Marines were out following their blood trails, a birthday spent on the job.

    At Dusty Outpost in Iraq, Cake Is Cut for Marines Young and Not So Young, NYT, 11.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/11/world/middleeast/11marines.html?hp&ex=1163307600&en=57c91b95376dc6d9&ei=5094&partner=homepage

What Is the Iraq War Really Like? The Veterans Tell Their Stories

November 11, 2006
The New York Times
By ALAN FEUER

One hears a lot of talk about the Iraq war — talk of casualties, quagmires, exit strategies. What is not heard much are the voices of those who fight the war. A veteran’s story cuts across divides, cuts through politics. It has a way of silencing a room.

On Veterans Day in 2000, Gov. George E. Pataki established the New York State Veteran Oral History Program to preserve the stories of New York veterans in their own words. The program is run out of a small state armory in Saratoga Springs where two men, Michael Russert and Wayne D. Clarke, who work for the New York State Military Museum, conduct interviews in a casual style on videotape.

So far, 1,304 veterans from as far back as World War I have contributed their tales. Only a handful are Iraq war veterans, Mr. Clarke said, largely because they have only recently come home and many are still reluctant to speak.

What follows are excerpts from the tales of four who served in Iraq, from the commanding general of a National Guard division to the first sergeant of a Regular Army regiment. They touch upon the large and small experiences of war: death, fear, e-mail, camaraderie and coming home.

As one of the four, Sgt. Howard Heard, put it: “You watch it in on TV, but when you get there, it’s like, ‘Man, this is really happening. It’s just totally different than you think.’ ” Here is what the people who have been there think.

•

Sgt. Howard Heard, 130th Engineer Brigade, 10th Mountain Division

THREE WAYS YOU COMING BACK

They had snipers there, oh yeah. I remember we invaded Falluja and we were stretched pretty thin then. Matter of fact, we had one guy just two weeks out of training at Fort Hood, Texas. He was here one week and he got killed; a sniper shot him underneath the armpit. He bled to death. I mean, we lost 3 guys out of 700. They told us we’d lose 30 before we left Fort Drum. So we lost three guys too many, but three’s not bad. ... People say, “Well what do you think?” I say, “Well, you coming back, you just don’t know how.” There’s only three ways you coming back. You can come back in a box. You can come back missing a limb. Or you can come back with everything you left with. And that’s my theory on that.

STAY FOCUSED

I told my guys: “Don’t slack off. You got two weeks left. Let’s keep it going.” We had one guy there, the day before he went home he got mortared at the PX. And he got killed — supposed to go home the next day. That’s why I told the guys, “See what happens? You never know.” You can’t let your hair down. You got to stay focused. Just stay focused.

•

Maj. David C. Feeley, Second Brigade, First Infantry Division

SMALL TOWN

There were several Shiite religious parties in Samarra. We had the Badr Corps, which was the armed wing of Sciri [the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq]. We had some Al Qaeda operatives that were operating in the town. And given the proximity to the air base and the proximity to Baghdad, we had former high-ranking members of the Baath Party. On a couple of raids we executed we found drugs, large footlockers filled with Parkinson’s disease medication that was apparently being distributed as a cheap drug for people who were addicted and because it suppressed the fear response in the people making attacks on us. Small town, a lot going on.

SPRAY AND PRAY

I would not classify anything I saw in Iraq as sniper fire. I would classify a lot of it as inaccurate rifle fire. Someone who is on drugs and randomly shooting an AK-47 is not a sniper. We did capture a Russian sniper rifle at least once in our area, but as far as accurate, precision rifle fire, that was not what we typically encountered. What we typically encountered was spray and pray on the part of the Iraqis.

•

Maj. Gen. Joseph J. Taluto, 42nd Infantry Division, New York National Guard

INHIBITED BY SECURITY PROBLEMS

At the leader level, we had wonderful relationships with the Iraqis. We worked together, we socialized together, we talked. Our units worked together. I had wonderful relationships with the governors of each province. I had good relationships with many of the tribal leaders in central Iraq, the sheiks. Our relationships down into the community, though, were inhibited by security problems, the fact that some of the people felt threatened hanging out with U.S. forces. ... Our impression was they wanted to embrace us. And they did embrace us at those levels I described, but it wasn’t like you could go down into the community and in amongst the common, ordinary, nongovernmental, nonmilitary leaders and break bread.

AN ASYMMETRICAL WAR

The people in the National Guard feel good about what they’re doing, the fact that they’re making a significant contribution. The sacrifice is great, but the morale is good. Our country is at war. We have been in a new type of war, an asymmetrical war, where it’s 360 degrees and all around you. ... We have been working and preparing for it for some time. But this is a new evolution in warfare.

•

First Sgt. Kevin Lyons, Third Armored Cavalry Regiment

FOX NEWS

Finally some local Iraqis went across the Syrian border, and they were buying televisions and satellite dishes. So this squadron bought one — and Fox News! It was like the greatest thing. It was the biggest event we had in two months. They hooked up the satellite dish and there was Fox News. I’m sitting there in Iraq and we’d go up to the briefing room, and if we didn’t have anything to do we’d sit there for hours at a time. At night we stayed up late just to watch Fox News.

IT DOESN’T GET ANY EASIER

We didn’t know how anybody was. There was Strobel, Sergeant Jake and Sergeant Williams in the vehicle. Later on that evening we found out that Strobel had been evacuated because the I.E.D. [improvised explosive device] had perforated his eardrums. And we found out at the same time that Sergeant Williams didn’t make it. I had gone through this before, but it doesn’t get easier. You just figure it does. You try and make yourself believe it does. But now I’ve got this new job. I was the first sergeant of the troop, and they said: “Hey, now we have to do this memorial ceremony. You have to read the guy’s name, and you have to do it like three times.” It was probably the toughest thing I ever done except for one other thing. ... It was rough. Unfortunately, he passed on, but he’s in a better place, and that was the only name I read the entire time over there.

THE BEST DAYS

Once e-mail started, it was great. I would try to make it up there every other day to e-mail my wife. Those had to be some of the best days. It just felt like you were there. You get pictures from home, you get to send pictures. You’re telling her you’re all right, but she’s like: “How do I know? I haven’t seen anything or heard from you in months.” ... Technology had to be about the greatest thing about this war.

HOME

We landed on the ground in Colorado Springs Airport, and it was awesome. Just to know that you were home. Just to know that you were safe. Just to know you made it back in one piece. And at the same time you take a second to think, “Not everybody’s back yet, and not everybody came back.” But then you get in there, and as we were walking off the plane the first thing we get is this guy, he’s a civilian, he works for one of the local companies, and he took his personal — somebody said upwards of $10,000 — and he bought Quarter Pounders, hundreds of them, and he had them right there, and he’s handing them out to everybody. He’s got a big American flag on his pickup truck, just handing out Quarter Pounders. ... Then you walk inside them doors, and they’re playing “American Soldier” by Toby Keith. Man, you get in there and there’s all these people and they’re cheering and it’s the greatest feeling in the world. And then when you’re done, they release you and there’s your wife and son. And then you know you’re home.

    What Is the Iraq War Really Like? The Veterans Tell Their Stories, NYT, 11.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/11/nyregion/11guard.html

Military Team Undertakes a Broad Review of the Iraq War and the Campaign Against Terror

November 11, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON

WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 — Senior military leaders have begun a broad review of strategy in Iraq and other crisis areas in the Bush administration’s campaign against terrorism, according to Pentagon officials.

In a closely held effort, Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has assembled a team of some of the military’s brightest and most innovative officers and told them to take a fresh look at Iraq and Afghanistan, among other flashpoints.

Pentagon officials said that the team’s objective was to outline a range of options that General Pace might draw on in advising President Bush and Robert M. Gates, selected by Mr. Bush to become defense secretary, as the White House adjusts its strategy in Iraq. Ideas that have been discussed include increasing the size of the Iraqi security forces, along with the American effort to train and equip them, and adjusting the size of the American force in Iraq.

But Pentagon officials stressed that the review extended well beyond Iraq, and that some unorthodox ideas on how to fight terrorism were being weighed. The review reflects the recognition that military efforts need to be part of an overall approach that includes all aspects of American power, including diplomatic and economic.

Pentagon officials said the military review, which formally began Sept. 25, is being coordinated with the rest of the government, but that the military team had not met with members of the Iraq Study Group, the commission that is also looking into options for Iraq. The creation of that commission, headed by a former secretary of state, James A. Baker III, and Lee H. Hamilton, a former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, had raised the possibility that fundamental decisions on how to proceed in Iraq might be determined largely outside of the Pentagon. The commission is being advised by former military officers, but none of its members have served as senior military commanders.

The team involved in the military review includes Col. H. R. McMaster, the Army officer whose 2005 operation in Tal Afar has been cited as a textbook case in how to wage counterinsurgency in Iraq.

Other military officers include Col. Peter R. Mansoor, the director of the United States Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., who previously commanded an Army brigade that fought the Mahdi Army militia in 2004 at Karbala.

Col. Thomas C. Greenwood, the director of the Marine Command and Staff College, who oversaw efforts to train Iraqi security forces in Anbar, the restive province in western Iraq, is also on the team. All told, more than a dozen military officers are on the team, which is overseen by Capt. Michael Rogers of the Navy, who serves as a special assistant to General Pace.

Though the review has been under way for six weeks, it has acquired special urgency as a result of the Democratic gains in the election, President Bush’s decision to replace Donald H. Rumsfeld as defense secretary and the clamor for some kind of course adjustment in Iraq.

The goal is to finish the review in December, but some of its interim thinking has been made available to the military chiefs, Pentagon officials said.

Initially, the Pentagon tried to keep the existence of the review secret. But in recent days the Bush administration has advertised its willingness to consider fresh approaches in an effort to counter criticism that it was rigidly adhering to a faltering strategy. General Pace referred to the review in general terms in TV appearances today.

“We have to give ourselves a good honest scrub about what is working and what is not working, what are the impediments to progress and what should we change about the way we are doing it to make sure that we get to the objective that we set for ourselves,” General Pace said in an interview with CBS. “I am looking at it with the Joint Chiefs. We’re making our recommendations. We’re having our dialogue.”

General Pace said that Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top commander in Iraq, and General John P. Abizaid, the head of the United States Central Command, were part of the effort.

Mr. Bush is to meet Monday with the commission headed by Mr. Baker and Mr. Hamilton. Others who will meet with the group are Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Mr. Rumsfeld; the national intelligence director, John D. Negroponte; Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency; and Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Iraq. The study group is expected to issue its recommendations around Dec. 7.

    Military Team Undertakes a Broad Review of the Iraq War and the Campaign Against Terror, NYT, 11.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/11/world/middleeast/11pentagon.html

Bush uses dedication ceremony of Marines' museum to tout Middle East work

Updated 11/10/2006 9:34 PM ET
AP
USA Today

QUANTICO, Va. (AP) — An emotional President Bush said Friday he would present the Medal of Honor — America's highest military decoration — to a Marine who died when he jumped on a grenade in Iraq and saved the lives of two comrades.

The medal will be given posthumously to Cpl. Jason Dunham of Scio, N.Y., who died on April 22, 2004, of wounds he suffered when his patrol was ambushed near the Syrian border.

"He and his men stopped a convoy of cars that were trying to make an escape," Bush said during a speech to dedicate a new Marine museum. "As he moved to search one of the vehicles, an insurgent jumped out and grabbed the corporal by the throat."

During hand-to-hand combat with the insurgent, Dunham called out to his fellow Marines: "No, no, no. Watch his hand!"

"Moments later, an enemy grenade rolled out," Bush said. "Cpl. Dunham did not hesitate. He jumped on the grenade to protect his fellow Marines. He used his helmet and his body to absorb the blast."

Friday would have been Dunham's 25th birthday. The museum dedication came on the 231st anniversary of the establishment of the Marines.

"You might say that he was born to be a Marine," Bush told Dunham's mother and father, who were among an estimated 10,000 people attending the dedication of the museum. They will be presented with the award, which is voted by Congress, at the White House.

Bush has presented the Medal of Honor six times. Three went to Vietnam veterans, one each to veterans of World War II and Korea, and one to an Iraq war veteran. Dunham is the second Medal of Honor recipient from the war in Iraq.

The dedication of the National Museum of the Marine Corps, located on a 135-acre site next to the Marine Corps Base in Quantico, began with the introduction of Marine Corps brass and a 21-gun salute to Bush, who walked from the building as the band played "Hail to the Chief." After the singing of the nation anthem, four F-18s streaked across a blue sky.

The design of the museum's building, which slants upward toward the clouds, reflects the famous image of five Marines and a sailor raising the American flag on Iwo Jima. The scene was captured in a Pulitzer Prize-winning picture taken by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal.

"Years from now when America looks out on a democratic Middle East, growing in freedom and prosperity, Americans will speak of the battles like Fallujah with the same awe and reverence that we now give to Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima" in World War II, Bush said.

The museum is the centerpiece of the Marine Corps Heritage Center, which will include a memorial park, parade grounds, artifact restoration facilities and an onsite hotel and conference center. The museum, which opens to the public Monday, will focus on the Marines' contributions throughout the nation's history, immersing visitors in the sights and sounds of Marines in action.

Bush said visitors will experience life from a Marine's perspective — what it's like to make an amphibious landing under fire, deploy from a helicopter in Vietnam or endure a grueling boot camp.

"No thanks," Bush joked.

    Bush uses dedication ceremony of Marines' museum to tout Middle East work, UT, 10.11.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-11-10-marines_x.htm

New al - Qaida Tape Says 12, 000 Activated

November 10, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:13 a.m. ET
The New York Times

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed in a new audio tape Friday to be winning the war faster than expected in Iraq, saying it had mobilized 12,000 fighters.

The group also said it welcomed the Republican electoral defeat that led to the departure of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Abu Ayyub al-Masri, also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, also urged the U.S. to stay in Iraq so his group would have more opportunities to kill American troops.

''The al-Qaida army has 12,000 fighters in Iraq, and they have vowed to die for God's sake,'' a man introduced as al-Muhajir said in an audio tape made available on militant Web sites.

Al-Muhajir became the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq after Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. airstrike in June.

The tape could not be independently verified.

The speaker praised the outcome of Tuesday's elections in which Democrats swept to power in the House and the Senate, in large part due to U.S. voter dissatisfaction over the handling of the war in Iraq.

''The American people have put their feet on the right path by ... realizing their president's betrayal in supporting Israel,'' the terror leader said. ''So they voted for something reasonable in the last elections.''

Describing President Bush as ''the most stupid president'' in U.S. history, al-Masri reached out to the Muslim world and said his group was winning the war in Iraq faster than expected due to U.S. policies.

He urged Bush not to withdraw U.S. forces so al-Qaida could have more opportunities to fight U.S. soldiers. ''We haven't had enough of your blood yet,'' he told the U.S.

The speaker also referred to Rumsfeld's resignation and called on ''the lame duck (Bush) not to hurry up in escaping the same way the defense minister did.''

''They are getting ready to leave, because they are no longer capable of staying,'' the al-Qaida leader said, referring to U.S. forces.

''Remain steadfast in the battlefield, you coward,'' he said, addressing Bush.

    New al - Qaida Tape Says 12, 000 Activated, NYT, 10.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Egypt-al-Qaida.html

When Soldiers Fall, Grief Binds a Unit’s 2 Worlds

November 10, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL LUO and MICHAEL WILSON

BAGHDAD, Nov. 9 — Memorial services honoring fallen soldiers from the First Battalion, 22nd Infantry in Iraq used to require planning meetings of as long as 45 minutes. But at this point, they take barely five.

“We’re here again,” said Chaplain John Hill. A roadside bomb had killed yet another soldier from the battalion the day before. He began to recite the unit’s “memorial ceremony execution matrix,” a 40-item checklist of tasks that includes everything from collecting personal effects to finding a singer.

Lt. Col. Craig Osborne, the battalion’s commander, said, “Unfortunately, we’ve gotten, I won’t say, good at this,” and he wrapped up the meeting almost as soon as it began. “It’s become habitual.”

In October, 105 American troops were killed in Iraq, the most since January 2005. The spike in deaths, more than three years after the war began, became a major factor in the sweeping Democratic gains in Congress this week. Colonel Osborne’s soldiers alone lost nine comrades, just as the battalion was beginning to make preparations to return home later this month.

“When something like this happens, all you do is think about it,” said Sgt. First Class Robert Warman, who last month watched a Humvee carrying four soldiers get blown to bits in front of him when a huge bomb hidden in the road exploded. “You think about it when you go to the mess hall, when you go to take a shower, when you lay down to sleep. You think, and you think, and you think, and you cry.”

The 800-strong Army battalion, part of the First Brigade of the Fourth Infantry Division based in Fort Hood, Tex., has been patrolling a vast swath of land west of Baghdad riven by Sunni Arab insurgents.

The losses in the unit in October were the most suffered by any battalion or squadron, according to a New York Times database of war casualties compiled from information provided by the Pentagon.

Back home, among the soldiers’ wives, fear spread in ever-widening circles. News sped from a woman’s living room in Killeen, outside Fort Hood, to her friend across town and then across the country.

After hearing that a member of her husband’s unit had been killed, Debbie Borawski braced herself. She was so certain that an Army officer was going to arrive at her home that she called a friend to come and wait with her. “I pretty much almost blacked out, “ she said.

Hour by hour from her home in Fort Hood, she filters the news of every roadside bomb, every sniper attack. “Until you hear that he’s safe, it almost kills you,” she said. “It eats you away.”

In the battalion’s first tour in Iraq, when it aided in the eventual capture of Saddam Hussein in Tikrit, it lost a handful of soldiers. And until September, only 3 soldiers of the 800 in the battalion had been killed in combat during this tour. On Oct. 1, a platoon of soldiers from A Company set out to establish an observation post near a road that had been plagued by concealed bombs.

Specialist Heriberto Hernandez, 20, was among a group of soldiers in a Humvee that rolled up toward a bridge near where they would set up. Specialist Hernandez and another soldier got out, while Cpl. Chase A. Haag, 22, a carefree soldier from Portland, Ore., who was in the gunner’s hatch, continued down the road with two others. The explosion that followed detonated right below Corporal Haag. Specialist Hernandez said he could tell right away that his friend, one of the best gunners in the battalion, was gone.

Still, he gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation until the medevac helicopter arrived. Specialist Zachary Mayhew, who was one of Corporal Haag’s closest confidants in the platoon, put a splint on his mangled leg.

“We got him out of there in 25 minutes,” Specialist Hernandez said. They learned later that their friend had died. That shook the younger soldiers in the platoon, who had protected themselves with an inflated sense of invincibility.

The young soldier’s death forced couples like Sgt. Joseph Wilson and his wife, Sara, to strip away denial from their conversations.

“He doesn’t really like to talk about it,” said Mrs. Wilson, 26, living in Arizona until her husband’s return. “I’ve kind of forced him to talk about things, especially Haag’s death. He gets upset and starts crying.”

A few days later, Sgt. Brandon S. Asbury, 21, part of the battalion’s forward support company, was shot and killed by a sniper. Less than two weeks afterward, a roadside bomb killed Second Lt. Johnny K. Craver, 37, from the battalion’s B Company. On Oct. 18, four soldiers — Cpl. Russell G. Culbertson III, 22; Specialist Joseph C. Dumas Jr., 25; Second Lt. Christopher E. Loudon, 23; and Cpl. David M. Unger, 21 — along with their Iraqi interpreter, were killed by a bomb blast that left a crater in the road 7 feet deep and 15 feet wide.

Sgt. Scott Borawski, 36, of C Company, was supposed to have been on that Humvee that day. But because he was busy with other duties, he was replaced by Corporal Unger of Headquarters Company, whom Sergeant Borawski and his wife had befriended back home at Fort Hood.

Debbie Borawski first thought her husband was among the dead, after a call from Corporal Unger’s grieving wife.

“I knew Scott was with them,” Mrs. Borawski, 40, said later. “I didn’t know he wasn’t with his crew.”

She struggled to focus on the new widow, now forced to raise her young son alone, on the other end of the line. “I was so much more worried about my husband,” she said. “I feel selfish saying this. But I ended up kind of shutting down.”

After the blast, it took Sergeant Borawski two days to gather himself enough to call his wife to tell her what had happened. He had hoped to avoid breaking down for his wife’s sake, but halfway through he did.

“I didn’t know if I should feel grateful for not being there, or remorseful,” he said.

The bomb attack, coming so soon after Corporal Haag’s death, shook Specialist Mayhew anew. Lieutenant Loudon was a high school friend of his. The pair came from the same tiny town of just 2,100 people in Pennsylvania. They played on the same soccer team. Their mothers were friends. Somehow they had wound up in the same battalion in Iraq.

Back in Pennsylvania, Specialist Mayhew’s mother, Beverly Fustine, attended the young lieutenant’s funeral.

She said she was “pretty much O.K.” before October but now needed medication to sleep at night.

“I’m scared to death,” she said. “Sometimes I even fear answering the door. But it can’t compare to the fear he must feel every day.”

On Oct. 22, as Colonel Osborne and his men were questioning a store owner about reports of a Sunni checkpoint stopping Shiites, a shot rang out. Specialist Nathaniel A. Aguirre, 21, a medic who had been making plans to enroll at Texas A&M University and sign up for ROTC after Iraq, lay motionless on the street. He was standing less than 20 feet from the battalion commander.

Sgt. Kenneth England and Colonel Osborne dragged his body behind a parked car and tried to revive him. Sergeant England shoved a tube into his nose to try to create an airway but after five minutes of work, he pronounced Specialist Aguirre dead.

Less than a half hour later, as they were still looking for the sniper, they heard the crack of another rifle shot. Word came over the radio that the gunner in one of the Humvees down the street, Specialist Matthew W. Creed, 23, had been hit.

Sergeant England again dashed out to try to save Specialist Creed, one of many soldiers in the battalion who was supposed to have left the Army but is in Iraq because of the Department of Defense’s stop-loss order. He could not save him either.

That night, Sergeant England called his wife, Vanessa, a pharmacy student in Oklahoma, as he always does.

“Hey baby,” he said and listened to her tell him about her day.

When it was his turn, he could only say that it had been bad. It was not until several days later that he shared a few details.

“I told her we lost two guys, and I was there,” he said. “She really doesn’t need to know there was a sniper 50 meters away from me.”

Several wives said they took for granted the misinformation coming from their own husbands, well-intentioned little lies to ease fears. The women gather bits of news from one another, within the longstanding Family Readiness Groups or through the less formal channels of MySpace accounts and cellphones.

Specialist Hernandez made his fiancée, Kathleen Soliz, promise not to watch the news. In October, she broke the promise.

“I try not to, but it’s just that forbidden fruit,” said Ms. Soliz, 20, of Austin. “I can’t help it. I want to see if things are getting progressively worse or better, what regions are in a bind, and how the forces are dealing with that. I don’t even know what area exactly he’s in, so I’m probably doing myself an injustice more than anything.”

For the soldiers struggling to cope back in Iraq, it is the quiet moments in between missions and hanging out with buddies that are the most difficult. On Nov. 1, they lost yet another soldier to yet another makeshift bomb.

Pfc. Shane Barrows, who was there when the four soldiers in the Humvee were killed last month, strums his guitar and sings to himself in his room. He and others spent hours afterward cleaning up the area, collecting remnants of their friends’ bodies and placing them gently in body bags.

On a recent morning, he closed his eyes and sang: “When you are reading the paper, will you remember them? Will you see their faces like I did? I will see them forever in my head.”

Michael Luo reported from Baghdad and Camp Liberty in Iraq, and Michael Wilson from Killeen, Tex. Andy Lehren contributed reporting from New York.

    When Soldiers Fall, Grief Binds a Unit’s 2 Worlds, NYT, 10.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/10/world/middleeast/10unit.html

Iraqi Predicts the Hanging of Hussein by Year’s End

November 9, 2006
The New York Times
By KIRK SEMPLE

BAGHDAD, Nov. 8 — Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki predicted in a televised interview on Wednesday that former President Saddam Hussein would be hanged by the end of the year.

Court officials said, however, that the prime minister’s prediction was unrealistic, considering the timing of the appeals process and the sheer volume of evidence the appellate judges would have to review. It was far more likely, they said, that the hanging would not take place until January at the earliest, and probably later.

The authorities reported the killing on Wednesday of more than 30 people in various attacks around Iraq. And the American military command described a major attack on an American military base in northeastern Baghdad on Sunday that lasted for an hour and a half and left at least 38 insurgents dead.

Under Iraqi law, a nine-judge appellate court will begin its review of the death sentences against Mr. Hussein and two of his co-defendants 30 days from Sunday, when the sentences were handed down. If the appellate judges uphold the rulings, the executions must be carried out within 30 days.

The appellate judges are not bound by a deadline for their deliberation, but Mr. Maliki and other Shiite leaders have made no secret of their desire to see Mr. Hussein executed as soon as possible. They say that Mr. Hussein’s survival could help to rally the Sunni Arab-led insurgency that has been trying to drive American forces out of the country and topple the Shiite-dominated government. He periodically issues written messages from his cell at an American military detention center here exhorting insurgents to continue their resistance.

Mr. Hussein was found guilty of crimes against humanity for the persecution of the townspeople of Dujail, north of Baghdad, after what was said to be an assassination attempt against him there in 1982. A total of 148 men and youths were killed, and hundreds of others banished for years to a remote desert camp in southern Iraq.

American and Iraqi officials had originally planned to prosecute Mr. Hussein in a series of trials that, they said, would describe his long rule of terror. He is the principal defendant in a second trial involving the so-called Anfal military campaign in the late 1980s in which, prosecutors contend, as many as 180,000 Kurdish civilians were killed.

But with the conflict worsening, senior Iraqi officials, including Mr. Maliki, now say they would rather eliminate Mr. Hussein as a source of inspiration for the Sunni insurgents than use the trials to prove his personal responsibility for atrocities during his 24-year rule. According to Iraqi court officials, nothing in Iraqi law would prevent Mr. Hussein being executed before the Anfal trial ends.

In an interview televised by the BBC on Wednesday, Mr. Maliki said, “I think the court is determined to pursue this case that they are looking at, but we will not interfere.”

When asked to specify when he expected Mr. Hussein to be executed, Mr. Maliki said, “I expect it to happen before the end of the year.”

The Constitution mandates that President Jalal Talabani and his two vice presidents must approve the execution. But Mr. Maliki raised the possibility during the interview that because the decision was rendered by a special tribunal, it might not be subject to that constitutional provision. Mr. Hussein was tried before the Iraqi High Tribunal, the court set up to prosecute the top officials of the ousted government.

President Talabani, a Kurd, has said publicly that he is opposed to the death penalty, suggesting that he would not approve the execution. But according to court officials, the president has said he is prepared to designate Adel Abdul-Mahdi, one of his vice presidents and a Shiite, as his proxy in the vote.

Court officials said they also did not anticipate opposition from Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, a Sunni Arab. Mr. Hashemi, they contend, accepted his post on the assurance that he would not oppose the court’s findings.

The insurgent blitz against the American military base on Sunday began when attackers opened fire from the north and south with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, the military said Wednesday in a statement.

The garrison, called Forward Operating Base Apache, is in Adhamiya, a heavily Sunni Arab neighborhood.

John F. Burns contributed reporting.

    Iraqi Predicts the Hanging of Hussein by Year’s End, NYT, 9.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/09/world/middleeast/09iraq.html

Saddam Hussein Is Sentenced to Death

November 5, 2006
The New York Times
By KIRK SEMPLE

BAGHDAD, Nov. 5 — An Iraqi special tribunal today convicted Saddam Hussein of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to death by hanging for the brutal repression of a Shiite town in the 1980’s.

As the chief judge read aloud the verdict, a defiant Mr. Hussein shouted, “Long live the people! Long live the Arab nation! Down with the spies!” He thrust his finger emphatically into the air as he spoke, then repeatedly chanted, “God is great!”

The judge, Raouf Rasheed Abdul Rahman, tried to calm Mr. Hussein down. “There’s no point,” Mr. Rahman told him.

The verdict, under Iraqi law, will immediately be submitted to an appellate court, which will begin its review within a month, officials said.

Still, today’s verdict represented a moment of triumph and catharsis for many Iraqis after decades of suffering under Mr. Hussein’s tyrannical rule.

Spontaneous celebrations broke out across Iraq in spite of an around-the-clock curfew imposed on the capital and other regions. People fired pistols and assault rifles into the air in a common gesture of jubilation. Residents of Sadr City, a Shiite bastion in northeastern Baghdad, flooded the streets in defiance of a curfew, whooping and dancing and sounding car horns. Even some Shiite police officers joined in the revelry, firing their weapons in the air.

“I feel happy,” said a 31-year-old Shiite shop owner, who was smoking apple-flavored tobacco on the sidewalk in Karrada, a well-to-do neighborhood in central Baghdad. “I think he got his punishment. There was no Iraqi house that didn’t have damage because of Saddam Hussein.”

But a darker mood settled over predominantly Sunni Arab areas. Immediately following the verdicts, fighting broke out between gunmen and the Iraqi Army in the Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiya in northeastern Baghdad, according to an Interior Ministry official. American forces swarmed the district, however, suppressing the violence, the official said.

In the Sunni Arab city of Samarra, a stronghold of support for the Sunni-led insurgency, hundreds of demonstrators marched through the streets in violation of the curfew. They carried photographs of Mr. Hussein, who was born in the same region, and fired guns in the air in anger.

“The ground will be burned,” they chanted. They were escorted by Iraqi police officers, who provided some of the demonstrators with rides through the city, witnesses said.

Iraqi and American security forces had been bracing for a violent reaction among Mr. Hussein’s armed supporters, who constitute a significant corps within the insurgency. A ban on cars and pedestrians was imposed in the capital and other areas, Iraq’s security forces were put on high alert and American jet fighters circled high above the capital throughout the day today.

In a nationally televised address following the verdict, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said Mr. Hussein “is facing the punishment he deserves.”

“His sentence does not represent anything because executing him is not worth the blood he spilled,” he said. “But it may bring some comfort to the families of the martyrs.”

In recent days, Mr. Maliki publicly expressed his hope that Mr. Hussein would receive the death sentence, saying it would help to dissipate the insurgency.

The American ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, hailed the verdict as “an important milestone in the building of a free society” in Iraq.

“Although the Iraqis may face difficult days in the coming weeks, closing the book on Saddam and his regime is an opportunity to unite and build a better future,” he said in a statement.

The long-awaited verdict today came nearly three years after Mr. Hussein was hauled from an underground hideaway by American troops and more than a year after he and seven co-defendants first appeared in an Iraqi court to face charges of orchestrating what the prosecution called a “widespread and systematic persecution” of the townspeople of Dujail, 35 miles north of Baghdad.

The case centered on the execution of 148 men and boys from the town after a purported assassination attempt against Mr. Hussein by men firing from a nearby orchard on July 8, 1982. Mr. Hussein’s lawyers contended at the trial that the would-be assassins were Iranian-backed Shiite militants, and that he was justified in ordering the crackdown on the town because Iraq was at war with Iran at the time.

In the Dujail case, Mr. Hussein faced multiple charges for his involvement in the crimes. He was sentenced to the death penalty for willful killings, 10 years for forcible deportation and 10 years for torture.

The five-judge tribunal also issued death sentences for two of his seven co-defendants: Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Mr. Hussein’s half-brother, who was head of Iraq’s domestic intelligence agency; and Awad al-Bandar, president of Mr. Hussein’s revolutionary court. Taha Yassin Ramadan, a former vice president under Mr. Hussein, was sentenced to life in prison for his involvement in the crimes.

Mr. Barzan and Mr. Ramadan were also convicted and sentenced for enforced deportation and torture. Mr. Ramadan was given an additional sentence for “other inhumane acts.”

Three local Baath Party officials — Abdullah Kadhim Ruweid, his son Mizher Abdullah Ruweid and Ali Dayeh Ali — were sentenced to 15 years of prison for willful murder and seven years for torture, although the sentences will run concurrently. Another defendant and minor Baath party official, Mohammed Azawi Ali, was acquitted for insufficient evidence. Prosecutors had argued for lesser sentences for those officials.

Several of the defendants, including Mr. Hussein, were found not guilty for lack of evidence on counts of enforced disappearances.

Like the verdicts and sentence against Mr. Hussein, the verdicts and sentences against Mr. Tikriti, Mr. Bandar and Mr. Ramadan will all come under review by the nine-judge appellate chamber of the trial court. There is no time limit for the appeal court’s review, but Iraqi and American officials who work with the court said that the earliest realistic date for Mr. Hussein’s execution, assuming it stood up to review, would be next spring.

The court has been under growing political pressure from Mr. Maliki and other Shiite officials, who believe an execution sooner rather than later would help to suppress elements of the insurgency that have held out for a return of Mr. Hussein to power.

Mr. Hussein, along with six other defendants, is also being tried in a separate case in which they face charges of killing at least 50,000 people in the so-called Anfal military campaign in 1987 and 1988 in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. Prosecutors are preparing numerous other cases against Mr. Hussein, and the tribunal may decide to try him on some or all of the additional charges if it wants to create a full record of the former leader’s crimes.

But Jaafar al-Mousawi, chief prosecutor in the Dujail case, noted at a briefing after today’s verdict that nothing in Iraqi law prevents the execution of a defendant in an ongoing trial. He said that if Mr. Hussein was executed before the end of the Anfal trial, which is expected next summer, it would be a simple procedural matter to strike his name from the list of defendants.

Today’s court session unfolded in about 50 minutes, with the defendants brought into the courtroom one at a time to listen to their verdicts.

Mr. Hussein was led in at about noon local time wearing his customary trial attire: a charcoal-colored suit and white shirt. He began shouting almost immediately.

“I’ll listen to the judgment, but I won’t stand up,” he declared. The judge ordered him to stand up and sent bailiffs into the defendants’ dock to force Mr. Hussein to his feet. As the bailiffs took him by the arms, he yanked himself free and snarled at one of them: “You stupid! Don’t twist my arm!”

The judge launched into a rapid-paced monologue, summarizing the verdicts against Mr. Hussein, who started shouting: “Long live the people! Long live the Arab nation! Down with the spies!” As the judge outlined the Iraqi criminal code and court statutes under which the death sentence would be applied, Mr. Hussein yelled, “To hell with you and your court!”

“You don’t decide!” he continued. “You are servants of the occupiers and their followers. You are puppets.”

When the judge concluded the sentencing, he ordered the bailiffs to “take him out.” The bailiffs grabbed Mr. Hussein by both arms and led him 25 paces to the exit. As Mr. Hussein left the room, he shouted, “Long live the Kurds! Long live the Arabs!”

Some international legal experts and human rights have questioned the impartiality of the trial court, which was created to try top leaders of the ousted government during the 15-month period of formal American occupation following the invasion in the spring of 2003.

“We saw this trial, along with the others, as an opportunity to bring justice to those Iraqis who had suffered horribly under Baath Party rule,” Richard Dicker, director of the international justice program at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement today. “Unfortunately, we believe the serious shortcomings in the fairness of the proceedings undermined the legitimacy and credibility of the trial.”

Mr. Dicker said the proceedings were marred by “some disturbing court practices,” including, he said, the court’s failure to deliver documents to the defense in a timely manner; public criticism by government minister of the first presiding judge, Rizgar Amin, who resigned in protest in January 2006; and the failure of Mr. Amin’s replacement, Mr. Rahman, “to demonstrate proper judicial demeanor in his management of the proceedings.”

The trial was marked by delays, violence and courtroom histrionics.

Mr. Hussein demonstrated a formidable reluctance to acquiesce to the will or conventions of the tribunal, frequently erupting into tirades in court, issuing written denunciations of the tribunal as an American-orchestrated farce and staging hunger strikes in his cell in an American military detention center near Baghdad International Airport.

During the course of the trial, three defense lawyers were killed by gunmen and the original chief judge resigned in protest over governmental interference.

Many Sunni Arabs today criticized the verdicts as the product of a political charade designed to satisfy the political agendas of the Shiite-led Iraqi government and the Bush administration.

The country’s biggest Sunni Arab party suggested in a statement that the government was using the trial and sentencing of Mr. Hussein for political purposes “to distract people from the daily tragedy that they suffer.”

The group, the Iraqi Islamic Party, said the Maliki administration should be more concerned with stopping the current bloodshed and misery afflicting Iraq than to execute Mr. Hussein. “Don’t these events need a trial for those who committed them?” the statement asked, in a pointed suggestion that the ruling Shiites were at least partly to blame.

Even among Mr. Hussein’s detractors and enemies, the euphoria that greeted the verdicts was not unequivocal. A 70-year-old Shiite woman from the Palestine Street neighborhood of eastern Baghdad said the worsening security situation in Iraq robbed her of any feeling of celebration. “The happiness is gone because we are not comfortable now,” she complained.

Anticipating civil unrest, authorities increased the police and military presence at checkpoints throughout the capital and other cities this weekend and recalled all Iraqi troops and police officers from leave and put them on standby.

Mr. Hussein’s advocates, including his chief defense lawyer, had warned that a guilty verdict for Mr. Hussein would set off widespread attacks by his supporters, who constitute a corps of the Sunni Arab-led insurgency. On Saturday, the government imposed a curfew on all vehicles and pedestrians in Baghdad; in the provinces of Salahuddin and Diyala, bastions of the Sunni Arab insurgency; and in the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk.

Mr. Hussein’s chief defense counsel, Khalil al-Dulaimi, warned last week that if the former dictator were found guilty, “The doors of hell will open in Iraq, the sectarian divide in the country will deepen, and many more coffins will be sent back to America.”

But the curfew order appeared to be blatantly ignored in some areas with the tacit consent of Iraq’s security forces.

This morning, in spite of the curfew, thousands of people held a demonstration in support of Mr. Hussein in the streets of Dur, a town in the predominantly Sunni Arab province of Salahuddin, Mr. Hussein’s birthplace. They demanded the immediate release of Mr. Hussein and warned that a guilty verdict could have violent consequences. They carried photos of Mr. Hussein mounted on poster board and fired guns into the air.

Iraqi security forces were present but simply looked on, witnesses said.

Meanwhile, a demonstration of Mr. Hussein’s opponents took place in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, which was not placed under a curfew.

The American military announced today that an American soldier was killed Saturday afternoon when gunmen attacked a military patrol with small arms fire in western Baghdad. A marine assigned to Regimental Combat Team 7 in Anbar province died Saturday from “nonhostile causes,” the military said. At least 14 American troops have died in Iraq this month.

Reporting was contributed by Khalid al-Ansary, John F. Burns, Qais Mizher, Sahar Nageeb, Sabrina Tavernise and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times.

    Saddam Hussein Is Sentenced to Death, NYT, 5.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/05/world/middleeast/05cnd-saddam.html?hp&ex=1162789200&en=55feeded58d269df&ei=5094&partner=homepage

News Analysis

For U.S. and Top Iraqi, Animosity Is Mutual

November 4, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, Nov. 3 — The cycle of discord and strained reconciliation that has broken into the open between Iraq’s Shiite-led government and the Bush administration has revealed how wide the gulf has become between what the United States expects from the Baghdad government and what it is able or willing to deliver.

Just in the past 10 days, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has rejected the notion of an American “timeline” for action on urgent Iraqi political issues; ordered American commanders to lift checkpoints they had set up around the Shiite district of Sadr City to hunt for a kidnapped American soldier and a fugitive Shiite death squad leader; blamed the Americans for the deteriorating security situation in Iraq; and demanded speeded-up Iraqi control of its own military.

The estrangement has developed despite the two governments’ mutual dependency. The Maliki government needs the United States for the protection its 150,000 troops afford, and without which, most Iraqi politicians agree, the country would slide into full-blown civil war. For the Americans, success for the government that won a four-year term in January’s elections seems central to any hope for an orderly American disengagement from Iraq.

Without doubt, there has been an element of political grandstanding by Mr. Maliki that reflects his need to rally support among fractious Shiite political partners and the restive masses they represent. With American pressures focusing on the need for political concessions to the minority Sunnis by the majority Shiites — the principal victims of Saddam Hussein’s repression, and, since his overthrow, the main targets for Sunni insurgent bombings — the prime minister cannot afford to be seen to be at America’s beck and call.

Still, the differences between the new Shiite rulers and the Americans are real and growing. And the paradox of their animosity is that the primary beneficiary of the rift is likely to be their common enemy, the Sunni insurgents. Their aim has been to recapture the power the Sunnis lost with Mr. Hussein’s overthrow — and to repeat the experience of the 1920s, when Shiites squandered their last opportunity to wrest power and handed the Sunnis an opening to another 80 years of domination.

The bitterness between the Shiite leaders and the Americans reflects widely divergent views of the government’s responsibilities. The Americans want Mr. Maliki to lead in forging a “national compact,” healing bitter splits between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds over the division of political and economic power.

The timeline that Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador, set out last week — prompting an acerbic protest from Mr. Maliki — foresaw framework agreements over coming months. Central issues include disbanding the militias that have been responsible for a wave of sectarian killing, the future division of oil revenues, and a new approach to the Baathists, who were the bedrock of the Hussein government, that will strike a fairer balance between holding the worst accountable for their crimes and offering others rehabilitation.

But Mr. Maliki is not well cast for the role of national conciliator, and has shown a growing tendency to revert to type as a stalwart of a Shiite religious party, the Islamic Dawa Party, which had thousands of its followers killed under Mr. Hussein.

Like most other current Shiite leaders, Mr. Maliki spent decades in exile, and lost family members in Mr. Hussein’s gulag. By nature, he is withdrawn and, American officials say, lacks the natural ease, and perhaps the will, to reach out to politicians from other communities, especially Sunnis.

The Americans say that a self-reinforcing dynamic is at play, with the growing sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites, responsible for thousands of deaths this year in Baghdad and surrounding areas, causing politicians from both groups to pull back from the vision of a shared life.

Instead, positions have hardened. In the case of Mr. Maliki, who heads what is nominally a “national unity” cabinet, this has meant an increasing tendency to act as the steward of Shiite interests, sometimes so obtrusively that Sunnis, and to a lesser extent Kurds, have accused him of blatant sectarianism.

The issue of greatest concern to the Americans — and to Sunnis — has been Mr. Maliki’s resistance to American pressure for a crackdown on the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia that the Americans say has been in the forefront of death squad attacks on Sunnis. The Shiite cleric who leads the militia, Moktada al-Sadr, controls the largest Shiite bloc in Parliament and backed Mr. Maliki in the contest among Shiite groups to name the new prime minister.

Another Shiite militia, the Badr Organization, is controlled by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, who is both a powerful rival to Mr. Maliki in Shiite religious politics and another mainstay of the government.

So for Mr. Maliki, American demands for action to disband the militias have revealed in their sharpest form the tensions between his role as national leader and as steward of Shiite interests. Compounding his dilemma, public opinion among Shiites, particularly in Sadr City, the Mahdi Army’s main stronghold, has coalesced around the militiamen, who are seen by many as the only effective protection against Sunni insurgents who have killed thousands of Shiites with their bombings of marketplaces, mosques, weddings, funerals and other public gatherings.

The failure of American troops to stop these bombings is a source of anger among Shiites, who have woven conspiracy theories that depict the Americans as silent partners for the Sunnis. And the rancor finds a favorite target in Mr. Khalilzad, who has become a figure of contempt among some senior Shiites in the government for his efforts to draw the Sunnis into the circle of power in Baghdad. It has become common among Shiite officials to say that the envoy harbors an unease toward Shiites engendered by growing up in a Sunni family in Afghanistan that distrusted Hazaras, Shiite descendants of Genghis Khan.

For months, Mr. Maliki has argued against forcible moves to disband the militias, urging a political solution and pointing to cases in which Mr. Sadr himself has approved, or at least not opposed, raids on death squad leaders whom he has described as renegades from the mainforce Mahdi Army. Publicly, the Americans have backed the prime minister; privately, they say the country cannot wait while sectarian killing rages unabated. The result has been an uneasy, and at times volatile, compromise.

American commanders have picked off some of the most brutal Shiite death squad leaders on a raid-by-raid basis, sometimes with Mr. Maliki’s approval, and sometimes, as in the case of a disputed Sadr City raid last week that failed to capture the wanted man, known as Abu Derar, without it. In one case last month, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top American commander in Iraq, intervened to release another alleged Mahdi Army death squad leader captured in a raid in west Baghdad after Mr. Maliki demanded he be freed, apparently to assuage Mr. Sadr.

American dissatisfaction with the Maliki government goes far beyond the ambivalence over the militias. When the government was sworn in on May 20, Mr. Khalilzad and General Casey said it had six months to take a broad range of political actions that would build public support, and make the war winnable. When President Bush made a six-hour visit to Baghdad in June, he said he had looked Mr. Maliki “in the eye” to determine if America had a reliable partner, and reported that he was convinced the new prime minister met the test.

High among American priorities was the need for effective government after a largely wasted year under Mr. Maliki’s predecessor, Ibrahim al-Jaafari. American officials have told reporters in background briefings in recent weeks that little has changed, with the budgets of many government departments, including the Health Ministry, controlled by officials loyal to Mr. Sadr, being used for what the Americans say amounts to wholesale looting.

In the past week, Mr. Maliki has added a new, potentially incendiary grievance against the Americans. In interviews that preceded a placatory teleconference call with President Bush last weekend, he said the poor security situation across Iraq was the Americans’ fault, and demanded a more rapid transfer of command authority over the war. With apparent unconcern for the war’s growing unpopularity in the United States, he demanded more American money for the buildup of Iraq’s own forces, and for reconstruction of the country’s infrastructure, on top of the $38 billion the Bush administration says it has already spent on civil and military aid to Iraq since the toppling of Mr. Hussein in 2003 and the nearly $400 billion for America’s own deployments.

Mr. Bush responded by dispatching his national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, on an urgent trip to Baghdad on Monday, and agreeing to work on ways of accelerating the transfer of authority, especially in regard to the Maliki government’s ability to control the deployment of Iraqi troops.

What the Bush administration’s public comments omitted was any reference to the deep frustration among American commanders at the continuing weakness of many Iraqi Army units, which have been plagued by high levels of indiscipline, absenteeism and desertion. Some American officers say that as many as half of the listed 137,000 Iraqi soldiers are effectively undeployable.

The situation has its keenest effects in Baghdad, where American commanders say the war will ultimately be won or lost. In the stepped-up effort to clear the city of insurgents and death squads, begun in August and acknowledged by American commanders to be faltering, American troops have accounted for two-thirds of the 25,000 deployed, after Iraqi commanders delivered two of the six battalions they promised.

The result, American officers involved in the operation have noted, is that what little security there is in the city — and, ultimately, the survival of the Maliki government itself — relies far more on American than Iraqi troops.

    For U.S. and Top Iraqi, Animosity Is Mutual, NYT, 4.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/04/world/middleeast/04assess.html?hp&ex=1162702800&en=0b2d2036897a3d58&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Editorial

Blinding the Taxpayers on Iraq

November 4, 2006
The New York Times

Talk about arbitrary deadlines. Iraq is still an open-ended tragedy, and there is mounting evidence that without vigilant, independent monitoring, reconstruction contracts will waste American tax dollars without delivering the results that Iraqis have been promised. Still, the Republican-controlled Congress has voted to close down, as of next Oct. 1, the one effective oversight agency that has shown it could produce results.

The deadline for ending the work of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction was included in the conference report on a huge military authorization bill — inserted at the last minute in the back room by the staff of Duncan Hunter, the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. It should be promptly lifted by the new Congress to be elected next week.

That ought to be possible even if the Republicans stay in charge, since neither the House nor the Senate included such a deadline in its original legislation. But if the Republicans do lose their House majority, Mr. Hunter will no longer be able carry out such mischief.

The special inspector general’s office, run by Stuart Bowen, a Republican lawyer who had worked for George W. Bush both in Texas and in Washington, is widely respected by Democrats and Republicans for the quality of its investigations and reports.

As a result of its work, contracting and supervision failures in the Pentagon were brought to Congressional and public attention, unsatisfactory performance was uncovered on the part of contractors like Halliburton and Parsons, and corrupt American occupation officials were sent to jail.

That is exactly the way a democracy is supposed to hold the people who work for it accountable. The special inspector general enjoys a sweeping authority and institutional independence that the investigative branches of the Defense and State Departments do not. Yet it is those in-house investigators who are now set to take over the job next fall.

Mr. Hunter, who is exploring a 2008 presidential run, insists that neither the Bush administration nor the huge defense contractors who have been criticized in the inspector general’s reports played any role in inspiring him to cut off the office’s work. If this is only the bad judgment of one ambitious lawmaker, it should be easy enough to reverse it.

    Blinding the Taxpayers on Iraq, NYT, 4.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/04/opinion/04sat1.html

7 U.S. Troops Die in Iraq; U.S. Intelligence Chief Visits

November 4, 2006
The New York Times
By SABRINA TAVERNISE

BAGHDAD, Nov. 3 — John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, met here with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki on Friday, the second high-level visit by an American official in a week.

The American military, meanwhile, announced the deaths of seven more American troops. All were killed Thursday, three in a roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad and four in the roiling western province of Anbar in sniper and bomb attacks.

Hidden killing continued across the capital, with 83 bodies and a severed human head found in the two days ending Friday. At least nine other Iraqis died in violence on Friday, Reuters reported, including a freelance journalist, a singer, a taxi driver and a gas station employee.

Mr. Negroponte did not make any public comments in Baghdad, but Mr. Maliki’s spokesman, Yaseen Majeed, said that the two “discussed the need for the Iraqi armed forces to have enough numbers and equipment to take charge of the security portfolio.”

Mr. Maliki’s government has recently sought to exert its independence from what it sees as an overbearing American policy of keeping full control over security here. The visit by Mr. Negroponte, who previously served as ambassador to Iraq, was widely seen as an effort to smooth the ruffled feathers of the Bush administration’s Iraqi partners.

In advance of the verdict on Sunday in the trial of the former dictator, Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s Defense and Interior Ministries have recalled all army and police forces currently on leave, about 25 percent, to prepare for possible violence, said Muhamed al-Askari, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry.

The tale of a kidnapped American soldier took a fresh turn on Friday, with a relative saying that kidnappers had demanded a $250,000 ransom for his release. Entifad Qanbar, a former associate of Ahmad Chalabi, identified himself as the soldier’s uncle and said by telephone from Baghdad that American officials working for his release had met with an intermediary trusted by the kidnappers earlier this week.

Mr. Qanbar confirmed an account of the meeting reported on Time magazine’s Web site, in which Americans were shown a cellphone video clip of the soldier, appearing beaten and bloodied, and given the ransom request. The Americans have asked for proof that the soldier is still alive.

Mr. Qanbar, who said he is the brother of the soldier’s mother, Nawal al-Taie, said he believed the kidnappers were Shiite members of the Baath Party.

The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said on Friday that it lacked the money to care for the soaring number of Iraqi refugees inside and outside the country. A spokesman, Ron Redmond, told reporters in Geneva that just two-thirds of its $29 million budget had been financed, and that some employees were going without salaries.

About 50,000 Iraqis have moved within the country every month since February, Mr. Redmond said, and the net exodus to other countries, primarily Syria and Jordan, is now running at about 70,000 a month.

The American military said it had killed 13 insurgents in two raids on Friday near the town of Mahmudiya, in the farmland south of Baghdad.

Reporting was contributed by Paul von Zielbauer in Washington, John O’Neil in New York, and Khalid al-Ansary and Qais Mizher in Baghdad.

    7 U.S. Troops Die in Iraq; U.S. Intelligence Chief Visits, NYT, 4.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/04/world/middleeast/04iraq.html

Sniper Attacks Adding to Peril of U.S. Troops

November 4, 2006
The New York Times
By C. J. CHIVERS

KARMA, Iraq, Nov. 3 — The bullet passed through Lance Cpl. Juan Valdez-Castillo as his Marine patrol moved down a muddy urban lane. It was a single shot. The lance corporal fell against a wall, tried to stand and fell again.

His squad leader, Sgt. Jesse E. Leach, faced where the shot had come from, raised his rifle and grenade launcher and quickly stepped between the sniper and the bloodied marine. He walked backward, scanning, ready to fire.

Shielding the marine with his own thick body, he grabbed the corporal by a strap and dragged him across a muddy road to a line of tall reeds, where they were concealed. He put down his weapon, shouted orders and cut open the lance corporal’s uniform, exposing a bubbling wound.

Lance Corporal Valdez-Castillo, shot through the right arm and torso, was saved. But the patrol was temporarily stuck. The marines were engaged in the task of calling for a casualty evacuation while staring down their barrels at dozens of windows that faced them, as if waiting for a ghost’s next move.

This sequence on Tuesday here in Anbar Province captured in a matter of seconds an expanding threat in the war in Iraq. In recent months, military officers and enlisted marines say, the insurgents have been using snipers more frequently and with greater effect, disrupting the military’s operations and fueling a climate of frustration and quiet rage.

Across Iraq, the threat has become serious enough that in late October the military held an internal conference about it, sharing the experiences of combat troops and discussing tactics to counter it. There has been no ready fix.

The battalion commander of Sergeant Leach’s unit — the Second Battalion, Eighth Marines — recalled eight sniper hits on his marines in three months and said there had been other possible incidents as well. Two of the battalion’s five fatalities have come from snipers, he said, and one marine is in a coma. Another marine gravely wounded by a sniper has suffered a stroke.

A sniper team was captured in the area a few weeks ago, he said, but more have taken its place. “The enemy has the ability to regenerate, and after we put a dent in his activity, we see sniper activity again,” said the commander, Lt. Col. Kenneth M. DeTreux.

Marines in two infantry companies recounted more cases, telling of lone shots that zipped in as if from nowhere, striking turrets and walls within inches of marines. They typically occur when the marines are not engaged in combat. It is as if, they say, they are being watched.

By many measures, the Iraqi snipers have showed unexceptional marksmanship, usually shooting from within 300 yards, far less than ranges preferred by the elite snipers in Western military units.

But as the insurgent sniper teams have become more active, the marines here say, they have displayed greater skill, selecting their targets and their firing positions with care. They have also developed cunning methods of mobility and concealment, including firing from shooting platforms and hidden ports within cars.

They often use variants of the long-barreled Dragunov rifle, which shoots higher-powered ammunition than the much more common Kalashnikov assault rifles. Their marksmanship has improved to the point of being good enough.

“In the beginning of the war, sniping wasn’t something that the Iraqis did,” said Capt. Glen Taylor, the executive officer of the battalion’s Company G, who is on his third combat tour. “It was like, ‘If Allah wants that bullet to hit its target, it will.’ But they are starting to realize how effective it is.”

The insurgents are recruiting snipers and centralizing their instruction, the captain said, meaning that the phenomenon is likely to grow.

“They have training camps — they go around and advertise,” he said. “We heard from some of our sources that the insurgents were going around with loudspeakers, saying that if you want to be a sniper we will pay you three times whatever your salary is now.”

The marines also express their belief that the sniper teams have a network of spotters, and that each time the marines leave their outpost, spotters hidden among the Iraqi population call the snipers and tell them where the marines are and what they are doing. The snipers then arrive.

For the infantry, Iraq’s improved snipers have created confounding new dangers, as an unseen enemy plucks members from their ranks. Most of the time, the marines said, the snipers aim for their heads, necks and armpits, displaying knowledge of gaps in their protective gear. They typically shoot once and disappear. And they often fire on the opposite side of obstacles like canals, which limits a unit’s ability to capture the sniper or respond with fire.

“That’s the biggest thing that tears marines apart,” said Cpl. Curtis S. Cota-Robles of Company G, who was standing beside a marine who was shot through the collarbone in late September. “They hit us when we are vulnerable, and then they are gone.”

As part of their counterinsurgency operations, the marines working in Anbar are under orders to show restraint, a policy rooted in hopes of winning the trust of the civilian population.

Iraqi snipers seem to know these rules and use them for their own protection. They often fire from among civilians, the marines say, having observed that unless the marines have a clear target, they will not shoot. In two sniper shootings witnessed by two journalists for The New York Times, on Oct. 30 and 31, the snipers fired from among civilians. The marines did not fire back.

In conditions where killing the snipers has proved difficult, the marines have tried to find ways to limit their effectiveness. Signs inside Marine positions display an often-spoken rule: “Make yourself hard to kill.”

Many marines, on operations, do an understated dance they call “cutting squares.” It is not really a square at all.

They zig and zag as they walk, and when they stop they shift weight from foot to foot, bobbing their heads. They change the rhythm often, so that when a sniper who might be watching them thinks they are about to zig, they have zagged.

Now and then they squat, shift weight to one leg and stand up beside the place where they had just been. Maj. Sean Riordan, the battalion executive officer, described his own unpredictable jigs as “my little salsa dance.”

As they move, the marines often peer down their own scopes, looking at windows, rooftops, lines of brush. Then they might step backward, or forward, or duck, as if saying: try to shoot that.

But as operations drag on, some marines begin to stop cutting squares. And sometimes even those that are moving are still shot. And there are special dangers.

Lance Cpl. Colin Smith, who was shot on Monday, was behind a machine gun in a vehicle turret, a position that placed him higher in the air than a walking marine. Turret gunners are protected by armor shields, but their heads are often exposed. He was struck in the skull. He survived but fell into a coma and was placed on life support.

Lance Corporal Valdez-Castillo, who was shot on Tuesday, was a radio operator — a preferred sniper’s target since radios and rifles first mixed on the battlefield many decades ago. A tactical radio can provide a link to mortars, artillery, air support and other infantry units.

Ten marines, several soldiers from the nascent Iraqi Army and two journalists were walking exposed in a column when the shot was fired and he went down; his antenna probably made him the sniper’s pick. Lance Corporal Valdez-Castillo has been flown to a military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany. He is in good condition and has spoken to his unit.

In both cases the sniper fired from the other side of a canal, among civilians and a group of buildings. The advantages were his.

Seeing the risks, the commanders have been shifting tactics to reduce the marines’ vulnerability while still trying to keep them out on the streets, interacting with Iraqis and searching for insurgents and arms caches.

Some units have limited their foot patrols by day, finding them to be too dangerous. They still enter neighborhoods in armored vehicles and dismount, but often quickly step into buildings to interview people inside.

They continue to patrol on foot at night, because the Iraqi snipers have not yet shown the sophistication to fire with precision in the dark, and the marines’ night vision equipment and weapons sights give them the upper hand.

They also cover most of their vital organs with protective armor plates, which have saved several of them when the Iraqi snipers have fired.

One marine, Gunnery Sgt. Shawn M. Dempsey of Weapons Company, was shot in the back as he helped a small girl across a street. The plate saved him. He remains on duty as a platoon commander.

Another, Lance Cpl. Edward Knuth of Company G, was hit as his squad searched a watermelon market beside a main road. No one in his squad heard the shot, which he said was probably made from a vehicle parked on the highway. All they heard was the impact of the bullet on his plate.

“It was like a smacking sound,” he said.

The force of the impact, like being struck with a baseball bat, knocked him to his knees. A marine swiftly dragged him to cover. Then his squad rushed the line of cars. They found nothing. The sniper had escaped.

“They’re good,” Lance Corporal Knuth said, showing a crumbling, coin-sized hole in his armor where the bullet stopped. “They take their time. They’re patient. They only take one shot most of the time, and they are hard to find.”

After Lance Corporal Valdez-Castillo was shot and evacuated, a sweat-soaked, bloodied Sergeant Leach led his team through the rest of his patrol. When the marines re-entered the wire, an angry debriefing began.

Move quickly through the open areas, the noncommissioned officers told the troops. Don’t stand high on the berms. Camouflage the radios. Keep your eyes out and rifles ready.

Little was said about how to kill the sniper; the marines did not know where he was. They passed cigarettes and smoked them in the sun, and fumed.

“I’ll carry the radio next time,” said Lance Cpl. Peter Sprague. “I don’t have any kids.”

    Sniper Attacks Adding to Peril of U.S. Troops, NYT, 4.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/04/world/middleeast/04sniper.html?hp&ex=1162702800&en=a19ab167e70c1aeb&ei=5094&partner=homepage

U.S. Web Archive Is Said to Reveal a Nuclear Primer

November 3, 2006
The New York Times
By WILLIAM J. BROAD

Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who had said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.

But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.

Last night, the government shut down the Web site after The New York Times asked about complaints from weapons experts and arms-control officials. A spokesman for the director of national intelligence said access to the site had been suspended “pending a review to ensure its content is appropriate for public viewing.”

Officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency, fearing that the information could help states like Iran develop nuclear arms, had privately protested last week to the American ambassador to the agency, according to European diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity. One diplomat said the agency’s technical experts “were shocked” at the public disclosures.

Early this morning, a spokesman for Gregory L. Schulte, the American ambassador, denied that anyone from the agency had approached Mr. Schulte about the Web site.

The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs.

“For the U.S. to toss a match into this flammable area is very irresponsible,” said A. Bryan Siebert, a former director of classification at the federal Department of Energy, which runs the nation’s nuclear arms program. “There’s a lot of things about nuclear weapons that are secret and should remain so.”

The government had received earlier warnings about the contents of the Web site. Last spring, after the site began posting old Iraqi documents about chemical weapons, United Nations arms-control officials in New York won the withdrawal of a report that gave information on how to make tabun and sarin, nerve agents that kill by causing respiratory failure.

The campaign for the online archive was mounted by conservative publications and politicians, who said that the nation’s spy agencies had failed adequately to analyze the 48,000 boxes of documents seized since the March 2003 invasion. With the public increasingly skeptical about the rationale and conduct of the war, the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees argued that wide analysis and translation of the documents — most of them in Arabic — would reinvigorate the search for clues that Mr. Hussein had resumed his unconventional arms programs in the years before the invasion. American search teams never found such evidence.

The director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, had resisted setting up the Web site, which some intelligence officials felt implicitly raised questions about the competence and judgment of government analysts. But President Bush approved the site’s creation after Congressional Republicans proposed legislation to force the documents’ release.

In his statement last night, Mr. Negroponte’s spokesman, Chad Kolton, said, “While strict criteria had already been established to govern posted documents, the material currently on the Web site, as well as the procedures used to post new documents, will be carefully reviewed before the site becomes available again.”

A spokesman for the National Security Council, Gordon D. Johndroe, said, “We’re confident the D.N.I. is taking the appropriate steps to maintain the balance between public information and national security.”

The Web site, “Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal,” was a constantly expanding portrait of prewar Iraq. Its many thousands of documents included everything from a collection of religious and nationalistic poetry to instructions for the repair of parachutes to handwritten notes from Mr. Hussein’s intelligence service. It became a popular quarry for a legion of bloggers, translators and amateur historians.

Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq had abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.

European diplomats said this week that some of those nuclear documents on the Web site were identical to the ones presented to the United Nations Security Council in late 2002, as America got ready to invade Iraq. But unlike those on the Web site, the papers given to the Security Council had been extensively edited, to remove sensitive information on unconventional arms.

The deletions, the diplomats said, had been done in consultation with the United States and other nuclear-weapons nations. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which ran the nuclear part of the inspections, told the Security Council in late 2002 that the deletions were “consistent with the principle that proliferation-sensitive information should not be released.”

In Europe, a senior diplomat said atomic experts there had studied the nuclear documents on the Web site and judged their public release as potentially dangerous. “It’s a cookbook,” said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of his agency’s rules. “If you had this, it would short-circuit a lot of things.”

The New York Times had examined dozens of the documents and asked a half dozen nuclear experts to evaluate some of them.

Peter D. Zimmerman, a physicist and former United States government arms scientist now at the war studies department of King’s College, London, called the posted material “very sensitive, much of it undoubtedly secret restricted data.”

Ray E. Kidder, a senior nuclear physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, an arms design center, said “some things in these documents would be helpful” to nations aspiring to develop nuclear weapons and should have remained secret.

A senior American intelligence official who deals routinely with atomic issues said the documents showed “where the Iraqis failed and how to get around the failures.” The documents, he added, could perhaps help Iran or other nations making a serious effort to develop nuclear arms, but probably not terrorists or poorly equipped states. The official, who requested anonymity because of his agency’s rules against public comment, called the papers “a road map that helps you get from point A to point B, but only if you already have a car.”

Thomas S. Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a private group at George Washington University that tracks federal secrecy decisions, said the impetus for the Web site’s creation came from an array of sources — private conservative groups, Congressional Republicans and some figures in the Bush administration — who clung to the belief that close examination of the captured documents would show that Mr. Hussein’s government had clandestinely reconstituted an unconventional arms programs.

“There were hundreds of people who said, ‘There’s got to be gold in them thar hills,’ ” Mr. Blanton said.

The campaign for the Web site was led by the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan. Last November, he and his Senate counterpart, Pat Roberts of Kansas, wrote to Mr. Negroponte, asking him to post the Iraqi material. The sheer volume of the documents, they argued, had overwhelmed the intelligence community.

Some intelligence officials feared that individual documents, translated and interpreted by amateurs, would be used out of context to second-guess the intelligence agencies’ view that Mr. Hussein did not have unconventional weapons or substantive ties to Al Qaeda. Reviewing the documents for release would add an unnecessary burden on busy intelligence analysts, they argued.

On March 16, after the documents’ release was approved, Mr. Negroponte’s office issued a terse public announcement including a disclaimer that remained on the Web site: “The U.S. government has made no determination regarding the authenticity of the documents, validity or factual accuracy of the information contained therein, or the quality of any translations, when available.”

On April 18, about a month after the first documents were made public, Mr. Hoekstra issued a news release acknowledging “minimal risks,” but saying the site “will enable us to better understand information such as Saddam’s links to terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and violence against the Iraqi people.” He added: “It will allow us to leverage the Internet to enable a mass examination as opposed to limiting it to a few exclusive elites.”

Yesterday, before the site was shut down, Jamal Ware, a spokesman for Mr. Hoekstra, said the government had “developed a sound process to review the documents to ensure sensitive or dangerous information is not posted.” Later, he said the complaints about the site “didn’t sound like a big deal,” adding, “We were a little surprised when they pulled the plug.”

The precise review process that led to the posting of the nuclear and chemical-weapons documents is unclear. But in testimony before Congress last spring, a senior official from Mr. Negroponte’s office, Daniel Butler, described a “triage” system used to sort out material that should remain classified. Even so, he said, the policy was to “be biased towards release if at all possible.” Government officials say all the documents in Arabic have received at least a quick review by Arabic linguists.

Some of the first posted documents dealt with Iraq’s program to make germ weapons, followed by a wave of papers on chemical arms.

At the United Nations in New York, the chemical papers raised alarms at the Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, which had been in charge of searching Iraq for all unconventional arms, save the nuclear ones.

In April, diplomats said, the commission’s acting chief weapons inspector, Demetrius Perricos, lodged an objection with the United States mission to the United Nations over the document that dealt with the nerve agents tabun and sarin.

Soon, the document vanished from the Web site. On June 8, diplomats said, Mr. Perricos told the Security Council of how risky arms information had shown up on a public Web site and how his agency appreciated the American cooperation in resolving the matter.

In September, the Web site began posting the nuclear documents, and some soon raised concerns. On Sept. 12, it posted a document it called “Progress of Iraqi nuclear program circa 1995.” That description is potentially misleading since the research occurred years earlier.

The Iraqi document is marked “Draft FFCD Version 3 (20.12.95),” meaning it was preparatory for the “Full, Final, Complete Disclosure” that Iraq made to United Nations inspectors in March 1996. The document carries three diagrams showing cross sections of bomb cores, and their diameters.

On Sept. 20, the site posted a much larger document, “Summary of technical achievements of Iraq’s former nuclear program.” It runs to 51 pages, 18 focusing on the development of Iraq’s bomb design. Topics included physical theory, the atomic core and high-explosive experiments. By early October, diplomats and officials said, United Nations arms inspectors in New York and their counterparts in Vienna were alarmed and discussing what to do.

Last week in Vienna, Olli J. Heinonen, head of safeguards at the international atomic agency, expressed concern about the documents to Mr. Schulte, diplomats said.

Scott Shane contributed reporting.

U.S. Web Archive Is Said to Reveal a Nuclear Primer, NYT, 3.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/03/world/middleeast/03documents.html?hp&ex=1162616400&en=8326da2ccc77699e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Congress Tells Auditor in Iraq to Close Office

November 3, 2006
The New York Times
By JAMES GLANZ

Investigations led by a Republican lawyer named Stuart W. Bowen Jr. in Iraq have sent American occupation officials to jail on bribery and conspiracy charges, exposed disastrously poor construction work by well-connected companies like Halliburton and Parsons, and discovered that the military did not properly track hundreds of thousands of weapons it shipped to Iraqi security forces.

And tucked away in a huge military authorization bill that President Bush signed two weeks ago is what some of Mr. Bowen’s supporters believe is his reward for repeatedly embarrassing the administration: a pink slip.

The order comes in the form of an obscure provision that terminates his federal oversight agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, on Oct. 1, 2007. The clause was inserted by the Republican side of the House Armed Services Committee over the objections of Democratic counterparts during a closed-door conference, and it has generated surprise and some outrage among lawmakers who say they had no idea it was in the final legislation.

Mr. Bowen’s office, which began operation in January 2004 to examine reconstruction money spent in Iraq, was always envisioned as a temporary organization, permitted to continue its work only as long as Congress saw fit. Some advocates for the office, in fact, have regarded its lack of a permanent bureaucracy as the key to its aggressiveness and independence.

But as the implications of the provision in the new bill have become clear, opposition has been building on both sides of the political aisle. One point of contention is exactly when the office would have naturally run its course without a hard end date.

The bipartisan opposition may not be unexpected given Mr. Bowen’s Republican credentials — he served under George W. Bush both in Texas and in the White House — and deep public skepticism on the Bush administration’s conduct of the war.

Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who followed the bill closely as chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, says that she still does not know how the provision made its way into what is called the conference report, which reconciles differences between House and Senate versions of a bill.

Neither the House nor the Senate version contained such a termination clause before the conference, all involved agree.

“It’s truly a mystery to me,” Ms. Collins said. “I looked at what I thought was the final version of the conference report and that provision was not in at that time.”

“The one thing I can confirm is that this was a last-minute insertion,” she said.

A Republican spokesman for the committee, Josh Holly, said lawmakers should not have been surprised by the provision closing the inspector general’s office because it “was discussed very early in the conference process.”

But like several other members of the House and Senate who were contacted on the bill, Ms. Collins said that she feared the loss of oversight that could occur if the inspector general’s office went out of business, adding that she was already working on legislation with several Democratic and Republican senators to reverse the termination.

One of those, John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who is chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement that Mr. Bowen was “making a valuable contribution to the Congressional and public understanding of this very complex and ever-changing situation in Iraq.”

“Given that his office has performed important work and that much remains to be done,” Mr. Warner added, “I intend to join Senator Collins in consulting with our colleagues to extend his charter.”

While Senators Collins and Warner said they had nothing more than hunches on where the impetus for setting a termination date had originated, Congressional Democrats were less reserved.

“It appears to me that the administration wants to silence the messenger that is giving us information about waste and fraud in Iraq,” said Representative Henry A. Waxman, a California Democrat who is the ranking minority member of the House Committee on Government Reform.

“I just can’t see how one can look at this change without believing it’s political,” he said.

The termination language was inserted into the bill by Congressional staff members working for Duncan Hunter, the California Republican who is the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and who declared on Monday that he plans to run for president in 2008.

Mr. Holly, who is the House Armed Services spokesman as well as a member of Mr. Hunter’s staff, said that politics played no role and that there had been no direction from the administration or lobbying from the companies whose work in Iraq Mr. Bowen’s office has severely critiqued. Three of the companies that have been a particular focus of Mr. Bowen’s investigations, Halliburton, Parsons and Bechtel, said that they had made no effort to lobby against his office.

The idea, Mr. Holly said, was simply to return to a non-wartime footing in which inspectors general in the State Department, the Pentagon and elsewhere would investigate American programs overseas. The definite termination date was also seen as helpful for planning future oversight efforts from Bush administration agencies, he said.

But in Congress, particularly on the Democratic side of the aisle, there have long been accusations that agencies controlled by the Bush administration are not inclined to unearth their own shortcomings in the first place.

The criticism came to a head in a hearing a year ago, when Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, an Ohio Democrat, induced the Pentagon’s acting inspector general, Thomas Gimble, to concede that he had no agents deployed in Iraq, more than two years after the invasion.

A spokesman for the Pentagon inspector general said Thursday that Mr. Gimble had worked to improve that situation, and currently had seven auditors in Baghdad and others working on Iraq-related issues in the United States and elsewhere. Mr. Gimble was in Iraq on Thursday, the spokesman said.

Mr. Bowen’s office has 55 auditors and inspectors in Iraq and about 300 reports and investigations already to its credit, far outstripping any other oversight agency in the country.

But Howard Krongard, the State Department inspector general, said that the comparison was misleading, because many of those resources would probably flow to State and the Pentagon if Congress shuts Mr. Bowen’s office down.

“I think we are competitive to do what they ask us to do,” Mr. Krongard said, referring to Congress.

Mr. Kucinich and other lawmakers said that Iraq oversight could also be hurt by the loss of Mr. Bowen’s mandate, which allows him to cross institutional boundaries, while the other inspectors general have jurisdictions only within their own agencies. Mr. Krongard said that issue could be handled by cooperation among the inspectors general.

Officials at the State Department and the Pentagon made it clear that in general terms they supported Mr. Bowen’s work and would abide by the wishes of Congress.

While the quality of Mr. Bowen’s work is seldom questioned, he is sometimes accused of being a grandstander who is too friendly with the news media. Mr. Bowen has responded that it is standard procedure to publicize successful investigations as a way of discouraging other potential wrongdoers.

Among the disagreements on the termination language in the defense authorization bill was exactly how much it would have shortened Mr. Bowen’s tenure. An amendment in the Senate version of the bill actually expanded the pot of reconstruction money his agents could examine.

Because the tenure of his office is calculated through a formula involving the amount of reconstruction money in that pot, the crafters of that amendment figured that it would have extended Mr. Bowen’s work until well into 2008 — or longer if Congress granted further extensions.

Mr. Holly agrees that the Senate language would have expanded that pot of money, but he says that in the Republican staff’s interpretation of the formula, Mr. Bowen’s tenure would have run out sometime in 2007 whether the money was added or not.

In any case, as the bill came out of conference, the termination date of Oct. 1, 2007, was inserted, effectively meaning that Mr. Bowen would have to start working on passing his responsibilities to other agencies by early next year.

Capitol Hill staff members said that after House Democratic objections were overridden, Senate conferees agreed to the provision in a bit of horse-trading: the amount of money Mr. Bowen could look at would be expanded, but only with the hard termination date.

Mr. Bowen himself declined to comment on the controversy surrounding his office, saying only that he was already working with the other inspectors general to develop a transition plan in accordance with the defense authorization act. “We will do what the Congress desires,” Mr. Bowen said.

    Congress Tells Auditor in Iraq to Close Office, NYT, 3.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/03/world/middleeast/03reconstruct.html?hp&ex=1162616400&en=590b5ef31979d828&ei=5094&partner=homepage

General Plays Down Discord Between U.S. and Iraqis

November 3, 2006
The New York Times
By KIRK SEMPLE

BAGHDAD, Nov. 2 — The top American military spokesman here on Thursday played down recent discord between the American and Iraqi governments, saying that while there had been “disconnects,” the leaders of both countries were working closely to achieve political stability in Iraq.

“A transition is not always a pleasant thing to watch as it happens,” the spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, said during a news briefing in Baghdad. “We need to have more dialogue, as was clearly evidenced by the fact that there have been some disconnects that have occurred in this transition period.”

On Tuesday, in the latest public flare-up of tension, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, under pressure from Shiite political leaders and outraged Baghdad residents, demanded that American troops remove a week-old cordon that had been set up around the Shiite district of Sadr City as part of the search for a missing American soldier.

General Caldwell said Thursday that a “tremendous amount of political activity” was under way to secure the release of the soldier, who was reported taken on Oct. 23 after he left the fortified Green Zone, without permission, to visit relatives in central Baghdad.

“There is ongoing dialogue that is being done at different levels at this time,” the general said, though he refused to provide any details of those conversations.

General Caldwell confirmed that the soldier was Specialist Ahmed Qusai al-Taie, a 41-year-old Iraqi-American reservist, and that he was married to an Iraqi woman. His wife was among the relatives Specialist Taie was visiting when he was abducted, the general said, adding that officials believed that the soldier was still alive and being held by his original captors.

The American command has dedicated more than 2,000 American troops and more than 1,000 members of Iraqi security forces to the search operation, which has focused on Sadr City and the central Baghdad neighborhood of Karrada, where Specialist Taie was taken. The authorities suspect involvement by the Mahdi Army, a large Shiite militia that controls Sadr City and is loyal to the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

The manhunt has angered some American troops in Iraq, who have privately complained that the military should not expend any additional resources, or put any troops at further risk, to search for a soldier who had violated military rules and exposed himself to danger by leaving his post without military protection.

But on Thursday, perhaps addressing those complaints, General Caldwell said, “We never stop looking for our service members.”

Prime Minister Maliki’s demand to end the search cordon put additional strain on an increasingly fractious relationship between him and President Bush.

The Iraqi leader has wrestled for more independence from his American protectors, including greater control of Iraq’s security, which is dominated by the Americans. According to General Caldwell, the prime minister announced an initiative this week to expand the Iraqi military by about 18,700 troops.

The top American military commander in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., said last week that Iraqi security forces still needed 12 to 18 months before they would be ready to take full control of the country’s security. But Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, offered a more conservative prediction, saying during a speech in Paris on Thursday that Iraq’s security forces would be ready to assume full responsibility in two to three years.

“Two to three years are needed to build our security forces and say goodbye to our friends,” said Mr. Talabani, who is on a six-day visit to France.

General Caldwell said some measurements of violence in Iraq had indicated a decrease since the holy month of Ramadan ended early last week, including a 23 percent drop in casualties across the country from the week before.

“Those statistics are promising, but as I’ve said before, one week does not constitute a trend,” he cautioned.

Indeed, a wide range of attacks on Thursday drew from the entire repertoire of tactics used by the country’s death squads and criminal groups: vehicle bombs, mortar bomb attacks, bombs concealed along urban and rural roadways, ambushes, assassinations, drive-by shootings and kidnappings.

At least 37 people were killed, including civilians and security forces, and 97 wounded in more than two dozen incidents reported by the authorities in Baghdad, Baquba and Kirkuk, three of the country’s largest cities.

In Baghdad at least five people were killed and 53 were wounded when a bomb hidden on a motorcycle exploded in a crowded marketplace in Sadr City.

Separately, attackers shot and killed the dean of Baghdad University’s economics and management college, his wife and their son at the college’s front gate, an Interior Ministry official said.

An American military patrol opened fire on guards working at a building associated with the Supreme Judiciary Council, killing four and wounding one, the ministry official said. The circumstances of the shooting remained unclear. A bomb exploded in a crowded market in the New Baghdad neighborhood, killing one and wounding 22, the official said.

In Diyala Province, gunmen opened fire on two oil tanker trucks, igniting the trucks and killing five people inside, a provincial police official reported. Other gunmen killed a judge and his son in the provincial capital of Baquba, the police official said.

An American soldier died in what was called “a noncombat-related incident” north of Baghdad on Thursday, the American military said.

It said in another statement that Iraqi security forces operating about three miles from the Iranian border had “intercepted six heavily loaded donkeys.” The donkeys were hauling 53 Soviet- and Italian-made antitank landmines and one antitank projectile, which the troops confiscated and destroyed. No humans were captured, the statement said, and the donkeys were set free.

    General Plays Down Discord Between U.S. and Iraqis, NYT, 3.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/03/world/middleeast/03iraq.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Abu Ghraib ended career, a top general says

Updated 11/2/2006 9:24 PM ET
USA Today
By Matt Kelley

WASHINGTON — A former commander of U.S. troops in Iraq retired from the Army this week and said the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal effectively ended his career.

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez called the scandal "the sole reason I was forced to retire" in an interview published Thursday in The Monitor newspaper in McAllen, Texas. Sanchez commanded American ground forces in Iraq during the months in 2003 when U.S. troops at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad beat, humiliated and sexually assaulted prisoners.

Sanchez, who retired Wednesday, is the third and highest-ranking general to have a career ended by the outcry over the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners. Eleven enlisted soldiers have been found guilty of crimes in connection with the abuse at Abu Ghraib, which burst into public view in April 2004.

Sanchez could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Critics of the Pentagon's handling of the case, such as Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., say more senior officers and civilian leaders need to be punished. Levin, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, says forced retirement is "not much in the way of accountability."

In response to questions Thursday about Sanchez, Army spokesman Paul Boyce said only that he "retired after a long, professional career of public service to the U.S. Army and our nation." In May 2004, shortly before Sanchez turned his Iraq command over to Gen. George Casey, President Bush said, "Rick Sanchez has done a fabulous job."

Sanchez approved some harsh interrogation tactics for use at Abu Ghraib in the fall of 2003, when he and other military commanders were concerned about rising violence. Those tactics included using military dogs to frighten detainees, although the orders required Sanchez's approval in each instance.

An Army report released in 2004 faulted Sanchez for failing to properly oversee prison operations and said he indirectly contributed to some of the abuses. But the Army said in April 2005 that an inspector general's investigation cleared Sanchez of accusations of dereliction of duty in his oversight of prison operations in Iraq.

During a retirement ceremony at Fort Sam Houston in Texas on Wednesday, Sanchez's colleagues praised his tenure. Gen. John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command, said, "I've never stood by a better soldier in tougher times."

Sanchez's former commander in Europe, retired general Wesley Clark, told the San Antonio Express- News that Sanchez was "a fine officer." Clark sought the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination.

The taint of Abu Ghraib would have made it difficult for Sanchez to win the necessary Senate approval for a promotion, said Lawrence Korb, an assistant Defense secretary in the Reagan administration.

"The (Bush) administration didn't want to send his name to Congress because they were afraid he would be asked embarrassing questions about Abu Ghraib," Korb said. He said that while in Iraq, Sanchez had been under pressure from Washington to get better information from prisoners.

    Abu Ghraib ended career, a top general says, UT, 2.11.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2006-11-02-sanchez-retirement_x.htm

Medic Tends a Fallen Marine, With Skill, Prayer and Fury

November 2, 2006
The New York Times
By C. J. CHIVERS

KARMA, Iraq, Oct. 30 — Petty Officer Third Class Dustin E. Kirby clutched the injured marine’s empty helmet. His hands were coated in blood. Sweat ran down his face, which he was trying to keep straight but kept twisting into a snarl.

He held up the helmet and flipped it, exposing the inside. It was lined with blood and splinters of bone.

“The round hit him,” he said, pausing to point at a tiny hole that aligned roughly with a man’s temple. “Right here.”

Petty Officer Kirby, 22, is a Navy corpsman, the trauma medic assigned to Second Mobile Assault Platoon of Weapons Company, Second Battalion, Eighth Marines. Everyone calls him Doc. He had just finished treating a marine who had been shot by an Iraqi sniper.

“It was 7.62 millimeter,” he continued. “Armor piercing.”

He reached into his pocket and retrieved the bullet, which he had found. “The impact with the Kevlar stopped most of it,” he said. “But it tore through, hit his head, went through and came out.”

He put the bullet in his breast pocket, to give to an intelligence team later. Sweat kept rolling off his face, mixed with tears. His voice was almost cracking, but he managed to control it and keep it deep. “When I got there, there wasn’t much I could do,” he said.

Then he nodded. He seemed to be talking to himself. “I kept him breathing,” he said.

He looked at Lance Cpl. Matias Tafoya, his driver, and raised his voice. It was almost a shout. “When I told you that I do not let people die on me, I meant it,” he said. “I meant it.”

He scanned the Iraqi houses, perhaps 150 yards away, on the other side of a fetid green canal. Marines were all around, pressed to the ground, peering from behind machine-gun turrets or bracing against their armored vehicles, aiming rifles at where they thought the sniper was.

The sniper had made a single shot just as the marines were leaving a rural settlement on the western edge of Karma, a city near Falluja in Anbar Province.

The marines had been searching several houses on this side of the canal, where they found five Kalashnikov assault rifles and bomb components, and were getting back into their vehicles when everyone heard the shot. It was a single loud crack.

No one was precisely sure where it had come from. Everyone knew precisely where it hit. It struck a marine who was peering out of the first vehicle’s gun turret. He collapsed.

Petty Officer Kirby rushed to him and found him breathing. He bandaged the marine’s head as the vehicle lurched away. Soon he helped load the wounded marine into a helicopter, which touched down beside the convoy within 12 minutes of the shot.

Once the helicopter lifted away, he ran back to his vehicle, ready to treat anyone else. He was thinking about the marine he had already treated.

“If I had gone with him,” he said, and glanced to where the helicopter had flown away, over the line of date palms at the end of a field. His voice softened. “But I’m not with him,” he said.

He turned, faced a reporter and spoke loudly again. “In situations and times like this, I am bound to start yelling and shouting furiously,” he said. “Don’t think I am losing my mind.”

He held his bloody hands before his face, to examine them. They were shaking. He made fists so tight his veins bulged. His forearms started to bounce.

“His name was Lance Cpl. Colin Smith,” he said. “He said a prayer today right before we came out, too.”

“Every time before we go out, we say a prayer,” he said. “It is a prayer for serenity. It says a lot about things that do pertain to us in this kind of environment.”

The only sounds were Doc’s voice and the vehicle’s engine thrumming.

He recited the prayer. There was a few moments of silence. “It’s a platoon kind of thing, if you know what I mean,” he said.

He listened to his radio headset and looked at Lance Corporal Tafoya, relaying word of the marines’ movements. “Right now the grunts are performing a hard hit on a house,” he said. He turned back to the subject of Lance Corporal Smith, 19.

“The best news I can throw at anybody right now, and that I am throwing to myself as often as I can, is that his eyes were O.K.,” he said. “They were both responsive. And he was breathing. And he had a pulse.”

He listened to his radio. “Two houses they’ve hit so far have both been swept and cleared.”

He looked at the reporter beside him. “Do you pray?” he asked. “Do that. I’d appreciate it.”

After a few minutes he started talking again. “You see, having a good platoon, one that you know real well, it’s both a gift and a curse. And Smith? Smith has been with me since I was...”

He stopped. “He was my roommate before we left,” he said.

He refilled his lungs and raised his voice. “His dad was his best friend,” he said. “He’s got the cutest little blond girlfriend, and she freaks out every time we call because she’s so happy to hear from him.”

He sat quietly again. A few minutes passed. “The first casualty we had here — his name was James Hirlston — he was his good friend.”

“Hirlston got shot in the head, too,” he said.

He said something about Iraqi snipers that could not be printed here.

Then he was back to the subject of Lance Corporal Smith.

“I really thank God that he was breathing when I got to him, because it means that I can do something with him,” he said. “It helps. People ask you, ‘What are you doing? What are you doing?’ It helps, because if he’s breathing, you’re doing something.”

There had been many Iraqi civilians outside a few minutes before the sniper made his shot. Most of them had disappeared. Now an Iraqi woman walked calmly between the sniper and the marines, as if nothing had happened.

She passed down the street.

Petty Officer Kirby began to list the schools he had attended to be ready for this moment. Some he had paid for himself, he said, to be extra-prepared.

In one course, an advanced trauma treatment program he had taken before deploying, he said, the instructors gave each corpsman an anesthetized pig.

“The idea is to work with live tissue,” he said. “You get a pig and you keep it alive. And every time I did something to help him, they would wound him again. So you see what shock does, and what happens when more wounds are received by a wounded creature.”

“My pig?” he said. “They shot him twice in the face with a 9-millimeter pistol, and then six times with an AK-47 and then twice with a 12-gauge shotgun. And then he was set on fire.”

“I kept him alive for 15 hours,” he said. “That was my pig.”

“That was my pig,” he said.

He paused. “Smith is my friend.”

He looked at his bloody hands. “You got some water?” he said. “I want some water. I just want to wash my wedding band.”

He listened to the tactical radio. The platoon was sweeping houses but could not find the sniper.

The company started to move. It stopped at another house. The marines were questioning five Iraqi men. Doc watched from the road, waiting for the next call.

“I would like to say that I am a good man,” he said. “But seeing this now, what happened to Smith, I want to hurt people. You know what I mean?”

The marines had not fired a shot.

They took one of the men into custody, mounted their vehicles and drove back to Outpost Omar, their company base, passing knots of Iraqi civilians on the way. The civilians looked at them coldly.

Inside the wire, First Lt. Scott R. Burlison, the company commander, gathered the group and told them that Lance Corporal Smith was alive and in surgery. He was critical, but stable. They hoped to fly him to Germany.

Doc had scrubbed himself clean. A big marine stepped forward with a small Bible, and the platoon huddled. He began with Psalm 91, verses 5 and 11.

“Thou shall not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day,” said the big marine, Lance Cpl. Daniel B. Nicholson. “For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.”

Then he asked for the Lord to look after Lance Corporal Smith and whatever was ahead, and to take care of everyone who was still in the platoon.

“Help us Lord,” he said. “We need your help. It’s the only way we’re going to get through this.”

Doc stood in the corner, his arm looped over a marine. “Amen,” he said. There were some hugs, and then the marines and their Doc went back to their bunks and their guns.

    Medic Tends a Fallen Marine, With Skill, Prayer and Fury, NYT, 2.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/02/world/middleeast/02medic.html?hp&ex=1162530000&en=eca8a08d94515012&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Iraqi Demands Pullback; U.S. Lifts Baghdad Cordon

November 1, 2006
The New York Times
By KIRK SEMPLE

BAGHDAD, Oct. 31 — Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki demanded the removal of American checkpoints from the streets of Baghdad on Tuesday, in what appeared to be his latest and boldest gambit in an increasingly tense struggle for more independence from his American protectors.

Mr. Maliki’s public declaration seemed at first to catch American commanders off guard. But by nightfall, American troops had abandoned all the positions in eastern and central Baghdad that they had set up last week with Iraqi forces as part of a search for a missing American soldier. The checkpoints had snarled traffic and disrupted daily life and commerce throughout the eastern part of the city.

The language of the declaration, which implied that Mr. Maliki had the power to command American forces, seemed to overstep his authority and to be aimed at placating his Shiite constituency.

The withdrawal was greeted with jubilation in the streets of Sadr City, the densely populated Shiite enclave where the Americans have focused their manhunt and where anti-American sentiment runs high. The initial American reaction to the order, which was released by Mr. Maliki’s press office, strongly suggested that the statement had not been issued in concert with the American authorities.

“Our commanders have his press release and are reviewing how best to address these concerns,” Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a military spokesman in Baghdad, said early Tuesday afternoon, about an hour after the order was issued.

Late Tuesday night, after hours of silence, a senior American Embassy official who had been delegated to return reporters’ phone calls said the prime minister’s order was “the result of a meeting” between Mr. Maliki, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top American commander in Iraq. “It was essentially something that Maliki wanted to do and Casey agreed to it,” the official said.

But Mr. Maliki’s announcement may have been a foregone conclusion: the meeting was at 1 p.m., officials said, and the prime minister’s office issued his press release at about 1:20 p.m.

Tensions between Mr. Maliki and President Bush have been building for months. American officials have grown impatient with the Iraqi government’s inability to curb Shiite militias accused of sectarian killings and to reduce the insurgent violence. For their part, Mr. Maliki and other leading Shiites have begun to chafe at American control of the military and what they view as American favoritism toward Sunnis.

Those tensions erupted publicly last week, to be followed by shows of reconciliation.

On Wednesday, Mr. Maliki challenged an American assertion that the two governments had agreed on a timetable for stabilizing Iraq. On Thursday and Friday, he issued angry comments pointedly voicing his independence from the Americans, including an account circulated by his aide of an acrimonious meeting with Mr. Khalilzad, during which Mr. Maliki was said to have told the ambassador that he was “a friend of the United States, but not America’s man in Iraq.” On Saturday, the White House convened a videoconference at which Mr. Maliki publicly praised President Bush.

The abrupt declaration by Mr. Maliki on Tuesday followed a visit to Baghdad on Monday by President Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, who was here to discuss how to reverse the country’s slide toward all-out civil war.

Violence continued to torment the country on Tuesday, including the mass kidnapping of at least 50 civilians by gunmen on a road north of Baghdad, and the announcement that 2 more American troops had been killed, raising the toll of American deaths this month to at least 103.

Mr. Maliki had been under pressure from his Shiite backers to push the Americans to lift an eight-day-old cordon around Sadr City, where American authorities believe the kidnapped American soldier is being held.

The soldier was abducted in the central Baghdad neighborhood of Karada on Oct. 23 after leaving the fortified Green Zone without authorization. Three people were detained early Tuesday in the latest raid in Sadr City as part of the manhunt, the American military said. Although the military has not released the name of the soldier, members of an Iraqi family who said they were the missing soldier’s in-laws identified him as Ahmed Qusai al-Taei, 41.

Moktada al-Sadr, the powerful Shiite cleric who counts Sadr City as his greatest bastion of support and who wields considerable influence in Mr. Maliki’s ruling Shiite coalition, called for a general strike in the neighborhood on Tuesday to protest the cordon. In its search for the soldier, the American military has singled out the Mahdi Army militia, which has grown increasingly fractured but still answers in part to Mr. Sadr.

Joint American-Iraqi roadblocks and checkpoints at the entrances to the neighborhood, and others erected in Karada, have caused major traffic jams, impeded commerce, turned short commutes into ordeals lasting hours and provoked the ire of Iraqis. On Monday, Mr. Sadr, who led two uprisings against American troops in 2004, threatened unspecified action if the American “siege” continued.

The wording of Mr. Maliki’s statement on Tuesday seemed intended to curry political favor with the residents and power brokers of Sadr City. “Mr. Nuri al-Maliki, the general commander of the armed forces, has issued an order to remove all barriers and checkpoints and open all entrances in Sadr City and all other areas in Baghdad and ease traffic jams in these areas no later than 5 p.m. today,” it said.

Under United Nations resolutions that remain in effect, the American military exercises control over American troops in Iraq, but consults closely with the Iraqi government as a partner. For that reason, the declaration appeared to be as much about Mr. Maliki’s stagecraft as about practical effects on the ground.

Within an hour of the statement, American troops had already begun pulling away from the checkpoints on the edge of Sadr City, according to witnesses, though Iraqi security forces remained behind. Lt. Col. Jonathan B. Withington, a military spokesman in Baghdad, said the order would affect only the checkpoints established in the last week, not all the checkpoints manned by Iraqi security forces.

When asked whether the American withdrawal was a response to the prime minister’s statement, Colonel Withington chose his words carefully: “We were ordered by our military chain of command not to impede traffic” in Karada and on the eastern access roads to Sadr City, he said.

The country’s Sunni leadership condemned Mr. Maliki’s decision, saying it would upend the Baghdad security plan and expose the population to greater violence. General Casey said last week that Iraqi security forces still needed at least a year before they would be ready to take over full control of the country’s security.

Tariq al-Hashemi, one of Iraq’s two vice-presidents and the leader of the largest Sunni Arab bloc, said the prime minister’s decision “will allow the terrorists and the insurgents to move freely.” He said that civilians’ lives should be more important than saving a few hours during a commute.

A National Police officer posted at a checkpoint near the Habibiya Bridge entrance to Sadr City said the departure of the Americans, who had left 15 minutes earlier, would make his job more difficult. “They helped us to stop everyone,” said the officer, who gave only his first name, Salam. “If we are alone, we can’t say a word against certain people.”

Mr. Maliki’s order said that special security measures, such as the latest roadblocks, “will be carried out only during the curfew period and in emergencies.” It added: “Joint efforts to track down the terrorists and outlaws who jeopardize the lives of people by killing and kidnapping will continue.”

According to senior Shiite politicians close to Mr. Maliki, the Americans had been extremely reluctant, if not opposed, to withdrawing from their roadblocks and checkpoints in Karada and Sadr City.

Ali al-Adeeb, a Shiite member of Parliament and a senior member of Mr. Maliki’s Islamic Dawa Party, said the prime minister had discussed the matter of the roadblocks with American officials during the past several days. In a meeting on Monday, Mr. Adeeb said, American officials had asked Mr. Maliki to give them 72 hours before issuing his order.

Hassan al-Sined, an adviser to the prime minister and a senior Dawa Party member, said he doubted that the order was coordinated with the Americans. “I don’t think he got the Americans’ opinion,” Mr. Sined said, though he said he was not privy to details of Tuesday’s meeting.

If the declaration was intended to show Mr. Maliki as a forceful and decisive leader, as far Mr. Sined was concerned, it had that effect. The order demonstrated that Mr. Maliki was “a strong and brave prime minister,” he said. “He behaved like a successful prime minister.”

The senior American Embassy official said that the embassy applauded the boldness of Mr. Maliki’s declaration. “We’re actually encouraging the prime minister to take responsibility,” he said. “So trying to sound like he’s a leader here in Iraq is a good thing.”

Mr. Maliki was not available for comment and his spokesman, who is the only administration official authorized to speak on the prime minister’s behalf, was in Kuwait on Thursday. When contacted by telephone late Tuesday, the spokesman said he had only just heard about Mr. Maliki’s order and could offer no details.

The victims of the mass kidnapping north of Baghdad on Tuesday were mostly Shiites and were ambushed by gunmen as they traveled in cars along a road from the capital to Balad, according to an official in the news media office of Salahuddin Province, north of Baghdad. The gunmen stopped the cars and scrutinized the occupants’ identification before abducting the victims, the official said.

The American military announced that two soldiers died in Baghdad on Monday, one when a bomb exploded next to his vehicle and the other by small arms fire. With at least 103 announced deaths, October has been the fourth-deadliest month for American troops since the beginning of the war. The other highest monthly tolls were 107 in January 2005, 135 in April 2004, and 137 in November 2004.

Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi and Omar al-Neami contributed reporting from Baghdad, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Dhuluiya.

    Iraqi Demands Pullback; U.S. Lifts Baghdad Cordon, NYT, 1.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/01/world/middleeast/01iraq.html?hp&ex=1162443600&en=25533569e4a2a8f1&ei=5094&partner=homepage

U.S. Central Command Charts Sharp Movement of the Civil Conflict in Iraq Toward Chaos

November 1, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON

WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 — A classified briefing prepared two weeks ago by the United States Central Command portrays Iraq as edging toward chaos, in a chart that the military is using as a barometer of civil conflict.

A one-page slide shown at the Oct. 18 briefing provides a rare glimpse into how the military command that oversees the war is trying to track its trajectory, particularly in terms of sectarian fighting.

The slide includes a color-coded bar chart that is used to illustrate an “Index of Civil Conflict.” It shows a sharp escalation in sectarian violence since the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February, and tracks a further worsening this month despite a concerted American push to tamp down the violence in Baghdad.

In fashioning the index, the military is weighing factors like the ineffectual Iraqi police and the dwindling influence of moderate religious and political figures, rather than more traditional military measures such as the enemy’s fighting strength and the control of territory.

The conclusions the Central Command has drawn from these trends are not encouraging, according to a copy of the slide that was obtained by The New York Times. The slide shows Iraq as moving sharply away from “peace,” an ideal on the far left side of the chart, to a point much closer to the right side of the spectrum, a red zone marked “chaos.” As depicted in the command’s chart, the needle has been moving steadily toward the far right of the chart.

An intelligence summary at the bottom of the slide reads “urban areas experiencing ‘ethnic cleansing’ campaigns to consolidate control” and “violence at all-time high, spreading geographically.” According to a Central Command official, the index on civil strife has been a staple of internal command briefings for most of this year. The analysis was prepared by the command’s intelligence directorate, which is overseen by Brig. Gen. John M. Custer.

Gen. John P. Abizaid, who heads the command, warned publicly in August about the risk of civil war in Iraq, but he said then that he thought it could be averted. In evaluating the prospects for all-out civil strife, the command concentrates on “key reads,” or several principal variables.

According to the slide from the Oct. 18 briefing, the variables include “hostile rhetoric” by political and religious leaders, which can be measured by listening to sermons at mosques and to important Shiite and Sunni leaders, and the amount of influence that moderate political and religious figures have over the population. The other main variables are assassinations and other especially provocative sectarian attacks, as well as “spontaneous mass civil conflict.”

A number of secondary indicators are also taken into account, including activity by militias, problems with ineffective police, the ability of Iraqi officials to govern effectively, the number of civilians who have been forced to move by sectarian violence, the willingness of Iraqi security forces to follow orders, and the degree to which the Iraqi Kurds are pressing for independence from the central government.

These factors are evaluated to create the index of civil strife, which has registered a steady worsening for months. “Ever since the February attack on the Shiite mosque in Samarra, it has been closer to the chaos side than the peace side,” said a Central Command official who asked not to be identified because he was talking about classified information.

In the Oct. 18 brief, the index moved still another notch toward “chaos.” That briefing was prepared three days before General Abizaid met in Washington with President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to take stock of the situation in Iraq.

A spokesman for the Central Command declined to comment on the index or other information in the slide. “We don’t comment on secret material,” the spokesman said.

One significant factor in the military’s decision to move the scale toward “chaos” was the expanding activity by militias.

Another reason was the limitations of Iraqi government security forces, which despite years of training and equipping by the United States, are either ineffective or, in some cases, infiltrated by the very militias they are supposed to be combating. The slide notes that “ineffectual” Iraqi police forces have been a significant problem, and cites as a concern sectarian conflicts between Iraqi security forces.

Other significant factors are in the political realm. The slide notes that Iraq’s political and religious leaders have lost some of their moderating influence over their constituents or adherents.

Notably, the slide also cites difficulties that the new Iraqi administration has experienced in “governance.” That appears to be shorthand for the frustration felt by American military officers about the Iraqi government’s delays in bringing about a genuine political reconciliation between Shiites and Sunnis. It also appears to apply to the lack of reconstruction programs to restore essential services and the dearth of job creation efforts to give young Iraqis an alternative to joining militias, as well as the absence of firm action against militias.

The slide lists other factors that are described as important but less significant. They include efforts by Iran and Syria to enable violence by militias and insurgent groups and the interest by many Kurds in achieving independence. The slide describes violence motivated by sectarian differences as having moved into a “critical” phase.

The chart does note some positive developments. Specifically, it notes that “hostile rhetoric” by political and religious leaders has not increased. It also notes that Iraqi security forces are refusing less often than in the past to take orders from the central government and that there has been a drop-off in mass desertions.

Still, for a military culture that thrives on PowerPoint briefings, the shifting index was seen by some officials as a stark warning about the difficult course of events in Iraq, and mirrored growing concern by some military officers.

    U.S. Central Command Charts Sharp Movement of the Civil Conflict in Iraq Toward Chaos, NYT, 1.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/01/world/middleeast/01military.html

U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq Still Mostly Outside Capital

November 1, 2006
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER and DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 — About two-thirds of the deaths among American troops in Iraq in October occurred outside Baghdad, even with a sharp increase in combat deaths in the capital that made it the fourth deadliest month of the war for the United States, Defense Department figures show.

The October death toll, which stood at 103 by late Tuesday, was the highest since January 2005, when 107 American troops were killed.

Forty American soldiers were killed in and around Baghdad in October, double the number there just two months ago, a review of casualty reports shows.

Military officers and civilian analysts said the rise in October resulted in part from more aggressive American security operations in Baghdad, which exposed larger numbers of troops to danger. The security operation in the capital put American troops on the streets not only in greater numbers, but more often on foot patrols outside their armored vehicles, where they were more vulnerable to improvised bombs and a growing threat of snipers.

The spike in violence in the capital was accompanied by higher tolls in other parts of the country, notably in Anbar Province, where 37 Americans died and deaths have climbed steadily since this summer.

The jump in combat deaths in October mirrored the annual rise in violence that coincides with the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. Military officers and civilian analysts rejected assertions by some Bush administration officials that the insurgents had planned offensives to influence the elections in the United States next Tuesday.

Hidden bombs remained the single biggest killer, and more deaths occurred throughout Iraq from such devices in October than in any previous month but one. Beyond that, more soldiers were also killed by small-arms fire and snipers than in the past, according to officials and the casualty reports.

Throughout Iraq, more American soldiers were killed by snipers in the first 10 days of October than were killed by sniper fire in all of September, according to an Army spokesman, Paul Boyce. He declined to release precise numbers.

“When you put people into urban warfare, they have to come out of their vehicles,” said Anthony H. Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “No matter how you run it, if your orders are to be more active on the ground, you are more vulnerable.”

Lt. Col. Jonathan B. Withington, an Army spokesman for the multinational division responsible for Baghdad and central Iraq, said casualties were high in October because there were “twice as many forces on the ground conducting operations in Baghdad.” He also cited Ramadan, and said the enemy was “attempting to push back on us” in response to the new security operation.

There are now about 150,000 American troops in Iraq, and troop numbers are likely to remain at that level until the end of the year, as units rotating into the country overlap with others due to leave, according to Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros, a Pentagon spokesman.

The Department of Defense posts cumulative statistics on those killed and wounded in Iraq at its Web site www.defenselink.mil/news/, where statistics on Tuesday showed 2,258 American military personnel had been killed in Iraq in combat and 556 in nonhostile incidents. The number of troops wounded in Iraq who have returned to duty stood at 11,682, and the number of those wounded so severely that they could not return to duty was 9,737.

Statistics provided by Michael S. White and Glenn Kutler of ICasualties.org, a privately operated database that uses the Defense Department’s official casualty announcements, indicated the geographical distribution of October fatalities: roughly one-third in Baghdad; one-third in Anbar Province, the restive western area that is a haven for Sunni insurgents and associates of Al Qaeda; and one-third in volatile cities to the north, including Taji, Tikrit, Samarra, Kirkuk and Mosul.

All are areas that have proven persistently difficult to pacify since the American-led invasion of March 2003.

“This was a significant month for casualties,” said Lt. Col. Bryan F. Salas of the Marine Corps, the spokesman for multinational forces in Anbar. “We are in more towns, and we are clearing and holding parts of Ramadi and other cities where we haven’t been before.”

Mr. White also wrote, “The current spike, which is indeed the highest in a year, occurred during Ramadan, as did the last spike of comparable magnitude a year ago.” He added: “This Ramadan spike is not a one-time phenomenon. It is the fourth that we have experienced since the war began.”

Senior administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, have acknowledged the trend of increased violence during Ramadan, but also have sought to portray this October’s increase in violence as timed to the midterm election, with insurgents hoping to influence the American political process.

“It’s my belief that they’re very sensitive of the fact that we’ve got an election scheduled, and they can get on the Web sites like anybody else,” Mr. Cheney said Monday in an interview with Fox News. “And I do believe that that’s a part of it. I think we’ve also seen, of course, a higher level of violence because of Ramadan.”

Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a policy research center, said the casualty statistics not only showed the overall strength of the insurgency, but also reflected the increase in sectarian violence and the decision over the summer by the Americans and the Iraqi government to confront killings by both organized militias and renegade insurgents.

“Now we have to juxtapose the insurgency with the strength of militias,” Mr. O’Hanlon said.

    U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq Still Mostly Outside Capital, NYT, 1.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/01/world/middleeast/01troops.html