History > 2007 > USA > War > Iraq (I)

Gideon Fry, 7,

son of Gunnery Sgt. John D. Fry, 28, of Lorena, Tex.,

looks at his father’s closet.

Sergeant Fry was killed seven days before he was to leave Iraq.

NYT

December 31, 2006

Photograph:

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

3,000 Deaths in Iraq, Countless Tears at Home

NYT        1.1.2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/01/us/01deaths.html

General says U.S. has proof

Iran arming Iraqi militias

Posted 1/30/2007 11:06 PM ET
USA Today
By Jim Michaels

BAGHDAD — Iran is supplying Iraqi militias with a variety of powerful weapons including Katyusha rockets, the No. 2 U.S. general in Iraq said Tuesday.

"We have weapons that we know through serial numbers … that trace back to Iran," Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno said in an interview with USA TODAY.

His comments came as the Bush administration has been taking an increasingly tough stance against what it alleges is Iranian meddling in sectarian violence in Iraq. Last week, the White House confirmed that the president had authorized U.S. troops to take action against Iranian agents in Iraq who present threats.

On Tuesday, President Bush vowed to crack down on those who supply Iraqi insurgents with arms, though he denied any plans to invade Iran.

"We'll deal with it by finding their supply chains and their agents and … arresting them. … In other words, we're going to protect our troops," Bush told ABC News.

Odierno did not provide further details on how weapons were linked to Iran. The Iranian government has denied providing weapons to Iraqi militias.

Most weapons supplied by Iran end up in the hands of Shiite extremists, Odierno said.

He said the weapons include:

•The RPG-29, a rocket-propelled grenade that can fire armor-piercing rounds. It is larger and more sophisticated than the RPG-7 more commonly found in Iraq.

•Katyusha rockets, so large they are generally fired from trucks.

•Powerful roadside bombs, known as explosively formed projectiles, which can pierce armor. The technological know-how and "some of the elements to make them are coming out of Iran," Odierno said.

Several Iranians have been detained in raids inside Iraq, and some remain in custody. The arrests have provided clues about Iranian operations, Odierno said.

"Every time you pick up individuals you learn about how they facilitate themselves within a country," he said.

He did not specify whether the Iranians in custody are cooperating, or whether evidence was seized during the arrest.

Iran's ambassador to Iraq told The New York Times this week that Iran was taking steps to expand military and economic ties with Iraq.

General says U.S. has proof Iran arming Iraqi militias, UT, 31.1.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-01-30-iraq-iran_x.htm

FACTBOX:

Military and civilian deaths in Iraq

Mon Jan 29, 2007 9:15 AM ET
Reuters

(Reuters) - Two U.S. soldiers were killed when their attack helicopter came down during fighting near the Iraqi city of Najaf, the military said on Monday.

Following are the latest figures for military deaths in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003:

U.S.-LED COALITION FORCES:

United States 3,077

Britain 130

Other nations 123

IRAQIS:

Military Between 4,900 and 6,375#

Civilians Between 55,073 and 60,754*

# = Think-tank estimates for military under Saddam Hussein killed during the 2003 war. No reliable official figures have been issued since new security forces were set up in late 2003.

* = From www.iraqbodycount.net (IBC), run by academics and peace activists, based on reports from at least two media sources. IBC says on its Web site that the figure underestimates the true number of casualties.

FACTBOX: Military and civilian deaths in Iraq, R, 29.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2007-01-29T141518Z_01_L2928253_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L1-RelatedNews-2

Iraqi cult leader killed in Najaf battle

Mon Jan 29, 2007 10:41 AM ET
Reuters
By Khaled Farhan

NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - The leader of an Iraqi cult who claimed to be the Mahdi, a messiah-like figure in Islam, was killed in a battle on Sunday near Najaf with hundreds of his followers, Iraq's national security minister said on Monday.

Women and children who joined 600-700 of his "Soldiers of Heaven" on the outskirts of the Shi'ite holy city may be among the casualties, Shirwan al-Waeli told Reuters. All those people not killed were in detention, many of them wounded.

Iraqi troops, backed by U.S. forces, confronted the group after learning it was planning an attack on the Shi'ite clerical establishment in Najaf on Monday.

"One of the signs of the coming of the Mahdi was to be the killing of the Ulema (hierarchy) in Najaf," Waeli said. "This was a perverse claim. No sane person could believe it."

Authorities have been on alert for days as hundreds of thousands of Shi'ite Muslims massed in the area to commemorate Ashura, the highpoint of their religious calendar, amid fears of attacks by Sunni Arab insurgents linked to al Qaeda.

But Sunday's battle involved a group of a different sort, a cult which Iraqi officials said included both Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims as well as foreigners.

"He claimed to be the Mahdi," Waeli said of the cult's leader, adding that he had used the full name Mahdi bin Ali bin Ali bin Abi Taleb, claiming descent from the Prophet Mohammad.

He was believed to be a 40-year-old from the nearby Shi'ite city of Diwaniya: "He was killed," Waeli said.

The final death toll, estimated by other Iraqi officials at 300 gunmen, was still being calculated, Waeli said, putting the initial figure at about 200. Searchers were still scouring the area where U.S. tanks, helicopters and jets reinforced Iraqi troops during some 24 hours of fighting.

Though Sunnis and Shi'ites are engaged in an embryonic sectarian civil war in Iraq, there have been instances in Islamic history where groups drawn from both communities have challenged the authority of the existing clerical leadership.

"SOLDIERS OF HEAVEN"

The U.S. military declined to provide details. It officially handed over responsibility for Najaf province, in southern Iraq, to Iraqi security forces last month and withdrew most U.S. troops, to be recalled only to help in emergencies.

A government statement said the group was planning "a dangerous criminal act" in Najaf.

"An ideologically perverted group ... tried to insult an Islamic holy symbol, the Imam Mahdi, and use him as an ideological base to recruit followers," the statement said.

Waeli said the death toll among Iraqi forces was around 10 soldiers and police. Najaf's police chief was wounded, he said.

Two U.S. soldiers were killed when their attack helicopter came down during the fighting, the U.S. military said. Iraqi officials and witnesses said it appeared to have been shot down.

Some of the fighters wore headbands describing themselves as "Soldiers of Heaven", Iraqi officials said. It was not clear how many women and children were present: "It is very sad to bring families onto the battlefield," Waeli said.

When police first approached the camp and tried to call on the group to leave, their leader replied: "I am the Mahdi and I want you to join me," Waeli said, adding: "Today was supposed to be the day of his coming."

Other Iraqi officials said on Sunday that a man named Ahmed Hassani al-Yemeni, who had been working from an office in Najaf until it was closed down earlier this month, had assembled the group, claiming to be the messenger of the Mahdi.

Among previous violent instances of people saying they were the Mahdi were an opposition movement to British imperial forces in Sudan in the 1880s and a group of several hundred, including women, that took over the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979.

There are precedents in Islamic history for such violent cults. They have declared temporal Muslim leaders illegitimate infidels and have drawn followers from both Sunni and Shi'ite believers, proclaiming a unity of inspiration from Mohammad.

As many as 2 million pilgrims gathered in Kerbala, 70 km (40 miles) north of Najaf, for the climax of Ashura on Monday and 11,000 troops and police were deployed.

More than 100 people were killed there by suicide bombers three years ago, as Shi'ites marked the first Ashura after the end of restrictions imposed by Saddam Hussein's Sunni-led state.

(Additional reporting by Mariam Karouny, Aseel Kami, Ross Colvin, Claudia Parsons and Alastair Macdonald in Baghdad)

    Iraqi cult leader killed in Najaf battle, R, 29.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2007-01-29T154107Z_01_L2828035_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ.xml&src=012907_1044_TOPSTORY_battle_in_najaf

‘Man Down’:

When One Bullet Alters Everything

January 29, 2007
The New York Times
By DAMIEN CAVE

BAGHDAD, Jan. 28 — Staff Sgt. Hector Leija scanned the kitchen, searching for illegal weapons. One wall away, in an apartment next door, a scared Shiite family huddled around a space heater, cradling an infant.

It was after 9 a.m. on Wednesday, on Haifa Street in central Baghdad, and the crack-crack of machine-gun fire had been rattling since dawn. More than a thousand American and Iraqi troops had come to this warren of high rises and hovels to disrupt the growing nest of Sunni and Shiite fighters battling for control of the area.

The joint military effort has been billed as the first step toward an Iraqi takeover of security. But this morning, in the two dark, third-floor apartments on Haifa Street, that promise seemed distant. What was close, and painfully real, was the cost of an escalating street fight that had trapped American soldiers and Iraqi bystanders between warring sects.

And as with so many days here, a bullet changed everything.

It started at 9:15 a.m.

“Help!” came the shout. “Man down.”

“Sergeant Leija got hit in the head,” yelled Specialist Evan Woollis, 25, his voice carrying into the apartment with the Iraqi family. The soldiers from the sergeant’s platoon, part of the Third Stryker Brigade Combat Team, rushed from one apartment to the other.

In the narrow kitchen, a single bullet hole could be seen in a tinted glass window facing north.

The platoon’s leader, Sgt. First Class Marc Biletski, ordered his men to get down, away from every window, and to pull Sergeant Leija out of the kitchen and into the living room.

“O.K., everybody, let’s relax,” Sergeant Biletski said. But he was shaking from his shoulder to his hand.

Relaxing was just not possible. Fifteen feet of floor and a three-inch-high metal doorjamb stood between where Sergeant Leija fell and the living room, out of the line of fire. Gunshots popped in bursts, their source obscured by echoes off the concrete buildings.

“Don’t freak out on me, Doc,” Sergeant Biletski shouted to the platoon medic, Pfc. Aaron Barnum, who was frantically yanking at Sergeant Leija’s flak jacket to take the weight off his chest. “Don’t freak out.”

Two minutes later, three soldiers rushed to help, dragging the sergeant from the kitchen. A medevac team then rushed in and carried him to a Stryker armored vehicle outside, around 9:20. He moaned as they carried him down the stairs on a stretcher.

The men of the platoon remained in the living room, frozen in shock. They had a problem. Sergeant Leija’s helmet, flak jacket, gear and weapon, along with that of at least one other soldier, were still in the exposed area of the kitchen. They needed to be recovered. But how?

“We don’t know if there’s friendlies in that building,” said Sgt. Richard Coleman, referring to the concrete complex a few feet away from where Sergeant Leija had been shot. Sergeant Biletski, 39, decided to wait. He called for another unit to search and clear the building next door.

The additional unit needed time, and got lost. The men sat still. Sergeant B, as his soldiers called him, was near the wall farthest from the kitchen, out of sight from the room’s wide, shaded window. Sergeant Woollis, Private Barnum, Sergeant Coleman and Specialist Terry Wilson sat around him.

Together, alone, trapped in a dark room with the blood of their comrade on the floor, they tried to piece together what had happened. Maybe the sniper saw Sergeant Leija’s silhouette in the window and fired. Or maybe the shot was accidental, they said, fired from below by Iraqi Army soldiers who had been moving between the buildings.

Sergeant Woollis cited the available evidence — an entrance wound just below the helmet with an exit wound above. He said the shot must have been fired from the ground.

The Iraqis were not supposed to even be there yet. The plan had been for Sergeant Leija’s squad to work alongside an Iraqi Army unit all day. But after arriving late at the first building, the Iraqis jumped ahead, leaving the Americans and pushing north without searching dozens of apartments in the area.

The Iraqi soldiers below the kitchen window had once again skipped forward. An American officer later said the Iraqis were brave to push ahead toward the most intense gunfire.

But Sergeant Leija’s squad had no communication links with their Iraqi counterparts, and because it was an Iraqi operation — as senior officers repeatedly emphasized — the Americans could not order the Iraqis to get back in line. There was nothing they could do.

9:40 a.m.

An Iraqi soldier rushed in and then stopped, seemingly surprised by the Americans sitting around him. He stood in the middle of the darkened living room, inches away from bloody bandages on the carpet.

“Get away from the window!”

The soldiers yelled at their interpreter, a masked Iraqi whom they called Santana. Between their shouts and his urgent Arabic, the Iraqi soldier got the message. He slowly walked away.

A few minutes later it happened again. This time, the Iraqi lingered.

“What part of ‘sniper’ don’t you understand?” Sergeant Biletski yelled. The other soldiers cursed and called the Iraqis idiots. They were still not sure whether an Iraqi soldier was responsible for Sergeant Leija’s wound, but they said the last thing they wanted was another casualty. In a moment of emotion, Private Barnum said, “I won’t treat him if he’s hit.”

When the second Iraqi left, an airless silence returned. The dark left people alone to grieve. “You O.K.? ” Sergeant B asked each soldier. A few nods. A few yeses.

Private Barnum stood up, facing the kitchen, eager to bring back the gear left. One foot back, the other forward, he stood like a sprinter. “I can get that stuff, Sergeant,” he said. “I can get it.”

The building next door had still not been cleared by Americans. The answer was no.

“I can’t lose another man,” Sergeant B said. “If I did, I failed. I already failed once. I’m not going to fail again.”

The room went quiet. Faces turned away. “You didn’t fail, sir,” said one of the men, his voice disguised by the sound of fighting back tears. “You didn’t fail.”

9:55 a.m.

The piercing cry of an infant was easily identifiable, even as the gunfire outside intensified. It came from the apartment next door. The Iraqi Army had been there, too. In an interview before Sergeant Leija was shot, the three young Iraqis there said that their father had been taken by the soldiers.

“Someone from over there” — they pointed back away from Haifa Street, toward the rows of mud-brick slums — “told them we had weapons,” said a young man, who seemed to be about 18.

He was sitting on a couch. To his right, his older sister clutched an infant in a blanket; his younger sister, about 16, sat on the other side.

The young man said the family was Shiite. He said the supposed informants were Sunni Arabs who wanted their apartment.

The truth of his claim was impossible to verify, but it was far from the day’s only confounding tip. Earlier that morning, an Iraqi boy of about 8 ran up to Sergeant Leija. He wanted to tell the Americans about terrorists hiding in the slums behind the apartment buildings on Haifa Street’s eastern side.

Sergeant Leija, an easygoing 27-year-old from Raymondville, Tex., ignored him. He and some of his soldiers said it was impossible to know whether the boy had legitimate information or would lead them to an ambush.

That summed up intelligence in Iraq, they said: there is always the threat of being set up, for an attack or an Iraqi’s own agenda.

The Iraqi Army did not seem worried about such concerns, according to the family. The three young Iraqis said they were glad that the Americans had come. Maybe they could help find their father.

10:50 a.m.

Sergeant. Coleman tried using a mop to get the gear, and failed. It was too far away. With more than an hour elapsed since the attack, and after no signs of another shot through the kitchen window, Sergeant B agreed to let Private Barnum make a mad dash for the equipment.

Private Barnum waited for several minutes in the doorway, peeking around the corner, stalling. Then he dove forward, pushing himself up against the wall near the window to cut down the angle, pausing, then darting back to the camouflaged kit.

Crack — a single gunshot. Private Barnum looked back at the kitchen window, his eyes squeezed with fear. His pace quickened. He cleared the weapons’ chambers and tossed them to the living room. Then he threw the flak jackets and bolt cutters.

He picked up Sergeant Leija’s helmet, cradled it in his arms, then made the final dangerous move back to the living room, his fatigues indelibly stained with his friend’s blood. There were no cheers to greet him. It was a brave act borne of horror, and the men seemed eager to go.

As Private Barnum gingerly wrapped the helmet in a towel, it tipped and blood spilled out.

11:15 a.m.

Sergeant B sat down on a chair outside the two apartments and used the radio to find out if they would be heading back to base or moving forward. He was told to stay put until after an airstrike on a building 500 yards away.

The platoon, looking for cover, returned to the Iraqis’ apartment, where they found the family as they were before — on the couch, in the dark, around the heater.

Specialist Wilson continued the conversation he started before the gunshot two hours earlier. The young Iraqi man said again that the Iraqi Army had taken his father. “Will you come back to help?” he asked.

“We didn’t take him,” Specialist Wilson said. “The I.A. took him. If he didn’t do anything wrong, he should be back.”

The Iraqi family nodded, as if they had heard this before.

Speaking together — none of them gave their names — they said they had lived in the apartment for 16 years. Ten days ago, before the Americans arrived, Sunnis told them they would kill every Shiite in the building if they did not leave immediately. So they fled to a neighborhood in southern Baghdad where some Shiites had started to gather in abandoned homes. But again, a threat came: leave or die. So less than a week ago, the family returned to Haifa Street.

And now the airstrike was coming.

Sergeant B told the family that they should go into a back room for safety. He asked if they wanted to take the heater with them (they did not), and he reminded everyone to keep their mouths open to protect their inner ears against the airstrike’s shockwave.

A boom, then another even louder explosion hit, shaking dust from the walls. One of blasts came from a mortar shell that hit the building, the soldier said. The family stayed, but for the Americans, it was time to go.

12:30 p.m.

Over the next few hours, the platoon combined sprints across open alleyways with bouts of rest in empty makeshift homes. Under what sounded like constant gunfire, the soldiers moved behind the Iraqi soldiers, staying close.

At one point, the Iraqis detained a man who they said had videos of himself shooting American soldiers. The Iraqi soldiers slapped him in the head as they walked him past.

About an hour later, a sniper wounded two Iraqi soldiers who were mingling outside a squat apartment like teenagers at a 7-11. Private Barnum wrapped their wounds with American bandages. He and the rest of the platoon had been inside, taking cover.

“Stay away from the windows,” Sergeant B kept repeating. The point was clear: don’t let it happen again. Don’t fail.

4 p.m.

Downstairs in the lobby of a mostly abandoned high rise on Haifa Street, the sergeant and his men sat on the floor, exhausted. They were waiting for their Stryker to return so they could head back to base. In 14 hours, they had moved through a stretch of eight buildings on Haifa Street. They had been scheduled to clear 18.

Upstairs, Iraqi soldiers searched rooms and made themselves at home in empty apartments. Many were spacious, even luxurious, with elevators opening into wide hallways and grand living rooms splashed with afternoon sun.

Under Saddam Hussein, Haifa Street had been favored by Baath Party officials and wealthy foreigners. The current residents seemed to have fled in an instant; in one apartment, a full container of shaving cream was left in the bathroom. In that apartment’s living room, a band of Iraqi soldiers settled in, relaxing on blue upholstered couches and listening to a soccer game on a radio they found in a closet.

They looked comfortable, like they were waiting to be called to dinner.

Sergeant B and Specialist Woollis, meanwhile, talked about what they would eat when they got back to their homes in California. The consensus was chili dogs and burgers.

Sergeant B also said he missed his 13-year-old son, who was growing up without him, playing football, learning to become a man with an absentee father. After 17 years in the Army, he said, he was thinking that maybe his family had put up with enough.

“I don’t see how you can do this,” he said, “and not be damaged.”

A few hours later, the word came in: Sergeant Leija had died.

‘Man Down’: When One Bullet Alters Everything, NYT, 29.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/29/world/middleeast/29haifa.html

250 Are Killed in Major Iraq Battle

January 29, 2007
The New York Times
By DAMIEN CAVE

BAGHDAD, Jan. 28 — At least 250 militants were killed and an American helicopter was shot down in violent clashes near the southern city of Najaf on Sunday, Iraqi officials said.

For 15 hours, Iraqi forces backed by American helicopters and tanks battled hundreds of gunmen hiding in a date palm orchard near the village of Zarqaa, about 120 miles south of Baghdad, by a river and a large grain silo that is surrounded by orchards, the officials said.

It appeared to be one of the deadliest battles in Iraq since the American-led invasion four years ago, and was the first major fight for Iraqi forces in Najaf Province since they took over control of security there from the Americans in December.

That handover was trumpeted by the Iraqi government at the time as a sign of its progress in regaining more control of Iraqi territory.

The American military confirmed that the helicopter crashed around 1:30 p.m., and said that two soldiers aboard died in the crash. But American military officials said they could not confirm the total number of dead in the battle.

Col. Ali Numaas, a spokesman for the Iraqi security forces in Najaf, and an Interior Ministry official said the number of dead could rise. They said that the fighting stopped just after 10 p.m. and that most of those killed were militants. An employee at a local morgue said at least two Iraqi policemen were among the dead.

In a statement, the United States military said bodies of the two soldiers aboard the helicopter were recovered. The crash, at least the third involving an American helicopter in Iraq over the past week, is under investigation.

The precise affiliation of the militants was unclear.

Asad Abu Ghalal, the governor of Najaf Province, said the fighters in the orchard were Iraqi and foreign, some wearing the brown, white and maroon regalia of Pakistani and Afghan fighters. He said they had come to assassinate Shiite clerics and attack religious convoys that were gathering in Najaf, one of Shiite Islam’s holiest cities, and other southern cities for Ashura, a Shiite holiday that starts Monday night.

At a news conference on Sunday afternoon, Mr. Ghalal said the fighters called themselves the Soldiers of Heaven, and seemed to be part of a wider Sunni effort to disrupt Ashura, which marks the seventh-century death of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Hussein.

The holiday attracts hundreds of thousands of Shiite pilgrims to Karbala, where Hussein is believed to have been killed, and for days, the roads of southern Iraq have been filled with convoys of pilgrims beating drums and preparing for the day’s rituals, which include self-flagellation. In past years, Ashura has been a magnet for violent attacks from Sunnis, with at least 180 people killed on the holiday three years ago.

But two senior Shiite clerics said the gunmen were part of a Shiite splinter group that Saddam Hussein helped build in the 1990s to compete with followers of the venerated Shiite religious leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. They said the group, calling itself the Mehwadiya, was loyal to Ahmad bin al-Hassan al-Basri, an Iraqi cleric who had a falling out with Muhammad Bakr al-Sadr — father-in-law of the Shiite leader Moktada al-Sadr — in Hawza, a revered Shiite seminary in Najaf.

The clerics spoke on condition of anonymity because they said they had been ordered not to discuss Shiite divisions.

Iraqi officials said the group of 100 to 600 fighters was discovered in the orchard Saturday night, leading to a midnight meeting of local authorities who hatched an attack plan.

“We agreed to carry out an operation to take them by surprise,” said Mr. Ghalal, the Najaf governor.

At dawn, the governor said, the area was surrounded and the offensive began. He said the militants had antiaircraft rockets and long-range sniper rifles, and, according to a soldier involved in the fighting, Iraqi security forces encountered heavy resistance. Commanders called for reinforcements and a brigade of soldiers from nearby Babil Province joined the fight.

Eventually, Iraqi officials said, they called on the United States military for help. American tanks and helicopter gunships arrived, and gun battles continued into the night. By 10:30 p.m., the gunfire had died down and Iraqi troops began searching the area for bodies.

Elsewhere in the heavily Shiite south, there were other signs of potential strikes on Ashura. Officials in Karbala said the police arrested three men — a Saudi, an Afghan and a Moroccan — who were found on the road between Najaf and Karbala with a suicide bomb belt and explosives in their car. The officials said the vehicle had been hollowed out so it could be used as a car bomb.

The United States military also announced the deaths of a soldier and a marine on Saturday.

The marine died from combat wounds in Anbar Province, where American troops have been battling Sunni insurgents for months. The soldier, a member of the military police, was killed when a roadside bomb exploded near his patrol north of Baghdad.

Throughout Iraq, the drumbeat of daily violence continued.

In Kirkuk, two car bombs at a Kurdish car dealership and a Kurdish market killed at least 17 people, authorities said.

In Baghdad, 54 bodies were found, many showing signs of torture. At least five girls were killed and 20 wounded when a mortar round hit a school in Adil, a Sunni neighborhood.

At 7:30 a.m., a bomb inside a minibus exploded in a Shiite area of the capital east of the Tigris River, killing one and wounding five. Two hours later, in the Sunni area of Yarmouk in western Baghdad, gunmen killed four people, including a consultant with the Ministry of Industry and his daughter, who were shot on their way to work.

After dark Sunday night, residents of the Yarmouk neighborhood reported that heavy clashes had broken out, with gun and mortar fire raining down for hours.

Also on Sunday, Saddam Hussein’s cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid acknowledged in court that he had given orders to destroy scores of villages during Iraq’s campaign against the Kurds in the 1980s.

Prosecutors introduced two dozen documents they said incriminated members of the Hussein government in the killing of tens of thousands of Kurds.

The Associated Press reported that Mr. Majid, also known as Chemical Ali because he is accused of using chemical weapons against the Kurds, said the area “was full of Iranian agents.”

“We had to isolate these saboteurs,” he said.

He added, “I am the one who gave orders to the army to demolish villages and relocate the villagers.”

Khalid al-Ansary and Qais Mizher contributed reporting from Baghdad, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Najaf.

250 Are Killed in Major Iraq Battle, NYT, 29.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/29/world/middleeast/29iraq.html

Biden: 'Failed Policy' Emboldens Enemy

January 28, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:23 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman on Sunday dismissed criticism a resolution opposing a troop buildup in Iraq would embolden the enemy and estimated perhaps only 20 senators believe President Bush ''is headed in the right direction.''

''It's not the American people or the U.S. Congress who are emboldening the enemy,'' said Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., and White House hopeful in 2008. ''It's the failed policy of this president -- going to war without a strategy, going to war prematurely.''

The Senate's top Republican, Mitch McConnell, cast doubt that a clear majority would be able to coalesce behind one of the many competing resolutions on Iraq. ''I'm not certain any'' will get the necessary votes, he said.

The Democratic-controlled Senate plans to begin debate this week on a nonbinding resolution declaring that Bush's proposal to send 21,500 more troops to Baghdad and Anbar province is ''not in the national interest.''

Last week, Biden's committee approved the measure on a near party-line vote of 12-9.

In reaction, Bush challenged lawmakers not to prematurely condemn his buildup and Vice President Dick Cheney said the administration would proceed even if a nonbinding resolution won Senate approval.

With the Senate having just confirmed a new top U.S. commander for Iraq, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said it was ''pretty clear that a resolution that in effect says that the general going out to take command of the arena shouldn't have the resources he thinks he needs to be successful certainly emboldens the enemy and our adversaries.''

Senate Republicans mostly oppose the committee-passed measure. They are lining up alternatives that express concern about a buildup or in other cases set performance benchmarks for the Iraqi government.

McConnell said Republican leaders would not seek to block a vote on the nonbinding resolution with a filibuster. He called a proposed resolution that focuses on benchmarks ''the best way to go.''

''I think I can pretty well speak for virtually all Republican senators when I say this is the last chance for the Iraqis to step up and do their part,'' said McConnell, R-Ky.

Biden acknowledged that votes in Congress could splinter among several competing proposals but contended that Senate opposition to the buildup was widespread.

''We will have a full throated debate on this policy,'' Biden said. ''I will make you a bet, you will not find 20 percent of the Senate standing up and saying the president is headed in the right direction.''

Cheney said most Republicans ''recognize that what's ultimately going to count here isn't sort of all the hurrah that surrounds these proposals so much as it's what happens on the ground on Iraq. And we're not going to know that for a while yet,'' according to a Newsweek interview released Sunday.

Cheney again cited ''significant progress'' in Iraq and said the war is part of a long-term fight against extreme elements of Islam.

''It's not something that's going to end decisively, and there's not going to be a day when we can, say, 'There, now we have a treaty, problem solved,''' Cheney said. ''It's a problem that I think will occupy our successors maybe for two or three or four administrations to come.''

Sen. Richard Lugar, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations committee, said the public's concern against the war was evident by the tens of thousands of demonstrators who turned out for a protest rally Saturday in Washington.

But he said a congressional resolution would not be constructive, expressing optimism that Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, the new U.S. commander in Iraq, can do a capable job.

''I don't believe that it's helpful right now to show there's disarray around the world as well as in our body at home,'' said Lugar, R-Ind. ''We really need, at this point, to get on the same page.''

Biden and Lugar appeared on ABC's ''This Week'' and McConnell spoke on ''Face the Nation'' on CBS.

    Biden: 'Failed Policy' Emboldens Enemy, NYT, 28.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Iraq.html

Clinton Calls Invasion of Iraq Irresponsible

January 28, 2007
The New York Times
By PATRICK HEALY

DAVENPORT, Jan. 28 – Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said this morning that the Bush administration plan to invade Iraq was “the height of irresponsibility” and that Americans “should expect him to extricate our country” from Iraq before he leaves office in early 2009.

After fairly gentle questioning from Iowa Democrats on Saturday, the first of a two-day visit to the site of the first-in-the-nation caucuses, Mrs. Clinton was hit with more challenging inquiries about Iraq, health care, and wartime leadership during a town hall-style meeting in Davenport.

One person in the Davenport audience pressed Mrs. Clinton on her vote for military action in Iraq in 2002, saying she allowed “the president to go to war,” and asked for specific steps she would take to end the war and withdraw the troops. The senator replied with her familiar talking points: She said she did not see her vote as one “for pre-emptive war,” but rather as leverage for the president to work diplomatic channels.

“If we had known then what we know now, there never would have been a vote, and I never would have voted to give the president the authority,” she said to applause from many of the 1,000 people gathered on the fairgrounds here in eastern Iowa, near the Mississippi River.

What she left out of her answer today, among other things, was that she said in 2002 that she was casting her vote for military action “with conviction,” and that most members of Congress at the time were well aware that a vote for military action could likely lead to war in Iraq. One of her likely rivals for the Democratic nomination, former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, has repudiated his similar vote in 2002, calling it wrong and apologizing – much further than Mrs. Clinton has been willing to go.

She said that the eventual invasion plan in the spring of 2003 was “the height of irresponsibility, and I really resent it,” and she threw down a new political gauntlet before the White House: “We should expect him to extricate our country from this before he leaves office.”

For her part, Mrs. Clinton said she wanted to “bring the Iraq war to the right end,” but she also acknowledged, referring to the likely 2008 presidential field of candidates, “That’s easy to say and everyone coming to Iowa is going to say it.”

She outlined her own Senate plans to introduce legislation that would cap the number of troops in Iraq at January 1 levels, but she also acknowledged that President Bush had his new troop deployment underway.

“This president is determined to move forward on a policy that cannot succeed,” she said. “He has tremendous powers under our Constitution.”

The answer, she said, was to put fierce new pressure on the White House to change course in Iraq, and such a turnabout would only come, she emphasized, if Democrats worked with Republicans in Congress to create bipartisan pressure points, such as a toughly worded joint resolution opposing the current war plan for Iraq.

“If we don’t have Republicans standing with us, the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue isn’t going to feel any pressure,” Mrs. Clinton said.

This view stands in sharp contrast to Senator Edwards’ exhortations that members of Congress should move swiftly to block the troop expansion in Iraq, even if that means Democrats acting as a party out of moral authority to block funding for new troops.

At another point, a man in the crowd, John Wood from Davenport, asked what experiences Mrs. Clinton had that would prepare her to work with evil men in power across the world today.

Partly to ensure that the audience heard the question, but also surely for effect, Mrs. Clinton replied: “What in my background equips me to deal with evil and bad men?” She paused for several beats as many in the audience laughed, and appeared to be blushing, her face down. Then, after deciding where to go with her answer, she said: “On a slightly more serious note, I believe a lot in my background and a lot in my public life shows the character and toughness to be president.”

On health care, Mrs. Clinton was reminded by another audience member in Davenport that her efforts in 1993 and 1994 to enact universal health insurance came to naught, and was asked how she would achieve that goal as president, which she has pledged to try to do.

“It’s a fair question,” she said. Speaking of the failed effort in the 1990’s, she said, “We could not put together the political consensus that we needed to make changes, in part because a lot of people had not confronted that their costs were going to go up.”

While her health care efforts at the time were widely criticized as secretive and poorly managed, Mrs. Clinton today put the onus on a lack of political will to make major changes in the nation’s health care system, and on the critics who stoked concerns among insured people that they would lose out under the Clinton plan.

“I believe that if you look at what we’re spending today, we can actually save money if we covered everybody and controlled the costs, but none of it’s going to be easy politically,” she said.

She surveyed the Davenport crowd about their preferences for a new health care system, and judged, from the responses, that members of the audience would prefer a new approach with the government helping to guarantee that all people had access to some coverage. But she also challenged her audience, noting that many of them might like a government role today, yet might later change their minds if critics mount the sort of scary-sounding advertising campaign to defeat a universal health plan like they did in 1993 and 1994.

“So this time we’re going to build a consensus first, so when Harry and Louise show up, people will just turn that off and say, that’s not true,” she said, referring to the names of two anxiety-ridden characters who appeared in television ads in the 1990s to fret and attack the Clinton health care proposal.

    Clinton Calls Invasion of Iraq Irresponsible, NYT, 28.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/us/politics/28cnd-hillary.html

Tens of thousands

demand U.S. get out of Iraq

Sun Jan 28, 2007 12:18 AM ET
Reuters
By Deborah Charles

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Chanting "bring our troops home," tens of thousands of anti-war protesters rallied in front of the U.S. Capitol on Saturday to pressure the government to get out of Iraq.

Veterans and military families joined some lawmakers, peace groups and actors including Vietnam war protester Jane Fonda to urge Congress and President George W. Bush to stop funding the war and pull troops from Iraq.

"When I served in the war, I thought I was serving honorably. Instead, I was sent to war ... for causes that have proved fraudulent," said Iraq war veteran Garett Reppenhagen.

"We need to put pressure on our elected government and force them to ... bring the troops home," the former sniper said to cheers from a sign-waving crowd.

Tens of thousands of people attended the rally on the National Mall, according to a park police officer.

For more than two hours, speakers atop a stage that also held a flag-draped coffin criticized Bush and the U.S. presence in Iraq before protesters marched around the Capitol.

In the crowd, a group of families of soldiers killed in Iraq held pictures of their loved ones, including one photo of a soldier in full dress uniform lying in a coffin.

More than 3,000 U.S. troops and tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The protest was one of several held around the United States. In California, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in San Francisco and Los Angeles, where several dozen people carried flag-draped, mock coffins.

Protesters also planned coordinated efforts in Washington and across the country over the next week to lobby lawmakers to take action against the war.

DISAPPROVE OF MORE TROOPS

Bush's approval ratings have dropped to some of the weakest of his presidency and polls show a majority of Americans disapprove of his plan to send another 21,500 troops to Iraq.

But Bush said he has no intention of backing off his plan.

Asked about the protests, White House national security adviser spokesman Gordon Johndroe said Bush "understands that Americans want to see a conclusion to the war in Iraq and the new strategy is designed to do just that."

The demonstrations come amid growing efforts by lawmakers to protest Bush's plans in Iraq. The Senate Foreign Relations committee passed a resolution on Wednesday opposing the plan to send more troops.

Protesters are trying to send Bush and Congress a message that Americans do not support the war.

"I'm convinced this is Bush's war. He has his own agenda there," said Anne Chay, holding a sign with a picture of her 19-year-old son, John, who is serving in Iraq. "We're serving no purpose there."

Fonda, who was criticized for her opposition to the Vietnam War, drew huge cheers when she addressed the crowd. She noted that she had not spoken at an anti-war rally in 34 years.

"Silence is no longer an option," she said. "I'm so sad we have to do this -- that we did not learn from the lessons of the Vietnam War."

Democratic Rep. John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat and chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said the November 7 election -- which gave Democrats control of both houses of Congress -- showed Americans want change.

"It takes the ... outrage of the American people to force Washington to do the right thing," he said. "We've got to hold more of these ... until our government gets the message -- Out if Iraq immediately. This year. We've got to go."

(Additional reporting by Timothy Ryan in Washington and Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles)

    Tens of thousands demand U.S. get out of Iraq, R, 28.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2007-01-28T051517Z_01_N27405190_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-USA-PROTESTS.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C2-TopNews-newsOne-5

NOTEBOOK:

People Speak Out in Capital

January 27, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:21 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Dressed in civilian clothing, a few active-duty members of the military quietly lodged their opposition against a war that has cost the lives of more than 3,000 of their comrades.

Jeffrey Fitting, 24, a senior airman from Camphill, Pa., is a chaplain's assistant at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where he helps families waiting to receive the bodies of their loved ones. The bodies of dead soldiers are prepared at a mortuary on the base before they are returned to the families.

''When we have military members, their families and civilians for the same cause, we're united'' against the war in Iraq, Fitting said. He asked his commander if he could attend the rally and was told he had the right to do so.

Marc Train, 19, an Army private stationed at Fort Stewart, Ga., asked not to be sent with his 3rd Infantry Division unit to Iraq. He said the Army has initiated proceedings to have him discharged.

Train said his specialty is intelligence analysis and believes that was a factor in the Army's decision to seek his discharge.

''When I joined, I was indifferent. I talked to people in my unit who have been there three or four times. They didn't feel like they were accomplishing anything,'' Train said.

Air Force Staff Sgt. Tassi McKee, stationed at Fort Meade and a specialist in intelligence, said, ''I don't believe the war is being managed correctly.''

McKee, 26, originally from Bastrop, La., said she joined the Air Force because of patriotism, travel and to save money for college.

--By Larry Margasak

About 40 counterprotesters lofted ''Support our troops'' signs in front of the Navy Memorial, a few blocks from the main demonstration. Among the participants were soldiers being treated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Army Cpl. Joshua Sparling, who lost his leg to a roadside bomb in November 2005 in Ramadi, said the anti-war protesters, especially those who are veterans or who are currently on active duty, ''need to remember the sacrifice we have made and what our fallen comrades would say if they are alive.'' Sparling, 25, is based at Fort Bragg, N.C.

The counterdemonstration vilified actress Jane Fonda's appearance at the rally. They set up a fake Fonda doll hanging from a noose and taped a sign to it that read ''Jane Fonda American Traitor.''

--By Kasie Hunt.

Mothers of soldiers made a poignant presence at the march. One woman held a sign with a picture of her son as a young boy, reading ''Cpl. Nicholas Ziolkowski, born April 21, 1982, Baltimore, KIA Nov. 14, 2004, Falluja.'' Ziolkowski, a Marine, was killed by a sniper's bullet.

Peggy Gray, 51, of West Hartford, Conn., said her son Shane recently returned from Iraq after an 18-month tour. Gray, a grandmother and state employee for the Connecticut comptroller's office, said she has protested wars since Vietnam. The difference between then and now is that people support the troops even if they oppose the war, she said.

''In Vietnam, we blamed the troops. Now, we see a lot of support for the troops from those opposed to the Iraq war,'' she said. She held one end of a banner that said, ''Military Families Speak Out,'' a Boston-based organization of people opposed to the war.

--By Larry Margasak.

A retired Marine lieutenant colonel handed out signs to protesters, a symbol of the growing discontent with the war in Iraq among the uniformed ranks.

Chris Case-Grillo, who said he was a proud Marine for four years of active duty and 17 years as a reservist, said political leaders have let the military down.

''In the military, we have special trust and confidence in our leaders because we don't have a voice. We go where we're told,'' said Case-Grillo, as he passed out signs that read ''Iraq Escalation? Wrong Way.''

''War has to be the last resort. It can't be done gratuitously.''

Case-Grillo, from Orange County, Calif., said he wouldn't want to lose his stepsons in Iraq. He retired in 2001.

--By Kasie Hunt

    NOTEBOOK: People Speak Out in Capital, NYT, 27.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Iraq-Protest-Vignettes.html

War Protesters Seek to Spur a Movement

January 27, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:57 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Protesters energized by fresh congressional skepticism about the Iraq war demanded a withdrawal of U.S. troops in a demonstration Saturday that drew tens of thousands and brought Jane Fonda back to the streets.

A sampling of celebrities and busloads of demonstrators from distant states joined in a spirited rally under a sunny sky, seeing opportunity to press their cause in a country that has turned against the war.

''We see many things that we feel helpless about,'' said Barbara Struna, 59, of Brewster, Mass. ''But this is like a united force. This is something I can do.''

Struna, a mother of five who runs an art gallery, made a two-day bus trip with her 17-year-old daughter, Anna, to the nation's capital to represent what she said was middle America's opposition to President Bush's war policy.

Her daughter, a high school senior, said she has as many as 20 friends who have been to Iraq. ''My generation is the one that is going to have to pay for this,'' she said.

Showcased speakers in addition to Fonda included actors Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins and Danny Glover; the Rev. Jesse Jackson; National Organization for Women President Kim Gandy; and several members of Congress who oppose the war.

Fonda was a lightning rod in the Vietnam era for her outspoken opposition to that war, earning the derisive nickname ''Hanoi Jane'' from conservatives for traveling to North Vietnam during the height of that conflict 35 years ago. She has avoided anti-Iraq war appearances until now.

About 40 people staged a counter-protest, including military family members and Army Cpl. Joshua Sparling, 25, who lost his leg to a bomb in Iraq in November 2005.

He said the anti-war protesters, especially those who are veterans or who are on active duty, ''need to remember the sacrifice we have made and what our fallen comrades would say if they are alive.''

As protesters streamed to the Mall, Bush reaffirmed his commitment to the troop increase in a phone conversation Saturday with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a day when one or two rockets struck the heavily fortified Green Zone, home of the Iraqi government, thousands of Americans and the U.S. and British embassies.

Bush was in Washington for the weekend. He is often is out of town during big protest days. On Monday, for instance, he called anti-abortion marchers on the telephone from Camp David.

United for Peace and Justice, a coalition group sponsoring the protest, said there has been intense interest in the rally since Bush announced he was sending 21,500 additional troops to supplement the 130,000 in Iraq.

The rally was held as congressional opposition to the war is building. The Senate is considering nonbinding resolutions that would state opposition to Bush sending the extra forces to Iraq.

Frank Houde, 72, of Albany, N.Y., was a career Air Force pilot who served in Vietnam. Houde did not carry a sign, but said that his protest was on his hat, which said ''Veterans for peace.''

''The fact is war doesn't work,'' he said. ''Iraq is not going to work. The war was started for reasons that turned out to be false.''

Houde, retired from the antique restoration business, said he was never upset by protests at home while he was in Vietnam.

''I knew most were protesting on principle,'' he said. ''It was a democratic process.''

Houde said he came to this protest to be counted and added, ''You can't sit in the middle of the stink of war for a year and not be affected by it. We changed the balance of power in Congress.''

Active-duty military troops were featured in the protest. A Defense Department spokeswoman said members of the Armed Forces can speak out, subject to several restrictions. They must not do so in uniform, and they must make clear that they do not speak on behalf of their military unit, their service or the Defense Department, unless authorized to do so.

------

Associated Press writer Kasie Hunt contributed to this report.

------

On the Net:

United for Peace and Justice: http://www.unitedforpeace.org/

    War Protesters Seek to Spur a Movement, NYT, 27.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Iraq-Protest.html

Bush Clears All Measures

Against Iranians in Iraq

January 26, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:25 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush has authorized U.S. forces in Iraq to take whatever actions are necessary to counter Iranian agents deemed a threat to American troops or the public at large, the White House said Friday.

''It makes sense that if somebody's trying to harm our troops, or stop us from achieving our goal, or killing innocent citizens in Iraq, that we will stop them,'' Bush said. ''It's an obligation we all have ... to protect our folks and achieve our goal.''

The aggressive new policy came in response to intelligence that Iran is supporting terrorists inside Iraq and is providing bombs -- known as improvised explosive devices -- and other equipment to anti-U.S. insurgents.

''The president and his national security team over the last several months have continued to receive information that Iranians were supplying IED equipment and or training that was being used to harm American soldiers,'' National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.

''As a result American forces, when they receive actionable information, may take the steps necessary to protect themselves as well as the population,'' Johndroe said.

Bush referred to the new policy in his Jan. 10 address to the nation in which he announced a buildup of 21,500 troops in Iraq. He said the United States would confront Iran and Syria more vigorously.

While promising tougher action, the White House said the United States does not intend to cross the Iraq-Iran border to attack Iranians.

During a picture-taking session Friday with Army Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, newly confirmed by the Senate to command U.S. troops in Iraq, Bush was asked about stepped-up activities in Iraq against Iranian activities thought to be fueling the violence.

He defended the policy, but said it is no indication that the United States intends to expand the confrontation beyond Iraq's borders.

''That's a presumption that's simply not accurate,'' Bush said.

But added: ''Our policy is going to be to protect our troops. It makes sense.''

Five Iranians were detained by U.S.-led forces earlier this month after a raid on an Iranian government liaison office in northern Iraq. The move further frayed relations between the two countries, already tense because of U.S.-led efforts to force Tehran to abandon its suspected nuclear weapons program.

''We believe that we can solve our problem with Iran diplomatically and are working to do that,'' Bush said. ''As a matter of fact, we're making pretty good progress on that front.''

The administration said at the time that U.S. forces entered an Iranian building in Kurdish-controlled Irbil because information linked it to Revolutionary Guards and other Iranian elements engaging in violent activities in Iraq.

But Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd, contended the Iranians were working in a liaison office that had government approval and that the office was in the process of being approved as a consulate. In Iran, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the U.S. raid constituted an intervention in Iranian-Iraqi affairs.

    Bush Clears All Measures Against Iranians in Iraq, NYT, 26.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Iran.html?hp&ex=1169874000&en=60276b4384a39924&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Saddam Cousin Says He Will Not Apologize

January 24, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:19 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Saddam Hussein's cousin told a court Wednesday that he does not regret any decision he made while crushing a Kurdish uprising nearly two decades ago, adding that the government's campaign didn't target Kurds because of their ethnicity.

Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as ''Chemical Ali'' for his alleged use of chemical weapons against Kurds, said the aim was to put an end to a Kurdish insurgency in northern Iraq.

''If I have committed any wrongdoing against any Iraqi, then I am ready to apologize to him,'' al-Majid said. ''If you asked me why have you done this, my answer is that we were compelled to do so to stop the shedding of Iraqi blood that was running for more than 25 years.''

Al-Majid is one of six defendants who still face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity stemming from the Anfal military campaign during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. More than 100,000 Kurds were killed.

Saddam was among the defendants until he was executed for crimes against humanity on Dec. 30 after he was sentenced to death in the killing of 148 Shiite Muslims following an assassination attempt against him in 1982.

Al-Majid, wearing a red-and-white traditional Arab head dress, said the government was targeting rebels -- not Kurds on the basis of their ethnicity. Saddam's regime was dominated by minority Sunnis at the expense of Shiites and Kurds.

During Wednesday's session, the prosecution showed several documents, including one that was dated in March but did not give a year. It said Iraqi warplanes bombed ''some of the saboteurs' headquarters in (Kurdish) Saway village and a chemical strike was launched that led to the killing of 50 saboteurs and wounding of 30.''

Speaking about the documents, al-Majid said ''all decisions I took were for a reason,'' which was to end the bloodshed caused by the Kurdish rebellion. Offering no apology, he said ''I am not defending myself and it is not an apology because I have committed no mistake that I need to apologize for.''

Al-Majid said the government attacked the Kurds because they were cooperating with the ''Iranian enemy, with which we were at war.'' The Iran-Iraq war left 1 million people killed on both sides.

''It is not part of our ideology or policy to be against an ethnic group,'' he said.

The trial was adjourned until Sunday.

    Saddam Cousin Says He Will Not Apologize, NYT, 24.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq-Anfal-Trial.html

4 Americans in Iraq Crash Shot in Head

January 24, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:55 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Four of the five Americans killed when a U.S. security company's helicopter crashed in a dangerous Sunni neighborhood in central Baghdad were shot execution style in the back of the head, Iraqi and U.S. officials said Wednesday.

A senior Iraqi military official said a machine gunner downed the helicopter, but a U.S. military official in Washington said there were no indications that the aircraft, owned by Blackwater USA, had been shot out of the sky.

In Washington, a U.S. defense official said four of the five killed were shot in the back of the head but did not know whether they were still alive when they were shot. The U.S. official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.

The Iraqi official, who also declined to be identified because details had not been made public, said the four were shot in the back of the head while they were on the ground.

It also was not clear whether gunfire actually brought the small helicopter down or caused the craft to drop toward the ground, where it became entangled in electrical wires, the U.S. official said. The helicopter was virtually destroyed and after investigating the site, U.S. forces had been planning to blow up it up to keep people from scavenging the parts, the official said.

Blackwater USA confirmed that five Americans employed by the North Carolina-based company as security professionals were killed, but provided no identities or any details.

On Wednesday, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad offered condolences for the five Americans killed.

''We had a very bad day yesterday,'' Khalilzad told reporters during a round-table discussion at the embassy in the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad. ''We lost five fine men.''

He said he had traveled with the men who were killed and had gone to the morgue to view the bodies.

Khalilzad did not give more details, saying the crash was still under investigation and it was difficult to know exactly what happened because of ''the fog of war.''

Another American official in Baghdad, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said three Blackwater helicopters were involved. One had landed for an unknown reason and one of the Blackwater employees was shot at that point, he said. That helicopter apparently was able to take off but a second one then crashed in the same area, he added without explaining the involvement of the third helicopter.

The New York Times, citing unnamed American officials, reported that the helicopter's four-man crew was killed along with a gunner on a second Blackwater helicopter.

The Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television said the 1920 Revolution Brigades insurgent group claimed responsibility for shooting down the helicopter and showed a video taken by a cell phone of a mass of still-smoldering twisted metal that it was said was the wreckage of the chopper.

Another Sunni insurgent group, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, also claimed responsibility and posted identity cards of men who were on the helicopter on a Web site, including at least two that bore the name of Arthur Laguna, who was later identified by his mother as among those killed.

Laguna was a 52-year-old pilot for Blackwater who previously served in the Army and the California National Guard, his mother, Lydia Laguna, of Rio Linda, Calif., told the AP. She said she received a call from her other son, also a Blackwater pilot in Baghdad, notifying her of Arthur's death.

Witnesses in the Fadhil neighborhood told the AP that they saw the helicopter go down after gunmen on the ground opened fire. Accounts varied, but all were consistent that at least one person operating the aircraft had been shot and badly hurt before the crash.

The helicopter was believed to have been escorting a VIP ground convoy as it headed away from the heavily fortified Green Zone.

A report in the Washington Post, also citing unnamed U.S. officials, said one of the Blackwater victims was killed as he traveled with the convoy on the ground.

Blackwater USA provides security for State Department officials in Iraq, trains military units from around the world, and works for corporate clients.

''These untimely deaths are a reminder of the extraordinary circumstances under which our professionals voluntarily serve to bring freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people,'' the Blackwater statement said.

Katy Helvenston, mother of Scott Helvenston, a Blackwater employee who died in March 2004, said Tuesday's crash ''just breaks my heart.''

''I'm so sick of these kids dying,'' she said.

Helvenston was killed, along with Jerko ''Jerry'' Zovko, Wesley J.K. Batalona, and Michael R. Teague, when a frenzied mob of insurgents ambushed a supply convoy they were escorting through Fallujah. The insurgents burned and mutilated the guards and strung two of the bodies from a bridge. The gruesome scene was filmed and broadcast worldwide, leading the U.S. military to launch a three-week siege of Fallujah.

Before Tuesday's crash, at least 22 employees of Blackwater Security Consulting or Blackwater USA had died in Iraq as a result of war related violence, according to the Web site iCasualties.org, which tracks foreign troop fatalities in Iraq. Of those, 20 were Americans, and two were Polish.

The crash of the small surveillance helicopter, believed to be a version of the Hughes Defender that was developed during the Vietnam War, was the second associated with the U.S. war effort in Iraq in four days.

A U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter went down Saturday northeast of Baghdad, killing all 12 service members on board. The American military in Baghdad has refused to confirm a report by a Pentagon official that debris at the crash site indicated the helicopter was shot out of the air by a surface-to-air missile.

Relatively few U.S. aircraft have been shot down during the war despite hundreds, perhaps thousands of flights above Iraq. Helicopters typically fly fast and low over populated areas, making it extremely difficult for militant fighters to draw a bead with shoulder-fired missiles. U.S. fighter jets normally travel at very high altitudes and usually can be heard screaming through the skies.

Civilian aircraft that serve Baghdad International Airport use avoidance techniques that included landing in a steep, circular descent from nearly straight overhead the runways. Takeoffs are achieved with the same technique until passenger jets are out of missile range.

The Blackwater aircraft was at least the 14th helicopter to go down since the war began in March 2003. The worst incident occurred Jan. 26, 2005, when a U.S. transport helicopter crashed in a sandstorm in western Iraq, killing 30 Marines and a U.S. sailor.

According to insurance claims on file at the Department of Labor, 770 civilian contractors have been killed in Iraq since the war began in March 2003, through December 31, 2006. Additionally, 7,761 civilian contractors have been injured in the same period, according to claims on file.

Associated Press writers Steven R. Hurst in Baghdad and Pauline Jelinek in Washington contributed to this report.

    4 Americans in Iraq Crash Shot in Head, NYT, 24.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq.html

Bush defends Iraq plan,

asks for chance

Wed Jan 24, 2007 10:10 AM ET
Reuters
By Steve Holland and Tabassum Zakaria

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush urged a rebellious Congress on Tuesday to give his new Iraq war plan a chance and insisted in his State of the Union speech it is not too late to shape the outcome.

Facing skeptical lawmakers and some of the weakest approval ratings of his six years in office, Bush said the best chance for success is to send 21,500 more U.S. troops to Iraq.

"On this day, at this hour, it is still within our power to shape the outcome of the battle. Let us find our resolve, and turn events toward victory," Bush said.

He did not back down even as Democrats and his own Republicans work on nonbinding congressional resolutions expressing opposition to the plan he announced two weeks ago.

"Our country is pursuing a new strategy in Iraq -- and I ask you to give it a chance to work," Bush told the joint session of the U.S. Congress, the first time since he took office that he has faced a House of Representatives and Senate both controlled by Democrats.

With a Washington-Post/ABC News poll giving Bush a 33 percent approval rating, he faces a tough road ahead focusing America's attention on domestic issues with Iraq dominating the debate.

He sought to push an agenda at home against a heavy tide of criticism over Iraq, calling climate change a "serious challenge" that he would address by reducing U.S. gasoline consumption by 20 percent over 10 years and increasing use of alternative fuels.

He also called for expanding health care for Americans, and creating a guest-worker program for illegal immigrants that could represent the best chance for a bipartisan agreement.

"Like many before us, we can work through our differences, and achieve big things for the American people," Bush said.

In the audience of lawmakers, Cabinet officials, diplomats and Supreme Court justices were as many as 10 potential successors of both political parties jockeying for position to replace him.

A silence fell over the crowd as Bush reviewed the 2006 setbacks in Iraq. Some of the Iraq lines in his speech netted ovations only from Republicans.

Watching over his shoulder with a tight set to her jaw was the first woman speaker of the House, California Democrat Nancy Pelosi, who refused to stand and applaud during some sections of Bush's Iraq remarks.

"Unfortunately, tonight the president demonstrated he has not listened to Americans' single greatest concern: the war in Iraq," she said in a joint statement with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat.

Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy said two of the best words he heard in Bush's speech were "Madame Speaker."

Bush rejected Democratic arguments for pulling American troops out of Baghdad. He said Iraq would be victim of an epic battle between Shi'ite and Sunni extremists and Iraq's government would be overrun if U.S. forces step back before Baghdad is secure.

"This is not the fight we entered in Iraq, but it is the fight we are in," he said.

'NEW DIRECTION IN IRAQ'

In the Democratic response, Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, a recently elected Vietnam veteran, said "we need a new direction in Iraq," a policy "that takes our soldiers off the streets of Iraq's cities and a formula that will in short order allow our combat forces to leave Iraq."

The energy proposals by Bush, who has frequently been accused by critics of ignoring global warming, fell short of seeking mandatory caps on carbon emissions sought by some Democrats as well as Europeans.

He would achieve his goal through improved vehicle fuel standards and an increase in production and use of alternative fuels like ethanol.

Bush was not pushing for a specific increase in the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, which many experts see as critical to reduce oil usage but which the White House fears would prompt manufacturers to build smaller, less-safe cars.

Instead, he asked Congress for authority to reform CAFE standards for cars with the goal of reducing projected annual gasoline use by up to 8.5 billion gallons.

Bush believes the projected growth in carbon emissions from cars, light trucks and suburban utility vehicles could be stopped in 10 years under his plan.

New York Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer dismissed Bush's proposal, saying "the quickest, most efficient way to reduce gas imports and bring down prices is to increase fuel economy standards."

Bush's health care plan -- making health insurance taxable income and deductible up to $15,000 a year for families starting in 2009 -- could raise taxes for as many as 30 million Americans but he says it would lower costs for many millions more.

(Additional reporting by Thomas Ferraro and Susan Cornwell)

    Bush defends Iraq plan, asks for chance, R, 24.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2007-01-24T150948Z_01_N23288759_RTRUKOC_0_US-BUSH-SPEECH.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-politicsNews-2

General Says New Strategy in Iraq

Can Work Over Time

January 24, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON

WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 — Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, President Bush’s new choice as the top commander in Iraq, told senators on Tuesday that the new military strategy to secure Baghdad can work, and that he had asked that the additional troops the administration promised be deployed as quickly as possible.

In his first public comments about Mr. Bush’s plan to send some 21,500 troops, the general described the situation in Iraq as “dire” but not hopeless. He asserted that the “persistent presence” of American and Iraqi forces in strife-ridden Baghdad neighborhoods was a necessary step, but also cautioned that the mission would not succeed if the Iraqi government did not carry out its program of political reconciliation.

“The way ahead will be neither quick nor easy, and undoubtedly there will be tough days,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “We face a determined, adaptable, barbaric enemy. He will try to wait us out. In fact any such endeavor is a test of wills, and there are no guarantees.”

But much of the hearing focused not on details of the strategy about to unfold in Iraq, but rather on the political debate within the Senate over resolutions that would signal disapproval of the new strategy.

When Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who has long favored sending more troops to Iraq, asked if approval of a Senate resolution assailing Mr. Bush’s new strategy could hurt the morale of American troops, the general replied, “It would not be a beneficial effect, sir.”

Asked by Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, who also backs the plan, if a resolution would also “give the enemy some encouragement” by suggesting that the American people are divided, General Petraeus replied, “That’s correct, sir.”

That answer sparked admonishments by critics of Mr. Bush’s strategy, who insisted that the point of the Senate resolutions is to put pressure on the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq to follow through on its political program and take more responsibility for its own security.

“We know this policy is going forward,” said Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York. “We know the troops are moving. We know that we’re not likely to stop this escalation. But we are going to do everything we can to send a message to our government and the Iraqi government that they had better change, because the enemy we are confronting is adaptable.”

Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who is promoting a resolution opposing Mr. Bush’s troop reinforcement plan, cautioned General Petraeus to be sure that “this colloquy has not entrapped you into some responses that you might later regret.”

By the end of the hearing, General Petraeus sought to extricate himself from the political tussle by insisting that as a military man he did not want to take a position on the Senate debate. “There are a number of resolutions out there,” he said. “Learning that minefields are best avoided and gone around rather than walked through on some occasions, I’d like to leave that one there.”

Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the Democratic chairman of the panel, said later that he was satisfied that the general had not intended to involve himself in the debate. The exchanges at the hearing did not appear to have any ill effect on the prospects for the confirmation of General Petraeus, and Mr. McCain said he hoped the commander would “catch the next flight” to Iraq after winning Senate confirmation.

When their questions focused on the military plan, senators elicited several new details. General Petraeus said Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the day-to-day commander of American troops in Iraq, advised that in order to carry out the new strategy, five additional brigades were needed in Baghdad and two additional battalions were needed in Anbar Province in western Iraq.

Under the current deployment schedule, it will be May before all five of the brigades are in Iraq, but General Petraeus hinted that he would like them sooner, saying that he had asked the Pentagon to dispatch them “as rapidly as possible.”

General Petraeus acknowledged that the guidelines in the military’s counterinsurgency manual implied that 120,000 troops would be needed to secure Baghdad. But he reasoned that the roughly 32,000 American troops that would be deployed in the capital under the plan would be enough, because the total number of American and Iraqi security personnel would be about 85,000, while the use of civilian contractors to guard government buildings would reduce troop requirements.

If the troops are sent according to the current schedule, General Petraeus said the United States would know by late summer if the plan to clear contested neighborhoods of insurgents and militias, hold them with American and Iraqi security forces and win public support through reconstruction was working.

He said he would raise the issue of suspending troop reinforcements with his military superiors if the Iraqi government appeared to have not lived up to its commitments. But he suggested that withholding assistance from specific Iraqi institutions that fall short would have a greater influence. The general also said that a decision to withdraw American troops within six months would lead to more sectarian attacks and increased “ethnic cleansing.”

General Petraeus acknowledged that he had concerns about the absence of a unified command structure. Under the new plan, the Iraqi Army and police units will be under direct Iraqi command. The American Army units that work with them will be under a parallel American command. To ensure proper coordination, American officers are trying to establish joint command posts.

Senator Levin said his committee had repeatedly asked the administration to make available a list of the security and political “benchmarks” the Iraqi had agreed to meet. He warned that the committee would use its subpoena power or hold up military nominations if benchmarks were not provided.

By insisting on that the benchmarks be provided, Mr. Levin seemed to be trying to position himself to argue that the “surge” of reinforcements be suspended if the Iraqis fell short of meeting commitments.

    General Says New Strategy in Iraq Can Work Over Time, NYT, 24.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/24/world/middleeast/24general.html

In the Vortex of Baghdad,

Staying Put This Time

January 23, 2007
The New York Times
By MARC SANTORA

BAGHDAD, Jan. 22 — Two blocks from the new American outpost in Ghazaliya, one of Baghdad’s most dangerous neighborhoods, a fight was raging. Shiites were battling Sunnis, the latest skirmish in a sectarian war that has left this area a wasteland.

On Friday morning, it became an American fight, too, after a few rounds whizzed by Sgt. Sergej Michaud’s head, and he and three other soldiers returned fire.

The battle would rage for nearly an hour, with mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades exploding near the soldiers, who in turn laid down heavy fire, eventually driving the attackers away.

Previously, that would have been the end of it, with the soldiers moving on to their next patrol area and eventually returning to their base. But this time, the Americans were staying, defending their new home in a neighborhood where the rule of law had been driven out by the reign of the gun.

Their outpost here, a cluster of fortified houses officially designated a joint security station and unofficially called the Alamo by some of the soldiers, is a test case for President Bush’s new Baghdad security plan. The strategy envisions at least 20 more facilities like it in other troubled neighborhoods, all jointly staffed by Iraqi and American forces.

Even after the stations are set up, American commanders say, it will be many months, at best, before they can even hope to prevent bombings like the one that killed at least 88 people in a central Baghdad market area on Monday.

In the week since the Americans arrived, however, the troops have seen the truth of what their commanders warned in announcing the plan: it leaves Americans more exposed than ever, stationary targets for warring militias.

The outpost sits on the fault line between Sunni and Shiite enclaves: Ghazaliya to the south, where fighters with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia have moved in among the Sunni population, and Shula to the north, a base for Shiite militias that have been raiding this neighborhood for months.

Over the course of three days spent with the 105 soldiers here — Company C of the Second Battalion, 12th Cavalry — four American vehicles were hit by roadside bombs near the outpost. No soldiers from Company C were wounded, but they know the fighting will intensify.

“I’m a juicy target they are just trying to figure out,” said Capt. Erik Peterson, 29, the commander at the outpost.

During the week, the soldiers also received their first glimpse of the green Iraqi forces who will share the mission and eventually, they hoped, take it over. The soldiers talked about them with a mixture of bemusement, disdain and mistrust.

“You could talk about partnership, but you would be lying,” said one soldier who asked that his name not be used, for fear of punishment by his superiors.

It was also a week to start getting to know the desperate residents of Ghazaliya, where almost every remaining family has lost someone to kidnappings and executions, and where government services have long been cut off.

In their new role, the Americans find themselves acting as jailers and doctors, construction workers and garbage men, guardians and detectives — all in an effort to restore lasting order despite the threats on every side.

Wednesday: First Test

After three days of grueling work on muddy and filthy ground, including installing blast walls around the perimeter, filling 5,000 sandbags and hauling away trash, the soldiers had the beginnings of a functioning base on Wednesday.

That night, they had their first real test. It was nearing midnight, the generator had failed, there was no heat, the radio was malfunctioning — and an Iraqi girl no more than 4 was dying in the bitter cold on an Army cot.

At the same time, a loud firefight erupted outside, apparently an attack on an Iraqi Army checkpoint nearby.

Captain Peterson had brought the sick child to the base because her family was afraid to travel after curfew and no Iraqi government ambulance would dare visit the neighborhood after dark, if at all.

One of the company’s medics, Cpl. Peter Callahan, 23, worked by flashlight, trying to soothe the girl, whose body was rejecting the medication her parents had given her.

“She needs to go to the hospital right now,” he told Captain Peterson. With no time to call in support, Captain Peterson quickly arranged a convoy to the nearest hospital — a risky proposition even in daylight and with more soldiers to provide security.

But the girl’s Sunni family resisted, fearing they would be killed at the hospital, which was in Shula, the Shiite district, if the Americans left them there.

Frustrated, Captain Peterson said over the radio, “I think they are pretty much willing to let this kid die instead of all dying together.”

The Americans decided to head to a safer hospital farther away. But time was running out; the girl’s pulse was dropping fast, dipping below 25.

Corporal Callahan gave her a small shot of atropine, which was all he had, to increase her heart rate. She stabilized, and when he emerged with the girl alive and breathing, he and her parents could barely contain their joy. He had saved her life.

Thursday: The Neighbors

After fortifying the outpost, the soldiers of Company C were ready for their first foray into the neighborhood. Most of them were familiar with the area, having conducted patrols here in armored Humvees for months, from a base near Baghdad’s airport.

The platoon leader, First Lt. Samuel Cartee, 25, reminded his men that this would be different. “They know where we are coming from,” he said.

It would be a short trip on foot, just two blocks north, circling back and checking out a local market area. The biggest threat was snipers.

“If we get shot at, and we know what house it is coming from, we are authorized to raid that house,” he said.

A few minutes after setting out, the soldiers passed a school that, like the other two in the area, was closed. Two months ago, American officers say, a teacher was raped, mutilated and strung up by her feet outside the building, left to hang for days.

It was unclear whether the killing was conducted by Shiites or Sunnis. But American officers said women were increasingly being attacked, especially by elements of Al Qaeda in the southern part of the neighborhood.

The soldiers soon came to an open area, and a shot rang out. A sniper.

They ran across the trash-strewn lot and took up battle positions, backs against a concrete wall, sun in their eyes. The shot came from about two blocks away — too far to pursue the shooter, who would be gone by the time they got there.

Later, two more snipers took shots, both far off the mark.

The Americans continued on, trudging through streets where rainwater had collected in pools and mixed with the open sewers.

Lieutenant Cartee passed out a flier announcing the presence of the station and inviting residents to call with information or problems. In this Sunni part of town, all the tips would point north, toward Shiite Shula. That fact was clearly painted in English on one wall the soldiers passed.

“Hey Americans, we want you to destroy the J.A.M.” It was a reference to the largest Shiite militia, the Mahdi Army. In smaller letters, someone had written an equally clear message: “Bush is appalling and dreadful.”

The soldiers made it to the market, and a crowd formed around them. But the soldiers were mostly unable to talk: interpreters are favored targets of snipers, so theirs had to stay in the armored Humvee that trailed behind.

The entire patrol lasted less than an hour. They had been shot at three times, handed out their new phone number to a few dozen people, seen several newly opened stores and made it back alive.

“Nice neighborhood,” Lieutenant Cartee said, deadpan.

That evening, a firefight began outside, close enough that tracer fire whizzed over the station. But the Americans did not seem to be the target, this night at least.

Friday: Troubling Thoughts

The first big fight for the Americans came the next morning — the battle that found Sergeant Michaud. When it was over, the Americans had killed two suspected militia members and taken two prisoner.

The suspects were young men, wearing black — the uniform of the Mahdi militia. The Americans blindfolded them and put them in separate rooms, where they were tested for residue from explosives and held for questioning.

As residents began arriving to offer information, a man who lived next to the new station, a Sunni and former police commander, loaded his family’s possessions into a pickup truck.

He was happy that the Americans were there, he said, but he was afraid that they would attract constant attacks, so he was moving to a different part of the neighborhood. As he packed up his family, he noticed a young boy loitering. The man became enraged, pointing two fingers at his eyes, then pointing at the boy, yelling, “Mahdi! Mahdi!”

The man explained that both the Mahdi Army and Al Qaeda were sending spies to see who was feeding the Americans information. The boy slipped away.

At the same time, Iraqi Army soldiers were starting to move into the outpost. They arrived in the late afternoon, one truck with a flat tire towing another truck that was not working.

Maj. Chasib Kattab, a boisterous Shiite who commands the Iraqi unit of two companies, about 200 men, started to provide information. But, in a likely hint of things to come, all his tips involved Sunni fighters. He had nothing to say about the Shiite militias.

He also seemed eager to fight. When he told the Americans about a car that was likely to be used as a bomb, he asked whether American helicopters would be able to destroy it. Told that, at night, they could make out the shape but not the color, Major Chasib seemed to think that was good enough. “They should just shoot it,” he said.

Captain Peterson had to explain that was not how things worked, aware that his partner’s decisions would affect how the Americans would be perceived.

Captain Peterson was under no illusions that establishing security and training the Iraqis to maintain it would be a difficult operation that could take time. He said he was initially skeptical about the plan, thinking the risks might be too great. But looking back over his experiences this fall patrolling the neighborhood, he said he had changed his mind.

One recent event in particular swayed him. When the Americans canceled their usual patrol on Jan. 3, Sunni extremists used the opportunity to bait militiamen by waging war on the small Shiite civilian population in Ghazaliya.

“They just went into the streets and started killing as many people as they could,” he said. Captain Peterson was at the main American base for western Baghdad, three miles away near the airport, and it took him nearly an hour to respond to pleas for help.

“It was such a helpless feeling for me,” he said.

Corporal Callahan, for his part, said that he was not sure he agrees with the war, and that he knew his wife, Stacie, thought it was terrible. But to get through it, he focuses on the people he can help, like the little Iraqi girl he saved.

“As long as I am here, I am going to try and make it worthwhile as far as the kids are concerned,” he said. “The adults, they are going to do what they are going to do.”

    In the Vortex of Baghdad, Staying Put This Time, NYT, 23.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/23/world/middleeast/23baghdad.html?hp&ex=1169614800&en=81df0d9bcc1c4dfe&ei=5094&partner=homepage

U.S. says

killed 93 Qaeda-linked fighters

in Iraq

Mon Jan 22, 2007 11:24 AM ET
Reuters

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The U.S. military said on Monday 93 rebels were killed and 57 captured in a 10-day operation against al Qaeda-linked insurgents northeast of Baghdad.

In an unusually detailed video news conference broadcast to journalists in Baghdad from Diyala province, Colonel David Sutherland said Iraqi troops had fought well in the operation and were improving their capabilities every day.

He said 25 weapons caches, including around 1,200 Katyusha rockets, had been found during operations dating back to November in the area around a remote village called Turki.

Sutherland said U.S. and Iraqi forces had gradually isolated the insurgents since November before launching the 10-day assault backed by air strikes from January 4 to 14. Last week, the Iraqi army said it had killed about 50 rebels in the area.

"Since I've been here we have not conducted an operation ... against a group of this size that were willing to fight us out in the open," Sutherland said. "This operation shows ... there's partnership between Iraqi army and Coalition forces."

Diyala is a violent province where Shi'ites, Sunni Arabs and ethnic Kurds are increasingly divided on sectarian lines.

    U.S. says killed 93 Qaeda-linked fighters in Iraq, R, 22.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2007-01-22T162417Z_01_PAR256580_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-USA-FIGHTERS.xml&src=012207_1143_TOPSTORY_iraq_death_toll_climbs

Twin Bombing Kills Scores

at Packed Market in Baghdad

January 22, 2007
The New York Times
By MARC SANTORA

BAGHDAD, Jan. 22 — In the most deadly bombing in Iraq so far this year, two powerful car bombs ripped through a crowded market in central Baghdad today, killing at least 75 people, wounding another 160 or more and leaving the area littered with pieces of human bodies amidst the flotsam of second hand goods that drew customers to the area.

The bombings were timed to inflict maximum carnage, occurring around noon, when shoppers and commuters who use the area as an informal transportation hub tend to gather.

From the eastern banks of the nearby Tigris River, the two explosions could be heard going off in quick succession, with only seconds between the blasts. Police officials said they were so large that the cars each likely had a minimum of 45 pounds of explosives loaded inside. Massive clouds of smoke billowed high into the sky and as the fires caused by the explosion engulfed at least a dozen cars, the cloud drifted over the heavily fortified government Green Zone, which is only about a half-mile away.

Elsewhere in the country, both Iraqi security forces and government officials continued to be targeted by extremists, including the Sunni mayor of Baquba, who was kidnapped and had his office blown up, according to a police official there.

Even as chaos continued to envelop this country, American soldiers began heading into neighborhoods in some of Baghdad’s most troubled areas, setting up new bases where they plan to work with the Iraqi security forces to restore order.

Today’s bombing, which came only six days after another attacks left 70 dead at a predominantly Shiite university here, was followed by prolonged gun battles.

The fighting could be heard across the city, although officials did not release any casualty figures from the skirmishes.

At the site of the car bombings, which took place at the popular market in Bab al Sharji, Iraqi Army troops spotted someone on a nearby rooftop shortly after the attack, filming the carnage.

They went after him as he tried to escape by jumping from rooftop to rooftop before he was shot dead. An Iraqi police official said he was an Egyptian and said that the film was meant for use as propaganda for the Sunni insurgents.

The scene after the blasts was all too familiar. Bodies ripped apart, unrecognizable body parts strewn among the used electronic equipment, CD’s and vegetables, all sold at discount prices that made the place particularly popular among working-class residents.

There were so many bodies, they had to be loaded on wooden carts stacked one upon the other, according to witnesses.

The force of the explosion turned everyday items into projectiles, injuring scores.

Ali Hussein 47, a biologist who lives in Zaafaraniya, said he was heading home when he was knocked off his feet by the explosion.

“Bottles of perfumes and deodorants were flying in the air like small rockets,” he said. “I was wounded in my right leg, and the guards took me after fifteen minutes to the hospital.”

Mr. Hussein blamed foreign fighters who are seeking to fuel the sectarian violence for their own purposes.

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, whose government has been unable to prevent such attacks, condemned the latest bombing.

“The violent terrorists who committed this crime have illusions that their bloody ideology to kill large number of civilians will break the will of the Iraqis and tear their unity and to raise sectarianism,” he said in a statement.

Wisam A. Habeeb contributed reporting.

    Twin Bombing Kills Scores at Packed Market in Baghdad, NYT, 22.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/22/world/middleeast/22cnd-iraq.html?hp&ex=1169528400&en=4e4e63d87c785c2e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Army Says

Improper Orders by Colonel

Led to 4 Deaths

January 21, 2007
The New York Times
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER

Army investigators say that Col. Michael D. Steele, a decorated combat veteran and brigade commander in Iraq, issued improper orders to his soldiers that contributed to the deaths of four unarmed Iraqi men during a raid in May, according to military documents.

No charges have been filed against Colonel Steele in the Army’s continuing investigation. But two Defense Department officials said last week that Colonel Steele was formally reprimanded in the summer by Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the former commander in Iraq, for not reporting the deaths and other details of the raid. The action was not made public.

The reprimand and the controversy surrounding the raid have effectively ended the career of Colonel Steele, an aggressive officer known for unorthodox methods and who was portrayed in the book and movie “Black Hawk Down” as a fearless fighter during Special Operations missions in Somalia in 1993.

The four Iraqi men were killed on a channel island northwest of Baghdad on May 9 by members of the division’s Third Brigade Combat Team, which Colonel Steele commanded. Four soldiers were later charged with murder by military prosecutors, who said they captured the men, then turned them loose and killed them as part of a staged escape attempt. Over the past two weeks, two of the soldiers have pleaded guilty to lesser charges.

The military’s administrative investigation into Colonel Steele centered on how he communicated the rules of engagement, the instructions that all soldiers must follow to determine whether they may legally use lethal force against an enemy, to his soldiers before the raid.

The colonel improperly led his soldiers to believe that distinguishing combatants from noncombatants — a main tenet of the military’s standing rules of engagement — was not necessary during the May 9 mission, according to a classified report in June by Brig. Gen. Thomas Maffey, a deputy commander tapped by General Chiarelli to investigate Colonel Steele. “A person cannot be targeted on status simply by being present on an objective deemed hostile by an on-scene commander,” General Maffey wrote in his June 16 report.

Although the colonel’s “miscommunication” of the rules contributed to the deaths of four unarmed Iraqis, General Maffey wrote, formal charges were not warranted “in light of his honest belief of the correctness of the mission R.O.E.” The general recommended that Colonel Steele be admonished, a lesser punishment than the formal reprimand he eventually received.

Several soldiers have said in sworn statements that Colonel Steele told them to kill all military-age males. Colonel Steele and two lawyers representing him did not respond to several e-mail and phone messages requesting comment on the case. But in testimony he gave on June 3 to General Maffey and another investigator at an Army garrison in Tikrit, Colonel Steele said he did not use “specific language” to order his soldiers to kill all military-age males, and that “we don’t shoot people with their hands up.”

On June 10, an investigative report by the 101st Airborne Division’s lawyers concluded: “Although clearly unintentional, confusion regarding the R.O.E. was the proximate cause of the death of at least four unarmed individuals, none of whom committed a hostile act or displayed hostile intent.”

In his June 3 testimony, Colonel Steele said he told his men that Army intelligence had shown that the island held dozens of fighters for Al Qaeda. “Guys, you are going to get shot coming off the helicopter,” Colonel Steele said he told them before the raid. “If you don’t get shot, you ought to be surprised.”

As it turned out, the assault occurred without encountering any hostile fire, and the soldiers found only unarmed men, women and children. Only excess caution by Colonel Steele’s troops spared the Iraqi civilians from being shot, General Maffey wrote in his report.

The military’s investigations of Colonel Steele’s actions before and after the raid also determined that the fourth Iraqi man killed in the assault was 70 years old, unarmed and not a legitimate target.

After the raid, several soldiers noticed blindfolds and plastic handcuffs on the bodies of three of the men who were killed. Colonel Steele testified that he ordered a junior officer to begin an investigation into the deaths but to avoid reporting any findings to the division commander until the colonel returned from leave a few weeks later.

The formal reprimand Colonel Steele received effectively blocks any chance for his promotion, according to former and current military officers. “When you’re looking to go from colonel to general, and it’s a 2 percent selection rate, you’re looking to throw people out, and that’s an easy one,” said John D. Hutson, the former judge advocate general of the Navy.

In November, Colonel Steele was reassigned out of Iraq and the 101st Airborne Division to an administrative assignment at Fort McPherson, Ga., where the Army Forces Command oversees the readiness of United States-based active-duty and Army Reserve soldiers. He will work in the unit responsible for Army operations and training, including developing methods of teaching soldiers how to handle enemy detainees, an Army spokesman said.

In addition to the trial of the four soldiers charged in the killings during the raid, an investigation is continuing into whether at least 10 other soldiers from Colonel Steele’s former brigade lied to cover up three of the deaths, according to a classified report in December by the Army’s Criminal Investigative Division. A division spokesman declined to comment on its investigation.

    Army Says Improper Orders by Colonel Led to 4 Deaths, NYT, 21.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/21/world/middleeast/21abuse.html

Helicopter Crash Claims 13

on Deadly Day for U.S. in Iraq

January 21, 2007
The New York Times
By DAMIEN CAVE

BAGHDAD, Jan. 20 — On one of the deadliest days for United States forces since the Iraq war began, an American helicopter crashed in a Sunni area north of Baghdad on Saturday, killing all 13 people onboard, the United States military said.

Iraqi officials in the area said it had been shot down, though there was no immediate confirmation from American officials.

In separate episodes, five American soldiers were killed and three wounded in a battle with gunmen who attacked the local governor’s office in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, and two soldiers died from other attacks, military officials said.

It was not clear whether all those on the helicopter were Americans. If they were, 20 uniformed Americans died Saturday. On the worst day of the war for American forces, Jan. 26, 2005, 37 American service members died. Thirty-one of them died when a Marine helicopter crashed in the western desert, and six others in combat that day.

An Interior Ministry official and the police in Diyala Province said Saturday that the American helicopter was shot down about 4 p.m. by insurgents who had fired missiles or grenades from at least two locations. It crashed near Tarrafa Village, they said, over a rural area near the Diyala River.

The American military said that debris had been immediately surrounded and secured. Several hours after the crash, soldiers were still combing through the wreckage.

A spokesman declined to provide details on the type of aircraft or how it crashed. The number of people aboard suggested that it had been a Black Hawk transport helicopter, which typically carries about 10 passengers and 4 crew members.

The crash occurred northeast of Baghdad near Baquba, where American and Iraqi forces have been battling Sunni insurgents and Shiite militia forces for months.

The American military also announced seven other deaths on Saturday and three deaths from earlier in the week. In addition to the five soldiers killed during the battle in Karbala, a soldier was killed in northern Baghdad on Saturday when a roadside bomb exploded near his patrol, and another, assigned to a unit of engineers, died of wounds from a roadside bomb in northern Iraq.

The three earlier deaths were of a sailor from Brooklyn who died Wednesday in a “noncombat-related incident” at Camp Bucca, an American-run detention center in southern Iraq; a marine who died Friday from wounds suffered in combat in Anbar Province; and a soldier who died Friday after being wounded by a roadside bomb in Tikrit, north of Baghdad.

The gun battle in Karbala started when “an illegally armed militia,” according to a statement from the American military, attacked the offices of the provincial government in Karbala with guns and grenades.

Brig. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, deputy commander for Multi-National Division-Baghdad, said American and Iraqi security forces were meeting at the time of the attack to ensure that Shiite pilgrims would be safe during the celebrations later this month for Ashura, one of Shiite Islam’s holiest days, which marks the seventh-century martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Hussein.

Iraqi state television reported that at least two dozen gunmen assaulted the building, getting inside, and drawing a response from American troops who were dropped by helicopter onto the roof.

Col. Scott Bleichwehl, a military spokesman, said it was not clear who or how many had attacked. By 10 p.m., the building had been secured, he said.

“It was never lost,” he said. “It came under fire from a couple of directions. We responded to it.”

The attack nonetheless seemed to be the latest in a series of power struggles in the south among a patchwork of Shiite tribes and political parties. American officials have been pressing the government of Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to set a date for provincial elections, which they said would firmly establish new leaders and possibly reduce the fighting.

Iraqi state television reported that a raid in south Baghdad on Saturday, with around 100 Iraqi police commandos backed by six United States helicopters, killed 15 suspected Sunni Arab insurgents.

The police found 29 bodies in the capital, many with gunshot wounds to the head.

Qais Mizher, Sabrina Tavernise and Khalid al-Ansary contributed reporting.

    Helicopter Crash Claims 13 on Deadly Day for U.S. in Iraq, NYT, 21.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/21/world/middleeast/21iraq.html

Draft Law

Keeps Central Control

Over Oil in Iraq

January 20, 2007
The New York Times
By JAMES GLANZ

BAGHDAD, Jan. 19 — After months of tense bargaining, a cabinet-level committee has produced a draft law governing Iraq’s vast oil fields that would distribute all revenues through the federal government and grant Baghdad wide powers in exploration, development and awarding major international contracts.

The draft, described Friday by several members of the committee, could still change and must be approved by the Iraqi cabinet and Parliament before it becomes law. Negotiations have veered off track in the past, and members of the political and sectarian groups with interest in the law could still object as they read it more closely.

But if approved in anything close to its present form, the law would appear to settle a longstanding debate over whether the oil industry and its revenues should be overseen by the central government or the regions dominated by Kurds in the north and Shiite Arabs in the south, where the richest oil fields are located.

The draft comes down firmly on the side of central oversight, a decision that advocates for Iraq’s unity are likely to trumpet as a triumph. Because control of the oil industry touches so directly on the interests of all Iraq’s warring sectarian groups, and therefore the future of the country, the proposed law has been described as the most critical piece of pending legislation.

“This will give us the basis of the unity of this country,” said Ali Baban, the Iraqi planning minister and a member of the Sunni-dominated Tawafaq party who serves on the negotiating committee. “We pushed for the center in Baghdad, but we didn’t neglect the Kurds and other regions,” Mr. Baban said.

Negotiators said that the final weeks of wrangling on the draft focused on a federal committee that would be set up to review the oil contracts. Kurdish, and to some extent Shiite, parties wanted to maintain regional control over the contracts, while Sunni Arabs, with few oil resources on territories they dominate, insisted that the federal committee have the power to approve contracts, rather than just reviewing them and offering advice.

The negotiators appear to have finessed that issue by allowing the regions to initiate the process of tendering contracts before sending them to Baghdad for approval. To limit the powers of the committee, they also have drawn up an exacting set of criteria to govern the deliberations of the committee rather than simply relying on its independent discretion. And in a bow to the Kurds, who objected to the use of the word “approve” in describing the committee’s duties, the draft law says instead that the committee may review and reject contracts that do not meet the criteria.

The draft law would also radically restructure parts of Iraq’s state-controlled oil industry by giving wide independence — possibly leading to eventual privatization — to the government companies that control oil exports, the maintenance of pipelines and the operation of oil platforms in the Persian Gulf.

The law would also revive the Iraqi National Oil Company, a countrywide umbrella organization that was essentially closed by Saddam Hussein.

At the same time, the law would place substantial administrative authorities outside Baghdad by allowing any region that produces at least 150,000 barrels of oil a day to create its own operating company, according to Hussain al-Shahristani, the Iraqi oil minister and member of a powerful coalition of Shiite political parties who also serves on the negotiating committee.

Barham Salih, a deputy prime minister and the chairman of the negotiating committee, said that the precise wording of clauses could still change. He was speaking by telephone from Iraqi Kurdistan, where Mr. Salih, a Kurd, said he was still working to cement support for some provisions in the draft law.

“This is the most important piece of legislation that Iraq will adopt, and it is not a surprise that it is taking long, tedious rounds of negotiations,” Mr. Salih said. “We are close, but we have not yet closed the deal. We are making progress and need to continue.”

The developments come with several additional cautions, not the least of which is that in Iraq’s chaotic wartime environment, even laws that do get passed can have little impact. In one example of a document arrived at through similar negotiations, Iraq’s Constitution, it remains unclear what effect many of the fastidiously negotiated clauses are having in the governance of the country.

And even though Iraq’s main political and sectarian groups have been represented in the talks over the oil law, it is still possible that members of those groups could bridle as the draft is scrutinized more widely.

As a case in point, the Kurdistan regional government issued a statement on Friday criticizing an Oil Ministry spokesman for saying that the oil law had been agreed upon unanimously and put in final form.

“Although the process of drafting the oil law is nearing completion, the important annexes to the law are still pending,” the statement said.

Some of those annexes will address how to deal with fields that are already producing oil under existing contracts, how to begin taking bids for drilling new wells in known fields and exploring areas where currently unknown oil fields could be located.

The committee achieved a breakthrough of sorts in December, when negotiators took a step toward central control by agreeing that all oil revenues should first go to the central government before being sent back to the regions in amounts proportional to population.

But the talks bogged down on the question of whether the committee, to be called the Federal Oil and Gas Council, would be called upon to approve contracts proposed by the regions or just review those contracts and offer advice. In its current form, the draft law avoids the word “approve” and in effect gives the committee veto power.

Whatever the language, Mr. Shahristani, the oil minister, said, the committee will in fact pass judgment on each contract, even when it originates in a proposed deal between a company and one of the oil-producing regions.

But the committee must make its decision based on specific guidelines, like a directive to maximize profits for Iraq and to keep the contracting process transparent, Mr. Shahristani said. And there are other checks and balances written into the law. For example, while the regions can propose their own deals, they will have to work with companies that have been “pre-qualified” in Baghdad.

Directives like that could still generate objections in Kurdistan, which wants as much freedom as possible to write its own contracts.

The draft law also specifies that technical experts in the Oil Ministry are to be included in the process at all levels. It is the ministry that will be called upon to write a plan for which oil fields will be developed and drilled first, and which ones will follow. The federal council would simply be called upon to endorse that plan or send it back for revisions.

The Oil Ministry would also be closely involved in developing “model contracts” to be used as templates at all levels of Iraq’s oil industry.

Having an oil law will in principle make it easier to attract international companies with the resources and expertise that the country so desperately needs. Still, hovering over all the negotiations is the question of whether companies will want to do business in Iraq.

Mr. Shahristani, for one, says that because of the financial stakes, companies are already reaching out.

“The international companies keep contacting me — every week, without exception,” Mr. Shahristani said. “They are all very, very keen.”

Yerevan Adham contributed reporting from Iraqi Kurdistan.

    Draft Law Keeps Central Control Over Oil in Iraq, NYT, 20.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/20/world/middleeast/20oil.html?hp&ex=1169355600&en=3e091311d93ff873&ei=5094&partner=homepage

U.S. General

Expects Troop Increase

to End by Summer

January 19, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID S. CLOUD and JOHN O’NEIL

TALLIL AIR BASE, Iraq, Jan. 19 — Gen. George Casey, the top American commander in Iraq, said today that the additional troops being sent to Iraq could begin to be withdrawn by late summer if security conditions improve in Baghdad.

“I believe the projections are late summer,” General Casey said, adding, “I think it’s probably going to be late summer before you get to the point where people in Baghdad feel safe in their neighborhoods.”

Also today, the American military announced that it had seized a suspect it called “a high-level illegal armed-group leader” and two other suspects during a raid in eastern Baghdad, conducted by American troops and special forces from the Iraqi army.

An aide to Moqtada al-Sadr, the anti-American Shiite cleric who is linked to the Mahdi Army, the country’s deadliest militia, said that Sheikh Abdul Hadi al-Darraji, the head of the group’s media operations in Baghdad, had been seized in the raid.

American officials have argued that cracking down on the Mahdi Army is crucial to breaking the cycle of executions, attacks and reprisals that have cost the lives of thousands of Baghdad residents in the past year.

General Casey, who spoke to reporters after meeting with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who made a surprise visit to southern Iraq, declined to identify the suspects seized in the new raid. But he said that American and Iraqi unites have arrested a number of insurgents and “five or six” death-squad leaders in recent weeks, and that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq appeared to be carrying through on his side of the new security plan, by sending more Iraqi troops to Baghdad and not interfering with operations against militias.

“So far, so good,” General Casey said. “We are seeing them come through on those commitments.”

The three Iraqi brigades that Mr. Maliki promised have not yet arrived in Baghdad. Lt. Gen. Graeme Lamb, the commander of British forces in Iraq, said later at a press briefing in the capital that “the forces that have been promised for Baghdad are coming.”

The American build-up, which is expected to involve slightly over 20,000 additional troops, is only just beginning, and some units may not be in place for several months.

General Casey, who is scheduled to step down soon as commander in Iraq, had originally planned to begin an American withdrawal from the country last year, and is said to have resisted the idea of additional forces, arguing that the Iraqis needed to take charge of the security effort.

He said today that it would take some time before the new American and Iraqi forces would make a substantial impact on the violence in Baghdad. “You’re going to see some progress gradually over the next 60 to 90 days,” he said, adding that “it will be late summer before we see the results that would cause us to make some decisions” about withdrawing troops.

With many Republicans joining Democrats in opposing the troop buildup, the question of how long the additional forces will remain in Iraq is a matter of significant political concern. When President Bush announced their deployment, he did not set a date for their return.

Within Iraq, the most sensitive part of the new security plan is the potential it poses for a clash with the forces of Mr. Sadr, who is Mr. Maliki’s most important backer.

Abdul Razzaq al-Nedawi, a Sadr aide in the southern city of Najaf — denounced the arrest of Mr. Darraji, calling it “part of a series of provocations by the Americans.”

“The U.S. is playing with fire here, and we hope there will be no further escalation,” he said.

But Mr. Sadr himself remained silent, and the overall reaction from the Mahdi Army, the militia that pledges loyalty to him, appeared relatively muted.

The Iraqi government’s top spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, indicated support today for the American arrest, saying that the raid was “not against the Sadrists,” Reuters reported. He said that it was prompted by security concerns about Mr. Darraji, who he said would be released if he proves to be innocent.

While Mr. Darraji’s official position is that of media director, he has been described by associates as an increasingly powerful and hard-line member of the Sadr movement, and one who has become wealthy through business dealings and political connections.

Earlier this week, Mr. Maliki said that he had ordered large-scale arrests of militia members, and appeared to be trying to distance himself from Mr. Sadr, saying they had only met twice in the four years since Mr. Maliki returned from exile. In Sadr City, there have been signs that the militia is trying to lower its profile in anticipation of a crackdown.

In an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Mr. Sadr said that his militias would not fight back during the Muslim holy month of Muharram, which starts this weekend, The Associated Press reported.

“Let them kill us. For a true believer, there is no better moment than this to die,” Mr. Sadr was quoted as saying. “After Muharram, we’ll see.”

He also said that he believes he is a target, and that he moves “continuously in a way that only a few people can know where I am.”

In its statement, the American military said that the suspect it is holding “is the leader of illegal armed group punishment committee activity, involving the organized kidnapping, torture and murder of Iraqi civilians.”

“The suspect is also reportedly involved in the assassination of numerous Iraqi Security Forces members and government officials,” and is believed to have ties to other death-squad leaders, the statement said.

General Lamb, the British commander, today described the overall command structure that will be put in place to carry out the new security plan, a question that has been the subject of much wrangling between American and Iraqi officials since the plan was announced.

He said that Iraqi and American forces would maintain parallel chains of command, working under a crisis committee led by Mr. Maliki. Other members of the group would include the American military commander for Iraq — a position in which Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus will soon succeed General Casey — and the Iraqi ministers of defense and interior, along with officials in charge of media and economic reconstruction.

For Mr. Gates, his visit was his second in less than a month. He met both with General Casey and with the British commanders who have charge of the southern part of the country.

Britain has about 7,000 troops in southern Iraq. Officials in London told Mr. Gates earlier this week that they are making plans to withdraw most of them sometime this year.

“As we see the need for less troops, the surplus will go home,” said Maj. Chris Ormond-King, a British military spokesman in Basra.

Major Ormond-King said that Britain maintains three bases inside Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, but that plans were moving forward to turn over the city entirely to Iraqi control, a step that he said was “probably achievable” sometime this spring.

He said that British commanders had no plans to disarm Shiite militia groups, including the Mahdi Army and the Badr Corps, that have been vying for power in the city, as long as they do not attack British forces.

Mr. Gates said this week that Britain is making troop reductions at the same time that Washington is building up forces in Iraq because conditions in southern Iraq are different from those in Baghdad and other areas where the United States has most of its troops.

Mr. Gates had lunch with General Casey in Basra and with Maj. Gen. Jonathan Shaw, the recently-arrived British commander. Later, Mr. Gates and General Casey traveled here to Tallil Air Base in southern Iraq to meet with Australian and Romanian commanders and to receive briefings on reconstruction efforts in the south.

Since taking office, Mr. Gates has pushed to ensure that the new American strategy to send around 20,000 additional troops also includes renewed focus on reconstruction efforts.

David S. Cloud reported from Tallil Air Base in Iraq and John O’Neil from New York. Ali Adeeb contributed reporting from Baghdad.

U.S. General Expects Troop Increase to End by Summer, NYT, 19.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/19/world/middleeast/19cnd-iraq.html


 

NYT        January 17, 2007

What $1.2 Trillion Can Buy        NYT        18.1.2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/business/17leonhardt.html

Economix

What $1.2 Trillion Can Buy

January 17, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID LEONHARDT

The human mind isn’t very well equipped to make sense of a figure like $1.2 trillion. We don’t deal with a trillion of anything in our daily lives, and so when we come across such a big number, it is hard to distinguish it from any other big number. Millions, billions, a trillion — they all start to sound the same.

The way to come to grips with $1.2 trillion is to forget about the number itself and think instead about what you could buy with the money. When you do that, a trillion stops sounding anything like millions or billions.

For starters, $1.2 trillion would pay for an unprecedented public health campaign — a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment for every American whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a global immunization campaign to save millions of children’s lives.

Combined, the cost of running those programs for a decade wouldn’t use up even half our money pot. So we could then turn to poverty and education, starting with universal preschool for every 3- and 4-year-old child across the country. The city of New Orleans could also receive a huge increase in reconstruction funds.

The final big chunk of the money could go to national security. The recommendations of the 9/11 Commission that have not been put in place — better baggage and cargo screening, stronger measures against nuclear proliferation — could be enacted. Financing for the war in Afghanistan could be increased to beat back the Taliban’s recent gains, and a peacekeeping force could put a stop to the genocide in Darfur.

All that would be one way to spend $1.2 trillion. Here would be another:

The war in Iraq.

In the days before the war almost five years ago, the Pentagon estimated that it would cost about $50 billion. Democratic staff members in Congress largely agreed. Lawrence Lindsey, a White House economic adviser, was a bit more realistic, predicting that the cost could go as high as $200 billion, but President Bush fired him in part for saying so.

These estimates probably would have turned out to be too optimistic even if the war had gone well. Throughout history, people have typically underestimated the cost of war, as William Nordhaus, a Yale economist, has pointed out.

But the deteriorating situation in Iraq has caused the initial predictions to be off the mark by a scale that is difficult to fathom. The operation itself — the helicopters, the tanks, the fuel needed to run them, the combat pay for enlisted troops, the salaries of reservists and contractors, the rebuilding of Iraq — is costing more than $300 million a day, estimates Scott Wallsten, an economist in Washington.

That translates into a couple of billion dollars a week and, over the full course of the war, an eventual total of $700 billion in direct spending.

The two best-known analyses of the war’s costs agree on this figure, but they diverge from there. Linda Bilmes, at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate and former Clinton administration adviser, put a total price tag of more than $2 trillion on the war. They include a number of indirect costs, like the economic stimulus that the war funds would have provided if they had been spent in this country.

Mr. Wallsten, who worked with Katrina Kosec, another economist, argues for a figure closer to $1 trillion in today’s dollars. My own estimate falls on the conservative side, largely because it focuses on the actual money that Americans would have been able to spend in the absence of a war. I didn’t even attempt to put a monetary value on the more than 3,000 American deaths in the war.

Besides the direct military spending, I’m including the gas tax that the war has effectively imposed on American families (to the benefit of oil-producing countries like Iran, Russia and Saudi Arabia). At the start of 2003, a barrel of oil was selling for $30. Since then, the average price has been about $50. Attributing even $5 of this difference to the conflict adds another $150 billion to the war’s price tag, Ms. Bilmes and Mr. Stiglitz say.

The war has also guaranteed some big future expenses. Replacing the hardware used in Iraq and otherwise getting the United States military back into its prewar fighting shape could cost $100 billion. And if this war’s veterans receive disability payments and medical care at the same rate as veterans of the first gulf war, their health costs will add up to $250 billion. If the disability rate matches Vietnam’s, the number climbs higher. Either way, Ms. Bilmes says, “It’s like a miniature Medicare.”

In economic terms, you can think of these medical costs as the difference between how productive the soldiers would have been as, say, computer programmers or firefighters and how productive they will be as wounded veterans. In human terms, you can think of soldiers like Jason Poole, a young corporal profiled in The New York Times last year. Before the war, he had planned to be a teacher. After being hit by a roadside bomb in 2004, he spent hundreds of hours learning to walk and talk again, and he now splits his time between a community college and a hospital in Northern California.

Whatever number you use for the war’s total cost, it will tower over costs that normally seem prohibitive. Right now, including everything, the war is costing about $200 billion a year.

Treating heart disease and diabetes, by contrast, would probably cost about $50 billion a year. The remaining 9/11 Commission recommendations — held up in Congress partly because of their cost — might cost somewhat less. Universal preschool would be $35 billion. In Afghanistan, $10 billion could make a real difference. At the National Cancer Institute, annual budget is about $6 billion.

“This war has skewed our thinking about resources,” said Mr. Wallsten, a senior fellow at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a conservative-leaning research group. “In the context of the war, $20 billion is nothing.”

As it happens, $20 billion is not a bad ballpark estimate for the added cost of Mr. Bush’s planned surge in troops. By itself, of course, that price tag doesn’t mean the surge is a bad idea. If it offers the best chance to stabilize Iraq, then it may well be the right option.

But the standard shouldn’t simply be whether a surge is better than the most popular alternative — a far-less-expensive political strategy that includes getting tough with the Iraqi government. The standard should be whether the surge would be better than the political strategy plus whatever else might be accomplished with the $20 billion.

This time, it would be nice to have that discussion before the troops reach Iraq.

    What $1.2 Trillion Can Buy, NYT, 18.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/business/17leonhardt.html

After Iraq Trip,

Clinton Proposes War Limits

January 18, 2007
The New York Times
By PATRICK HEALY

WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday called President Bush’s plan to send more troops to Iraq “a losing strategy” and proposed placing new limits on the White House’s conduct of the war.

Her comments came after a weekend trip to Iraq and amounted to her latest effort to bolster her credentials as a critic of the war at the outset of the 2008 presidential race.

Starting at 7 a.m. with back-to-back appearances on NBC and CBS, Senator Clinton devoted her day to a choreographed effort to press the Bush administration to change its Iraq policy and to outline a set of views that might bring her more in sync with Democratic primary voters.

Mrs. Clinton, who is expected to announce plans to run for president soon, sought to tap into the intense and bitter emotions that many Democrats feel about the war, as she promised to introduce legislation to cap the number of troops in Iraq and to place restraints on the administration’s policy.

“I’m really passionate about getting the administration’s attention because they hold most of the cards,” Mrs. Clinton said during an interview in her Senate office here. “And I don’t want to keep losing these young men and women.”

Her new political offensive on Iraq came one day after Senator Barack Obama of Illinois announced that he had formed an exploratory committee for a presidential bid and three days after another likely rival, former Senator John Edwards, took an indirect swipe at Mrs. Clinton and other members of Congress for not doing more to oppose the war in Iraq.

Hours after Mrs. Clinton’s announcement, Mr. Obama said that he, too, would support a cap on troop levels. Mrs. Clinton also took her own glancing shot back at Mr. Edwards, saying in the interview that it was important for political candidates in 2008 to avoid “finger-pointing, hot rhetoric” on Iraq.

Mrs. Clinton offered sharp criticism of the administration while also staking out two positions that might alienate antiwar Democrats: She said that she would oppose cutting off any funds for American troops and that she would not rush to set a deadline for withdrawal from Iraq.

“I’m not going to cut American troops’ funding right now — they’re in harm’s way,” Mrs. Clinton said, rejecting for the moment pressure from some antiwar Democrats who want Congress to use its power of the purse to end the war. “But what I do want to do is to send a message to the Iraqi government — the funding for their security forces and personal security is at risk — and to send a message to the White House that there are certain conditions that we expect them to meet, or they have to come for new authorization for troops to remain in Iraq.”

The senator described her philosophy about military power as one rooted in pragmatism. Regardless of the pressure from some liberals and antiwar Democrats, Mrs. Clinton said she was skeptical about embracing hard timetables and cutting off financing in Iraq, for instance, because they were not practically feasible.

“I am not for imposing a date — certain withdrawal date,” she said. “But don’t be mistaken, I am for ending this war as soon as possible.”

She announced that she would support the bipartisan resolution introduced Wednesday opposing Mr. Bush’s plan to send more troops to Baghdad. And, taking aim at uncooperative Iraqi leaders, she said her forthcoming legislation would cut off funds for their bodyguards and security services unless they did more to support American troops in Iraq.

She said the legislation would also propose capping the number of troops at the levels they were on Jan. 1 — roughly 130,000. After she announced that on the 7 a.m. broadcasts, Mr. Obama followed suit, saying at 4 p.m. that he would introduce a bill proposing a cap as well. Aides to a third likely Democratic contender, Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, cried foul, saying that Mrs. Clinton’s plan to propose a cap seemed to copy a similar proposal by Mr. Dodd.

Mrs. Clinton said that candidates in the 2008 race should be thoughtful and responsible when talking about war, rather than trying to score easy political points with red-meat rhetoric.

“I am cursed with the responsibility gene.” she said. “I am. I admit to that. You’ve got to be very careful in how you proceed with any combat situation in which American lives are at stake.”

On Iraq, she has never repudiated her vote in 2002 authorizing military action. But last month she said that she “certainly wouldn’t have voted” to go to war if she had the same information in 2002 that she does now.

Clinton advisers are divided on whether that vote will loom over her presidential campaign, and on the extent to which her speech explaining her vote, delivered on the Senate floor on Oct. 10, 2002, will be used against her.

At different points in that speech, Mrs. Clinton made the cases both for and against the war resolution, saying it had “appeal to some” but was also “fraught with danger.” She also called for a diplomatic push at the United Nations, but also noted that the organization was “still growing and maturing” and sometimes lacked cohesion. She ultimately came down on the side of the resolution, but made clear that she expected Mr. Bush to use it as leverage at the United Nations to put pressure on Iraq.

In the interview on Wednesday, she said she wanted to work with the White House where she could. She said she had pressed the national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, this week on her idea to appoint a presidential envoy to improve ties between the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Mrs. Clinton was sharply critical of Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, saying she believed he had given her “lip service” during a meeting on Saturday about his government’s commitment to cooperating with the American mission there.

“You don’t want to say there’s nobody within the Iraqi government who’s really committed to any nonsectarian future, but the weight of the evidence is that the people in charge are not committed that way,” she said. “At some point, how much are we willing to sacrifice if they’re not willing to compromise? I don’t think anybody wants to keep going down this path.”

Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting.

    After Iraq Trip, Clinton Proposes War Limits, NYT, 18.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/18/world/middleeast/18clinton.html

Suicide Car Bomb Kills 17 in Baghdad

January 17, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:12 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A suicide car bomb struck a market in the Shiite district of Sadr City and police said 17 people died Wednesday, a day after a blast targeting university students killed 70 in what appeared to be a renewed campaign of Sunni insurgent violence against Shiites.

The latest explosion occurred at 3:55 p.m. near the outdoor Mereidi market, one of the neighborhood's most popular commercial centers, and also injured 33 people, police said. The force of the blast shattered the windows of nearby stores and restaurants.

On Tuesday, twin car bombs struck Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, not far from Sadr City, as students lined up for the ride home, leaving at least 70 dead and more than 130 injured.

It was the single deadliest attack on civilians in Iraq since Nov. 23, when a series of car bombs and mortar attacks by suspected al-Qaida in Iraq fighters in Sadr City slum killed at least 215 people.

Another suicide car bomb exploded earlier Wednesday at a checkpoint in the city of Kirkuk after guards opened fire as the driver approached a police station, police said. The blast killed eight people and injured dozens.

The explosion in the center of the oil-rich city 180 miles north of Baghdad came amid rising violence in northern Iraq even as the government and U.S. forces prepare to launch a massive security operation aimed at stopping sectarian attacks in the capital.

Guards shot the driver as he approached the checkpoint, killing him before he could reach the police station. But his explosives detonated, causing part of the sand-colored station to collapse and damaging nearby shops, police Brig. Sarhad Qadi. Eight people were killed and 43 wounded with most of the casualties caused by the building collapse, he said.

The escalation of deadly attacks coincided with Tuesday's release of U.N. figures that showed an average of 94 civilians died each day in sectarian bloodshed in 2006.

Two more American soldiers died this week, the U.S. military said. One soldier from the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division died Wednesday from wounds sustained in an operation in Anbar, the Sunni insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad. Another soldier from Regimental Combat Team 5 died Monday, the military said without elaborating.

The deaths brought the toll of U.S. military members who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003 to 3,028, according to an Associated Press count.

The U.S. capture last week of six Iranians working at a liaison office in the northern city of Irbil drew criticism Wednesday from the leader of the 130-member Shiite bloc in parliament, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim. One of the six was released and the five others were alleged to be connected to an Iranian Revolutionary Guard faction that funds and arms insurgents in Iraq.

''Regardless of the Iranian position, we consider these actions as incorrect,'' al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. ''They represent a kind of attack on Iraq's sovereignty and we hope such things are not repeated.''

In other violence, a mortar attack on a residential area in Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of the capital, killed a woman and injured 10 people, police said.

Police also said they found the body of an Iraqi policeman whose hands and legs had been bound hanging by electric wire, two days after he was kidnapped while going to his home in the same area.

Gunmen in a car also opened fire on two brothers, aged 30 and 35, on their way to work as construction workers in Mahaweel, 35 miles south of Baghdad. One was killed and the other was wounded, police said.

In Baghdad, a civilian was killed in a drive-by shooting in the west, while a roadside bomb struck a downtown commercial district, injuring a policeman and a bystander, police said.

Five unidentified bodies were found by Iraqi police. Two of them were apparently killed by a sniper on Haifa Street, a Sunni Arab stronghold in Baghdad that has seen recent fierce clashes. The others were found shot to death with their hands and legs bound in areas in western Baghdad, police said.

    Suicide Car Bomb Kills 17 in Baghdad, NYT, 17.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq.html

Gulf Allies Support

Goals of New U.S. Strategy in Iraq

January 17, 2007
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER

KUWAIT, Jan. 16 — America’s Persian Gulf allies on Tuesday endorsed the goals of President Bush’s new Iraq strategy. But even one of Washington’s staunchest partners in the region, Saudi Arabia, indicated deep concerns about whether the Shiite-led government in Baghdad had the capacity and will to halt sectarian violence and protect Sunni Arabs.

The six foreign ministers of the Gulf Cooperation Council, along with those of Egypt and Jordan and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, issued a statement that “welcomed the commitment” of the United States to stabilizing Iraq, but made no commitments to help stabilize or rebuild the country.

The Bush administration’s blunt warnings to Iran in recent days echoed throughout the session, and the official communiqué broadly criticized any nation that interfered in the internal affairs of Iraq — a clear reference to Iran, although the official document never mentioned it by name.

Kuwait was the final stop of a diplomatic swing by Ms. Rice across the Middle East to explain the president’s new military, diplomatic and economic initiatives for Iraq, and to build support among the region’s Arab states, most of which have majority Sunni populations. The meeting in Kuwait was held 16 years to the day after a United States-led coalition began an offensive to drive the Iraqi Army out of Kuwait.

But it was the threat of rising sectarian violence following a second American-led invasion that was the topic of Tuesday’s meeting.

“Nine foreign ministers are meeting in Kuwait today to precisely prevent Iraq from sliding into civil war, and that speaks volumes,” said Sheik Muhammad al-Sabah al-Salim al-Sabah, the foreign minister of Kuwait.

“The participants welcomed the commitment by the United States as stated in President Bush’s recent speech to defend the security of the gulf, the territorial integrity of Iraq and to ensure a successful, fair and inclusive political process that engages all Iraqi communities and guarantees the stability of the country,” said the communiqué, in language that the Bush administration could cite to prove broad regional support for its initiatives.

But earlier on Tuesday, Prince Saud al-Faisal, the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, issued a more guarded and carefully worded endorsement of the new Bush strategy.

“We agree fully with the goals set by the new strategy, which in our view are the goals that — if implemented — would solve the problems that face Iraq,” he said.

Prince Saud said he could not comment on specifics of the plan, which Bush administration officials acknowledge relies heavily on the actions of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq, a Shiite political leader who has shown a reluctance to crack down on violent Shiite militias. Yet he also declined to be drawn into a discussion of possible Saudi action to protect Sunni Arabs in Iraq in the event of a full-blown sectarian civil war.

“Why speculate on such dire consequences?” he said, urging unity among Iraq’s Shiites, Sunnis, Turkmen and Kurds. “Why not speculate on the positive side? I cannot for the life of me concede that a country like that would commit suicide given the good will and the desire of all to help in this.”

Ms. Rice acknowledged the legitimacy of those worries within powerful Sunni-majority states, where the Baghdad government has remained either unwilling or unable to stop Shiite death squads from murdering Sunnis, in what appeared to be a campaign of ethnic killings.

“There are concerns about whether the Maliki government is prepared to take an evenhanded, nonsectarian path,” Ms. Rice said. “After all the years of deep grievance in the region, within Iraq, it’s not surprising that that’s the case.”

But Ms. Rice stressed that each of the Middle Eastern leaders with whom she has met “wants to give this a chance,” adding, “That’s the position of people in the region, and there is, in fact, a burden on the Iraqi government to perform.”

The communiqué contained no specific reference to Mr. Bush’s order for adding more than 20,000 troops to the Iraq mission. But Sheik Muhammad, the Kuwaiti foreign minister, said, “We expressed our desire to see the president’s plan to reinforce the American military presence in Baghdad as a vehicle and a venue to stabilize Baghdad and to prevent Iraq from sliding into ugly war, the civil war.”

The statement never challenged the Maliki government directly, but it used standard diplomatic code to make the point: it called for disarming militias and ending sectarian violence. “The ministers expressed the hope that the Iraqi government will actively engage all components of the Iraqi people in a real political process and act in a manner that ensures inclusiveness and paves the way for the success of national reconciliation,” it said.

Asked about regional worries over Iran, Sheik Muhammad said the other ministers had agreed to a “call for all countries to refrain from interfering in Iraqi internal affairs.” He added, “This is something that we are all concerned about.”

    Gulf Allies Support Goals of New U.S. Strategy in Iraq, NYT, 17.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/world/middleeast/17rice.html

Bush Widens Iraq Criticism

Over Handling of Executions

January 17, 2007
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 — President Bush said Tuesday that Iraq had “fumbled” the executions of Saddam Hussein and two of his deputies, and that the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki “has still got some maturation to do.”

The president’s remarks were the most extensive yet on the executions, and they pointed up the continued tensions between Mr. Bush and Mr. Maliki as they try to forge a joint plan to calm the violence plaguing Iraq.

Mr. Bush expressed particular displeasure with the handling of Mr. Hussein’s hanging in late December, at which guards chanted their allegiance to the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who backs Mr. Maliki and whose militia has been a major source of anti-Sunni violence.

“It basically says to people, ‘Look, you conducted a trial and gave Saddam justice that he didn’t give to others,’ ” Mr. Bush said in an interview with Jim Lehrer of PBS. “But then when it came to execute him, it looked like it was kind of a revenge killing.”

The president has said that Mr. Maliki has given him assurances that political considerations will not hinder Iraqi and American forces from going after the militias, including Mr. Sadr’s.

But the notion that Mr. Maliki’s government will crack down on Mr. Sadr, a course considered crucial to the success of Mr. Bush’s new plan for Iraq, has been met with skepticism. And Mr. Bush said the handling of the execution only added to the questions.

“It reinforced doubts in people’s minds that the Maliki government and the unity government of Iraq is a serious government,” Mr. Bush said, “which makes it harder for me to make the case to the American people that this is a government that does want to unify the country and move forward.”

Mr. Bush spoke with Mr. Lehrer, host of the “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer” on PBS, as part of a media tour aimed at rebuilding support for the war and, more specifically, the new war plan he announced last week. Officials have said that Mr. Bush was in part trying to build credibility after so many setbacks in Iraq by nodding to troubles there.

“We have to swallow hard and remind people the president realizes how hard it is,” said a White House official involved in the strategy.

The interview on PBS was the second shown in three days in which Mr. Bush went into detail acknowledging setbacks and public frustration.

“If you were to take it and put me in an opinion poll and said, ‘Do I approve of Iraq?’ I’d be one of those that said, ‘No, I don’t approve of what’s taking place in Iraq,’ ” Mr. Bush said in the interview.

“On the other hand, I do believe we can succeed,” he said.

Mr. Bush said on “60 Minutes” on Sunday night, “No question decisions have made things unstable,” though he added, “But the question is, can we succeed? And I believe we can.”

Democrats and even some Republicans have interpreted Mr. Bush’s plan to send more than 20,000 additional troops to Iraq as a refutation of the suggestions of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which had as its chairmen Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman, and a longtime Republican aide to Mr. Bush’s father, James A. Baker III.

Mr. Bush said he did not disagree with the report’s overall suggestion that United States military operations shift their focus to training the Iraqis and going after terrorists. But he said the Iraqis were not yet strong enough to take the lead in combating sectarian strife.

“They have a good strategy inherent in their report towards the role of U.S. troops inside Iraq,” Mr. Bush said. “It’s just that there needs to be an interim stage in order to achieve that objective.”

    Bush Widens Iraq Criticism Over Handling of Executions, NYT, 17.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/washington/17prexy.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

News Analysis

Hangings Fuel Sectarian Split

Across Mideast

January 17, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

CAIRO, Jan. 16 — The botched hanging of Saddam Hussein and two lieutenants in Iraq by its Shiite-led government has helped to accelerate Sunni-Shiite sectarianism across an already fragile Middle East, according to experts across the region.

The chaotic executions and the calm with which Mr. Hussein confronted the gallows and mocking Shiite guards have bolstered his image among many of his fellow Sunni Muslims.

But something else is happening too: a pan-Muslim unity that surged after the summer war between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia, is waning.

And while political analysts and government officials in the region say the spreading Sunni disillusionment with Shiites and their backers in Iran will benefit Sunni-led governments and the United States, they and others worry that the tensions could start to balkanize the region as they have in Iraq itself.

“The reality of the current situation is that we are approaching an open Sunni-Shiite conflict in the region,” said Emad Gad, a specialist in international relations at the government-financed Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. “And Egypt will also be a part of it as a part of the Sunni axis. No one will be able to avoid or escape it.”

This changing dynamic in the region, described by many scholars, analysts and officials in recent days, is a result not only of the hangings, the Iraq war and the Lebanese political struggle. It has also been encouraged by Sunni-led governments like those in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and some Sunni religious leaders alarmed by the rising influence of Iran, the region’s biggest Shiite power. Far from Cairo, in a sprawling farming village in the Nile Delta region north of the city, Hamada Abdullah, a Sunni Muslim, said that after the war between Hezbollah and Israel, he posted a small picture of Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, on the bare wall of his home. It did not matter that Sheik Nasrallah was a Shiite Muslim aligned with the Shiite state of Iran.

To Mr. Abdullah, Sheik Nasrallah was first and foremost a bold Arab resistance leader. But since the hanging of Mr. Hussein and since Hezbollah has pushed to topple the Sunni-led government in Lebanon, he has begun to reconsider.

He says he is suspicious of Sheik Nasrallah and his politics. “His whole army in the south of Lebanon, they are Shiites,” Mr. Abdullah said. While some American officials and Sunni leaders say that increased tension leads to reduced Iranian influence, others say that sectarian loyalties are difficult to control.

“When Hezbollah did what they did in Lebanon in the summer, no one thought of it as a Shiite party; it was a nationalist party,” said Taher Masri, a former prime minister of Jordan. “Now with the events in Iraq culminating in the way Saddam Hussein was executed and the lack of condemnation and total silence of Hezbollah, many people are examining the position of Hezbollah as a Shiite party.”

Some of the region’s Sunni-led governments and religious leaders used the hanging of Mr. Hussein on a Sunni Muslim holy day as a weapon in the jockeying for regional power.

“Sunni states are using this sectarian card to undercut Iran’s influence because they feel that Iran was able to penetrate the Arab world after the fall of Iraq, which was acting as a shield against Iranian influence,” said Marwan Kabalan, a political science professor at Damascus University.

Sunnis make up a vast majority of the Islamic world. Shiites, who lead Iran and the Iraqi government, are the next largest sect. The two split over who would lead Islam after the death of the Prophet Muhammad.

While the two have theological differences — and similarities — the gathering conflict is being stoked by a determination by Sunni leaders to preserve, or reinvigorate, their waning influence in the region — while emboldened Shiites have pressed for more influence.

After the war between Hezbollah and Israel, Shiite leaders seemed to reach their zenith as an antidote to a Sunni Muslim leadership widely viewed as corrupt, impotent and stooges of the West, analysts said.

Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Sheik Nasrallah of Hezbollah, each won wide followings across the region for their willingness to defy the United States. Hezbollah and its allies pressed for more power in Lebanon and when rebuffed, began demonstrations intended to topple the government.

Now, fueled by state controlled media in many Sunni Muslim states, a divide, or at least an estrangement, is growing across the Middle East between Sunni Muslims and Shiites. Egyptians, for example, are inundated nearly daily with headlines, commentaries and television reports alleging Shiite transgressions.

An Egyptian-government controlled satellite service, called Nilesat, has been broadcasting across the Arab world Al Zawraa, a television station that shows what is billed as heroic footage of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, American soldiers being killed and wounded, and unflattering images of Shiite leaders.

“Raising the ugly face of Shiites, expanding Iranian influence in the region,” read a headline in a recent edition of Rose el-Youssef, a pro-government Egyptian newspaper.

In December, a top religious leader close to the Saudi royal family, Abdul Rahman al-Barak, said that Shiites, whom he called rejectionists, were worse than Jews or Christians.

“By and large, rejectionists are the most evil sect of the nation and they have all the ingredients of the infidels,” he wrote.

Such talk is causing a creeping sectarian tension, political analysts said. In Mr. Abdullah’s village in the Nile Delta region of Egypt, where many people had posted a picture of Sheik Nasrallah, there is a growing sense of disunity with Shiites that mirrors partly what is happening in Iraq. “Saddam Hussein was the one courageous man among Arab leaders,” said Ibrahim Mustafa Ibrahim, a school janitor. “We saw how he was executed. We saw everything.”

Nada Bakri and Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting.

    Hangings Fuel Sectarian Split Across Mideast, NYT, 17.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/world/middleeast/17shiite.html?hp&ex=1169096400&en=0fb09876671b4299&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bush Chides Iraq

Over Hussein Execution

January 16, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:31 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush says the chaotic execution of Saddam Hussein shows that the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ''has still got some maturation to do.''

    Bush Chides Iraq Over Hussein Execution, NYT, 16.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush-Iraq.html

Baghdad bombs kill 100,

U.N. says 34,000 died in '06

Tue Jan 16, 2007 2:46 PM ET
Reuters
By Claudia Parsons and Alastair Macdonald

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Bombers killed 65 people, many of them young women students, at a Baghdad university on Tuesday on one of the city's bloodiest days in weeks.

In all, at least 100 were killed in bombings and a shooting in the capital on a day when the United Nations said more than 34,000 Iraqi civilians died in violence last year. Four U.S. soldiers were also killed in a bomb attack in northern Iraq.

The Shi'ite prime minister blamed the latest bloodshed in Baghdad on followers of Saddam Hussein. His fellow Sunni Arabs are angry at the botched execution of two aides on Monday, two weeks after the ousted leader was himself hanged amid sectarian taunts from official observers, captured on an illicit video.

A car bomb tore through students gathered outside the Mustansiriya University in central Baghdad, most of them women waiting for vehicles to take them home. A suicide bomber then walked into the panicked crowd at a rear entrance, killing more.

"The followers of the ousted regime have been dealt a blow and their dreams buried forever," Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said in a statement. "So Saddamists and terrorists now target the world of knowledge and committed this act today against the innocent students of Mustansiriya University."

He vowed to catch the killers and see justice done.

The Education Ministry, whose employees and students have been frequent targets of what the United Nations report called Islamic extremists, issued a public appeal for blood for the 110 wounded and said the university would close until next week.

Rescue workers picked through smoldering wreckage and human remains as police pick-up trucks bore away casualties.

The bombings bore the marks of Sunni Arab insurgents. Many Sunnis were outraged by the latest hanging following a trial for crimes against humanity and saw the decapitation of his brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti by the tightening noose as an act of revenge, not the mishap the Shi'ite-led government said it was.

Mourners, most of them Sunni and angry, visited the two fresh graves in the village where Saddam himself was buried.

34,000 DEAD

The United Nations, in its latest two-monthly human rights report on Iraq, said data from hospitals and morgues put the total civilian death toll for 2006 at 34,452 -- 94 each day.

Comparable figures for previous years were not available but officials agree sectarian bloodshed has surged in the past year.

"Without significant progress on the rule of law, sectarian violence will continue indefinitely and eventually spiral out of control," the U.N. human rights chief in Iraq, Gianni Magazzeni, told a news conference, chiding Iraqi leaders for not stopping militia killers operating with and within their security forces.

Maliki's government, which branded the last U.N. report grossly exaggerated, banned its officials from giving casualty statistics and the United States, which has run Iraq for four years, declined to vouch for the U.N. data.

"Unfortunately it is a war," White House spokesman Tony Snow said. "The actual number, whatever it is, is too high."

Maliki and President Bush are preparing a security crackdown in Baghdad, involving Iraqi and some 20,000 American reinforcements, which is widely portrayed as a last chance to save Iraq from a civil war between Sunnis and Shi'ites that could draw in Iran and Arab states on opposing sides.

Leaders of the Shi'ite majority say the plan to stifle militants with extra force, lasting six months or more, must break Shi'ite militias as well as Sunni rebels. Maliki has made that pledge before but Americans critical of Bush's new troop increase say they are skeptical he can deliver this time.

However, the Shi'ite deputy speaker of parliament said the message truly had been understood by Maliki and others and added that they expected failure would mean an end to American support for the system that has brought Shi'ites to power.

"It is very, very dangerous. One consequence may be a collapse of government," Khaled al-Attiya told Reuters.

Tasting power in the Sunni Muslim-dominated Arab world for the first time in centuries, the Shi'ite Islamist establishment is anxious not to lose its hold on Iraq and its vast oil wealth.

"I think all the Shi'ite parties are now aware of how dangerous the issue is," Attiya said. "We don't have a choice.

"Bush ... is still supporting the political process and the government. But I don't think that if this plan doesn't work ... he can continue."

(Additional reporting by Mariam Karouny, Aseel Kami, Ahmed Rasheed, Huda Majeed and Alastair Macdonald in Baghdad)

(Writing by Alastair Macdonald, editing by Elizabeth Piper)

    Baghdad bombs kill 100, U.N. says 34,000 died in '06, R, 16.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2007-01-16T194521Z_01_PAR639139_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C2-TopNews-newsOne-5

Saudis Endorse

New U.S. Strategy for Iraq

January 16, 2007
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Jan. 16 — Saudi Arabia endorsed the goals of President Bush’s new strategy for Iraq today. But in carefully worded comments, the Saudi foreign minister indicated deep concern about whether the Shiite-led government in Baghdad can halt sectarian violence and protect Sunni interests.

“We agree fully with the goals set by the new strategy, which in our view are the goals that — if implemented — would solve the problems that face Iraq,” said Prince Saud al-Faisal, the foreign minister.

During a joint news conference here with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the prince said he could not comment on specifics of the plan, which Bush administration officials acknowledge is built around support for the current Iraqi government of Nuri al-Maliki, a Shiite political leader.

Saudi Arabia is a predominantly Sunni state. Ms. Rice met late on Monday with King Abdullah and other officials at a hunting lodge in the desert outside the capital, after arriving from Egypt.

Although Prince Saud’s endorsement of Mr. Bush’s new Iraq plan was lukewarm at best, the prince declined to be drawn into a discussion of potential Saudi actions in the event that Iraq slides into full-blown sectarian civil war.

“Why speculate on such dire consequences? Why not speculate on the positive side?” he said, urging unity among Iraq’s Shiites, Sunni Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen, the main groups in its population. “I cannot for the life of me concede that a country like that would commit suicide, given the goodwill and the desire of all to help in this.”

Ms. Rice announced in Egypt on Monday that she intends to call together Israeli and Palestinian leaders within the next month for what she described as a high-level but informal three-way meeting, in hopes of giving new impetus to moribund peace efforts.

That announcement was the one tangible development to emerge from her visit to Israel and the Palestinian areas earlier on her Middle East trip. She held talks with the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Sunday and with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel early Monday before moving on to Egypt.

“I will soon meet with Prime Minister Olmert and with President Abbas to have discussions about the broad issues on the horizon, so that we can work on the road map to try and accelerate the road map and to move to the establishment of a Palestinian state,” Ms. Rice said, referring to the stalled peace plan for the region.

Both men have been weakened politically lately. Mr. Olmert’s approval ratings are dropping after what many viewed as the clumsy military offensive during the summer to counter Hezbollah attacks from Lebanon. As for Mr. Abbas, he has been battling for his political survival since the militant group Hamas swept to power a year ago and took control of the Palestinian legislature away from his Fatah allies.

Ms. Rice was pressed on Monday to cite any cause for optimism in resolving an Israeli-Palestinian dispute that has defied both Republican and Democratic administrations — and at a time when the region is roiled with conflict.

“Before we say that this is going to end in frustration, let’s be glad that after six years and a long time that the parties want to engage in an informal set of discussions about the future between them,” Ms. Rice said.

Ms. Rice is now trying to rally support among America’s Sunni Arab allies in the region for President Bush’s new military and diplomatic strategy in Iraq. The Gulf states are next on her itinerary.

While Ms. Rice and her senior aides said there was no quid pro quo, Arab governments want to show their populations that some progress is being made in resolving Palestinian grievances before they endorse the Bush administration’s new efforts in Iraq, let alone offer concrete support for them.

Ms. Rice spoke several times of how the two sides could discuss a “political horizon” to energize their peace efforts. The Palestinians have used this phrase on occasion to emphasize the need for some sort of timetable for achieving statehood.

American and Israeli officials declined to define what might be viewed on this distant “political horizon.” But the new language seems to be an effort to cast talks on the future course of Israeli-Palestinian relations in a hopeful light even before the two sides fulfill specific, intermediate steps required by the internationally agreed “road map” framework to resolve their disputes.

The road map is a 2003 plan backed by the United Nations, Russia, the United States and the European Union that lays out sequential steps to be carried out by Israelis and Palestinians on the way to reaching a final political settlement. Neither side has met its obligations under the plan, which stalled immediately after it was introduced.

In the first phase, Israel is to freeze settlement activity and the Palestinians are to break up militant groups. But on Monday, the Israeli government published plans to build 44 additional homes in Maale Adumim, the largest West Bank settlement, just east of Jerusalem.

Officials for all three governments to be involved in the informal meeting said those broader discussions to energize their peace efforts would not be allowed to replace the international “road map” agreement.

“I am very clear that the one thing that you do not want to do is to try to rush to formal negotiations before things are fully prepared, before people are fully prepared,” Ms. Rice said. “But that doesn’t mean that there can’t be progress as we’re moving along.”

There was no immediate decision about when or where the three-way meeting would take place, or what the agenda might be.

David Baker, an official in the Israeli prime minister’s office, said Mr. Olmert and Ms. Rice “spoke about ways to generate momentum between Israel and the Palestinians.”

Ms. Rice’s subsequent meetings here with President Hosni Mubarak and his senior aides were held along the Nile, not far from the ancient temple complex of Luxor. The ruins date to the greatest era of the pharaohs, but their delicately carved walls and heroic statues have been reshaped over the centuries by designs of other conquering powers — including empires that likewise have fallen to history, including those of Alexander the Great and Rome.

Ms. Rice’s schedule did not allow time for a visit to the site, though.

Joining Ms. Rice and Mr. Mubarak at a news conference in Luxor on Monday, the Egyptian foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, acknowledged that his nation shared a regional interest in stabilizing Iraq, and he expressed support for the new Bush strategy.

“We are supportive of that plan, because we are hopeful that that plan would lead to, ensure, the stability, the unity and the cohesion of the Iraqi government,” he said.

    Saudis Endorse New U.S. Strategy for Iraq, NYT, 16.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/16/world/middleeast/16cnd-rice.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

80 Killed in Baghdad;

U.N. Sets ’06 Toll Above 34,000

January 16, 2007
The New York Times
By DAMIEN CAVE and JOHN O’NEIL

BAGHDAD, Jan. 16 — More than 80 people died in a trio of bomb attacks around the capital today, as United Nations officials released a report estimating that more than 34,000 civilians were killed across Iraq last year and warning that the violence was “likely to continue” in the absence of a functioning justice system.

Two of the bombs exploded in quick succession at Baghdad University as students were leaving classes, killing at least 60 people and wounding at least 110, Interior Ministry officials said. One was detonated by a suicide bomber and one was placed in a car, but it was not clear in which order they were detonated.

At least 15 other people died and 70 were wounded by another pair of bombs in central Baghdad in a market devoted to motorcycle and stereo shops, not far from a Sunni mosque, officials said. The mosque was not believed to be the target. And two members of an elite police bomb disposal unit and two civilians were killed when the second of a pair of bombs the officers were working to defuse exploded.

Today’s violence and the U.N. report’s chilling portrait on civilian deaths underscored the depth of the security problem facing American military officials as they prepare to deploy more troops there as part of a new strategy that for the first time makes the protection of civilians the war effort’s highest priority.

The report by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq was based on figures provided by from the Medico-Legal Institute in Baghdad and hospitals around the country. It estimated that 34,452 civilians were violently killed in 2006 — an average of 94 a day — and that a addition 36,685 were wounded.

The report said that the level of violence appeared to have declined toward the end of the year — 3,462 violent deaths were recorded for November and 2,914 for December, compared with 3,345 in September and 3,702 in October — although it noted that some provinces had not yet reported December figures.

The head of the mission, Gianni Magazzeni, told reporters that a cycle of revenge killings and reprisals has escalated in the absence of an effective and impartial justice system. "If people don’t have a sense that justice is done, unfortunately this sectarian violence is likely to continue,” Mr. Magazzeni said. “Ensuring accountability would go a long way to help turning the tide.”

The report described a “growing sense of impunity for on-going human rights violations,” a development that it said “leads people to take the law into their hands and rely on actions by militias or criminal gangs.”

The report also noted that law-enforcement agencies are ineffective and that militias and criminal gangs increasingly work in collusion with or have infiltrated the official security forces.

The report was also critical of American and other international troops, whose operations it said “cause severe suffering to the local population.” Saying that limitations on freedom of movement and lack of access to basic services effect a large part of the population, it called on coalition troops to “refrain from any excessive use of force.”

The report released today found the killing centered in Baghdad, where it said more than 16,000 civilian deaths from violence were recorded. It noted that some parts of the country, notably in the Shiite-dominated south and in Kurdistan in the north, were “relatively safer.” But it also reported that some areas have become more violent recently, including the ethnically mixed northern cities of Mosul and Kirkuk.

Around the country, the report described a deteriorating situation for women and minorities, including Palestinians and Christians, and said that attacks on professional groups “continued unabated.”

Many of Iraq’s educated elite have fled the country, and Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki paid a visit to Baghdad University late last year to urge students and professors not to leave in the face of continued violence.

Damien Cave reported from Baghad and John O’Neil from New York. Sabrina Tavernise contributed reporting from Baghdad.

    80 Killed in Baghdad; U.N. Sets ’06 Toll Above 34,000, NYT, 16.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/16/world/middleeast/16cnd-iraq.html?hp&ex=1169010000&en=934ebfa88b7db5cb&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Saddam aides hanged,

film shows brother beheaded

Mon Jan 15, 2007 1:20 PM ET
Reuters
By Mariam Karouny and Alastair Macdonald

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Two of Saddam Hussein's aides were hanged before dawn on Monday, the Iraqi government said.

But despite its efforts to avoid the uproar that marred the execution of the former president two weeks ago, news that the noose ripped the head from Saddam's cancer-stricken half-brother as he plunged from the gallows appalled international critics of the process and fueled fury among Saddam's fellow Sunni Arabs.

On the defensive after Shi'ite sectarian taunts were heard in illicit film of Saddam's execution, a spokesman for the Shi'ite-led government insisted there was "no violation of procedure" during the executions of his half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and former judge Awad Hamed al-Bander.

But defense lawyers and politicians from the once dominant Sunni Arab minority expressed anger at the fate of Barzan, Saddam's once feared intelligence chief, and there was also skepticism and condemnation of Iraq's Shi'ite-dominated leadership across the mostly Sunni-ruled Arab world.

Government officials showed journalists film of the two men standing side by side in orange jumpsuits on the scaffold, looking fearful before they were hooded and the nooses placed around their necks. There was no disturbance in the execution chamber -- apparently the same one where Saddam died on December 30.

Bander muttered the prayer: "There is no god but God."

Barzan, 55, a vocal presence during the year-long trial for crimes against humanity, appeared to tremble quietly. As the bodies plunged through the traps, Barzan's hooded head flew off and came to rest beside his body in a pool of blood below the empty noose under the gallows. Bander swung dead on his rope.

Officials said they would not release the film publicly.

Government adviser Bassam al-Husseini said the damage to the body was "an act of God". During his trial for crimes against humanity over the killings of 148 Shi'ites from Dujail, a witness said Barzan's agents put people in a meat grinder.

Hangmen gauge the length of rope needed to snap the neck of the condemned but not to create enough force to sever the head.

Saleem al-Jibouri, a senior Sunni Arab lawmaker, said Barzan may have been weakened by the cancer he was suffering.

SECTARIAN INSULT

Barzan's son-in-law hurled a sectarian insult at the government on pan-Arab Al Jazeera television: "As for ripping off his head, this is the grudge of the Safavids," he said -- a historical term referring to Shi'ite ties to non-Arab Iran.

"They have only came to Iraq for revenge," Azzam Salih Abdullah said from Yemen. "May God curse this democracy."

The hangings took place at 3 a.m. (0000 GMT) at the same former secret police base where Saddam was hanged on December 30, an adviser to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said. Officials tried to impose a media blackout for some hours but word leaked out.

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq said the executions were an entirely Iraqi affair with little U.S. involvement. Asked about the hangings, Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters: "It was an Iraqi process. It was an Iraqi decision, an Iraqi execution."

After Saddam was hanged, the United Nations urged Iraq to reconsider death sentences and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, an opponent of capital punishment, said last week he thought there should be a delay in executing the other two condemned men. Talabani left the country on Sunday to visit Syria.

The video showing Saddam being taunted, angered Sunni Arabs, embarrassed the government and the U.S. administration and raised sectarian tensions in a nation on the brink of civil war.

Shi'ites again celebrated in the streets of Baghdad's Sadr City slum, a bastion of the cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr. His name was heard being chanted at Saddam on the gallows. An unnamed guard faces legal proceedings following a government inquiry into the circumstances of Saddam's execution.

After Barzan's hanging, Moussa Jabor in Sadr City said: "This is the least he should get. He should have been handed over to the people. Execution is a blessing for him."

Barzan was a feared figure in Iraq at the head of the intelligence service in the 1980s, at a time when the Shi'ite majority was harshly oppressed, some like those from Dujail due to suspected links to Shi'ite Iran, then at war with Iraq.

Bander presided over the Revolutionary Court which sentenced 148 Shi'ite men and youths to death after an assassination attempt on Saddam in the town in 1982. With Saddam, they were convicted on November 5 and their appeals rejected on December 26.

Both are to be buried in the village of Awja, near the northern city of Tikrit, where Saddam was born and where he was buried two weeks ago, the provincial governor told Reuters.

Muslim tradition dictates they be interred within a day.

They would lie close to Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay, who were killed by U.S. troops in 2003, not in the building that has become Saddam's mausoleum, visited by thousands of mourners.

(Additional reporting by Claudia Parsons, Aseel Kami and Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad and Inal Ersan and Diala Saadeh in Dubai)

    Saddam aides hanged, film shows brother beheaded, R, 15.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2007-01-15T181942Z_01_MAC638878_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C2-TopNews-newsOne-2

FACTBOX:

Decapitation possible in judicial hanging

Mon Jan 15, 2007 8:42 AM ET
Reuters



(Reuters) - Two of Saddam Hussein's aides were hanged before dawn on Monday, the Iraqi government said, admitting that the head of his half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti was pulled from his body during the execution.

Here are some details on how the process should work.

* Hanging is the suspension of a person by a cord wrapped around the neck, causing death. Throughout history it has been used as a form of capital punishment in various forms. That used in Iraq is modeled on the 19th-century method of execution used in Britain, which formed the Iraqi state after World War One.

* Four types of drop have been used in hanging: the short drop, suspension, standard and long drop. In all but the last, subjects can remain conscious for minutes and eventually die of strangulation and/or loss of blood to the brain.

* The 19th-century long drop through a trap door is intended to be more humane, generating enough force from the tightening of the rope and the twisting of the noose knot under the jaw to break the neck. A calculation is made based on the convict's weight, height and build of the drop needed to break the neck. The distance is typically 1.5-2.5 meters (5-9 feet).

* When the neck breaks and severs the spine, the subject immediately loses consciousness. Brain death follows in minutes. But if the drop is too short, the subject can be strangled. If it is too long, the subject can be decapitated.

Sources: Reuters/people.howstuffworks.com/emedicine/Capital Punishment U.K.

    FACTBOX: Decapitation possible in judicial hanging, R, 15.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2007-01-15T133759Z_01_L15262455_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L1-RelatedNews-8

Saddam aides buried near him in Awja

Mon Jan 15, 2007 1:19 PM ET
Reuters

AWJA, Iraq (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein's two aides were buried within hours of their hanging on Monday in a garden outside the hall which has become a shrine to the former president since he was interred there two weeks ago.

Abdullah Jubara, deputy governor of Iraq's Salahaddin province, said the bodies of Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Saddam's half-brother, and former judge Awad Hamed al-Bander were handed to local officials after being flown to a U.S. military base.

The two bodies in plain coffins draped in Iraqi flags were then driven to Awja, the village on the outskirts of Tikrit where Saddam was born, arriving soon after dark.

Several hundred mourners had gathered in the hall, where flowers and pictures of Saddam were still piled up over his grave. The two bodies were ritually washed and prepared for burial and then put to rest in the garden outside as prayers were said and people read from the Koran.

The two men were convicted of crimes against humanity for their role in the killing of 148 Shi'ites from the town of Dujail after a failed assassination bid on Saddam in 1982.

Like Saddam's execution, their hangings angered many Sunni Arabs who accuse the now dominant Shi'ite and Kurdish majority of seeking revenge rather than justice in Saddam's trials.

The government's admission that Barzan's head was ripped from his body by the noose sparked anger among the mourners.

Some chanted anti-government slogans, accusing the Shi'ite- led government of being "agents of Iran", Iraq's Shi'ite non- Arab neighbor which is viewed with deep suspicion by many Sunni Arab Iraqis.

Bander's son was among the mourners at the burial, along with the governor and deputy governor of Salahaddin province and the local chief of police. Some fired off volleys of gunfire to show their anger at the executions.

In keeping with Muslim tradition, the bodies were buried less than 24 hours after the 3:00 a.m. (0000 GMT) executions.

    Saddam aides buried near him in Awja, R, 15.1.2007,http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2007-01-15T181938Z_01_MAC546400_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L1-RelatedNews-1

FACTBOX:

Saddam's co-defendants

hanged in Iraq

Mon Jan 15, 2007 8:42 AM ET
Reuters



(Reuters) - Saddam Hussein's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and former chief judge Awad Hamed al-Bander were hanged on Monday for crimes against humanity.

Barzan's head was ripped off by the rope during the execution, a government spokesman said.

The following are brief profiles of the two men, who were sentenced in the killing of 148 Shi'ites from Dujail in the 1980s.

BARZAN IBRAHIM AL-TIKRITI

Saddam's half-brother, 14 years his junior, Barzan was head of the feared Mukhabarat intelligence service from 1979 to 1983. Witnesses in the trial said he personally oversaw torture, eating grapes as he watched on one occasion, and had a meat grinder for human flesh at his interrogation facility.

He was Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva from 1988 to 1997, where he is remembered as an elegantly-suited man dubbed "Saddam's banker in the West."

Barzan was captured by U.S. special forces in Baghdad in April 2003. He was the five of clubs in a U.S. deck of playing cards representing the most wanted men in Iraq.

As intelligence chief, Barzan was accused of ordering mass murder and torture, and of personally taking part in human rights abuses, including the destruction of Kurdish villages.

Barzan's then teenage eldest daughter married Saddam's playboy eldest son Uday in 1993, though Uday later rejected her and sent her back to her father.

Barzan, believed to be aged 55 at his death, was suffering from cancer but that did not stop him mounting spirited attacks on the court and its U.S. backers.

Taking the stand in his own defense last March, he said Saddam had a right to punish those who tried to kill him, but denied any part in the reprisals, saying: "My hands are as clean as Moses' hands. I have no blood on my hands."

AWAD HAMED AL-BANDER

Bander, aged around 61, was a former chief judge in Saddam's Revolutionary Court, which was accused of organizing show trials that often led to summary executions.

Bander was the judge in charge of trying many of the 148 Shi'ite men killed after a failed assassination bid on Saddam in 1982.

Prosecutors said he sentenced some of the men from Dujail after they had already been killed, and that among those sentenced were under-18s who could not legally be executed.

Bander's defense lawyer was abducted from his office and killed the day after the trial started.

When the trial opened in October 2005, Bander, in a plain white traditional robe, sat at Saddam's right hand in the court, loudly demanding and then donning a checkered Arab headdress as proceedings got under way.

He sat quietly throughout most of the court sessions, though always quick to back up Saddam and Barzan in their frequent battles of will with the judge.

    FACTBOX: Saddam's co-defendants hanged in Iraq, R, 15.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2007-01-15T133759Z_01_L15601064_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L1-RelatedNews-9

PROFILE:

Barzan,

Saddam's banker

and torturer in chief

Mon Jan 15, 2007 8:41 AM ET
Reuters
By Claudia Parsons

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - In Geneva, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti was Saddam's dapper "banker in the West" but in Iraq he was his brother's ruthless enforcer, a man who ate grapes as he watched torture and was reputed to have a meat grinder for human flesh.

His death was as grisly as some of those he inflicted on others. His head was ripped from his body by the hangman's noose as he plunged through the trapdoor of the gallows, according to a government spokesman who called it a rare mishap.

Barzan was hanged on Monday with former chief judge Awad Hamed al-Bander, both found guilty with Saddam Hussein of crimes against humanity in the killing of 148 Shi'ites from Dujail after a failed assassination attempt on Saddam in 1982.

One of Saddam's three half-brothers, and 14 years his junior, Barzan was a former head of the Mukhabarat intelligence service and one of the most feared men in Iraq.

A witness at his trial said Barzan had personally supervised his torture with electric shocks in Baghdad in the 1980s, and had eaten grapes while the man screamed in agony. Another witness described how Barzan beat her and broke her ribs after she was hung naked from the ceiling by her feet.

Prosecution witness Ahmed Hassan described being taken to Barzan's interrogation facility in Baghdad and seeing a meat grinder for human flesh.

Barzan was said to have roamed Dujail with a sniper rifle firing indiscriminately after the attack on Saddam's motorcade.

"Barzan was present. He had red cowboy boots and blue jeans and a sniper rifle," Hassan told the court.

Widely circulated film of him viciously kicking a man who lies cowering on the floor sealed his image as Saddam's enforcer.

Barzan was captured by U.S. special forces in Baghdad in April 2003. His home near Ramadi, which was also an operations center for the intelligence service, had been targeted by U.S. "smart bombs" during the war. He was the five of clubs in a U.S. deck of playing cards representing the most wanted men in Iraq.

As intelligence chief, Barzan was accused of ordering mass murder and torture, and of personally taking part in human rights abuses, including the destruction of Kurdish villages.

After one of his frequent, and lengthy, tirades in court, Judge Raouf Abdel Rahman told him: "Enough blood. Your hands have been saturated with blood since your childhood."

FROM COWBOY BOOTS TO TAILORED SUITS

Barzan ran Iraq's intelligence service from 1979 to 1983 but fell out of favor over his hatred for Lieutenant-General Hussein Kamel Hassan, who married Saddam's daughter Raghd.

Hussein Kamel was eventually killed upon return to Iraq in 1996 after a brief defection to Jordan.

Barzan, who was born in February 1951 in Tikrit, resurfaced as Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva from 1988 to 1997. One of his roles there was as Iraq's envoy to the Conference on Disarmament, which was holding preliminary talks on nuclear bomb making fissile material.

"He was deliberately ambiguous. It was all smoke and mirrors," a former western diplomat in Geneva told Reuters this month. The former diplomat recalled Barzan was always dressed in elegant tailored suits.

"He was said to be Saddam's banker in the West."

In 1993, Barzan's then teenage eldest daughter married Saddam's playboy eldest son Uday. Uday later rejected her and sent her back to her father.

After serving nearly a decade in the Swiss city, Barzan was called back to Baghdad in late 1998 after his wife died of cancer. But he returned regularly to Geneva to visit his six children who stayed to complete their studies.

Loyal to Saddam to the end, Barzan was a colorful presence in court. In January, when Saddam stormed out of a hearing, Barzan was dragged out by guards after refusing to keep quiet and calling the trial "a daughter of a whore."

At another hearing while disputing prosecution documents he had allegedly signed, he pointed to the movie "Catch Me If You Can" with Leonardo DiCaprio, which dramatizes the true story of a teenaged conman who stole more than $2.5 million, as an example of how easy it would be to forge a signature.

Forced to attend the court against his will when the defendants were boycotting proceedings, he turned up in what appeared to be his pajamas.

Barzan was suffering from cancer but that did not stop him mounting spirited attacks on the court and its U.S. backers.

Taking the stand in his own defense last March, he said Saddam had a right to punish those who tried to kill him, but denied any part in the reprisals, saying: "My hands are as clean as Moses' hands. I have no blood on my hands."

(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva)

    PROFILE: Barzan, Saddam's banker and torturer in chief, R, 15.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2007-01-15T133759Z_01_L15795607_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L1-RelatedNews-7

Anger, suspicion

at Saddam aide gallows beheading

Mon Jan 15, 2007 8:41 AM ET
Reuters
By Ghazwan al-Jibouri

TIKRIT, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi Shi'ites, oppressed by Saddam Hussein, welcomed the hanging of two of his aides on Monday though some also joined Sunni Arabs in expressing shock that his half-brother's head was ripped off by the noose.

Saddam's two co-defendants were hanged before dawn on Monday, the Iraqi government said, but they admitted that the head of his half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti was also torn from his body by the force of the rope during the execution.

In Saddam and Barzan's home town of Tikrit, a Sunni Arab stronghold north of Baghdad, a black banner was raised on the main mosque named after Saddam saying: "The people of Tikrit mourn the two martyrs ... killed by sectarian hands."

"There is no way a head would be ripped off the body during a hanging. I'm sure they mutilated the bodies after they hanged them," said Ahmed Mustafa, a 30-year-old student in the northern city of Mosul, accusing Iraq's Shi'ite-led government of "sucking the blood of the people."

Clearly conscious of the uproar over sectarian taunts during the illicitly filmed hanging of the ousted Sunni Arab president two weeks ago, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh insisted there was "no violation of procedure."

Reference works on judicial killing do assert that decapitation is a possibility during hanging. But the admission that Barzan suffered such a fate sparked suspicion and anger, especially in Tikrit.

"People are resentful for the way that Barzan has been executed, the tearing of his head from his body," said Abdullah al-Jubara, deputy governor of Salahaddin province around Tikrit.

JUSTICE?

Firas Abdullah, 30, a civil servant, said the executions underlined how unfair the legal proceedings had been.

"The court is illegal, it's a toy in the hands of the Americans and Iran," he said, in a reference to perceived links between Iraq's Shi'ite majority and neighboring Shi'ite Iran.

Some Shi'ites too, however, were troubled by the hanging.

"They deserved to be hanged. Justice has taken its course," said Issam Abdullah, a 27-year-old teacher in Safwan in the overwhelmingly Shi'ite south of Iraq.

"But the state has to explain what happened during Barzan's execution, especially the ripping off of his head," he added.

Ali Abbas Ridha, 27, a Shi'ite in Mosul, said he feared the executions would provoke violence. "What they've done incites people to sectarianism even more. Whether they were executed or not, what's the use of it?" he said.

Barzan and Saddam's former chief judge, Awad Hamed al-Bander, were convicted with Saddam for crimes against humanity in the killing of 148 Shi'ites in the 1980s.

In Sadr City, the Baghdad stronghold of the Mehdi Army, a militia loyal to Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, there was celebration at the executions, though some said hanging was the least the two aides of Saddam deserved.

"They should have been put in a cage and handed over to the Iraqis," said Sadr City resident Ali Jassim.

Another resident, Moussa Jabor, echoed that sentiment: "This is the least he should get. He should have been handed over to the people. Execution is a blessing for him."

Some in Baghdad were more concerned by the violence and instability in Iraq, where sectarian attacks are threatening to pitch the country into civil war.

"It's bad timing, the country will surge into anarchy," said Mohammed, an ethnic Kurdish man living in Baghdad.

Illicitly filmed video footage of Saddam's execution showing he was taunted by Shi'ite officials who chanted Sadr's name has inflamed sectarian passions, and Sunni Arabs charged the whole process was more about revenge than justice.

Long oppressed under Saddam, Shi'ites and Kurds now dominate the political process in Iraq, while Saddam's fellow Sunni Arabs, a numerical minority, have lost influence and fear even further marginalization at the hands of Shi'ites.

"We consider this a day of justice," said Khadhem Mohammed, another Sadr City resident. "Justice has been done."

(Additional reporting Aref Mohammed)

    Anger, suspicion at Saddam aide gallows beheading, R, 15.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2007-01-15T133759Z_01_PAR536112_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L1-RelatedNews-5

Botched hanging in Iraq

arouses Arab suspicions

Mon Jan 15, 2007 7:47 AM ET
Reuters
By Jonathan Wright

CAIRO (Reuters) - The botched hanging of Saddam Hussein's half-brother Barzan on Monday aroused Arab suspicions of foul play and malice, deepening the divide between the Iraqi government and Arabs in other countries.

The noose pulled off Barzan al-Tikriti's head as he fell from the gallows, suggesting that the hangman had misjudged the length of rope needed just to break his neck.

Government spokesman Ali Dabbagh said there was no "violation of procedure" in the hanging of Barzan and fellow convict Awad Hamed al-Bander, Saddam's former chief judge, for crimes against humanity over the killings of 148 Shi'ites.

But from Morocco to Yemen, ordinary Arabs cast doubt on the official explanation. Some recalled the chaotic and abusive treatment of Saddam Hussein when he was hanged on December 30.

Zaid al-Boudani, a shopkeeper in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, said: "I am very sad today, as many other Muslim Arabs are. This execution is part of the revenge campaign going on in Iraq. The way his head was ripped off shows hatred and revenge."

The president of Morocco's Human Rights Center described the hangings as a barbaric and vengeful act carried out under external pressure, probably from Iran and the United States.

"We had never heard that the head of a hanged person was ripped from his body, only in this case, which mirrors the hatred and violence," said the president, Khaled Charkaoui.

Azzam Saleh Abdullah, Barzan's brother-in-law, told Al Jazeera in a telephone call that the Iraqi authorities had not informed the family in advance that the execution was imminent.

"We heard the news on television and were shocked. The Iraqi government should have informed us. They know the traditions very well," he added.

"As for ripping off his head, this is the Safavids' rancor. They only came to Iraq to commit revenge and shed Iraqi blood. They did not come for democracy or to build a state. May God curse this democracy," he said.

'IRAQI BLOOD'

"Safavid" is a reference to the dynasty which established Shi'ite Islam as the Iranian state religion from the 16th century and which sometimes controlled parts of Iraq.

Hardline Iraqi Sunnis have started using the term to suggest that the Shi'ites are not true Iraqis.

Issam Ghazzawi, a Jordanian lawyer who saw Barzan on Friday, said he was convinced the decapitation was deliberate.

"His head was cut off after he was hanged to mutilate his body in an a barbaric act of revenge that is against any human values and is vigilante justice by a group of thugs," he said.

At the hanging of Saddam, the executioners shouted sectarian taunts at the former president, who was overthrown and captured after the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.

The Moroccan Human Rights Association, the main independent human rights body in the North African country, said the hangings were a "criminal political assassination."

"The trial of Saddam Hussein and his aides by a pro-U.S. Iraqi court lacks the conditions for a fair trial and makes the verdicts unjust and their hangings a criminal political assassination masterminded by American imperialism", it said.

Yemeni bus driver Hassan Mohammad agreed in blaming the U.S. military presence. "Barzan is another victim of the American occupation in Iraq and the way he was executed shows how the Iraqi government is punishing (people) to avenge their rejection of American dominance and occupation," he said.

But some Arabs in the Gulf, where Saddam was not popular, said they were happy to see Barzan hang.

Ali al-Baghli, a leading Kuwaiti analyst and a former oil minister, said: "Justice has finally been done! ... (Barzan) committed a lot of crimes against humanity and at least he had undergone a legal trial."

"This is the rule of law... They deserved what they got. They cannot kill and torture without facing justice," added Mansoor Al-Jamri, editor of the independent Bahraini newspaper Al Wasat.

    Botched hanging in Iraq arouses Arab suspicions, R, 15.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2007-01-15T124522Z_01_L15262958_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-ARABS.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-worldNews-2

Gates sees fewer troops in 2007

if Iraq plan works

Fri Jan 12, 2007 1:25 PM ET
Reuters
By Susan Cornwell and Kristin Roberts

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States could start withdrawing forces from Iraq this year if the additional troops being sent to Baghdad reduce violence significantly, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Friday.

"If these operations actually work you could begin to see a lightening of the U.S. footprint both in Baghdad and Iraq itself," Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Defending the President George W. Bush's plan for the war, Gates cautioned that adding more U.S. forces would not end sectarian violence in Iraq.

But if it lowers the violence "significantly" and the Iraqi government fulfills its promises, "then you could have a situation later this year where you could actually begin withdrawing."

Still, lawmakers challenged the plan to send an additional 21,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines into the most violent areas of Iraq.

They said it depended far too heavily on the Iraqi government keeping promises it had failed to keep before.

"Look at the track record of the Iraqi government in meeting some of its past benchmarks and promises," said Sen. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

He listed commitments that were not kept, such as a pledge from Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki that the government would disband the sectarian militias plaguing Baghdad and that Iraq would take over security for all its provinces by the end of 2006.

POOR RECORD

Gates admitted Iraq's poor performance in meeting its goals. But he said he thought they were serious now.

"The record of fulfilling their commitments is not an encouraging one," he said. "But I will say this. They really do seem to be eager to take control of this security."

Senators also questioned whether military commanders believed in Bush's plan given their previous, publicly stated rejection of calls for more troops.

Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, insisted that he supported the Bush plan and that it provided enough troops to establish security.

But he too premised his confidence on an expectation that the Iraqi government would deliver on its commitments, especially a promise to prohibit Iraqi politicians from interfering in military action against sectarian militias.

"I am confident that, given the Iraqis delivering on their promises and the economic legs of the stool, that the military part of this plan is sufficiently resourced," he said.

Both Gates and Pace said the United States did not need to attack targets in Iran to counter Iranian networks that Washington says support Iraq's insurgency.

Gates stressed that attacking Iran would be a "last resort."

"There is no need to attack targets in Iran itself," he said. "I continue to believe that any kind of military action inside Iran itself would be a very last resort."

    Gates sees fewer troops in 2007 if Iraq plan works, R, 12.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2007-01-12T182443Z_01_N09191468_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-USA.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C2-TopNews-newsOne-2

McCain Defends Bush's Iraq Strategy

January 12, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:20 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sen. John McCain defended President Bush's Iraq plan on Friday as a difficult but necessary move, parting company with lawmakers questioning the wisdom of the military build up.

''I believe that together these moves will give the Iraqis and Americans the best chance of success,'' said McCain, R-Ariz., a leading presidential contender for 2008.

McCain also took a shot at Democrats who say the United States must bring some troops home within four to six months.

''I believe these individuals ... have a responsibility to tell us what they believe are the consequences of withdrawal in Iraq,'' he said. ''If we walk away from Iraq, we'll be back, possibly in the context of a wider war in the world's most volatile region.''

McCain spoke at the Senate Armed Services Committee, where Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spent a second day on Capitol Hill defending the president's strategy.

Gates and Pace on Friday assured lawmakers there were no immediate plans to attack targets in Iran. In his speech this week on Iraq, Bush vowed to disrupt Iran's aid to insurgents in Iraq and ''destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.''

Bush's comments refer ''strictly to operations inside the territory of Iraq, not crossing the border,'' Gates said, later adding that all options, however, must remain on the table.

Despite pointed questions from Levin and other Democrats, the testimony of the two top officials drew considerably less consternation than Thursday's testimony from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., told Rice that he feared Bush's plan would be the worst foreign policy blunder since the Vietnam War.

On the Senate Armed Services Committee are several staunch Bush supporters, including John Cornyn of Texas, Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia. In addition to McCain, committee members Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., support sending more troops to Iraq.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and the panel's new chairman, said that deepening America's commitment in Iraq would be a grave mistake. Bush wants to add 21,500 more U.S. troops to the 132,000 already there.

''Increasing the number of U.S. forces in Iraq is flawed strategy because it is based on a flawed premise that there is a military solution to the violence and instability in Iraq, when what is needed is a political solution among the Iraqi leaders and factions,'' Levin said.

Repeating an admission that Bush made in his nationally televised address on Wednesday, Gates told the senators, ''Mistakes certainly have been made by the United States in Iraq. However we got to this moment, the stakes now are incalculable.''

Bush on Friday sought support for his new Iraq military build up in telephone calls to Jordan's King Abdullah II and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Late Thursday, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, led by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, warned against sending more troops for long. The group had called for withdrawal of U.S. combat troops by early 2008, but said that a temporary troop increase might be justified under some circumstances.

''We are encouraged by the president's statement that 'America's commitment is not open-ended' and Secretary Gate's statement that the addition of 21,000 troops would be viewed as a temporary surge,'' Baker and Hamilton said in a statement. ''The violence in Baghdad will not end without national reconciliation.''

Republican Sens. John Warner and Susan Collins said Friday they were gravely concerned about the fate of Iraq. Collins, R-Maine, asked Gates and Pace why the administration thinks the plan will work when past attempts have failed.

Warner said the goal must be to keep Iraq from imploding and being ''scattered to the winds'' in the region.

''I don't call it victory. I don't call it a win,'' said Warner, R-Va. ''But to enable this government and its people to continue to seek their own level of democracy and freedom.''

Gates said he believes additional troops in Iraq might work because of promises made by Iraqis to reach a political settlement and work toward rebuilding the country.

''If they fail to do those things, then I think it's incumbent upon the administration and incumbent upon me to recommend looking at whether this is the right strategy,'' Gates said.

During a series of Capitol Hill hearings Thursday, the new strategy was slammed as desperate and even dumb, and many expressed frustration that there was no stated time limit on the build up or a defined threat that the U.S. would pull out if the Iraqis don't perform as promised.

Democratic leaders in the House and Senate intend to hold votes within a few weeks on Bush's revised Iraq policy. The nonbinding resolutions would be one way to show their opposition to any troop buildup and force Republicans to make a choice.

Associated Press writers Anne Gearan, Jennifer Loven, Tom Raum and Barry Schweid contributed to this report.

    McCain Defends Bush's Iraq Strategy, NYT, 12.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Iraq.html

Tears Are Shed

at the White House

for a Marine’s Bravery in Iraq

January 12, 2007
The New York Times
By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ

WASHINGTON, Jan. 11 — In April 2004, Cpl. Jason L. Dunham, an ordinary recruit from a small town in upstate New York, did something extraordinary: he threw himself on a grenade to shield two men in his unit as they battled insurgents on a road in Iraq.

On Thursday, President Bush gave Corporal Dunham, who was 22 when he died, the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military award, presenting it to his mother and father in a somber East Room ceremony attended by his relatives and friends.

In an interview on Tuesday, as she was preparing to make the six-hour trip to Washington for the ceremony, Corporal Dunham’s mother, Debra, said she wished her son could “receive it himself.” “But we will receive it for him, and he will be watching us do that,” she said.

Corporal Dunham, who was a rifle squad leader in the Marines, is the second soldier to receive the medal for service in the current war in Iraq. Prior to that, the 1993 conflict in Mogadishu, Somalia, was the last to produce Medal of Honor recipients; two Delta Army Force soldiers died protecting a downed helicopter pilot there in actions later depicted in the movie “Black Hawk Down.”

In presenting the award to the Dunhams, President Bush, who on Wednesday night told the nation he would send 20,000 additional troops to Iraq, cited Corporal Dunham’s uncommon valor and said that he “gave his own life so that the men under his command might live.”

The president shed tears during the ceremony.

“He was the guy who signed on for an extra two months in Iraq so he could stay with his squad,” President Bush said. “As he explained it, he wanted to make sure that everyone makes it home alive. Corporal Dunham took that promise seriously and would give his own life to make it good.”

Corporal Dunham’s story is of a young man from a little-known town called Scio, about 80 miles southeast of Buffalo, who saw the military not just as a way to serve the country but also as an opportunity to pay for college.

He had just enrolled at a college near his battalion’s base in Twentynine Palms, Calif., before being deployed to Iraq, where his actions placed him in a “select group” of the nation’s military heroes, as President Bush put it on Thursday.

Mr. Bush approved Corporal Dunham’s nomination for the medal in November, ending a two-year process that required his commanding officers to investigate his actions in battle.

Since the medal was created during the Civil War, it has been bestowed on more than 3,400 soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and coast guardsmen, according to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society in Mount Pleasant, S.C.

While recipients include the likes of Theodore Roosevelt (for his charge up San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War), it was not entirely an elite medal at first. But the requirements were tightened and only slightly more than 840 medals have been awarded since World War II.

In his hometown of Scio, with a population of about 2,000, Corporal Dunham was considered an accomplished athlete in high school. His batting average in a single season, .414, still stands as a local league record.

His mother, a teacher, said that he was quietly generous and that she learned of one of his acts of kindness only after he had died. In a letter, a childhood friend described how Corporal Dunham went out of his way to console her when other children taunted her on a bus ride home.

“All he did was sit with her on the bus,” his mother recalled. “He had a quiet way about doing the right thing.”

After joining the Marines, he was chosen at 22 to become a squad leader with Kilo Company, Third Battalion, Seventh Marine Regiment in September 2003. His mother said he had wanted to continue his college education and also to take the New York State Police entrance exam once he returned from Iraq.

But the events of April 14, 2004, changed everything. That day, Corporal Dunham and his men were in the town of Karabilah, near the Syrian border, when they received reports that insurgents had ambushed a marine convoy. Corporal Dunham and his men boarded Humvees and headed toward the area, where they spotted a convoy of cars filled with Iraqis fleeing, according to various accounts.

The patrol led by Corporal Dunham stopped the Iraqi convoy and began inspecting the vehicles for weapons. As Corporal Dunham inspected one vehicle, a man jumped out and grabbed him by the throat. Two other marines ran over to subdue the attacker, who dropped a grenade, according to the accounts. It was then that Corporal Dunham made a fateful decision: he threw his Kevlar helmet and held it down over the grenade. He died a few days later from his wounds .

In addition to his mother and his father, Daniel, Corporal Dunham is survived by two brothers and a sister: Justin, 23, Kyle, 18, and Katelyn, 14. For a family still deeply in grief, the award presented on Thursday seemed to bring some measure of relief.

“He will be recognized and memorialized in history,” his mother said. “He is in the company of remarkable men.”

    Tears Are Shed at the White House for a Marine’s Bravery in Iraq, NYT, 12.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/12/nyregion/12medal.html

In Baghdad,

Bush Policy Is Met With Resentment

January 12, 2007
The New York Times
By JOHN F. BURNS and SABRINA TAVERNISE

BAGHDAD, Jan. 11 — Iraq’s Shiite-led government offered only a grudging endorsement on Thursday of President Bush’s proposal to deploy more than 20,000 additional troops in an effort to curb sectarian violence and regain control of Baghdad. The tepid response immediately raised questions about whether the government would make a good-faith effort to prosecute the new war plan.

The Iraqi leader, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, failed to appear at a news conference and avoided any public comment. He left the government’s response to an official spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, who gave what amounted to a backhanded approval of the troop increase and emphasized that Iraqis, not Americans, would set the future course in the war.

Mr. Dabbagh said that the government’s objective was to secure the eventual withdrawal of American troops, and that for that to be possible there had to be security for Iraqis. “If this can be achieved by increasing either Iraqi or multinational forces,” he added, “the government, for sure, will not stand against it.”

Mr. Dabbagh suggested that much about the Bush plan depended on how circumstances in Iraq would evolve over the coming months — an echo, in its way, of senior Bush administration officials. They have implied that they might halt the month-by-month inflow of additional troops if they think Mr. Maliki is failing to meet the political and military benchmarks Mr. Bush identified as the Iraqi government’s part in making the new war plan work.

“The plan can be developed according to the needs,” Mr. Dabbagh said. Then he added tartly, “What is suitable for our conditions in Iraq is what we decide, not what others decide for us.”

The spokesman’s remarks, and a similarly dyspeptic tone that was adopted by Shiite politicians with close ties to Mr. Maliki, pointed to the double-bind Mr. Bush finds himself in. Faced with low levels of public support for his new military push and a Democratic leadership in Congress that has said it will fight him over it, he also confronts the uncomfortable prospect of foot-dragging in Baghdad over the troop increases and the benchmarks he has set for the Iraqis.

While senior officials in Washington have presented the new war plan as an American adaptation of proposals that were first put to Mr. Bush by Mr. Maliki when the two men met in the Jordanian capital of Amman in November, the picture that is emerging in Baghdad is quite different. What Mr. Maliki wanted, his officials say, was in at least one crucial respect the opposite of what Mr. Bush decided: a lowering of the American profile in the war, not the increase Mr. Bush has ordered.

These Iraqi officials say Mr. Maliki, in the wake of Mr. Bush’s setback in the Democratic sweep in November’s midterm elections, demanded that American troops be pulled back to the periphery of Baghdad and that the war in the capital, at least, be handed to Iraqi troops. The demand was part of a broader impatience among the ruling Shiites to be relieved from American oversight so as to be able to fight and govern according to the dictates of Shiite politics, not according to strictures from Washington.

What transpired, in Mr. Bush’s speech on Wednesday night, appears to have been a hybrid: a plan that aims at marrying the Maliki government’s urgency for a broader license to act with Mr. Bush’s determination to make what American officials here see as a last-chance push for success in Iraq on American terms. And that, as Mr. Bush made clear on Wednesday, implies objectives that will be difficult — many Iraqis say impossible — to square with Mr. Maliki’s goals.

The differences seemed clear on Thursday as Iraqis responded to Mr. Bush’s speech. In the streets of Baghdad, reactions followed, broadly, the familiar pattern in a city that is more and more divided on sectarian lines. Many Shiites said Iraq’s own security forces, which are predominantly Shiite, should be left to do the job of stabilizing the city, while many Sunnis, shocked by the violence of Shiite death squads in recent months, said they would welcome the Americans if they could rein the sectarian killing in.

Mr. Dabbagh, the government spokesman, emphasized the parts of the Bush plan that best suited the Maliki government’s political ambitions. He said the “good thing in this plan is that it determines that responsibility should be transferred from the Americans to the Iraqis.” This was a prime point with Mr. Bush, too, when he said that the role of American troops under the new plan would be to “help the Iraqis” secure neighborhoods in Baghdad, protect the local population and maintain security in areas that American and Iraqi forces have cleared.

Within hours of Mr. Bush’s speech, American commanders were meeting with their Iraqi counterparts in Baghdad to work out the details of a new command arrangement that would give Mr. Maliki a direct role in overseeing the new crackdown. The Iraqis named a commander for the operation, Lt. Gen. Aboud Gambar, a Shiite from southern Iraq who was a top general in Saddam Hussein’s army until the American-led invasion in 2003.

General Gambar will report directly to Mr. Maliki, outside the chain of command that runs through the Defense Ministry, which the Maliki government has long viewed as a bastion of American influence, and, because the defense minister is a Sunni, of resistance to Shiite control. General Gambar will have two deputies, one for the heavily Shiite east part of Baghdad, another for the mostly Sunni west part, and they will oversee nine new military districts, each assigned an Iraqi brigade.

As details of the Bush plan became known on Wednesday, Iraqi officials said that the new arrangements would give Iraqis operational control of the new push in Baghdad. But Mr. Dabbagh and others were quick to pull back on Thursday, acknowledging that Baghdad would remain under American operational control at least until later this year. American officials noted that American officers would be assigned to General Gambar’s headquarters, that an American battalion would be twinned with each Iraqi brigade and that every Iraqi unit, down to the company level, would have American military advisers.

If this fell a long way short of the plan for full Iraqi control in Baghdad that Mr. Maliki set out in November, his officials were at pains to say that the prime minister would decide the issue of most concern to the Iraqi leader: whether, and when, Iraqi and American forces would be allowed to move in force into Sadr City. That Shiite working-class district in northeast Baghdad is the stronghold of the Mahdi Army, the most powerful of the Shiite militias, and the main power base of Moktada al-Sadr, the Mahdi Army leader, whose parliamentary bloc sustains Mr. Maliki in office.

“It’s been agreed that in order to succeed they have to consult,” Mr. Dabbagh said — a bland requirement as he stated it — but some distance from the formula put forward at Washington briefings on the new plan. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, at a news conference on Wednesday, said that American and Iraqi troops would be free to go into “all parts of Baghdad, including Sadr City” and that one benchmark in the plan was that there would be no “political interference” with military operations or attempts to protect death squad leaders.

That appeared to be an allusion to the past American experience with Mr. Maliki, who has consistently refused to sanction major offensives in Sadr City. On at least one occasion, he intervened to secure the release of a man captured by American troops and identified by American commanders as a death squad leader with links to Mr. Sadr. Mr. Maliki’s argument has been that the solution to the problem of militias, including Mr. Sadr’s, must be political, not military, but he has simultaneously postponed any action on a new law to disarm and demobilize the militias.

One of Mr. Maliki’s political allies, Sheik Khalid al-Attiya, who is deputy speaker of the Iraqi Parliament, said Thursday that he expected the benchmarks set by Mr. Bush to take 6 to 12 months to be met. With American commanders in Baghdad saying they hope to have the main parts of the city stabilized by late summer — allowing American troops to be pulled back to bases outside the city as Mr. Maliki has demanded — the Americans seem likely to run out of patience with Mr. Maliki long before Mr. Attiya’s timetable plays out.

A Shiite political leader who has worked closely with the Americans in the past said the Bush benchmarks appeared to have been drawn up in the expectation that Mr. Maliki would not meet them. “He cannot deliver the disarming of the militias,” the politician said, asking that he not be named because he did not want to be seen as publicly criticizing the prime minister. “He cannot deliver a good program for the economy and reconstruction. He cannot deliver on services. This is a matter of fact. There is a common understanding on the American side and the Iraqi side.”

Views such as these — increasingly common among the political class in Baghdad — are often accompanied by predictions that Mr. Maliki will be forced out as the crisis over the militias builds. The Shiite politician who described him as incapable of disarming militias suggested he might resign; others have pointed to an American effort in recent weeks to line up a “moderate front” of Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish political leaders outside the government, and said that the front might be a vehicle for mounting a parliamentary coup against Mr. Maliki, with behind-the-scenes American support.

Hussein’s Will Sought No Mercy

CAIRO, Egypt, Jan. 11 (AP) — Hours before Saddam Hussein’s execution, the ousted Iraqi dictator asked his lawyers not to appeal for his life and accused the United States and Iran of collaborating to hang him, according to a copy of his will.

Mr. Hussein gave his chief lawyer, Khalil al-Dulaimi, the right to “decide whatever is related to me except appealing for the life of Saddam Hussein to any of the presidents, kings, Arabs or foreigners,” reads a copy of the will obtained by The Associated Press.

He also asked to be buried in either Ouja, his birthplace, or in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, where many of the country’s Sunni Arab insurgents are fighting, depending on his daughter Raghad’s decision. He was buried in Ouja.

    In Baghdad, Bush Policy Is Met With Resentment, NYT, 12.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/12/world/middleeast/12iraq.html

U.S. forces raid Iranian office in Iraq:

Tehran

Thu Jan 11, 2007 10:59 AM ET
The New York Times
By Shamal Aqrawi

ARBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. forces stormed an Iranian government representative's office in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil early on Thursday and arrested five people, including diplomats and staff, Iranian officials said.

The U.S. military made no direct mention of Iranians but in answer to a query issued a statement saying six "individuals" had been arrested during "routine" operations in the area.

As the overnight raid was in progress, President George W. Bush was vowing in a keynote address on American television to disrupt what he called the "flow of support" from Iran and Syria for insurgent attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini condemned the raid -- the second such operation in the past month as tensions between Washington and Tehran have mounted -- and said it was a violation of international law.

"The activity of all those people at our office in Arbil was legal and was in cooperation with and had the approval of the Iraqi side," Hosseini told Iran's state-owned Arabic language satellite channel Al-Alam.

"There is no justification for this behavior of the Americans, particularly because Iraqi officials were not informed about this move." Earlier Iranian reports had described the premises raided as a consular office.

In a statement, the U.S. military said it had detained six people around Arbil on suspicion of being "closely tied to activities targeting Iraqi and coalition forces".

"This operation was part of an ongoing effort by coalition forces targeting individuals involved in activities aimed at the killing of Iraqi citizens and Coalition forces," it said, adding that the suspects had surrendered without incident.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, while not commenting on the operation in Arbil, told Fox News:

"The president made very clear last night that we know that Iran is engaged in activities that are endangering our troops, activities that are destabilizing the young Iraqi government and that we're going to pursue those who may be involved in those activities."

TEHRAN DENIES MEDDLING

Witnesses in Arbil, the capital of the autonomous northern region of Kurdistan bordering Iran, said Kurdish security forces sealed off the area after the Americans left. The Kurdish regional government made no immediate comment.

The official Iranian IRNA news agency said documents and computers were seized after the 5 a.m. (0200 GMT) raid and Iranian state television said those arrested included "diplomats and staff".

U.S. officials have repeatedly accused non-Arab, Shi'ite Iran of interfering in Iraq, where the long-oppressed Shi'ite majority is now in power. Tehran denies U.S. charges of supplying Shi'ite militias with weapons.

In December, U.S. forces in Baghdad arrested a number of Iranians they said were suspected of planning attacks on Iraqi security forces, including diplomats who were later turned over to Iraqi authorities.

A British official told the BBC this month that the Iranians arrested in Baghdad were senior intelligence officers on a covert mission to influence the Iraqi government.

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh, whose boss Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki traveled last year to Tehran as part of a series of high-level contacts that have sealed a warming of relations between former enemies Iraq and Iran, said Baghdad had demanded an explanation from Iran and Washington on the matter.

(Additional reporting by Edmund Blair)

    U.S. forces raid Iranian office in Iraq: Tehran, NYT, 11.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2007-01-11T155816Z_01_IBO130835_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-IRAN-RAID.xml&src=011107_1214_TOPSTORY_iraq_plan_questioned

Arabs see little hope for Bush's Iraq plan

Thu Jan 11, 2007 12:20 PM ET
Reuters
By Jonathan Wright

CAIRO (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush's plan to send 21,500 more troops will fail to bring peace to Iraq and could aggravate a conflict in which tens of thousands of people have already died, Arab analysts said on Thursday.

Bush, taking advice mainly from a small group of ideologues, has misunderstood the nature of the conflict and is wrong to think that a military solution is possible, they added.

A few analysts in the Gulf, where the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 was less unpopular than in the rest of the Arab world, said more troops might help, but it could also be too late.

Bush's plan, announced early on Thursday in the Middle East, overlooks or rejects policy options which the analysts said were essential -- dialogue with Iran and Syria, and a determined U.S. effort to tackle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"America is no longer in the driving seat. It has lost Iraq and adding a few thousands troops is not going to help because the situation is beyond fixing," said Abdel-Khaleq Abdullah, a political scientist in the United Arab Emirates.

Hassan Nafaa, professor of political science at Cairo University, said: "The Bush plan is based on many erroneous assumptions such as thinking that a military solution is possible. I think that is impossible."

"He has abandoned the classical American pragmatic approach. He considers that he has a vision but he is completely detached from the reality on the ground," he added.

Hilal Khashan, political scientist at the American University of Beirut, said extra troops would not make a difference and the Iraqi authorities could not impose order, as envisaged in Bush's plan.

"The Iraqi military has been a recruiting ground for militias and death squads. I can't see the Iraqi military helping to restore law and order. They are an expanded militia, a party to the conflict," he added.

The 21,500 extra troops will take the total U.S. force in Iraq to about 150,000, a troop level which the United States has already tried and which falls far short of the level which some military experts recommended at the time of the invasion.

WISHFUL THINKING

The Algerian newspaper Le Quotidien d'Oran said Washington would not have the means or political resources to disarm the militias, stop inter-confessional fighting or insurgent attacks against American troops.

Beirut-based commentator Rami Khouri said it was wishful thinking to imagine that putting in more troops, money and guns could turn things around, and could make them worse.

"I don't see how more or less doing the same as what you've done before but in a small and concentrated dose is going to achieve results," he said.

Most of the analysts, like their mainstream counterparts in the United States and Europe, said that the key to peace in Iraq must be a compromise between political representatives of the competing sectarian and ideological groups, coupled with a compromise between Iraq's competing neighbors.

Bush's approach, similar to his approach to al Qaeda and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is to give a high priority to force, with less emphasis on compromise or politics, they said.

Hamidreza Jalaiepour, a professor at Tehran University, said: "Bush's strategy ... has been to think about the Middle East and about Iraq and about anywhere else in terms of military action, in terms of military power ... His tone and the content of his speech was like before."

"What's happening in Iraq is not about the lack of boots on the ground. It's about the political situation that is spiraling out of control," added Fawaz Gerges, a visiting professor at the American University in Cairo.

In the Gulf, where the United States is seen as a counterweight to Iranian influence in Iraq, several commentators were more sympathetic to Bush's tactical adjustments.

Abdullah Bishara, president of the Kuwait-based Diplomatic Center for Strategic Studies, said more U.S. troops should have been sent long ago, but the move was better late than never.

"This will increase the effectiveness of the security measures, weaken the resistance, the daring of the terrorists and the opposition to the legitimate government," he said.

    Arabs see little hope for Bush's Iraq plan, R, 11.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2007-01-11T171951Z_01_L11851487_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-BUSH-ARABS.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L3-International+NewsNews-2

How Different Groups Feel About Iraq

January 11, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:27 p.m. ET
The New York Times

Demographics and details from the AP-Ipsos poll on Iraq, President Bush and the nation's direction. The poll was conducted by Ipsos, an international polling firm:

OVERALL: The publicly is strongly opposed to a troop increase. Only 26 percent of Americans favor sending more troops to Iraq and 70 percent oppose. Equally high skepticism: 25 percent think sending more troops will help stabilize the situation in Iraq, 70 percent don't think so. Only 35 percent now think the U.S. made the right decision in going to war in Iraq; 62 percent say it was a mistake. This is a new low; in June 2006, 38 percent called it the right decision and 59 percent said it was a mistake. That's a reversal of opinion since December 2004, when 64 percent said the war was the right decision and only 34 percent called it a mistake.

BUSH JOB APPROVAL: Bush's overall job approval rating, 32 percent compared to 33 percent a month ago, is at a new low in AP-Ipsos polling. Last month's slip to 38 percent approval for Bush's handling of the economy may have been a blip; that number is back to 43 percent.

CONGRESS APPROVAL: The job approval rating for Congress is up to 32 percent approval from 27 percent last month. Where in the past, Democrats used to have a much less favorable view of Congress than Republicans, now Republicans and Democrats are about even on the percentage who approve/disapprove of Congress. Just over three in 10 Republicans, 32 percent, approve and 28 percent of Democrats approve.

SENDING MORE TROOPS: Republicans are divided on sending more troops to Iraq. About half, 52 percent of Republicans, favor sending more troops, while 42 percent oppose the idea. Democrats, on the other hand, overwhelmingly oppose sending more troops to Iraq. 87 percent of Democrats oppose sending more troops. A majority of some key Republican constituencies oppose sending more troops, including white evangelical Christians, 60 percent, and self-described conservatives, 56 percent.

Republicans are more supportive of the original decision to go to war in Iraq, with 64 percent saying the United States made the right decision in going to war. Eighty-four percent of Democrats say the country made a mistake in going to war in Iraq. And 62 percent of Republicans think it is likely that a stable, democratic government will be established in Iraq, while 77 percent of Democrats think that is an unlikely outcome.

Women, minorities and young people were most likely to oppose sending more troops. Three-fourths of women, 75 percent, oppose sending more troops to Iraq, compared with 65 percent of men. Seventy-nine percent of those under 35 years of age oppose sending more troops, while 65 percent of those 35 and older oppose the idea. Eighty percent of minorities oppose sending more troops, compared with 65 percent of whites. Those most likely to favor sending more troops include men over 45 years of age, 39 percent; men with some college education but without a college degree, 42 percent; and suburban men, 38 percent.

Analysis by AP Manager of News Surveys Trevor Tompson, AP News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius and AP director of polling Mike Mokrzycki.

    How Different Groups Feel About Iraq, NYT, 11.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Iraq-AP-Poll-Glance.html

Gates, Rice

try to line up support for Iraq plan

Updated 1/11/2007 12:32 PM ET
USA Today
Staff and wire reports

WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON — Democratic leaders sharply criticized President Bush's proposal to send 21,500 new troops to Iraq even as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and new Defense Secretary Robert Gates fanned out across the capital today to rally support for the strategy.

Both officials, speaking one day after the president presented his new plan, said Bush's new strategy must succeed.

"Given what is at stake, failure in Iraq is not an option," Gates, joined by Rice at a White House briefing, told reporters.

"All Americans know that the stakes in Iraq are enormous, and we all share the belief that the situation is currently unacceptable," Rice said. "On this we are united."

But Democratic leaders made it clear that they were not swayed by the president's address.

"I can't in good conscience support the president's plan," Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., said as Rice appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations committee.

He said it was critical that any plan by the president must win broad, bipartisan support.

"No foreign policy can be sustained in this country without the informed consent of the American people," Biden said. "They've got to sign on. I just hope it's not too late."

On the Senate floor, Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said "putting more U.S. combat forces into the middle of a civil war is a mistake." Reid said that in choosing to escalate the war "the president virtually stands alone."

Some Republicans were also questioning the president's new plan. Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, of Nebraska, in questioning Rice before the Senate hearing, said the proposal represented "the most dangerous foreign policy blunder since Vietnam, if it is carried out."

At the same time, Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who supports the president's policy, raised the specter of a filibuster to block any Democratic attempt to pass a non-binding resolution expressing disapproval of the plan.

"Obviously, it will ... require 60 votes," McConnell said. McConnell's threat underscored that at least some GOP leaders are still willing to stand up for the president in the battle over Iraq policy

Gates and Rice made it clear that the administration has warned Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki the Iraqi government that it must move quickly on the military and political front to stabilize the country.

"I think he knows that his government is in a sense on borrowed time, not just in terms of the American people, but the Iraqi people," Rice told the Senate hearing.

But she added that she was confident that the prime minister would meet his pledge to bring enough Iraqi troops to Baghdad to shoulder the bulk of the fighting.

In terms of how long new U.S. troops will have to stay, Gates said: "we'll have to see."

"It's viewed as a temporary surge, but I think no one has a really clear idea of how long that might be," he said.

Gates added: "If this strategy is successful, over time we will see a lessening of violence in Baghdad."

Asked if the new U.S. and Iraqi offensive would go after Muqtada al-Sadr, the anti-U.S. radical Shiite cleric, Gates said, "All lawbreakers are susceptible to being detained or taken care of in this campaign."

Sadr is a key ally of al-Maliki.

Gates also told reporters that he is recommending an overall increase in the military of 92,000 soldiers and Marines over the next five years, bringing the overall total to 202,000 in Marines and 547,000 in the Army worldwide. Bush said last month that he would propose extra troops for the armed forces, which have been strained by the protracted wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Gates also said that to ease the strain on U.S. forces in Iraq, he would have to cycle some reserve units back to the war zone faster than current Pentagon policy, which is to mobilize those units for a year after at least five years of being inactive.

Gates said today's "global demands" made that change necessary, but said it would "allow us to move closer to removing the stress on the total force."

Contributing: The Associated Press

    Gates, Rice try to line up support for Iraq plan, UT, 1.11.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-01-11-iraq-rice-gates_x.htm

Robert Fisk: Bush's new strategy

- the march of folly

So into the graveyard of Iraq,
George Bush, commander-in-chief,
is to send another 21,000 of his soldiers.
The march of folly is to continue...

Published: 11 January 2007
The New York Times

There will be timetables, deadlines, benchmarks, goals for both America and its Iraqi satraps. But the war against terror can still be won. We shall prevail. Victory or death. And it shall be death.

President Bush's announcement early this morning tolled every bell. A billion dollars of extra aid for Iraq, a diary of future success as the Shia powers of Iraq ­ still to be referred to as the "democratically elected government" ­ march in lockstep with America's best men and women to restore order and strike fear into the hearts of al-Qa'ida. It will take time ­ oh, yes, it will take years, at least three in the words of Washington's top commander in the field, General Raymond Odierno this week ­ but the mission will be accomplished.

Mission accomplished. Wasn't that the refrain almost four years ago, on that lonely aircraft carrier off California, Bush striding the deck in his flying suit? And only a few months later, the President had a message for Osama bin Laden and the insurgents of Iraq. "Bring 'em on!" he shouted. And on they came. Few paid attention late last year when the Islamist leadership of this most ferocious of Arab rebellions proclaimed Bush a war criminal but asked him not to withdraw his troops. "We haven't yet killed enough of them," their videotaped statement announced.

Well, they will have their chance now. How ironic that it was the ghastly Saddam, dignified amid his lynch mob, who dared on the scaffold to tell the truth which Bush and Blair would not utter: that Iraq has become "hell" .

It is de rigueur, these days, to recall Vietnam, the false victories, the body counts, the torture and the murders ­ but history is littered with powerful men who thought they could batter their way to victory against the odds. Napoleon comes to mind; not the emperor who retreated from Moscow, but the man who believed the wild guerrilleros of French-occupied Spain could be liquidated. He tortured them, he executed them, he propped up a local Spanish administration of what we would now call Quislings, al-Malikis to a man. He rightly accused his enemies ­ Moore and Wellington ­ of supporting the insurgents. And when faced with defeat, Napoleon took the personal decision "to relaunch the machine" and advanced to recapture Madrid, just as Bush intends to recapture Baghdad. Of course, it ended in disaster. And George Bush is no Napoleon Bonaparte.

No, I would turn to another, less flamboyant, far more modern politician for prophecy, an American who understood, just before the 2003 launch of Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq, what would happen to the arrogance of power. For their relevance this morning, the words of the conservative politician Pat Buchanan deserve to be written in marble:

"We will soon launch an imperial war on Iraq with all the 'On to Berlin' bravado with which French poilus and British tommies marched in August 1914. But this invasion will not be the cakewalk neoconservatives predict ... For a militant Islam that holds in thrall scores of millions of true believers will never accept George Bush dictating the destiny of the Islamic world ...

"The one endeavour at which Islamic peoples excel is expelling imperial powers by terror and guerrilla war. They drove the Brits out of Palestine and Aden, the French out of Algeria, the Russians out of Afghanistan, the Americans out of Somalia and Beirut, the Israelis out of Lebanon... We have started up the road to empire and over the next hill we will meet those who went before."

But George Bush dare not see these armies of the past, their ghosts as palpable as the phantoms of the 3,000 Americans ­ let us forget the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis ­ already done to death in this obscene war, and those future spirits of the dead still living amid the 20,000 men and women whom Bush is now sending to Iraq. In Baghdad, they will move into both Sunni and Shia "insurgent strongholds" ­ as opposed to just the Sunni variety which they vainly invested in the autumn ­ because this time, and again I quote General Odierno, it is crucial the security plan be " evenhanded". This time, he said, "we have to have a believable approach, of going after Sunni and Shia extremists".

But a "believable approach" is what Bush does not have. The days of even-handed oppression disappeared in the aftermath of invasion.

"Democracy" should have been introduced at the start ­ not delayed until the Shias threatened to join the insurgency if Paul Bremer, America's second proconsul, did not hold elections ­ just as the American military should have prevented the anarchy of April 2003. The killing of 14 Sunni civilians by US paratroopers at Fallujah that spring set the seal on the insurgency. Yes, Syria and Iran could help George Bush. But Tehran was part of his toytown "Axis of Evil", Damascus a mere satellite. They were to be future prey, once Project Iraq proved successful. Then there came the shame of our torture, our murders, the mass ethnic cleansing in the land we said we had liberated.

And so more US troops must die, sacrificed for those who have already died. We cannot betray those who have been killed. It is a lie, of course. Every desperate man keeps gambling, preferably with other men's lives.

But the Bushes and Blairs have experienced war through television and Hollywood; this is both their illusion and their shield.

Historians will one day ask if the West did not plunge into its Middle East catastrophe so blithely because not one member of any Western government ­ except Colin Powell, and he has shuffled off stage ­ ever fought in a war. The Churchills have gone, used as a wardrobe for a prime minister who lied to his people and a president who, given the chance to fight for his country, felt his Vietnam mission was to defend the skies over Texas.

But still he talks of victory, as ignorant of the past as he is of the future.

Pat Buchanan ended his prophecy with imperishable words: "The only lesson we learn from history is that we do not learn from history."

The Bush plan, and the question of withdrawal

What Bush says

20,000 troops increase

Mistake of not sending sufficient troops must be rectified. Troops stabilise Baghdad and reinforce Anbar province, on condition that Iraqis take on Shia militias

$1bn reconstruction aid

Fresh funds will help create jobs and stimulate economy to show Iraqis there can be a peace dividend, and friendly Middle East states should help out too

Pullout

US commitment to Iraq is not open-ended but no timetable for troop withdrawal, even though US troops are expected to hand control to Iraqis by November

What Congress says

20,000 troops increase

Troop build-up is a mistake. House expected to vote on increase, Senate legislation forces Bush to seek congressional approval but neither move could block troop deployment

$1bn reconstruction aid

Don't throw good money after bad. US has squandered billions since the invasion and Democrats plan investigation. Millions of dollars 'overpaid' by Pentagon to Iraq contractors

Pullout

Bush has not learnt the lesson of November's mid-term elections which gave Democrats control of the House and Senate on the platform of a phased withdrawal from Iraq

What Baker says

20,000 troops increase

Up to 20,000 military trainers and troops embedded into and supporting Iraqi army, while combat troops drawn down to avoid increase in total numbers

$1bn reconstruction aid

US economic assistance should be boosted to $5bn per year. US should take anti-corruption measures by posting oil contracts on the internet for outside scrutiny

Pullout

All US combat troops not needed for force protection should be out of Iraq by the first quarter of 2008

Likely outcome

20,000 troops increase

Escalation of conflict

Money will be wasted, with official corruption in Iraq said to drain $7bn a year

Pullout

Troop surge could disguise 'cut and run' depending on the circumstances in both Iraq and America

    Robert Fisk: Bush's new strategy - the march of folly, I, 11.1.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2144057.ece

Editorial

The Real Disaster

January 11, 2007
The New York Times

President Bush told Americans last night that failure in Iraq would be a disaster. The disaster is Mr. Bush’s war, and he has already failed. Last night was his chance to stop offering more fog and be honest with the nation, and he did not take it.

Americans needed to hear a clear plan to extricate United States troops from the disaster that Mr. Bush created. What they got was more gauzy talk of victory in the war on terrorism and of creating a “young democracy” in Iraq. In other words, a way for this president to run out the clock and leave his mess for the next one.

Mr. Bush did acknowledge that some of his previous tactics had failed. But even then, the president sounded as if he were an accidental tourist in Iraq. He described the failure of last year’s effort to pacify Baghdad as if the White House and the Pentagon bore no responsibility.

In any case, Mr. Bush’s excuses were tragically inadequate. The nation needs an eyes-wide-open recognition that the only goal left is to get the U.S. military out of this civil war in a way that could minimize the slaughter of Iraqis and reduce the chances that the chaos Mr. Bush unleashed will engulf Iraq’s neighbors.

What it certainly did not need were more of Mr. Bush’s open-ended threats to Iran and Syria.

Before Mr. Bush spoke, Americans knew he planned to send more troops to pacify lawless Baghdad. Mr. Bush’s task was to justify that escalation by acknowledging that there was no military solution to this war and outlining the political mission that the military would be serving. We were waiting for him to detail the specific milestones that he would set for the Iraqis, set clear timelines for when they would be expected to meet them, and explain what he intended to do if they again failed.

Instead, he said he had warned the Iraqis that if they didn’t come through, they would lose the faith of the American people. Has Mr. Bush really not noticed that the American people long ago lost faith in the Iraqi government — and in him as well? Americans know that this Iraqi government is captive to Shiite militias, with no interest in the unity, reconciliation and democracy that Mr. Bush says he wants.

Mr. Bush said yet again that he wanted the Iraqi government to step up to the task of providing its security, and that Iraq needed a law on the fair distribution of oil money. Iraq’s government needs to do a lot more than that, starting with disarming the sectarian militias that are feeding the civil war and purging the police forces that too often are really death squads. It needs to offer amnesty to insurgents and militia fighters willing to put down their weapons. It needs to do those things immediately.

Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government has heard this list before. But so long as Mr. Bush is willing to back that failed government indefinitely — enabling is the psychological term — Iraq’s leaders will have no reason to move against the militias and more fairly share power with the Sunni minority.

Mr. Bush did announce his plan for 20,000 more troops, and the White House trumpeted a $1 billion contribution to reconstruction efforts. Congress will debate these as if they are the real issues. But they are not. Talk of a “surge” ignores the other 132,000 American troops trapped by a failed strategy.

We have argued that the United States has a moral obligation to stay in Iraq as long as there is a chance to mitigate the damage that a quick withdrawal might cause. We have called for an effort to secure Baghdad, but as part of the sort of comprehensive political solution utterly lacking in Mr. Bush’s speech. This war has reached the point that merely prolonging it could make a bad ending even worse. Without a real plan to bring it to a close, there is no point in talking about jobs programs and military offensives. There is nothing ahead but even greater disaster in Iraq.

    The Real Disaster, NYT, 11.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/opinion/11thu1.html

White House Pushes Hard on Iraq Plan

January 11, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON, Jan. 11 -- President Bush’s top aides pushed hard today for Mr. Bush’s Iraq strategy and unveiled plans to add 92,000 soldiers and marines to the overall strength of the United States military and help Iraqis far beyond Baghdad’s borders.

The addition of 65,000 soldiers to the Army and 27,000 to the Marine Corps, to be accomplished over five years, was announced by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates the morning after Mr. Bush told the American people that about 20,000 more troops are being sent to Iraq.

And the move to “further decentralize and diversify” the American civilian presence in Iraq was announced by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as the administration moved to persuade a skeptical Congress to embrace an intensified military, economic and military offensive to pacify Iraq and strengthen its frail, fledgling democracy.

“Success in Iraq relies on more than military efforts,” Ms. Rice said at a news conference. “It requires robust political and economic progress.”

It also depends on diplomacy, Ms. Rice said, reiterating that the United States would bring renewed pressure on Iran and Syria, both regarded by Washington as interlopers in Iraq.

Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who appeared with the two Cabinet members, said a look at the casualty lists in Iraq should convince anyone that the Iraqis are doing their share to eradicate terrorists and sectarian killers.

Immediately after their joint news conference, the secretaries and General Pace headed to Capitol Hill, where Mr. Gates and General Pace were to testify before the House Armed Services Committee and Ms. Rice was appearing before the Senate and House foreign relations panels.

The Cabinet members and the general were in line for sharp, perhaps hostile questions from the Democratic-controlled committees, if the reaction to Mr. Bush’s Iraq speech of Wednesday night was any indicator. For instance, Representative Ike Skelton of Missouri, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, called Mr. Bush’s plan to send just over 20,000 more troops “three and a half years later and several hundred thousand troops short” and said it was high time for Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to show that he is as committed as the United States to a new, peaceful Iraq.

Ms. Rice said she has appointed Tim Carney, a former ambassador to Haiti, to the new position of coordinator for “Iraq transitional assistance” to work with Iraqis on economic and development projects.

“Iraq is central to the future of the Middle East,” Ms. Rice said at the news conference.

Ms. Rice said it is essential to get Americans “out of the embassy, out of the Green Zone,” the heavily fortified sector in Baghdad, and into the countryside to help Iraqis build their country.

Mr. Gates said it would be obvious fairly soon if Iraqis are indeed living up to their obligations, and that the depth of their commitment would be a factor in how long the temporary American troop increase would last.

At the same time, he said that Iraq would continue to be a very dangerous place, at least as long as Americans are, in effect, “the prisoners of anyone who wants to strap on a bomb and blow themselves up.” But given the enormous stakes, Mr. Gates said, “failure in Iraq is not an option.”

    White House Pushes Hard on Iraq Plan, NYT, 11.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/world/middleeast/11cnd-capital.html

Democrats Plan

to Fight Expansion of Troops

January 11, 2007
The New York Times
By JEFF ZELENY

WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 — The new Democratic leaders of Congress on Wednesday accused President Bush of ignoring strong American sentiment against the war in Iraq and said they would build a bipartisan campaign against his proposed military expansion.

Democrats continued to debate how assertively to confront Mr. Bush over his plan. House Democrats said that they would seek to attach conditions to the spending request Mr. Bush will send to Congress soon and that those conditions, if not met, could lead Congress to limit or halt money for wider military operations.

“We are going to fund the troops that are there,” said Brendan Daly, an aide to Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House speaker. “Any escalation of troops we will subject to scrutiny. We will have hearings, and we will set benchmarks that the president must meet to obtain this money.”

Any challenge to Mr. Bush over paying for the additional troops is probably months away. House Democrats said their first step would be to vote on a nonbinding resolution opposing Mr. Bush’s plan. The Senate is planning to vote on a similar resolution as soon as next week.

“The president’s response to the challenge of Iraq is to send more American soldiers into the crossfire of a civil war,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, responding for his party immediately after Mr. Bush spoke. “The escalation of this war is not the change the American people called for in the last election.”

The criticism from Democrats resounded in near unison on Wednesday evening, a rare moment for a party that for more than four years has struggled to present a unified policy on Iraq.

Of more immediate concern to the administration was the bleak assessment from some Republicans.

Senator Norm Coleman, Republican of Minnesota, delivered a strong rebuke to the plan in a speech on the Senate floor only hours before the presidential address. A recent trip to Iraq, Mr. Coleman said, confirmed his fears that Baghdad was besieged by irreparable sectarian violence.

“I refuse to put more American lives on the line in Baghdad without being assured that the Iraqis themselves are willing to do what they need to do to end the violence of Iraqi against Iraqi,” said Mr. Coleman, who is up for re-election in 2008.

Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, one of the administration’s staunchest allies on Iraq, disagreed. Public opinion was not entirely against the war, Mr. McCain said, adding, “Americans want to be told how we can prevail in Iraq and how we can get out.”

Even though Mr. Bush proposed a bipartisan Congressional working group on Iraq, he set the stage for a major confrontation with Democrats, who won the majority last fall after the lingering war soured the climate for Republicans. The clash begins Thursday as Democrats open a series of hearings to scrutinize the president’s approach on Iraq.

“In the coming days and weeks, we should undertake respectful debate and deliberation over this new plan,” said Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, a Democrat turned independent singled out by Mr. Bush for recommending a new bipartisan group focusing on the war on terror. “Excessive partisan division and rancor at home only weakens our will to prevail in this war.”

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, whose potential presidential ambitions are complicated by her previous support for the war, rejected the proposal to send more American troops to Iraq. Mrs. Clinton said more pressure should be placed on the Iraqi government to begin solving its own crisis.

“The president simply has not gotten the message sent loudly and clearly by the American people, that we desperately need a new course,” she said. “The president has not offered a new direction, instead he will continue to take us down the wrong road, only faster.”

The White House had asked Republicans to reserve judgment on the Iraq strategy — or to at least stay silent — but several Republicans distanced themselves from the president Wednesday. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, made calls and held meetings in an effort to stem political damage.

“This is a dangerously wrongheaded strategy that will drive America deeper into an unwinnable swamp at a great cost,” said Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska. “It is wrong to place American troops in the middle of Iraq’s civil war.”

Senator Gordon H. Smith of Oregon, who was among the first Republicans to drop his support of the administration’s Iraq policy, said he was opposed to a troop increase. “This is the president’s Hail Mary pass,” Mr. Smith said. “Now it is up to the Iraqi army to catch the ball.”

Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, said he had reservations about increasing troops, but declined to condemn the president’s plan until Congress had had the opportunity to study it.

“Blow the whistle, time out, until Congress has done its homework and its analysis,” Mr. Warner said. “But each day that goes by, all of us are pained by the casualties. We cannot dither about.”

Six hours before the president delivered his address, Congressional leaders from both parties were called to the White House for a briefing. Democrats dismissed the meeting as a last-minute procedural briefing, saying the president had failed to consult with them, as he promised to only a week ago.

Anne E. Kornblut contributed reporting.

    Democrats Plan to Fight Expansion of Troops, NYT, 11.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/washington/11reaction.html

Military Analysis

Bid to Secure Baghdad

Relies on Troops and Iraqi Leaders

January 11, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON

WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 — With his new plan to secure Iraq, President Bush is in effect betting that Iraqi leaders are committed to building a multisectarian state, and his strategy will stand or fall on that assumption.

The plan differs in several respects from the faltering effort to bring stability to Baghdad that began last summer. It calls for a much larger American force. There are to be no havens for renegade militias. And, importantly, Iraqi security forces throughout the city are to be put under the direct control of a new Iraqi commander — and backed by American Army battalions.

But the new plan depends on the good intentions and competence of a Shiite-dominated Iraqi government that has not demonstrated an abundant supply of either.

“Everybody raises a question about the intentions and capability of this government,” a senior American official said, referring to the Iraqi government. “Is this a government that really is a unity government or is it in fact pursuing, either explicitly or implicitly, a Shia hegemony agenda?”

It was just in August that the Bush administration hailed the advent of “Operation Together Forward II,” a plan that was intended to provide security to Baghdad’s violence-ridden neighborhoods but did not stop the rise in sectarian violence.

Based on the assumption that the establishment of security in Baghdad was a bedrock condition for the broader push to stabilize the country, that plan called for American and Iraqi forces to clear contested neighborhoods in the capital, which would then be held with Iraqi police officers. That was to be followed to an energetic effort to fix sewage lines and generally rebuild neighborhoods, an effort intended to win public support and help remedy Iraq’s chronically high unemployment.

That plan was backed by only modest resources from the start.

With an increase of only 7,000 American troops, the number of Americans taking part in the operation was only about 15,000. The Iraqis sent only two of the six battalions promised as reinforcements, bringing the number of Iraqi soldiers involved to 9,600. Some 30,000 Iraqi policemen were to help secure Iraqi neighborhoods, but many police units were infiltrated by the Shiite militias they were supposed to control or proved ineffectual.

Much of the reconstruction that was to have been carried out by the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government was never undertaken or was directed away from Sunni areas.

The failure of the old plan led to a new strategy. Instead of emphasizing the turning over of security responsibilities to the Iraqi forces as quickly as possible so American troops could begin to withdraw, a new priority was to be put on protecting the Iraqi population.

The new strategy required more American forces, and the generals initially had different views as to how large the American troop reinforcement should be.

Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top American commander in Iraq, and Gen. John P. Abizaid, the leader of the United States Central Command, who have long argued that sending too many troops would put off the day when the Iraqis would take responsibility for their own security, initially had a more modest approach. According to a senior administration official, they thought two additional American combat brigades would be sufficient for Baghdad. A third would be held in reserve in Kuwait and two more would be on call in the United States.

But Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, whom Mr. Bush has selected to replace General Casey, wanted to ensure that he had enough troops to carry out what by all accounts will be an extremely challenging mission. He sought a commitment that all five combat brigades would be sent.

Mr. Bush opted for the larger commitment. Five brigades are to be sent to improve security in the greater Baghdad area — an increase of about 17,500 troops that will double the American force involved in security operations there.

Beyond the capital, the force in Anbar, the volatile province in western Iraq that is the base for many Sunni insurgents and Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, will be expanded by about 4,000 marines. The Americans and the insurgents are essentially locked in a stalemate there, and some officers have long complained that the effort in the west is understrength. This reinforcement is intended to buttress the Americans’ ability to interrupt insurgent supply lines from Syria and to make it harder for the insurgents to concentrate their efforts on Baghdad.

Critics of the troop-increase plan have complained that 17,500 more troops are too few to control a capital of six million people. Supporters say that by concentrating these soldiers in crucial neighborhoods, along with the 15,000 American troops already involved in the operation, the reinforcement can be effective.

An unknown variable is the performance of the Iraqis. The Iraqis are to reinforce Baghdad with three more Iraqi Army brigades, bringing the total number of Iraqi brigades in the city to nine — or some 20,000 troops if the units are at full strength.

The Iraqi brigades, along with Iraqi National Police units and regular Iraqi police units, will be deployed in nine sectors of Baghdad, each under an Iraqi commander. In an innovation, an American battalion will be assigned to each sector, a way to stiffen the Iraqi forces and monitor them should some harbor sectarian agendas.

In carrying out the old operation, Americans conducted patrols from large American bases in and around the city. This time, according to Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the second-ranking American command in Iraq, some American troops will remain in contested areas “24/7” to deter death squads and insurgents from infiltrating the sectors once the neighborhoods have been cleared.

In explaining the genesis of the new strategy, administration officials described its formation as essentially the product of a process of elimination. Other options were discarded until the White House was left with what it considered to be the least bad choice in a difficult situation.

Strikingly, Mr. Bush in his speech did not exclude the risk of failure. After listing all the reasons the new plan has a better chance of succeeding than the old one, Mr. Bush stressed that he had informed Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki that the United States commitment to the new operation was not open-ended.

“If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people,” Mr. Bush said. “Now is the time to act.”

    Bid to Secure Baghdad Relies on Troops and Iraqi Leaders, NYT, 11.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/world/middleeast/11military.html

Promising Troops Where They Aren’t Really Wanted

January 11, 2007
The New York Times
By SABRINA TAVERNISE and JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, Jan. 10 — As President Bush challenges public opinion at home by committing more American troops, he is confronted by a paradox: an Iraqi government that does not really want them.

The Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has not publicly opposed the American troop increase, but aides to Mr. Maliki have been saying for weeks that the government is wary of the proposal. They fear that an increased American troop presence, particularly in Baghdad, will be accompanied by a more assertive American role that will conflict with the Shiite government’s haste to cut back on American authority and run the war the way it wants. American troops, Shiite leaders say, should stay out of Shiite neighborhoods and focus on fighting Sunni insurgents.

“The government believes there is no need for extra troops from the American side,” Haidar al-Abadi, a Parliament member and close associate of Mr. Maliki, said Wednesday. “The existing troops can do the job.”

It is an opinion that is broadly held among a Shiite political elite that is increasingly impatient, after nearly two years heading the government here, to exercise power without the constraining supervision of the United States. As a long-oppressed majority, the Shiites have a deep-seated fear that the power they won at the polls, after centuries of subjugation by the Sunni minority, could somehow be pried from their fingers once again.

There are misgivings, too, among other Shiite leaders, including some whom Mr. Bush has courted recently in a United States effort to form a bloc of politicians from the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities that can break Mr. Maliki’s political dependence on the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who leads the Mahdi Army, the most powerful of the Shiite militias that are at the heart of sectarian violence in Iraq.

Hadi al-Ameri, the leader of the security committee in Parliament and a close associate of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim — a prominent Shiite leader who met with Mr. Bush last month in Washington, and who has quietly supported the American push to reshape the political landscape in Baghdad — was unequivocal in his opposition to a troop increase.

“You can’t solve the problem by adding more troops,” said Redha Jawad Tahi, another Shiite member of Parliament from Mr. Hakim’s party. “The security should be in the hands of the Iraqis. The U.S. should be in a supporting role.”

Still, the Iraqis seem to be getting some of the increased authority they have been demanding. The plan Mr. Bush sketched out involved the appointment of an Iraqi commander with overall control of the new security crackdown in Baghdad, and Iraqi officers working under him who would be in charge of military operations in nine newly demarcated districts in the capital. The commanders would sit in a new office of commander in chief directly under the authority of Mr. Maliki. The arrangement could allow Mr. Maliki to circumvent the Ministry of Defense, which is controlled directly by the American military.

The arrangements appeared to suggest that Mr. Maliki could halt any push into Sadr City, the Mahdi Army stronghold that American commanders have been saying for months will have to be swept of extremist militia elements if there is to be any lasting turn toward stability in Baghdad. But Mr. Bush’s new plan appeared to have safeguards of its own to prevent sectarian agendas from gaining the upper hand. Bush administration officials said that Americans would be present in the commander in chief’s office and that an American Army battalion — 400 to 600 soldiers — would be stationed in each of the nine Baghdad military districts. That means Mr. Maliki may not have complete freedom of movement. In the past, American commanders have been reluctant to hand over operational control to the Iraqis, worried that Iraqi forces will be used as a weapon in a civil war.

Still, Mr. Abadi said that the Iraqis are expecting that the Americans will base themselves on the outskirts of Baghdad and that the Iraqis will take command of the city itself.

“There is a dialogue going on between the prime minister and Bush,” he said. “The U.S. agrees that the government must take command.”

Shiite suspicions of the American troop increase reflect a tectonic shift in the political realities here. Shiites, the principal victims of Saddam Hussein’s repression, had joined with Iraqi Kurds in hailing the American-led invasion in 2003, seeing it as opening their way to power. But once they consolidated their control through two elections in 2005, they began distancing themselves from the Americans, seeing their liberators increasingly as an impediment to the full control they craved.

By contrast, moderate Sunnis, who were deeply alienated by the American occupation at an earlier stage of the war, are now looking to Americans for protection, as Shiite militias have moved into Sunni neighborhoods in a deadly cycle of revenge. On Wednesday, moderate Sunni politicians hailed the idea of more American troops.

The Shiite leaders’ frustrations have grown in recent months as American commanders have retained their tight grip in Baghdad. While the Americans have argued for a strategy that places equal emphasis on going after Shiite and Sunni extremists, the Shiite leaders have insisted that the killing is rooted in the Sunni attempt to regain power through violence and that Shiite militias and revenge killings are an inevitable response.

American officials have warned that with lessening American oversight, Shiite leaders might shift to a sectarian strategy that punished Sunni insurgents but spared Shiite militias. The execution 11 days ago of Saddam Hussein, carried out in haste by the Maliki government over American urgings that it be delayed until the legal paperwork was completed, only reinforced such fears. With as many as 17,000 additional American troops in Baghdad, the American force level in the capital will rise above 30,000, and many of those, under the Bush plan, will be in American units that are twinned with Iraqi units, or in expanded teams of military advisers that are embedded with the Iraqis, down to the company level.

American generals have acknowledged that the twinning of American and Iraqi units, and the rapid increase in the number of American advisers, will serve the dual purpose of stiffening Iraqi combat performance and providing American commanders with early warning of any Iraqi operations that run counter to American objectives. In effect, the advisers will serve as canaries in Mr. Maliki’s mine, ensuring the American command will get early notice if Iraqi operations threaten to abandon the equal pursuit of Sunni and Shiite extremists in favor of a more sectarian emphasis on going after Sunnis alone.

But if that appeared to set the stage for future tensions between the Americans and the Iraqis, there was much else in the Bush plan that appeared to have been fashioned to avoid an early confrontation with the Maliki government. While the plan set out a range of political benchmarks for the Iraqi leader, it appeared to lack any timelines to force compliance on Mr. Maliki, who has shown in the past months that his willingness to pledge action on issues urged on him by the Americans is more than matched by his resourcefulness in finding ways to defer steps that might incur resistance among Shiite religious groups.

The wish list set out by White House officials was the same as the one the Americans laid down in May, when Mr. Maliki took office: an oil law that promises a fair distribution of future oil revenues between the Shiite and Kurdish populations that sit atop most of Iraq’s oil wealth, and the Sunnis whose heartland is mostly bereft of proven oil reserves; constitutional revisions that will assuage Sunni complaints that their interests were swept aside when Shiite and Kurdish voters approved the charter 15 months ago over Sunni objections; a new de-Baathification law that will sweep aside the barrier that thousands of Sunnis have found in seeking government jobs; and, most important, a militia law that will lay the groundwork for disarming and demobilizing armed groups like Mr. Sadr’s that challenge the government’s monopoly on armed force.

Hard-line Shiite politicians have been saying with growing vehemence that these American goals amount to an attempt to deprive them of the victory they won at the polls, and that instead of placating Sunni Arabs, a minority of about 20 percent in Iraq’s population of 27 million, the United States should stand aside and “allow the minority to lose.” For Americans, whose best road home lies in drawing the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds together, it amounts to a collision with the hard history of Iraq.

Only time will tell whether Mr. Maliki and his associates, with the trends in the war running against them, will take the “breathing space” that White House officials said the American troop reinforcements will give them to decide, at last, that history is theirs to command.

Bush Troubled by Video of Hanging

WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 — President Bush told a private gathering of television news anchors and hosts on Wednesday that he was deeply troubled by the handling of the execution of Saddam Hussein.

“I asked the president if he had seen the execution video of Saddam Hussein,” Brian Williams, the NBC News anchor, said on the “Nightly News.” “He indicated that he had and said in his view the way it was handled ranked just below the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in terms of mistakes made thus far in the war.”

A grainy unauthorized recording of the execution showed some of the guards in the room taunting Mr. Hussein moments before his hanging.

In Iraq on Wednesday, The Associated Press reported that Mr. Maliki has named Lt. Gen. Aboud Gambar, an Iraqi general who was taken prisoner of war by American forces during the 1991 Persian Gulf war, as the overall commander of his troops.

General Gambar, a Shiite, will have two assistants, one from the police and one from the army, Iraqi military officers said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the information. General Gambar will report directly to Mr. Maliki, The A.P. reported.

At least 91 people were killed or found dead in Iraq on Wednesday, Reuters reported.

A day after Iraqis and Americans battled insurgents in downtown Baghdad, the area was quiet and empty on Wednesday. The American military said it had detained 21 Iraqis in two raids there.

    Promising Troops Where They Aren’t Really Wanted, NYT, 11.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/world/middleeast/11iraq.html

Bush Adds Troops in Bid to Secure Iraq

January 11, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 — President Bush embraced a major tactical shift on Wednesday evening in the war in Iraq when he declared that the only way to quell sectarian violence there was to send more than 20,000 additional American troops into combat.

Yet in defying mounting pressure to begin troop withdrawals, the president reiterated his argument that the consequences of failure in Iraq were so high that the United States could not afford to lose.

In a speech to the nation, Mr. Bush conceded for the first time that there had not been enough American or Iraqi troops in Baghdad to halt the capital’s descent over the past year into chaos. In documents released just before the speech, the White House acknowledged that his previous strategy was based on fundamentally flawed assumptions about the power of the shaky Iraqi government.

Mr. Bush gave no indication that the troop increase would be short-lived, describing his new strategy as an effort to “change America’s course in Iraq,” and he said that “we must expect more Iraqi and American casualties” in the course of more intensive round-the-clock patrols in some of Baghdad’s most dangerous neighborhoods.

But Mr. Bush rekindled his argument that a withdrawal would doom to failure the American experiment in Iraq, touch off chaos throughout the Middle East, provide a launching pad for attacks in the United States, and embolden Iran to develop nuclear weapons. [Transcript, Page A18.]

In making that argument, the president rejected strategies advocated by newly empowered Democrats, restive Republicans and the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, describing them as a formula for deepening disaster. “To step back now would force a collapse of the Iraqi government,” Mr. Bush said from the White House library, a room that officials said had been chosen to create more of a sense of a conversation with an anxious American public, rather than the formal surroundings of the Oval Office.

“Such a scenario would result in our troops being forced to stay in Iraq even longer, and confront an enemy that is even more lethal,” Mr. Bush said. “If we increase our support at this crucial moment, and help the Iraqis break the current cycle of violence, we can hasten the day our troops begin coming home.”

He also offered his most direct acknowledgment of error in an American-led war that has lasted nearly four years and claimed more than 3,000 American lives. “Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility lies with me,” he said.

Yet for the first time, Mr. Bush faces what could become considerable political opposition to pursuing a war in which 132,000 Americans are already committed, even before the increases announced Wednesday.

Democrats in Congress are drawing up plans for what, at a minimum, could be a nonbinding resolution expressing opposition to the commitment of more forces to what many of them say they now believe is a losing fight. They will be joined by some Republicans, and may attempt other steps to block Mr. Bush from deepening the American commitment.

Not since Richard M. Nixon ordered American troops in Vietnam to invade Cambodia in 1970 has a president taken such a risk with an increasingly unpopular war. “For the safety of our people, America must succeed in Iraq,” Mr. Bush said in repeating an argument that he has used for nearly four years — that a retreat from the country before a decisive victory is won would provide terrorists a place in which to conduct new attacks on the United States and American targets.

As part of a campaign to market the new strategy, Mr. Bush’s aides insisted that the plan was largely created by the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

Yet Mr. Bush sounded less than certain of his support for the prime minister, who many in the White House and the military fear may be intending to extend Shiite power over the Sunnis, or could prove incapable of making good on his promises. “If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people and it will lose the support of the Iraqi people,” Mr. Bush declared.

He put it far more bluntly when leaders of Congress visited the White House earlier on Wednesday. “I said to Maliki this has to work or you’re out,” the president told the Congressional leaders, according to two officials who were in the room. Pressed on why he thought this strategy would succeed where previous efforts had failed, Mr. Bush shot back: “Because it has to.”

In his 20-minute address to the nation, Mr. Bush said that for the first time Iraq would take command-and-control authority over all of its own forces, and that while more American ground troops were being put into the field, they would take more of a background role. He said the Iraqi government had committed to a series of “benchmarks” — which included another 8,000 Iraqi troops and policemen in Baghdad, passage of long-delayed legislation to share oil revenues among Iraq’s sects and ethnic groups, and a $10 billion jobs and reconstruction program, financed by the Iraqis.

Until the summer, Mr. Bush had used the phrase “stay the course” to describe his approach in Iraq, and his decision to describe his new strategy as an effort to “change America’s course” appeared intended to distance himself from that old approach. An earlier plan unveiled in November 2005 had been titled “Strategy for Victory in Iraq,” but Mr. Bush used the word “victory” sparingly on Wednesday night, and then only to diminish expectations.

“The question is whether our new strategy will bring us closer to success,” he said. “I believe that it will,” saying that if it is successful it would result in a “functioning democracy” that “fights terrorists instead of harboring them.”

In some of his sharpest words of warning to Iran, Mr. Bush accused the Iranian government of “providing material support for attacks on American troops” and vowed to “seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies.”

He left deliberately vague the question of whether those operations would be limited to Iraq or conducted elsewhere, and said he had ordered the previously reported deployment of a new aircraft carrier strike group to the region, where it is in easy reach of Iranian territory.

Mr. Bush also announced that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would leave Friday for the region to build diplomatic support for the American effort in Iraq.

Robert M. Gates, who replaced Donald H. Rumsfeld as defense secretary, is among the new members of the Iraq team whom Mr. Bush has brought in to execute the new strategy.

In the past week, Mr. Bush has speeded up the removal of the American commander in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., who is to become the Army chief of staff, and replaced him with a counterinsurgency specialist, Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus , who has embraced the new plan. A new American ambassador has been nominated to Baghdad as well, to replace Zalmay Khalilzad, a Sunni of Afghan heritage, who has been nominated to represent the United States in the United Nations.

While Democrats and some Republicans who attacked Mr. Bush’s plan in advance of the speech have questioned sending more troops, others question whether the Bush plan is too small — and falls short of the numbers needed to make a difference in a violent capital of six million.

Nonetheless, one of Mr. Bush’s top advisers said at the White House on Wednesday that he expected that Senator John McCain, who has championed a significant, long-term increase in troops, would embrace the plan.

The adviser cited a section of the Iraq Study Group’s report that had said the bipartisan commission could “support a short-term redeployment or surge of American combat forces to stabilize Baghdad, or to speed up the training and equipping mission.”

But on the same page, the report warned that “adding more American troops could conceivably worsen those aspects of the security problem that are fed by the view that the United States presence is intended to be a long-term ‘occupation.’ ” Similarly, the group urged direct engagement with Iran and Syria; Mr. Bush rejected that approach.

Mr. Bush, one of his top aides said in an interview on Wednesday, simply concluded that “the Iraqi government was running out of time” and would collapse without additional help. Yet at the core of Mr. Bush’s new strategy, his own aides said, lies a tension between two objectives: Mr. Bush’s commitment to staying in Iraq until the country is a stable, self-sustaining democracy, and his vague threat to Mr. Maliki that the American presence would be cut short if Americans believed that the effort was failing.

His aides hinted that the administration had already come up with a “Plan B” in case the latest strategy failed, with one saying “there are other ways to achieve our objective.” But he would not describe that strategy, or say if it involved withdrawal, containment or the breakup of the country into sectarian entities.

The five-brigade increase in American forces will be accomplished by speeding up the deployment of four units already scheduled to go to Iraq, and by sending one additional brigade that was not scheduled to go. The total increase of American troops in Iraq amounts to roughly 20,000, including 4,000 marines who will be stationed in Anbar Province, the stronghold of elements of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and the Sunni insurgency. The increase in Iraqi troops and policemen amounts, officials said, to about 8,000.

The units heading into Iraq begin with a brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division, now in Kuwait, expected in Iraq before the end of the month, followed by a brigade of the First Infantry Division, based at Fort Riley, Kan., probably next month.

The Army is also planning to announce that the Second Infantry Division, Fourth Brigade, based in Fort Lewis, Wash., and the Third Infantry Division’s Second Brigade, based at Fort Stewart, Ga., and the Third Brigade, based at Fort Benning, Ga., should begin preparing to go to Iraq earlier than scheduled. Officials said that the total increase in troops could take three or four months.

The Bush plan also calls for delaying the departure from Iraq of a Minnesota National Guard brigade by four months, an official said. The unit had planned to leave in the spring and had not been notified that it would be staying longer, Lt. Col. Kevin Olson, a spokesman for the Minnesota Guard, said Wednesday.

The president is expected to submit a supplemental budget request that will include $5.6 billion for the new troop commitment and roughly $1.1 billion for new job commitments and aid.

    Bush Adds Troops in Bid to Secure Iraq, NYT, 11.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/world/middleeast/11prexy.html?hp&ex=1168578000&en=11cd4fdcb960957e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Transcript of President Bush’s Address to Nation on U.S. Policy in Iraq

January 11, 2007
The New York Times

Following is a transcript of President Bush’s address to the nation last night, as recorded by The New York Times:

Good evening. Tonight in Iraq, the Armed Forces of the United States are engaged in a struggle that will determine the direction of the global war on terror and our safety here at home. The new strategy I outline tonight will change America’s course in Iraq, and help us succeed in the fight against terror.

When I addressed you just over a year ago, nearly 12 million Iraqis had cast their ballots for a unified and democratic nation. The elections of 2005 were a stunning achievement. We thought that these elections would bring the Iraqis together, and that as we trained Iraqi security forces, we could accomplish our mission with fewer American troops.

But in 2006, the opposite happened. The violence in Iraq — particularly in Baghdad — overwhelmed the political gains the Iraqis had made. Al Qaeda terrorists and Sunni insurgents recognized the mortal danger that Iraq’s elections posed for their cause. And they responded with outrageous acts of murder aimed at innocent Iraqis. They blew up one of the holiest shrines in Shia Islam, the Golden Mosque of Samarra, in a calculated effort to provoke Iraq’s Shia population to retaliate. Their strategy worked. Radical Shia elements, some supported by Iran, formed death squads. And the result was a vicious cycle of sectarian violence that continues today.

The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people and it is unacceptable to me. Our troops in Iraq have fought bravely. They have done everything we have asked them to do. Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me.

It is clear that we need to change our strategy in Iraq. So my national security team, military commanders and diplomats conducted a comprehensive review. We consulted members of Congress from both parties, our allies abroad and distinguished outside experts. We benefited from the thoughtful recommendations of the Iraq Study Group — a bipartisan panel led by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Congressman Lee Hamilton. In our discussions, we all agreed that there is no magic formula for success in Iraq. And one message came through loud and clear: Failure in Iraq would be a disaster for the United States.

The consequences of failure are clear: Radical Islamic extremists would grow — would — would grow in strength and gain new recruits. They would be in a better position to topple moderate governments, create chaos in the region and use oil revenues to fund their ambitions. Iran would be emboldened in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Our enemies would have a safe haven from which to plan and launch attacks on the American people. On Sept. 11, 2001, we saw what a refuge for extremists on the other side of the world could bring to the streets of our own cities. For the safety of our people, America must succeed in Iraq.

The most urgent priority for success in Iraq is security, especially in Baghdad. Eighty percent of Iraq’s sectarian violence occurs within 30 miles of the capital. This violence is splitting Baghdad into sectarian enclaves and shaking the confidence of all Iraqis. Only Iraqis can end the sectarian violence and secure their people. And their government has put forward an aggressive plan to do it.

Our past efforts to secure Baghdad failed for two principal reasons: There were not enough Iraqi and American troops to secure neighborhoods that had been cleared of terrorists and insurgents. And there were too many restrictions on the troops we did have. Our military commanders reviewed the new Iraqi plan to ensure that it addressed these mistakes. They report that it does. They also report that this plan can work.

Now, let me explain the main elements of this effort: The Iraqi government will appoint a military commander and two deputy commanders for their capital. The Iraqi government will deploy Iraqi Army and National Police brigades across Baghdad’s nine districts. When these forces are fully deployed, there will be 18 Iraqi Army and National Police brigades committed to this effort — along with local police. These Iraqi forces will operate from local police stations — conducting patrols and setting up checkpoints and going door-to-door to gain the trust of Baghdad residents.

This is a strong commitment. But for it to succeed, our commanders say the Iraqis will need our help. So America will change our strategy to help the Iraqis carry out their campaign to put down sectarian violence and bring security to the people of Baghdad. This will require increasing American force levels. So I have committed more than 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq. The vast majority of them, five brigades, will be deployed to Baghdad. These troops will work alongside Iraqi units and be embedded in their formations. Our troops will have a well-defined mission: to help Iraqis clear and secure neighborhoods, to help them protect the local population and to help ensure that the Iraqi forces left behind are capable of providing the security that Baghdad needs.

Many listening tonight will ask why this effort will succeed when previous operations to secure Baghdad did not. Well, here are the differences: In earlier operations, Iraqi and American forces cleared many neighborhoods of terrorists and insurgents, but when our forces moved on to other targets, the killers returned. This time, we will have the force levels we need to hold the areas that have been cleared. In earlier operations, political and sectarian interference prevented Iraqi and American forces from going into neighborhoods that are home to those fueling the sectarian violence. This time, Iraqi and American forces will have a green light to enter these neighborhoods, and Prime Minister Maliki has pledged that political or sectarian interference will not be tolerated.

I have made it clear to the prime minister and Iraq’s other leaders that America’s commitment is not open-ended. If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people — and it will lose the support of the Iraqi people. Now is the time to act. The prime minister understands this. Here is what he told his people just last week: “The Baghdad security plan will not provide a safe haven for any outlaws, regardless of sectarian or political affiliation.”

This new strategy will not yield an immediate end to suicide bombings, assassinations or I.E.D. [improvised explosive device] attacks. Our enemies in Iraq will make every effort to ensure that our television screens are filled with images of death and suffering. Yet over time, we can expect to see Iraqi troops chasing down murderers, fewer brazen acts of terror, and growing trust and cooperation from Baghdad’s residents. When this happens, daily life will improve, Iraqis will gain confidence in their leaders and the government will have the breathing space it needs to make progress in other critical areas. Most of Iraq’s Sunni and Shia want to live together in peace, and reducing the violence in Baghdad will help make reconciliation possible.

A successful strategy for Iraq goes beyond military operations. Ordinary Iraqi citizens must see that military operations are accompanied by visible improvements in their neighborhoods and communities. So America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced.

To establish its authority, the Iraqi government plans to take responsibility for security in all of Iraq’s provinces by November. To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country’s economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis. To show that it is committed to delivering a better life, the Iraqi government will spend 10 billion dollars of its own money on reconstruction and infrastructure projects that will create new jobs. To empower local leaders, Iraqis plan to hold provincial elections later this year. And to allow more Iraqis to re-enter their nation’s political life, the government will reform de-Baathification laws and establish a fair process for considering amendments to Iraq’s constitution.

America will change our approach to help the Iraqi government as it works to meet these benchmarks. In keeping with the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, we will increase the embedding of American advisers in Iraqi Army units and partner a Coalition brigade with every Iraqi Army division. We’ll help the Iraqis build a larger and better-equipped Army and we will accelerate the training of Iraqi forces, which remains the essential U.S. security mission in Iraq. We will give our commanders and civilians greater flexibility to spend funds for economic assistance. We will double the number of provincial reconstruction teams. These teams bring together military and civilian experts to help local Iraqi communities pursue reconciliation, strengthen the moderates and speed the transition to Iraqi self-reliance. And Secretary Rice will soon appoint a reconstruction coordinator in Baghdad to ensure better results for economic assistance being spent in Iraq.

As we make these changes, we will continue to pursue Al Qaeda and foreign fighters. Al Qaeda is still active in Iraq. Its home base is Anbar Province. Al Qaeda has helped make Anbar the most violent area of Iraq outside the capital. A captured Al Qaeda document describes the terrorists’ plan to infiltrate and seize control of the province. This would bring Al Qaeda closer to its goals of taking down Iraq’s democracy, building a radical Islamic empire, and launching new attacks on the United States at home and abroad.

Our military forces in Anbar are killing and capturing Al Qaeda leaders, and they are protecting the local population. Recently, local tribal leaders have begun to show their willingness to take on Al Qaeda. And as a result, our commanders believe we have an opportunity to deal a serious blow to the terrorists. So I have given orders to increase American forces in Anbar Province by 4,000 troops. These troops will work with Iraqi and tribal forces to up the pressure on the terrorists. America’s men and women in uniform took away Al Qaeda’s safe haven in Afghanistan — and we will not allow them to re-establish it in Iraq.

Succeeding in Iraq also requires defending its territorial integrity and stabilizing the region in the face of extremist challenge. This begins with addressing Iran and Syria. These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.

We are also taking other steps to bolster the security of Iraq and protect American interests in the Middle East. I recently ordered the deployment of an additional carrier strike group to the region. We will expand intelligence sharing and deploy Patriot air defense systems to reassure our friends and allies. We will work with the governments of Turkey and Iraq to help them resolve problems along their border. And we will work with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating the region.

We will use America’s full diplomatic resources to rally support for Iraq from nations throughout the Middle East. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the gulf states need to understand that an American defeat in Iraq would create a new sanctuary for extremists and a strategic threat to their survival. These nations have a stake in a successful Iraq that is at peace with its neighbors, and they must step up their support for Iraq’s unity government. We endorse the Iraqi government’s call to finalize an International Compact that will bring new economic assistance in exchange for greater economic reform. And on Friday, Secretary Rice will leave for the region to build support for Iraq, and continue the urgent diplomacy required to help bring peace to the Middle East.

The challenge playing out across the broader Middle East is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of our time. On one side are those who believe in freedom and moderation. On the other side are extremists who kill the innocent and have declared their intention to destroy our way of life. In the long run, the most realistic way to protect the American people is to provide a hopeful alternative to the hateful ideology of the enemy — by advancing liberty across a troubled region. It is in the interests of the United States to stand with the brave men and women who are risking their lives to claim their freedom, and to help them as they work to raise up just and hopeful societies across the Middle East.

From Afghanistan to Lebanon to the Palestinian Territories, millions of ordinary people are sick of the violence, and want a future of peace and opportunity for their children. And they are looking at Iraq. They want to know: Will America withdraw and yield the future of that country to the extremists — or will we stand with the Iraqis who have made the choice for freedom?

The changes I have outlined tonight are aimed at ensuring the survival of a young democracy that is fighting for its life in a part of the world of enormous importance to American security. Let me be clear: The terrorists and insurgents in Iraq are without conscience, and they will make the year ahead bloody and violent. Even if our new strategy works exactly as planned, deadly acts of violence will continue, and we must expect more Iraqi and American casualties. The question is whether our new strategy will bring us closer to success. I believe that it will.

Victory will not look like the ones our fathers and grandfathers achieved. There will be no surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship. But victory in Iraq will bring something new in the Arab world: a functioning democracy that polices its territory, upholds the rule of law, respects fundamental human liberties and answers to its people. A democratic Iraq will not be perfect. But it will be a country that fights terrorists instead of harboring them, and it will help bring a future of peace and security for our children and our grandchildren.

This new approach comes after consultations with Congress about the different courses we could take in Iraq. Many are concerned that the Iraqis are becoming too dependent on the United States and therefore, our policy should focus on protecting Iraq’s borders and hunting down Al Qaeda. Their solution is to scale back America’s efforts in Baghdad or announce the phased withdrawal of our combat forces. We carefully considered these proposals. And we concluded that to step back now would force a collapse of the Iraqi government, tear the country apart and result in mass killings on an unimaginable scale. Such a scenario would result in our troops being forced to stay in Iraq even longer and confront an enemy that is even more lethal. If we increase our support at this crucial moment, and help the Iraqis break the current cycle of violence, we can hasten the day our troops begin coming home.

In the days ahead, my national security team will fully brief Congress on our new strategy. If — if members have improvements that can be made, we will make them. If circumstances change, we will adjust. Honorable people have different views and they will voice their criticisms. It is fair to hold our views up to scrutiny. And all involved have a responsibility to explain how the path they propose would be more likely to succeed.

Acting on the good advice of Senator Joe Lieberman and other key members of Congress, we will form a new, bipartisan working group that will help us come together across party lines to win the war on terror. This group will meet regularly with me and my administration. It will help strengthen our relationship with Congress. We can begin by working together to increase the size of the active Army and Marine Corps, so that America has the Armed Forces we need for the 21st century. We also need to examine ways to mobilize talented American civilians to deploy overseas — where they can help build democratic institutions in communities and nations recovering from war and tyranny.

In these dangerous times, the United States is blessed to have extraordinary and selfless men and women willing to step forward and defend us. These young Americans understand that our cause in Iraq is noble and necessary, and that the advance of freedom is the calling of our time. They serve far from their families, who make the quiet sacrifices of lonely holidays and empty chairs at the dinner table. They have watched their comrades give their lives to ensure our liberty. We mourn the loss of every fallen American; and we owe it to them to build a future worthy of their sacrifice.

Fellow citizens: The year ahead will demand more patience, sacrifice and resolve. It can be tempting to think that America can put aside the burdens of freedom. Yet times of testing reveal the character of a nation. And throughout our history, Americans have always defied the pessimists and seen our faith in freedom redeemed. Now America is engaged in a new struggle that will set the course for a new century. We can and we will prevail.

We go forward with trust that the Author of Liberty will guide us through these trying hours. Thank you and good night.

    Transcript of President Bush’s Address to Nation on U.S. Policy in Iraq, NYT, 11.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/us/11ptext.html

Bush accepts responsibility for 'mistakes'

Updated 1/10/2007 11:34 PM ET
USA Today
By David Jackson

WASHINGTON — President Bush said Wednesday that he will raise U.S. troop levels in Iraq by 21,500 to try to break "the current cycle of violence" there, and he conceded for the first time that he has not sent enough military forces.

Although Bush warned of more bloodshed, he said benefits will be seen over time. "If we increase our support at this crucial moment … we can hasten the day our troops begin coming home."

Bush's plan includes $5.6 billion for the troop increase and more than $1 billion in new economic aid for Iraq. It also calls for better performance by the Iraqi government to control its own security.

The president said previous plans failed because there were not enough U.S. and Iraqi troops to protect Iraqi neighborhoods and to contain violence between Sunnis and Shiites.

"The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people, and it is unacceptable to me," Bush said. "Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me."

Democrats and some Republicans criticized the plan even before Bush addressed the nation from the White House library.

Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., new chairman of the House panel overseeing Pentagon spending, said Bush will have to make a strong case to justify more money for troops. "We really have an ability to stop this thing," said Murtha, a Vietnam veteran. "Not today, but later on."

Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, a potential 2008 presidential candidate, said committing more troops is the wrong answer. "Iraq requires a political rather than a military solution," he said.

Bush stressed that the goal of his revised plan will be to train Iraqi forces so they can control their country's security by November. He said his troop commitment "is not open-ended."

Bush described the consequences of failure for Iraq and the United States: radical Islamic extremists growing in strength in the Middle East, and terror rising throughout the world.

The president said he had sent another carrier strike group to the Middle East, and he warned Iran and Syria against aiding Iraqi insurgents. He said the United States will "interrupt the flow of support" from Iraq's neighbors.

In Iraq, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has told Shiite militiamen, including supporters of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, to surrender their arms or face an assault by U.S. and Iraqi forces, the Associated Press reported. The AP quoted an unnamed Shiite legislator who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for al-Maliki.

Bush said he told al-Maliki and his aides that they risk losing the support of Americans and Iraqis if they do not improve security. "A democratic Iraq will not be perfect, but it will be a country that fights terrorists instead of harboring them," the president said.

There are now 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. The retooled plan calls for 17,500 troops to be committed over the next several months to Baghdad, site of most of the sectarian violence. That would more than double the 15,000 troops now there. An additional 4,000 Marines are headed to Anbar province in western Iraq, which the administration says is a base for al-Qaeda terrorists.

Bush said the new money for reconstruction and jobs programs would help Iraqis see "that military operations are accompanied by visible improvements in their neighborhoods."

Contributing: Kathy Kiely

    Bush accepts responsibility for 'mistakes', UT, 10.1.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-01-10-bush-iraq_x.htm

Bush Iraq plan has many risks, no guarantees

Wed Jan 10, 2007 10:54 PM ET
The New York Times
By Andrew Gray - Analysis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush's decision to send more U.S. troops to Iraq poses serious risks, including at least a short-term rise in casualty rates, and its success will depend on many factors beyond American control.

While the increase of some 21,500 soldiers and Marines will take the number of U.S. troops in Iraq to more than 153,000, the United States has had more boots on the ground in the past and still failed to stop the spiral of deadly violence.

U.S. troop levels reached a peak of 159,000 in January 2005, according to Pentagon figures.

That raises the question of whether the increase proposed by Bush will be enough to quell violence that has, in the meantime, become more intense -- a complex mix of sectarian, insurgent, Islamist militant and criminal attacks.

In particular, sectarian violence has exploded since the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra last February.

"It's a different war in that respect," said John Pike, director of military information Web site globalsecurity.org.

Advocates of the boost pin much of their hopes on the fact that U.S. forces will now hold areas of Baghdad once they have been cleared of insurgents and militia fighters. This, they say, will be a significant change.

"The proof of the pudding is in the holding," said Tom Donnelly, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, who favors an increase in U.S. forces.

Previous operations failed because U.S. and Iraqi forces did not have enough troops to hold areas after clearing them of enemy fighters, U.S. officials have said.

Donnelly said he expected the U.S. casualty rate to rise at least initially after the new strategy is adopted but it could decline after a month to six weeks if operations succeeded.

More than 3,000 U.S. troops have died and more than 22,000 have been wounded in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Anthony Cordesman, one of Washington's most prominent military analysts, said the new strategy was probably the best Bush could present but added: "It certainly has very serious military and political risks."

CONTRAST WITH COMMANDERS

Bush's plan puts him at odds also with the views of his top Iraq commanders, who argued against an increase in U.S. troops and will leave their posts as the new plan is implemented.

It also assumes enough Iraqis are willing to abandon sectarianism and relies on Iraqi authorities supplying support they previously have not provided.

"It depends on Iraqi forces, which have proven to be very ineffective, even over the last few days in Baghdad," said Cordesman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"The other great question is -- how will the Iraqi people react?" he added.

Cordesman said Sunni Muslims saw insurgents as their protectors and Shi'ite Muslims viewed their militias in the same way. Much would depend on how ordinary people reacted to U.S. and Iraqi forces targeting both groups more aggressively.

Bush administration officials have insisted Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Iraqi government is more committed to this latest push to improve security and will provide the necessary forces and political backing.

But some analysts doubt the wisdom of relying on Maliki, whose commitment to tackling the Mehdi army militia of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has repeatedly been questioned, and say Bush's new plan is not based on sound military reasoning.

Andrew Bacevich, a retired U.S. Army colonel who is a professor of international relations at Boston University, said the number of extra troops had been determined by what the U.S. military could provide rather than what was needed.

"If you want to surge, then 21, 22,000 people... it's a trivial number of soldiers if you really want to make a difference," he said.

"This is really an act of desperation," he said. "I think the war is unwinnable and we need to begin to withdraw."

    Bush Iraq plan has many risks, no guarantees, R, 10.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2007-01-11T035249Z_01_N10312700_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-USA-MILITARY.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C2-TopNews-newsOne-2

Bush to send more troops to Iraq, admits mistakes

Wed Jan 10, 2007 10:25 PM ET
USA Today
By Steve Holland and Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush told skeptical Americans on Wednesday he was sending about 21,500 extra U.S. troops to Iraq, and in a rare admission, said he made a mistake by not deploying more forces sooner.

"The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people, and it is unacceptable to me," Bush said in a televised White House address. "Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me."

With American patience running thin over his handling of the war, Bush said he would put greater pressure on Iraqis to restore order in Baghdad and used blunt language to warn Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki that "America's commitment is not open-ended."

"If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people, and it will lose the support of the Iraqi people," Bush said.

Bush said his new strategy was for Iraqis to try to take responsibility for security in all 18 provinces by November rather than just three now.

"The year ahead will demand more patience, sacrifice and resolve," he said.

Bush said previous attempts to secure Baghdad failed because "there were not enough Iraqi and American troops to secure neighborhoods that had been cleared of terrorists and insurgents" and the troops labored under too many restrictions.

It was a rare acknowledgment of a mistake for Bush. He said his military commanders had reviewed the new plan and assured him it addressed the problems.

He accused Iran and Syria of allowing use of their territory for terrorists and insurgents to move in and out of Iraq and vowed "we will interrupt the flow of support from Syria and Iran."

Ahead of a visit to the Middle East by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Bush said Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Gulf states needed to understand that a U.S. defeat in Iraq "would create a new sanctuary for extremists -- and a strategic threat to their survival."

The president's fresh infusion of American troops into the nearly 4-year-old war -- 17,500 for Baghdad, 4,000 for restive Anbar province, was in defiance of Democrats who called it an escalation of the conflict.

Bush set no time limit for the new deployment.

The president faces a tough sell, after nearly four years of war and scenes of carnage that have undercut his argument that victory is possible in Iraq.

DEMOCRATIC SCRUTINY

Democrats, who saw their takeover of the U.S. Congress in November elections as a signal from voters that it was time to start bringing troops home, called for a "phased redeployment" of troops to begin in four to six months.

They pledged to give his plan great scrutiny in the days ahead but doubted they could stop it. Democrats planned to orchestrate a symbolic vote on Bush's new policy in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

"We are in a hole in Iraq and the president says that the way out is to dig deeper. Does that make sense? When you're in a hole, the solution is to dig deeper?" said Maryland Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski.

"The American people are demanding a change in course in Iraq. Instead, the president is accelerating the same failed course he has pursued for nearly four years. He must understand that Congress will not endorse this course," said Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy.

A solid majority of Americans were opposed to the troop increase and many in Bush's own Republican Party were uneasy about it if not outright against the troop increase.

Bush sought to justify the increase by saying the extra troops were needed to hold neighborhoods cleared of insurgents. He said if the Iraqi government collapsed, the United States would have to keep troops longer in Iraq.

"If we increase our support at this crucial moment and help the Iraqis break the current cycle of violence, we can hasten the day our troops begin coming home," he said.

He said Iraqi leaders must follow through on promises on approving an oil-sharing law and reforms aimed at a political reconciliation among warring groups, but gave no deadlines.

Bush will ask Congress for $5.6 billion to fund the extra deployment and another $1.2 billion for a rebuilding and jobs program aimed at getting Iraqis jobs and keeping them from joining militias.

About 50 protesters beat drums and rang cowbells and chanted "no more war" outside the White House gate after the speech.

In Baghdad, Iraqis voiced skepticism that more troops would help. Police recovered the bodies of 60 people with gunshot wounds and signs of torture from various parts of Baghdad in the 24 hours to Wednesday evening, an Interior Ministry source said.

(Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick, Susan Cornwell and Rick Cowan)

    Bush to send more troops to Iraq, admits mistakes, R, 10.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2007-01-11T032400Z_01_MAC638878_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ.xml&src=011007_2307_TOPSTORY_bush_details_iraq_plan

Iraq Urges Delay Saddam Case Executions

January 10, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:27 a.m. ET
The New York Times

SULEIMANIYAH, Iraq (AP) -- Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said Wednesday the execution of two of Saddam Hussein's co-defendants should be delayed.

Saddam's half brother and former intelligence chief, Barzan Ibrahim, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, were sentenced to death with Saddam.

They were found guilty, along with the former Iraqi leader, of involvement in killing 148 Shiite Muslims after a 1982 assassination attempt on the former leader in the northern town of Dujail.

''In my opinion we should wait on the executions,'' Talabani said Wednesday at a news conference with U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad. ''We should examine the situation,'' he said without elaborating.

    Iraq Urges Delay Saddam Case Executions, NYT, 1.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq-Executions.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Democrats Plan Symbolic Votes Against Bush’s Iraq Troop Plan

January 10, 2007
The New York Times
By JEFF ZELENY and CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 — Democratic leaders said Tuesday that they intended to hold symbolic votes in the House and Senate on President Bush’s plan to send more troops to Baghdad, forcing Republicans to take a stand on the proposal and seeking to isolate the president politically over his handling of the war.

Senate Democrats decided to schedule a vote on the resolution after a closed-door meeting on a day when Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts introduced legislation to require Mr. Bush to gain Congressional approval before sending more troops to Iraq.

The Senate vote is expected as early as next week, after an initial round of committee hearings on the plan Mr. Bush will lay out for the nation Wednesday night in a televised address delivered from the White House library, a setting chosen because it will provide a fresh backdrop for a presidential message.

The office of Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House, followed with an announcement that the House would also take up a resolution in opposition to a troop increase. House Democrats were scheduled to meet Wednesday morning to consider whether to interrupt their carefully choreographed 100-hour, two-week-long rollout of their domestic agenda this month to address the Iraq war.

In both chambers, Democrats made clear that the resolutions — which would do nothing in practical terms to block Mr. Bush’s intention to increase the United States military presence in Iraq — would be the minimum steps they would pursue. They did not rule out eventually considering more muscular responses, like seeking to cap the number of troops being deployed to Iraq or limiting financing for the war — steps that could provoke a Constitutional and political showdown over the president’s power to wage war.

The resolutions would represent the most significant reconsideration of Congressional support for the war since it began, and mark the first big clash between the White House and Congress since the November election, which put the Senate and House under the control of the Democrats. The decision to pursue a confrontation with the White House was a turning point for Democrats, who have struggled with how to take on Mr. Bush’s war policy without being perceived as undermining the military or risking criticism as defeatists.

“If you really want to change the situation on the ground, demonstrate to the president he’s on his own,” said Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. “That will spark real change.”

The administration continued Tuesday to press its case with members of Congress from both parties. By the time Mr. Bush delivers his speech, 148 lawmakers will have come to the White House in the past week to discuss the war, White House aides said Tuesday night, adding that most met with the president himself.

While Mr. Kennedy and a relatively small number of other Democrats were pushing for immediate, concrete steps to challenge Mr. Bush through legislation, Democratic leaders said that for now they favored the less-divisive approach of simply asking senators to cast a vote on a nonbinding resolution for or against the plan.

They also sought to frame the clash with the White House on their terms, using language reminiscent of the Vietnam War era to suggest that increasing the United States military presence in Iraq would be a mistake.

“We believe that there is a number of Republicans who will join with us to say no to escalation,” said the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada. “I really believe that if we can come up with a bipartisan approach to this escalation, we will do more to change the direction of that war in Iraq than any other thing that we can do.”

On the eve of the president’s Iraq speech, the White House sent Frederick W. Kagan, a military analyst who helped develop the troop increase plan, to meet with the Senate Republican Policy Committee.

But Republican officials conceded that at least 10 of their own senators were likely to oppose the plan to increase troops levels in Iraq. And Democrats were proposing their resolution with that in mind, hoping to send a forceful message that as many as 60 senators believed strengthening American forces in Baghdad was the wrong approach. Democratic leaders said they expect all but a few of their senators to back the resolution.

In an interview on Tuesday, Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, said he was becoming increasingly skeptical that a troop increase was in the best interest of the United States. “I’m particularly concerned about the greater injection of our troops into the middle of sectarian violence. Whom do you shoot at, the Sunni or the Shia?” Mr. Warner said. “Our American G.I.’s should not be subjected to that type of risk.”

But the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, said Congress could not supplant the authority of the president. “You can’t run a war by a committee of 435 in the House and 100 in the Senate,” he said.

The White House press secretary, Tony Snow, criticized the Democrats’ plans. “We understand that the resolution is purely symbolic, but the war — and the necessity of succeeding in Iraq — are very real,” he said Tuesday night.

On Thursday, Democrats in the House and Senate will open a series of hearings on the Iraq war. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are among those who have agreed to testify.

Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is the new chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said that if he was not satisfied that Mr. Bush’s plan has sufficient incentives and penalties for the Iraqis, he might support a resolution or amendment to cap the number of American troops in Iraq.

“We have got to force the Iraqis to take charge of their own country,” Mr. Levin said at a breakfast meeting with reporters. “We can’t save them from themselves. It is a political solution. It is no longer a military solution.”

Lawmakers said Senate Democrats appeared broadly united in opposition to Mr. Bush’s approach during their private luncheon on Tuesday. While there were a few senators who favored cutting off money for any troop increase, a handful of others expressed uncertainty about challenging the president on a potential war-powers issue.

“We have to be very careful about blocking funding for any troops because we don’t want to leave our troops short-changed,” said Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana.

Yet a large share of the House Democratic caucus supports a stronger stance against the plan. It remained unclear whether a resolution would satisfy constituents.

“Twice in the past 12 months the president has increased troop levels in a last-ditch effort to control the rapidly deteriorating security situation in Iraq,” said Representative Martin T. Meehan, Democrat of Massachusetts, who proposed a resolution opposing a troop increase. “Rather than cooling tensions in Baghdad, the situation has descended further into chaos.”

Thom Shanker, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Jim Rutenberg contributed reporting.

    Democrats Plan Symbolic Votes Against Bush’s Iraq Troop Plan, NYT, 10.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/10/washington/10capitol.html?hp&ex=1168491600&en=ce88834dd053e588&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Fierce Fighting Erupts in Baghdad

January 9, 2007
The New York Times
By MARC SANTORA

BAGHDAD, Jan. 9 — American and Iraqi troops, backed by helicopter gunships and F-18 warplanes, fought with insurgents in the streets of downtown Baghdad for several hours this morning, military officials said.

It was the fourth straight day of clashes in the Haifa Street neighborhood, and by far the most fierce, according to witnesses who live in the area.

While much of the information coming out about the fighting was murky, Iraqi officials said that at least 50 suspected insurgents had been killed and 11 more arrested. News services said that as many as 100 people have died in the fighting since it erupted on Saturday.

The Iraqi government’s official spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, said that Iraqi troops were trying with American help to wipe out “terrorist hideouts” in the area, news services reported. He said former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party were to blame for the fighting because they were providing safe havens in the neighborhood for Sunni insurgents “for them to destabilize Iraq.”

In the first official response here to President Bush’s plan to send more American troops to Baghdad, Mr. Dabbagh said that “the Iraqi government does not object to an increase in coalition forces.”

He said that American and Iraqi forces would avoid the “mistakes” made in previous efforts to stabilize Baghdad.

Officials in Washington have said that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has lobbied hard for speeding the transition to Iraqi control of security in the capital. They said he agreed during a videoconference with Mr. Bush last week to provide additional Iraqi troops to work jointly with the American reinforcements the president plans to announce on Wednesday night.

Concerning the Haifa Street fighting, American military officials said that the goal was to disrupt insurgent activity in the neighborhood, which is not far from the heavily fortified government Green Zone, following repeated attacks on Iraqi security forces with machine guns and rocket propelled grenades over the past week.

Long considered a redoubt for loyalists to Saddam Hussein, the neighborhood is predominantly Sunni. Two years ago, American forces made a concentrated effort to get the area under control, and until recently it was considered relatively stable.

However, several days ago, Iraqi Army soldiers came under attack there when they went to collect the remains of 27 people who had been killed execution-style and then dumped behind a local hospital.

Since then, there have been reports of Sunni insurgents setting up fake checkpoints, stopping Shiites, murdering them and then hanging the dead bodies from lampposts, as grim warning for the few Shiites remaining in the community.

Those reports have been contradicted by Sunnis who live in the neighborhood, who say they have been made targets by the Iraqi Army simply because they are Sunni.

Today’s fighting began before dawn, at around 5 a.m., when Iraqi troops began fanning out on Haifa Street with American forces supporting them, according to Iraqi military officials and witnesses.

A few hours later, Iraqi and American forces jointly began raiding the homes of suspected insurgents, the American military said.

One witness, Abu Mohammed, said that he saw only Iraqi troops entering the homes, not Americans.

During the raids, which Mr. Mohammed said led to the arrest of eight young men, the troops came under attack.

At that point the fighting quickly escalated, and the American forces became heavily involved.

Around 11 a.m., American fighter jets could be seen flying low over the area, dipping below the clouds and then quickly disappearing out of sight into the overcast sky. American helicopters also hovered over the scene. Loud explosions were heard, apparently from bombs falling on insurgent positions, but it was not clear whether the jets or the helicopters were dropping the explosives.

Mr. Mohammed said he saw one of the bombs hit a compound that seemed to be providing shelter for the gunmen. The compound was obliterated, but the gunmen were behind it, not inside, and were able to escape the attack, he said.

Mr. Mohammed and other residents described the situation on Haifa Street as increasingly dire, saying there had been no electricity there for 10 days.

Separately, officials in Turkey announced that a cargo plane carrying Turkish workers crashed north of Baghdad, apparently while attempting to land in thick fog at an airport near the city of Balad. News services, citing officials in Istanbul and the southern Turkish city of Adana, where the plane took off, reported that it was carrying 29 Turkish and 1 American passenger, and a crew of 5.

In Geneva, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees announced an emergency appeal today for what it said were an estimated 3.7 million Iraqis who had been displaced internally or had fled abroad as a result of the fighting.

The agency said that about 1 in 8 Iraqis had left their homes, in what it called “the largest population movement in the Middle East since Palestinians were displaced following the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.”

“There is currently no end in sight” to the Iraqi exodus, the agency’s statement said.

John O’Neil contributed reporting from New York.

    Fierce Fighting Erupts in Baghdad, NYT, 9.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/09/world/middleeast/09cnd-iraq.html?hp&ex=1168405200&en=a35a29443e638e9a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Editorial

Past Time to Get Real on Iraq

January 9, 2007
The New York Times

We’ve been down this road before. This time, it has to be different.

There have been too many times that President Bush has promised a new strategy on Iraq, only to repeat the same old set of failed approaches and unachievable objectives. Americans need to hear Mr. Bush offer something truly new — not more glossy statements about ultimate victory, condescending platitudes about what hard work war is, or aimless vows to remain “until the job is done.”

If the voters sent one clear message to Mr. Bush last November, it was that it is time to start winding down America’s involvement in this going-nowhere war.

What they need is for the president to acknowledge how bad things have gotten in Iraq (not just that it is not going as well as he planned) and to be honest about how limited the remaining options truly are. The country wants to know how Mr. Bush plans to end its involvement in a way that preserves as much of the nation’s remaining honor and influence as possible, limits the suffering of the Iraqi people and the harm to Iraq’s neighbors, and gives Iraqi leaders a chance — should they finally decide to take it — to rescue their country from an even worse disaster once the Americans are gone.

The reality that Mr. Bush needs to acknowledge when he speaks to the nation tomorrow night is that the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is feeding rather than restraining Iraq’s brutal civil war. The Iraqi Army cannot be relied on to impose order even in Baghdad, while the Iraqi police forces — dominated by sectarian militias — are inciting the mayhem.

Mr. Bush must acknowledge that there is no military solution for Iraq. Whatever plan he offers needs to start with a tough set of political benchmarks for national reconciliation that the Iraqi government is finally expected to meet. It needs to concentrate enough forces in Baghdad to bring some security to streets and neighborhoods, giving Iraq’s leaders one last opportunity to try to bargain their way out of civil war.

His plan needs to lay out tight timetables in which the Iraqis must take major steps to solve fundamental issues, including equitably dividing their oil wealth and disarming vengeful militias. There must also be a clear and rapid timetable for achieving enough stability in Baghdad to hand back significant military responsibilities to the Iraqis.

The last time America presented Mr. Maliki with a set of political benchmarks, he bluntly rejected them. If he does that again, there is no way America can or should try to secure Iraq on its own. Mr. Bush must make clear to both Iraqis and Americans that without significant progress, American forces will not remain.

We’re under no illusions. Meeting those challenges is going to be extremely tough. And Iraq’s unraveling may already be too far gone.

For Mr. Bush, this means resisting any vague Nixonian formula of “peace with honor” that translates into more years of fighting on for the same ever-receding goals. Democrats in Congress should also resist euphemistic formulas like “phased redeployment,” which really means trying to achieve with even fewer troops what Washington failed to achieve with current force levels.

Nor can America simply turn its back on whatever happens to Iraq after it leaves. With or without American troops, a nightmare future for Iraq is a nightmare future for the United States, too, whether it consists of an expanding civil war that turns into a regional war or millions of Iraq’s people and its oil fields falling under the tightening grip of a more powerful Iran.

Mr. Bush is widely expected to announce a significant increase in American troops to deploy in Baghdad’s violent neighborhoods. He needs to explain to Congress and the American people where the dangerously tapped-out military is going to find those troops. And he needs to place a strict time limit on any increase, or it will turn into a thinly disguised escalation of the American combat role.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that just under 23,000 Iraqi civilians and police officers died violently in 2006, more than 17,000 of them in the last six months. That is a damning indictment of the Maliki government, and of current American military strategy.

That is the Iraq that Americans want Mr. Bush to deal with tomorrow night.

    Past Time to Get Real on Iraq, NYT, 9.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/09/opinion/09tue1.html

Hussein’s Voice Speaks in Court in Praise of Atrocities

January 9, 2007
The New York Times
By JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, Jan. 8 — The courtroom he dominated for 15 months seemed much smaller on Monday without him there to mock the judges and assert his menacing place in history.

But the thick, high-register voice of Saddam Hussein was unmistakable. In audio recordings made years ago and played 10 days after his hanging, Mr. Hussein was heard justifying the use of chemical weapons against the Iraqi Kurds in the late 1980s, predicting they would kill “thousands” and saying he alone among Iraq’s leaders had the authority to order chemical attacks.

In the history of prosecutions against some of the last century’s grimmest men, there can rarely have been a moment that so starkly caught a despot’s unpitying nature.

On one recording, Mr. Hussein presses the merits of chemical weapons on Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, his vice-president, and now, the Americans believe, the fugitive leader of the Sunni insurgency that has tied down thousands of American troops. Mr. Douri, a notorious hard-liner, asks whether chemical attacks will be effective against civilian populations, and suggests that they might stir an international outcry.

“Yes, they’re very effective if people don’t wear masks,” Mr. Hussein replies.

“You mean they will kill thousands?” Mr. Douri asks.

“Yes, they will kill thousands,” Mr. Hussein says.

Before he was hanged Dec. 30 for offenses in another case, Mr. Hussein had used the so-called Anfal trial, involving the massacre of as many as 180,000 Iraqi Kurds, as a platform for arguing that the chemical weapons attacks of the kind that devastated the town of Halabja on March 16, 1988, were carried out by Iranian forces then fighting Iraq in an eight-year war.

But the recordings told another story. Court officials gave no hint as to how they obtained the recordings, which Iraqis familiar with Mr. Hussein’s voice said seemed to be authentic. But they appeared to have been made during meetings of his Revolutionary Command Council and of the Baath Party High Command, two groups that acted as rubber stamps for his decisions. Mr. Hussein regularly ordered meetings to be recorded, according to Iraqis who knew the inner workings of Mr. Hussein’s dictatorship.

Mr. Hussein sounds matter of fact as he describes what chemical weapons will do. “They will prevent people eating and drinking the local water, and they won’t be able to sleep in their beds,” he says. “They will force people to leave their homes and make them uninhabitable until they have been decontaminated.”

As for the concern about international reaction, he assures Mr. Douri that only he will order the attacks. “I don’t know if you know this, Comrade Izzat, but chemical weapons are not used unless I personally give the orders,” he says.

When Iraq resumed the genocide trial of its former leaders on Monday, Mr. Hussein’s high-backed, black vinyl seat at the front of the dock was left ominously empty. Something about the six remaining defendants, including Ali Hassan al-Majid, Mr. Hussein’s cousin, who was known among Iraqis as Chemical Ali for his role in overseeing the attacks on the Kurds, suggested that they felt orphaned without the commanding presence of Mr. Hussein.

Gone were the cries of “Mr. President!” as Mr. Hussein entered the court to join them in the dock, and gone, too, was the emboldened posture they took from Mr. Hussein, with frequent challenges and insults to witnesses, prosecutors and judges. Perhaps Mr. Hussein’s hanging, and the humiliating taunts he endured from witnesses and guards as he stood with the noose around his neck, had broken the last illusions among those surviving him that they could somehow evade a similar end.

When the chief judge, Muhammad Ureibi al-Khalifa, began the proceedings by abruptly cutting the microphone as Mr. Majid stood to intone a prayer in memory of Mr. Hussein, the former dictator seemed to be judicially, as well as existentially, dead. But the anticlimactic beginning swiftly gave way to the most astonishing day of testimony since Mr. Hussein and his associates went on trial. Once more, it was Mr. Hussein, this time in an involuntary orgy of self-incrimination, who dominated.

In the sequence of scratchy recordings — some with the dialogue quite clear, some barely decipherable — Mr. Hussein repeatedly showed the ready resort to brutality that seized Iraq with fear during his 24 years in power. At one point, he is heard telling a general to summarily execute field commanders who fail to adequately prepare their defenses against Kurdish guerrilla raids.

He cites as a precedent “some commanders who abandoned their positions when they found themselves in an awkward situation, who deserved to have their necks cut, and did.” At another point, he tells subordinates to execute any internal security officials who fail to stop Iraqi soldiers sneaking home from the Iranian front on fake passes.

“If you arrest any of them, cut off their heads,” he says. “Show no mercy. They only joined the security to avoid having to join the army and fight Iran.”

One recording revealed, more clearly than anything before, Mr. Hussein’s personal involvement in covering up Iraq’s attempts to acquire unconventional weapons, the program that ultimately led to President Bush sending American troops to overthrow him. Talking to the general who led Iraq’s dealings with United Nations weapons inspectors until weeks before the 2003 invasion, he counseled caution in the figures being divulged on the extent of Iraq’s raw supplies for chemical weapons, so as to disguise the use of unaccounted-for chemicals in the attacks on the Kurds.

But it was Mr. Hussein’s chilling discussion of the power of chemical weapons against civilians that brought prosecutors and judges to the verge of tears, and seemed to shock the remaining defendants. One of the recordings featured an unidentified military officer telling Mr. Hussein that a plan was under development for having Soviet-built aircraft carry containers, packed with up to 50 napalm bombs each, which would be rolled out of the cargo deck and dropped on Kurdish towns.

“Yes, in areas where you have concentrated populations, that would be useful,” Mr. Hussein replies.

Another recording involves a General Thabit, who was not further identified by the prosecutors, telling Mr. Hussein that his forces had used chemical weapons in the northern sector of Kurdistan, but that “our supplies of the weapons were low, and we didn’t make good use of the ones we had.” The general notes that Iraq’s production of mustard gas and sarin, a nerve gas, was “very low,” and says they should be used sparingly. “We’re keeping what we have for the future,” he says.

Before they recovered enough to begin pleading their innocence, Mr. Hussein’s erstwhile companions in the dock buried their heads in their hands, gazed at the floor, and glanced furtively toward TV cameras transmitting live coverage of the trial. Mr. Majid shifted uneasily in his seat as one recording had him telling officials to warn Kurdish refugees that they would be attacked with chemical weapons if they attempted to return to their villages.

The prosecutor, Munkith al-Faroun, came to court as almost the only person who attended Mr. Hussein’s execution on Dec. 30 to emerge with an unsullied reputation. It was he, as he and others confirmed, who attempted to halt the taunts hurled at Mr. Hussein as he stood with the noose around his neck, moments before the trapdoor opened. Over the hubbub, an illicit camera phone recording showed Mr. Faroun calling out for silence, “Please, no!” he said. “The man is about to be executed.”

But back in the courtroom, Mr. Faroun became, again, the man holding Mr. Hussein to account and, in one poignant moment, counseling restraint among those who have expressed outrage over the manner of the former ruler’s execution. That moment came after the court watched television images taken after the Halabja attack, which more than any other event focused world attention on the atrocities committed under Mr. Hussein.

The video showed the horrors: a father wailing in grief as he found his children lying along a street littered with bodies; dead mothers clutching gas-choked infants to their breasts in swaddling clothes; young sisters embracing each other in death; and trucks piled high with civilian bodies. “I ask the whole world to look at these images, especially those who are crying right now,” Mr. Faroun said, referring to the outpouring of sympathy for Mr. Hussein.

The recordings played at Monday’s trial session, seemingly eliminating any doubt about Mr. Hussein’s role in the attacks on the Kurds, may go a long way to answering criticism of the government for executing him before he was judged for the worst of his crimes.

American justice department lawyers, who have done much of the behind-the-scenes work in sifting tons of documents and other evidence gathered after the invasion of 2003, had never hinted that they held the trump card, judicially and historically, that the audio recordings seem likely to be.

    Hussein’s Voice Speaks in Court in Praise of Atrocities, NYT, 9.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/09/world/middleeast/09iraq.html?hp&ex=1168405200&en=3262246c3350873c&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Hussein’s Chair Empty as Trial Resumes

January 8, 2007
By REUTERS
Filed at 8:53 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein and his cousin ``Chemical Ali'' discussed how chemical weapons would exterminate thousands before unleashing them on Kurds in 1988, according to tapes played on Monday in a trial of former Iraqi officials.

``I will strike them with chemical weapons and kill them all,'' a voice identified by prosecutors as ``Chemical Ali'' Hassan al-Majeed is heard saying.

``Who is going to say anything? The international community? Curse the international community,'' the voice continued.

``Yes, it's effective, especially on those who don't wear a mask immediately, as we understand,'' a voice identified as Saddam is heard saying on another tape.

``Sir, does it exterminate thousands?'' a voice asks back.

``Yes, it exterminates thousands and forces them not to eat or drink and they will have to evacuate their homes without taking anything with them, until we can finally purge them,'' the voice identified as Saddam answers.

With Saddam's chair empty, nine days after he was hanged, Majeed and five other Baath party officials were being tried for their roles in the 1988 Anfal (Spoils of War) military campaign in northern Kurdistan.

MANY KURDS GASSED

Prosecutors said 180,000 people were killed, many of them gassed. Many Kurds regret the chief suspect can no longer face justice for his role in the campaign against them, but they hope others share his fate on the gallows.

Saddam was hanged on December 30 after being convicted in an earlier trial for his role in killing 148 Shi'ites in the 1980s.

Majeed, who faces charges of genocide, is considered the main enforcer of the Anfal campaign.

Defendants have said Anfal was a legitimate military operation targeting Kurdish guerrillas who had sided with Shi'ite Iran during the last stages of the Iraq-Iran war.

Chief Prosecutor Munqith al-Faroon also played on Monday video showing women and children lying dead on village streets and mountain slopes after what he said was a chemical attack ordered by Saddam.

``These are the honorable battles they claimed to have launched against the enemy,'' he told the court.

Judge Mohammed al-Ureybi, in his first order of business, formally dropped charges of genocide and crimes against humanity against Saddam. He cut off the microphones when Majeed stood up and started to read the Koran in tribute to his former chief.

``In virtue of the confirmation of the death of defendant Saddam Hussein, the court decided to finally stop legal procedures against defendant Saddam Hussein according to the Iraqi Penal Procedures Law,'' Ureybi told the court.

Looking tired and sporting an uncharacteristic white stubble, Majeed refused to take his chair and insisted on reciting a prayer as he stood behind Saddam's empty chair.

``Make him sit down, make him sit down,'' Ureybi ordered the bailiffs.

Saddam's hanging has turned him into a martyr in much of the Arab world, overshadowing memories of his often brutal rule.

Two of Saddam's aides, his half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and former judge Awad al-Bander, are likely to be hanged any day now after being convicted along with Saddam for killing Shi'ites.

    Hussein’s Chair Empty as Trial Resumes, NYT, 8.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-iraq-saddam.html

Plan Sets Series of Goals for Iraq Leaders

January 8, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and JEFF ZELENY

WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 — President Bush’s new Iraq policy will establish a series of goals that the Iraqi government will be expected to meet to try to ease sectarian tensions and stabilize the country politically and economically, senior administration officials said Sunday.

Among these “benchmarks” are steps that would draw more Sunnis into the political process, finalize a long-delayed measure on the distribution of oil revenue and ease the government’s policy toward former Baath Party members, the officials said.

As the policy is being debated in Washington, the new American operational commander in Iraq said Sunday that his plan was to send additional American troops, expected to be part of the policy change, into Baghdad’s toughest neighborhoods, and that under the new strategy it may take another “two or three years” to gain the upper hand in the war. [Page A9.]

Without saying what the specific penalties for failing to achieve the goals would be, American officials insisted that they intended to hold the Iraqis to a realistic timetable for action, but the Americans and Iraqis have agreed on many of the objectives before, only to fall considerably short.

And the widespread skepticism about the Bush administration’s Iraq strategy among Democrats and some Republicans was underscored by the new speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, in a television interview broadcast Sunday. She, along with the Democratic leader of the Senate, Harry Reid, informed the president that they were opposed to increasing troop levels.

“If the president wants to add to this mission, he is going to have to justify it,” Mrs. Pelosi said on the CBS News program “Face the Nation.” “And this is new for him because up until now the Republican Congress has given him a blank check with no oversight, no standards, no conditions.”

She also suggested that Congress should deal with financing for the current war and for the proposed increase as separate issues. “If the president chooses to escalate the war, in his budget request we want to see a distinction between what is there to support the troops who are there now,” she said.

Whether lawmakers are prepared to advocate legislative steps to withhold funds from an expanded mission is unclear. Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said Sunday that as a practical matter, there was little that lawmakers could do to prevent Mr. Bush from expanding the American military mission in Iraq.

“You can’t go in like a Tinkertoy and play around and say you can’t spend the money on this piece and this piece,” Mr. Biden said on the NBC News program “Meet the Press.” “He’ll be able to keep the troops there forever, constitutionally, if he wants to.”

“As a practical matter,” Mr. Biden added, “there is no way to say, ‘Mr. President, stop.’ ”

Mr. Bush is expected to refer to the benchmarks in a much-anticipated speech this week outlining his new Iraq strategy, including plans to send as many as 20,000 additional troops. Administration officials plan to make the benchmarks public sometime after the address.

In addition to trying to ease Congressional concerns over the new strategy, the administration is trying to instill discipline in an Iraqi government that has been slow to act and hampered by sectarian agendas.

“There will be an approach and a strategy that reflects not only the desire for the Iraqis to take more responsibility but the need for the Iraqis to step up,” a senior administration official familiar with the deliberations said. “This is not an open-ended commitment. We are putting real specific requirements and expectations on the Iraqi government.”

The Americans and Iraqis have agreed on benchmarks before. Indeed, some of the goals that are to be incorporated on the list of benchmarks have been carried over from an earlier list that was hammered out with the Iraqis and made public in October, but never met.

The benchmarks, for example, include a previously stated commitment: setting a date for provincial elections. That goal is intended to enfranchise Sunnis — who had initially boycotted the political process — and thus give them a role in the governing of Sunni-dominated areas.

Another measure that was carried over from the old list of benchmarks is the final completion of the long-delayed national oil law that would give the central government the power to distribute current and future oil revenues to the provinces or regions, based on their population.

The list of benchmarks will also deal with the still-unresolved matter of settling a new policy on de-Baathification. There is wide agreement among experts that the initial Iraqi approach toward former Baath Party members was too sweeping and excluded too many from government service and entitlements. A revised approach would seek to address those concerns by, for example, paying Army pensions to some former Baathists who have been excluded from receiving them.

One important theme of the new Iraqi strategy will be encouraging the Iraqi government to spend more on projects and programs in Sunni areas. Most of the funds allocated for the Sunni-dominated Anbar Province in western Iraq have never actually been expended. That has encouraged opposition to the Iraqi authorities in Baghdad and handicapped the American military’s counterinsurgency efforts in the province.

“The assessment has been that the disbursement of funds from the Iraqi government from Baghdad out to the provinces, particularly the Sunni provinces, has been either slow or nonexisting,” the senior Bush administration official said. “That has to change.”

Administration officials said that by more clearly defining the goals and by planning to make them public some time after Mr. Bush’s address they hoped to encourage a sense of accountability on the part of the Iraqis.

Mr. Bush discussed some of the goals — the need for provincial elections, the enactment of the oil law and reform of Iraq’s de-Baathification policy — during his recent video conference with Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

The Americans have not been the only ones underscoring the need for benchmarks. The Maliki government has pressed to gain direct command of Iraq’s 10 army divisions, insisting it should be achieved by June. Some American officials have been concerned that it is overambitious. Nevertheless, an administration official has indicated that it is among the goals.

In Washington, the idea of benchmarks has been generally welcomed by lawmakers, though many remain skeptical that they will be achieved on schedule.

After meeting with the president and his national security team on Friday at the White House, senators from both parties said they told Mr. Bush they would have trouble supporting an American troop increase unless the plan included specific goals for the Iraqi government.

Senator John E. Sununu, Republican of New Hampshire, said one of his Senate colleagues asked why the effort to add to American forces in Iraq would be more likely to succeed than previous troop increases. Mr. Sununu said the president and Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, responded that Mr. Bush’s plan would “include more specific goals, different rules of engagement and different expectations for cooperation with the Iraqi government.”

Mr. Sununu said when he raised questions about oil revenue distribution, provincial elections and national reconciliation, he received “strong assurances that these were recognized as critical issues, that they were being addressed by the Maliki government,” with one proposal that was nearing completion for the distribution of oil revenue and another regarding provincial elections.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting.

    Plan Sets Series of Goals for Iraq Leaders, 8.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/world/middleeast/08strategy.html?hp&ex=1168318800&en=076ca8b44e7233b1&ei=5094&partner=homepage

War Could Last Years, Commander Says

January 8, 2007
The New York Times
By JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, Jan. 7 — The new American operational commander in Iraq said Sunday that even with the additional American troops likely to be deployed in Baghdad under President Bush’s new war strategy it might take another “two or three years” for American and Iraqi forces to gain the upper hand in the war.

The commander, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, assumed day-to-day control of war operations last month in the first step of a makeover of the American military hierarchy here. In his first lengthy meeting with reporters, General Odierno, 52, struck a cautious note about American prospects, saying much will depend on whether commanders can show enough progress to stem eroding support in the United States for the war.

“I believe the American people, if they feel we are making progress, they will have the patience,” he said. But right now, he added, “I think the frustration is that they think we are not making progress.”

The general laid out a plan to make an impact in Baghdad with the additional troops. Several other military plans since the fall of Baghdad in 2003 have faltered. He said he wanted the new American units, working with three additional Iraqi combat brigades that Iraqi officials say will be deployed in the capital, to move back into the city’s toughest neighborhoods and show that they can “protect the people,” which he said coalition forces had previously failed to do.

General Odierno contrasted his approach with the last effort to secure Baghdad, effectively abandoned for lack of enough Iraqi troops last fall.

Then, American troops conducted house-to-house clearing operations before moving on to other neighborhoods, leaving the holding phase of the operation to Iraqi troops, who failed to control the areas and forced Americans to return. This time, the general said, American troops would remain in the cleared areas “24/7,” to stiffen Iraqi resolve and build confidence among residents that they would be treated evenhandedly.

Equally important, he said, coalition troops would move into both Shiite and Sunni neighborhoods. That, too, would break with the pattern set last fall, when American troops concentrated on known Sunni insurgent strongholds, especially Dora, in southwest Baghdad. This time, the general said, it was crucial the security plan be evenhanded. “We have to have a believable approach, of going after Sunni and Shia extremists,” he said.

Going into Shiite neighborhoods, particularly the sprawling working-class district of Sadr City, the base for the powerful Mahdi Army militia that has spawned Shiite death squads, will risk new strains in the relationship between American commanders and the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. Sunni leaders and, increasingly, American commanders here have accused Mr. Maliki of a strong Shiite bias. The criticism has intensified since the sectarian taunting by Shiite guards at the hanging nine days ago of Iraq’s ousted dictator, Saddam Hussein, an event personally planned by Mr. Maliki.

General Odierno said he envisaged making enough of a difference within three or four months of the new deployments to move to a second phase of the new plan, pulling American troops back to the periphery of Baghdad and leaving Iraqi forces to carry on the fight in the capital. He said he hoped to be able to do that by August or September, but with American troops prepared to move back into the capital rapidly if commanders conclude that the pullback was “a miscalculation.”

Meeting American reporters over lunch at a villa in the grounds of one of Mr. Hussein’s former palaces, General Odierno was careful not to divulge details of Mr. Bush’s new war plan, which the president is expected to make public in coming days, perhaps on Wednesday.

But much of the Bush plan has been leaked, including an influx of as many as 20,000 additional combat troops to Baghdad. Their arrival would be staged over coming months as American commanders watch to see whether the Iraqis, who made troop commitments before that they have not fulfilled, meet their part of the deal.

Sending up to five additional combat brigades, as suggested by administration officials in Washington who have discussed the plan with reporters, would push the American force in Iraq to at least 160,000 troops, close to the levels involved in the invasion nearly four years ago.

This so-called surge would constitute an abrupt about-face in American strategy, which has aimed in the past two years for a drawdown of American troops as Iraqi forces take on greater responsibility for the war.

General Odierno, the second-ranking American commander here, will be joined in Baghdad in coming weeks by the new overall commander chosen by Mr. Bush, Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, who will be promoted to full general when he succeeds Gen. George W. Casey Jr., top commander in Iraq for the past two-and-a-half years. The recasting of the war command will also include a new top officer at the Central Command, with overall responsibility for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That post will go to Adm. William J. Fallon, a Navy officer who is now the American commander in the Pacific. The appointments of Admiral Fallon and General Petraeus are expected to be approved by the Senate.

Generals Petraeus and Odierno will assume control in Iraq at a critical juncture, with additional American troops — assuming Mr. Bush’s plan is not blocked by Democratic opponents in Congress — and the burden of showing they can find ways of turning the worsening situation around that escaped General Casey and Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the operational commander who preceded General Odierno. General Casey and General Chiarelli have been wary of American troop increases, saying the key to prevailing here is to have Iraqis take over, not to encourage them to shelter behind enhanced American combat power.

The plans laid out by General Odierno appeared aimed at meeting several goals in what American commanders here say has become a highly complex interplay of American and Iraqi politics, in addition to stabilizing a situation that has threatened to spiral out of control as Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis move ever closer to all-out civil war.

The commanders have acknowledged privately that the new Bush plan is almost certain to represent a last-chance option for persuading Americans that it is worth persisting with the heavy burdens of the war, with more than 3,000 American troops dead and overall costs that are nearing $450 billion.

General Odierno said one American goal would be to satisfy Iraqi leaders’ insistence that American commanders transfer to them as quickly as possible overall responsibility for the war.

One thorny issue for the Bush administration has been that Iraqi leaders, facing the highest levels of violence in the war and struggling with weaknesses in their forces, have been wary of increasing American troop levels because of the impediment that might pose to the Iraqis taking fuller control of events here.

General Odierno spoke of the mood in the United States as another crucial factor. He served a year here in 2003 and 2004 as commander of the Fourth Infantry Division, during which his troops took credit for capturing Mr. Hussein. But he spent the last two years in Washington, the most recent 12 months as military adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

He said he understood the failing confidence among Americans, including some of those who had lost sons and daughters here, that the war was worthwhile. The general’s own son, Capt. Anthony Odierno, a 28-year-old West Point graduate, lost an arm when a bomb detonated during a patrol in Baghdad in 2004.

As a father as well as a commander, the general said, he did not doubt the sacrifices had been justified. “I believe it’s worth it,” he said.

    War Could Last Years, Commander Says, NYT, 8.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/world/middleeast/08iraq.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Before Hanging, a Push for Revenge and a Push Back

January 7, 2007
The New York Times
By JOHN F. BURNS

This article was reported by John F. Burns, James Glanz, Sabrina Tavernise and Marc Santora and written by Mr. Burns.

BAGHDAD, Jan. 6 — When American soldiers woke Saddam Hussein in his cell near Baghdad airport at 3:55 a.m. last Saturday, they told him to dress for a journey to Baghdad. He had followed the routine dozens of times before, traveling by helicopter in the predawn darkness to the courtroom where he spent 14 months on trial for his life.

When his cell lights were dimmed on Friday night, Mr. Hussein may have hoped that he would live a few days longer, and perhaps cheat the hangman altogether.

According to Task Force 134, the American military unit responsible for all Iraqi detainees, Mr. Hussein “had heard some of the rumors on the radio about potential execution dates.” But never one to understate his own importance, he had told his lawyers for months that the Americans might spare him in the end, for negotiations to end the insurgency whose daily bombings rattled his cellblock windows.

As Mr. Hussein prepared to walk out into the chill of the desert winter, dressed in a tailored black overcoat, that last illusion was shattered. After being roused and told that he was being transferred to Iraqi custody, a task force statement e-mailed to The New York Times a week later revealed, “he immediately indicated that he knew the execution would soon follow.”

“As he left the detention area, he thanked the guards and medics for the treatment he had received,” said Lt. Col. Keir-Kevin Curry, spokesman for the task force. Mr. Hussein was then driven to a waiting Black Hawk helicopter for a 10-minute flight to the old Istikhbarat prison in northern Baghdad, where a party of Iraqi officials awaited him at the gallows. “During this brief period of transfer, Saddam Hussein appeared more serious,” the task force said.

The time as the helicopter took off was 5:05 a.m., and Mr. Hussein had 65 minutes to live. But as he flew over Baghdad’s darkened suburbs, he can have known little of the last-minute battle waged between top Iraqi and American officials — and among the Americans themselves — over whether the execution, fraught with legal ambiguities and Islamic religious sensitivities, should go ahead.

American opposition to executing him in haste centered partly on the fact that the Id al-Adha religious holiday, marking the end of the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, began for Sunnis at sunrise on Saturday. In Baghdad, the sun was to rise at 7:06 a.m. Iraqi government officials had promised the hanging would be over before the dawn light began seeping through the palms that shade the capital’s streets.

The taunts Mr. Hussein endured from Shiite guards as he stood with the noose around his neck have made headlines around the world, and stirred angry protests among his fellow Iraqi Sunnis. But the story of how American commanders and diplomats fought to halt the execution until midnight on Friday, only six hours before Mr. Hussein was hanged, is only now coming into focus, as Iraqi and American officials, in the glare of international outrage over the hanging, compete with their versions of what happened.

Tensions Boil Over

It is a story of the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, trying to coerce second-tier American military and diplomatic officials into handing over Mr. Hussein, first on Thursday night, then again on Friday. The American push back was complicated by the absences of Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and the top American military commander, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., who were both out of Iraq on leave. The American message throughout was that rushing Mr. Hussein to the gallows could rebound disastrously, as it did.

It is a story, too, of the Americans disagreeing among themselves. After a final call to Mr. Maliki at 10:30 p.m. Friday, American and Iraqi officials said, Mr. Khalilzad concluded that there was no prospect of persuading the Iraqis to delay the execution and passed that message to Washington. The conclusion found little favor with the military, who were the ones who had to transport Mr. Hussein to the gallows.

For General Casey and Mr. Khalilzad, close partners here, the messy ending for Mr. Hussein was made worse by the confirmation this week that Mr. Bush will soon replace both men as he refashions his Iraq war policy.

There were disputes among the Iraqis as well. At least one senior judge from the tribunal that sentenced Mr. Hussein to die, and three American lawyers who worked closely with the Iraqis at his trials, fought their own rearguard battle, telling fellow Iraqis how surprised they were that he received the death sentence in the narrow case that produced it — the “systematic persecution” of Dujail, a small Shiite town north of Baghdad, after an alleged assassination attempt against Mr. Hussein there in 1982.

In interviews with dozens of American and Iraqi officials involved in the hanging, a picture has emerged of a clash of cultures and political interests, reflecting the widening gulf between Americans here and the Iraqi exiles who rode to power behind American tanks. Even before a smuggled cellphone camera recording revealed the derision Mr. Hussein faced on the gallows, the hanging had become a metaphor, among Mr. Maliki’s critics, for how the “new Iraq” is starting to resemble the repressive, vengeful place it was under Mr. Hussein, albeit in a paler shade.

The hanging spread wide dismay among the Americans. Aides said American commanders were deeply upset by the way they were forced to hand Mr. Hussein over, a sequence commanders saw as motivated less by a concern for justice than for revenge. In the days following the hanging, recriminations flowed between the military command and the United States Embassy, accused by some officers of abandoning American interests at midnight Friday in favor of placating Mr. Maliki and hard-line Shiites.

But for Mr. Maliki’s inner circle, the hanging was a moment to avenge decades of brutal repression by Mr. Hussein, as well as a moment to drive home to Iraq’s five million Sunnis that after centuries of subjugation, Shiites were in power to stay. At the “White House,” as his officials now describe Mr. Maliki’s headquarters in the Green Zone, a celebratory dinner began Friday night even before the Americans withdrew their threat not to hand over Mr. Hussein.

An Iraqi who attended the hanging said the government saw the Americans as wasting time with their demands for a delay until after the four-day Id al-Adha holiday, and for whatever time beyond that required to obtain the legal authorizations they considered necessary. For the Americans to claim the moral high ground afterward by disavowing the hanging, the Iraqi said, was disingenuous.

“They cannot wash their hands, this is a joint responsibility,” he said. “They had the physical custody, and we had the legal custody. At one point, I asked, ‘Is it our call or is it your call?’ They said, ‘It’s your call.’ I said, ‘If it’s our call, we’ve made the decision.’ ” Legal niceties could not save Mr. Hussein, he said, concluding, “The man has to go.”

In a speech on Saturday, a week after the hanging, Mr. Maliki showed that he remains as angry as the Americans. Hitting out at governments and human rights organizations around the world that have condemned the hanging, he said they were hypocritical. “We’re wondering where these organizations were during the crimes of Anfal and Halabja,” he said, referring to Mr. Hussein’s persecution of Iraqi Kurds. “Where were they during the mass graves and the executions and the massacres that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis?”

Differing Timelines

The countdown to the hanging began eight weeks earlier, on Nov. 5, as Raouf Abdel-Rahman, the chief judge in the Dujail case, passed death sentences on Mr. Hussein and two associates, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Mr. Hussein’s half-brother, and Awad al-Bandar, chief judge of Mr. Hussein’s revolutionary court, for crimes against humanity in the hanging of 148 men and boys from the Shiite town. “Go to hell, you and the court!” Mr. Hussein yelled as bailiffs ushered him out.

The widespread expectation was that the appeal of the death sentences would run for months, allowing time for the more notorious Anfal case, involving charges of genocide in the killing of 180,000 Kurds, to be completed before Mr. Hussein was hanged. American lawyers in the embassy’s Regime Crimes Liaison Office, the behind-the-scenes organizer of the trials, predicted Mr. Hussein’s execution in the spring.

When the tribunal’s appeals bench announced that it had upheld the death sentences on Dec. 26, three weeks into the appeal, even prosecutors were stunned. Defense lawyers said Mr. Hussein was being railroaded under pressure from Mr. Maliki, who told a BBC interviewer shortly after the Dujail verdict that he expected the ousted ruler to be hanged before year’s end.

The suspicion that the judges had submitted to government pressure was shared by some of Americans working with the tribunal, who had stifled their growing disillusionment with the government’s interference for months. Among a host of other complaints, the Americans’ frustrations focused on the government’s dismissal of two judges seen as too indulgent with Mr. Hussein, and its failure to investigate seriously when three defense lawyers were killed. The appeals court’s apparent eagerness to fast-forward Mr. Hussein to the gallows — and the scenes at the execution itself — was, for some of the Americans, the last straw.

On the Thursday before the hanging, American military officials were summoned. Both Mr. Khalilzad and General Casey were on vacation, so the American team handling negotiations with Mr. Maliki and his officials was headed by Maj. Gen. Jack Gardner, head of Task Force 134, the detainee unit, and Margaret Scobey, head of the embassy’s political section.

Iraqi officials said neither carried much weight with Mr. Maliki, who had learned through bruising confrontations to be wary of alienating Mr. Khalilzad and General Casey, both of whom have direct access to President Bush. At the Thursday afternoon meeting, tempers frayed. According to an Iraqi legal expert at the meeting, Iraqi officials demanded that the Americans hand over Mr. Hussein that night, for an execution before dawn on Friday.

General Gardner responded with demands of his own, for letters affirming the legality of the execution from Mr. Maliki, President Jalal Talabani and the chief judge of the high tribunal that convicted Mr. Hussein, the Iraqi legal expert said. The focus was on two issues: a constitutional requirement that Iraq’s three-man presidency council approve all executions, and a Hussein-era law forbidding executions during religious holidays.

Mr. Talabani, a death penalty opponent, refused to sign off on the hanging, but did sign a letter for Mr. Maliki saying he had no objections if the government went ahead. The Iraqis, bolstering their case, said that the Hussein tribunal’s own statute, drafted by the Americans, placed its rulings beyond review. They dismissed the holiday ban on executions, saying Iraq’s death penalty law had been suspended by the Americans in 2003 and that the new Iraqi Parliament, in reviving it in 2004, had not reinstituted the ban.

An Iraqi participant who opposed the hanging said that Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Mr. Maliki’s national security adviser, said angrily, “This is an Iraqi issue,” and added, “Who is going to execute him anyway, you or us?” When the Americans insisted they would not hand over Mr. Hussein without the letters, another Iraqi official exploded: “Just give him to us!”

By Thursday evening, pressures for a quick hanging were growing. Esam al-Gazawi, a Hussein lawyer, said by telephone from Jordan that his legal team had been denied a final visit to Camp Cropper, the American detention center, and that they had been told to send somebody to collect Mr. Hussein’s personal belongings.

Around midnight on Thursday, the meeting broke up, and General Gardner contacted commanders at Camp Cropper to tell them to stand down. By then, the American command had entered what it called its “X-hour sequence,” a 10-hour countdown to the execution that provided a timeline for everything the Americans needed to do to ensure Mr. Hussein’s “secure and dignified” delivery to the execution site.

Negotiations resumed Friday morning. In Phoenix, 10 time zones away, General Casey was monitoring the exchanges in signals traffic from Baghdad. American military officials remained opposed to an immediate hanging, telling Mr. Maliki that beyond the legal issues, there was a question of his government’s need to gain international support by carrying out the hanging in a way that could withstand any criticism.

“We said, ‘You have to do it by international law, you have to do it in accordance with international standards of decorum, you have to establish yourselves as a nation under law,’ ” an American official recounted. When Mr. Maliki said the Americans should respect Iraq’s right to decide matters for itself, American officials said, one of the Americans said: “Forget about us. You’re in front of the international community here. People will be watching this.”

The arguments continued deep into the Iraqi night. General Gardner and Ms. Scobey returned at one point to the former Republican Palace, the American headquarters in the Green Zone, seeking Washington’s advice. Workarounds for the legal problems were discussed.

At 10:30 p.m., Ambassador Khalilzad made a last-ditch call to Mr. Maliki asking him not to proceed with the hanging. When the Iraqi leader remained adamant, an American official said, the ambassador made a second call to Washington conveying “the determination of the Iraqi prime minister to go forward,” and his conclusion that there was nothing more, consistent with respect for Iraqi sovereignty, that the United States could do.

Senior Bush administration officials in Washington said that Mr. Khalilzad’s principal contact in Washington was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and that she gave the green light for Mr. Hussein to be turned over, despite the reservations of the military commanders in Baghdad. One official said that Ms. Rice was supported in that view by Stephen J. Hadley, Mr. Bush’s national security adviser.

“It literally came down to the Iraqis interpreting their law, and our looking at their law and interpreting it differently,” the official said. “Finally, it was decided we are not the court of last appeal for Iraqi law here. The president of their country says it meets their procedures. We are not going to be their legal nannies.”

Mr. Khalilzad had suggested that the Iraqis get a written ruling approving the execution from Midhat al-Mahmoud, the chief judge of Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council; Mr. Mahmoud refused. Then, the Iraqis played their trump card: a call to high-ranking Shiite clerics in the holy city of Najaf, asking for approval from the marjaiya, the supreme authority in Iraqi Shiism. When his officials reported that they had it, Mr. Maliki signed a letter authorizing the hanging. It was 11:45 p.m.

The Americans suggested that foreign reporters be invited to the hanging, along with United Nations observers. American commanders feared the concern for procedure might be swept away by the urge for revenge. “Anybody who’s been involved in a firefight will tell you there’s a moment when rage takes over,” an American official said. The Iraqis dismissed the idea of outside observers and assembled an execution party of 14 Shiite officials and a Sunni cleric invited to help Mr. Hussein with his prayers.

The ‘X-Hour Sequence’

At Camp Cropper, the X-hour sequence was running for a second night. Helicopters were positioned. Special security measures went into effect along the flight path. The Americans dispatched sniffer dogs along the route of Mr. Hussein’s final steps and into the execution chamber, the only time any American set foot there.

Before he left the camp, Mr. Hussein bade farewell to American soldiers who guarded him during the latter stages of his 1,110 days in solitary confinement. There, and again after the helicopter carrying him landed at 5:15 a.m. at Camp Justice, the American military post in the Kadhimiya district of northern Baghdad that encloses the Istikhbarat prison, the former dictator went man to man, thanking each of the Americans for looking after him.

At 5:21 a.m., he was led into the prison, a forbidding, four-story concrete building that once housed the headquarters of Mr. Hussein’s military intelligence agency and now is a base for an Iraqi Army brigade. The Americans took him to a holding room and exchanged papers with the prison governor formalizing the transfer.

“At that point, he was dignified,” Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the American command’s chief spokesman, said at a briefing later. “He said farewell to his interpreter. He thanked the military police squad, the lieutenant who was the squad leader, the medical doctor we had present, the American colonel who was on site.” He added, with emphasis, “And then we had absolutely nothing to do with any of the procedures or any of control mechanisms or anything from that point forward.”

At 5:30 a.m., the Iraqis took over. An American official who watched said Mr. Hussein’s demeanor “changed in the Iraqi prison when the Iraqi governor assumed control of him.” Mr. Hussein had long since told his American captors that he trusted them but not the Iraqis.

“He was still dignified, but he was scornful,” the American official said.

Mr. Rubaie, the security adviser, said that when Mr. Hussein stepped into the execution block, an ill-lighted concrete structure behind the main prison building where thousands of hangings took place under Mr. Hussein, he seemed composed.

“He made some joking remarks,” he said. “He said to me, ‘Don’t be afraid,’ as if I was going to be hanged. I didn’t reply, but one of the guards shouted, ‘You did bad things to Iraq.’ And he said, ‘I made this backward country into an advanced and prosperous nation.’ ”

After that, the story is taken up by the illicit cellphone video that has caused an uproar among Iraqi Sunnis and across the world, showing Mr. Hussein erect on the gallows in his black overcoat and gray beard, staring ahead, and answering back, as taunts flowed from Shiites gathered in front of the platform.

Mr. Hussein got halfway through the most sacred of Muslim prayers. “There is no God but God, and Muhammad. ...” The trapdoor clanged open. It was 6:10 a.m.

Securing the Body

Before 7 a.m., helicopters ferried Iraqi officials back to the Green Zone, along with Mr. Hussein’s body. For nearly 17 hours, Mr. Maliki and his officials remained locked in a dispute with Sunni officials and leaders of Mr. Hussein’s Albu Nasir tribe, with Mr. Maliki’s officials refusing to release the body, saying they wanted no shrine to him. Throughout, the body, in a white shroud, remained inside the ambulance in the parking lot behind Mr. Maliki’s office.

For the last time, the Americans intervened, flying a delegation from Tikrit, Mr. Hussein’s hometown, to Baghdad, and returning them 110 miles north again after Mr. Maliki, at nearly midnight, agreed to let the body go.

It was transferred to a pine coffin, loaded onto the open back of a police pickup, and driven back to Landing Zone Washington, the Green Zone helipad.

Upset by events in the execution chamber, and concerned at attracting any fresh anger from Iraqi Sunnis, the Americans ordered their troops not to touch Mr. Hussein’s body after the execution, even as it was loaded and unloaded from their helicopters.

This left Iraqi officials to unload the stretcher carrying the body when the execution party returned to the Green Zone from the prison. Mr. Rubaie, the security adviser, said he helped carry the stretcher bearing the body from the helicopter to a waiting ambulance.

“We weren’t walking, we were jogging” to the ambulance, he said. “This was a chapter we wanted to get done and finished with. We just wanted it to be over.”

David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Baghdad.

    Before Hanging, a Push for Revenge and a Push Back, NYT, 7.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/world/middleeast/07ticktock.html?hp&ex=1168232400&en=b0246e2cd77524e9&ei=5094&partner=homepage

30 Dead in Baghdad Clash; Bodies Hanged on Lampposts

January 7, 2007
The New York Times
By MARC SANTORA

BAGHDAD, Jan. 6 — A fierce clash left at least 30 people dead in central Baghdad late Saturday night as Iraqi Army forces fought with gunmen in an area where several residents had been killed and their bodies hanged from street lampposts, the Iraqi military said.

The fighting took place in the neighborhood around Haifa Street, a mostly Sunni Arab enclave with a small Shiite population.

A spokesman for the Defense Ministry, Muhammad al-Askari, said that an Iraqi Army unit had gone into the area after receiving reports that Sunni fighters had set up a fake security checkpoint and were taking Shiites aside and shooting them.

The bodies of many of those killed at the roadblock were then hanged from the lampposts, Mr. Askari said.

He said that Iraqi soldiers had moved in and surrounded the fighters at the checkpoint. In initial fighting there, 30 of the men were killed and several more were arrested, Mr. Askari said, adding that the neighborhood remained locked down. There was no way to verify the figures.

Residents living nearby said that they were hearing continued fighting through the night but that it was impossible to know precisely what was happening.

In the same neighborhood, there were reports of clashes as government forces moved to collect 27 bodies dumped behind a local hospital. But it was unclear whether the firefight with Iraqi troops was related.

The government said Saturday that 72 bodies were recovered around the city on Saturday, most showing signs of torture.

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki announced Saturday the beginning of a new Baghdad security operation and promised to purge the government security forces of militia fighters and others with sectarian aims.

But Mr. Maliki has promised such a crackdown before, and his government has been increasingly seen by Sunnis in Iraq and abroad as dominated by Shiite interests.

30 Dead in Baghdad Clash; Bodies Hanged on Lampposts, NYT, 7.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/world/middleeast/07iraq.html


 

Qais Ataiwee Yaseen lost two sons,

Abbas, 11, and Ali, 8, in the blast.

“I’m like a dead man,” said Mr. Yaseen,

who now lives alone in a small room.

“I have no ambitions. I have no goals in life. I have lost everything.”

Johan Spanner for The New York Times

Bomb’s Lasting Toll: Lost Laughter and Broken Lives        NYT        7.1.2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/world/middleeast/07civilian.html
 

Bomb’s Lasting Toll: Lost Laughter and Broken Lives

January 7, 2007
The New York Times
By SABRINA TAVERNISE

BAGHDAD, Jan. 6 — If the cost of this war is measured in human lives, one block in southeast Baghdad has paid more than its share.

On a hot morning two summers ago, 34 children were killed here in a flash of smoke and metal. They were scooping up candy thrown from an American Humvee. The suicide bomber’s truck never slowed down.

More than 3,000 Iraqis are dying every month in this war — roughly the total deaths in the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or all the American troops killed since the war began. But behind the headlines and statistics, most of the war is experienced in Iraqi living rooms and on blocks like the one here, where families struggle with the intense pain of loss.

And while American war planners discuss the way ahead, Iraqis on this scarred block are stuck in the past on the morning of July 13, 2005, when time stopped and the war truly began for them.

“Our life now, it’s not a life, it’s a kind of dream,” said Qais Ataiwee Yaseen, whose two boys, ages 8 and 11, were killed that day. “Life has no taste. I even feel sick of myself.”

In the early years of the war, the street — a dusty, trash-strewn strip of concrete that runs between Baghdad’s southeast highway and the neighborhood of Naariya — was mostly quiet, home to a mix of Shiite and Sunni families who had known each other for years.

But the cruelty of the war intervened when the bomber struck, apparently aiming at a convoy of American Humvees parked at the end of the street. One American soldier and 34 Iraqis were killed. All were boys, and all but four were younger than 15. The youngest was 6. In all, 29 families lost children; one lost three sons.

In the seconds after the explosion, the world narrowed to one child for Sattar Hashim, a 39-year-old security guard whose son had gone out to see the American patrol. Mr. Hashim moved frantically through the wreckage, just outside his front gate, a scene now burned into his memory. He found his son unconscious, his body torn by shrapnel.

“I pray to God that no one in this world will ever have to face such a scene,” he said, remembering the scene as he sat in his sparely furnished living room with the curtains drawn. “As if they had been scattered on the ground. Legs. Arms. Heads. Bodies still burning.”

His son died in a hospital operating room several hours after the explosion.

Suicide bombings often stop clocks nearby, throwing the delicate mechanisms out of balance. The minute hand freezes the moment that the bomber detonates, and cleanup crews find clocks hanging crookedly on walls hours later, with the moment of loss fixed forever on the clocks’ faces.

For the parents in Naariya, the clocks are frozen at a quarter after 10. The deaths that morning tore a hole in the life of the block, and more than a year later, many people have been unable to put their lives back together. Some have drifted away from their spouses. Others changed jobs or stopped going to work altogether. Reminders of the loss were everywhere: Class sizes were smaller. Soccer tournaments for 12-year-olds stopped. Bug collecting was no longer a hobby.

The pain caused strange things to happen. Mr. Yaseen lost his knack for numbers and found himself fumbling in front of customers at the hardware store where he had worked for years. Eventually, he quit. Reading and writing became difficult for Zahra Hussein, the mother of 11-year-old Hamza. She had lost her ability to concentrate and some of her eyesight.

Hadi Faris, Hamza’s father, stopped his work as a driver. He could not control his thoughts, and concentrating on the road and split- second decisions was too onerous.

“I kept thinking how life is cheap, how so many innocent people are killed,” he said, sitting in front of a kerosene heater in a small guest room.

After some months, he applied for, and was given, a job as a guard in his son’s school. It felt somehow reassuring to do after his son’s death what could not be done during his life: protect.

“I felt that all the kids were Hamza,” he said. “My main job was to protect them all.”

Life became empty and quiet for the children who were left. Adel Ali, 12, lost four of his best friends, most of his small soccer team and his entire bicycle-racing brigade. They had all shared a surge of happiness in the form of a birthday cake with candles, a first for most of the children, just days before the explosion. The experience was recorded in a grainy photograph of nine little boys making monkey faces. All but two are dead.

Adel spends his afternoons alone at home. In the early evening, he plays soccer with the older boys. They do not know the names of famous players that he and his friends gave each other when they made good plays. They do not know the sheer joy of riding bicycles while holding a rope together. They do not understand his loneliness.

“We used to play together, and the adults would play in another place,” said Adel, his small fingers zipping and unzipping a fleece pullover at his neck.

The attack seemed calculated to make Iraqis despise Americans, in a pattern that would eventually succeed and change the direction of the war. But while some of the parents interviewed seem to have developed that hatred, many had not and even expressed respect. Mr. Faris said that immediately after the bombing he saw a soldier with a mangled arm trying to pick up a wounded child.

More Americans came to the area several weeks later and brought small trinkets to houses, in what Iraqis assumed was something of a peace offering.

“We never hurt the Americans, and the Americans never hurt us,” Mr. Faris said.

A constant theme of the war for Iraqis has been their complete lack of control over chaotic, life-changing events. Like victims of a car wreck on an empty highway, they sit in pain and hope that help will come along.

Mr. Yaseen is haunted by the helplessness he felt that morning when he found his younger son, Ali, still alive. He was badly burned and missing his feet.

“I said to myself — two feet, it is nothing,” he said. But within several hours the child was dead.

“I did not have the ability to do anything for him,” Mr. Yaseen said. “To save him.”

Memories rush back at inconvenient moments. Mr. Yaseen has one in which his older son, Abbas, who loved bugs, begged him not to put poison down for the ants, saying, “They also have families and houses.”

Even trifles sting. Ali, called English Ali for his tidiness and admiration for Americans, had only bread to eat for breakfast that morning.

“I’m like a dead man,” said Mr. Yaseen, crying into his hands. “I have no ambitions. I have no goals in life. I have lost everything.”

His wife and daughter have moved out, and he has retreated into his apartment, a 12-foot by 14-foot room. He stopped shaving. The room is now piled with baskets of laundry, old children’s toys and a metal bassinet.

“I live in this room,” he said. “I sleep in this room. I eat in this room. This is my whole life. As if I’m in prison.”

Meanwhile, the war ground on, and the block was not immune to changes.

In February, poor Shiites rampaged in neighborhoods throughout eastern Baghdad. Naariya started to lose Sunnis. New graffiti in black paint across from Mr. Yaseen’s house spelled praise for a Shiite cleric.

Three Shiite families from Diyala, a violent province north of Baghdad, arrived with the stunned look of refugees who just lost everything but their lives.

“There are no smiles on their faces,” Ms. Hussein said. “You can tell they lost somebody.”

Attacks on Shiites by Sunni militants started to wear, and families on the block began asking about the backgrounds of newcomers.

A small statue erected in the children’s memory was blown up, and a bomb was planted under a date palm tree nearby, but it did not explode. During the Ramadan holiday in October, around 20 Sunni men disappeared from the neighborhood. Their bodies turned up in different neighborhoods several days later.

Mr. Hashim heard of the kidnappings but was afraid to ask about them.

“We woke up one day,” he said, “and a family had left.” The 2005 explosion gouged the pavement in front of his house, and afterward he had a large blast wall built. The wall had the added benefit of shielding him from seeing the crater in the street day after day.

For Adel, the 12-year-old whose friends were killed, memories returned in spurts. Some time after the July attack, he took his bicycle to the balcony of his house and threw it off. He was angry about what happened, Ms. Hussein said. A month ago, his life became even more isolated: a guard and a teacher from his school were killed, and Adel’s father began keeping him home.

The boys come back in unexpected ways. Hamza’s sister sees her brother’s face in a boy who lives in a house on her way to school. She gives him candy sometimes. Mr. Yaseen often sees his boys in dreams.

In one, Abbas asks him why he is crying. He spoke of his own burial in a reassuring way. “He tried to make it easy for me,” Mr. Yaseen said.

Speaking of the deaths, Mr. Hashim said: “It formed a hole, a big hole. Before the street was crowded. Cars had to go slowly. Now it’s empty.”

Hosham Hussein contributed reporting.

    Bomb’s Lasting Toll: Lost Laughter and Broken Lives, NYT, 7.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/world/middleeast/07civilian.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

U.S. Inquiry Backs Charges of Killing by Marines in Iraq

January 7, 2007
The New York Times
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER

An American government report on the killing of 24 Iraqis, including several women and children, by marines in the village of Haditha in 2005 provides new details of how the shootings unfolded and supports allegations by prosecutors that a few marines illegally killed civilians, government officials said yesterday.

The report, by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, contains thousands of pages of interviews with marines, Iraqi Army soldiers who had accompanied them and Iraqi villagers who had seen the attack. The shootings followed a roadside bombing that killed a young lance corporal and wounded two other marines, said a senior Defense Department official and another official who had read the report.

The evidence contained in the report, the most exhaustive of several inquiries begun by the military last year to determine what happened in Haditha that day, led prosecutors to charge four enlisted marines with murder. Four marine officers, who were not present during the attack, were also charged with dereliction of duty and other crimes for failing to properly report details of the episode.

The details of the investigation, first reported by The Washington Post yesterday, corroborate accounts of how the killings took place over a period of hours, as described by senior military and Defense Department officials last year in The New York Times.

But the report broadly expands those descriptions, and provides additional evidence, sworn testimony and accounts of witnesses that both prosecutors and lawyers for the accused marines are likely to use in upcoming courts martial, officials said.

The four enlisted men charged with unpremeditated murder, all members of a squad of Company K, Third Battalion, First Marines, are: Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich of Meriden, Conn.; Sgt. Sanick P. Dela Cruz, 24, of Chicago; Lance Cpl. Justin L. Sharratt, 22, of Carbondale, Pa.; and Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum, 25, of Edmond, Okla.

The attack on the Iraqis began after the roadside bomb blew up one of four Humvees the marines were traveling in on Nov. 19, 2005. Minutes after that, the report portrays Sergeant Wuterich, the squad leader, and Sergeant Dela Cruz as killing five men who had nervously piled out of a taxi that had stopped near the marine convoy, the officials said.

The men “were shot by Wuterich as they stood, unarmed, next to the vehicle approximately 10 feet in front of him,” the report said, according to a person who has read it.

Sergeant Dela Cruz said that as he approached the taxi, he saw some men standing near it with their hands in the air, officials said. After Sergeant Wuterich shot them, he continued shooting as they lay on the ground, and later urinated on one of them, an official said.

The marines, taking small arms fire from several locations near homes on either side of the convoy, attacked a home nearby, killing six people, including a young boy, a woman and two elderly people, none of them armed, the report said, according to officials and people who have read it.

The report said that marines told investigators who interviewed them months later that they believed they had permission from their superiors to fire at will inside that home and a second home they raided minutes later, officials said. They said an officer, First Lt. William Kallop, who arrived with other marines after the roadside bomb to support the squad under fire, told them to commandeer one of the homes.

In one of the houses the marines raided, the report said, a 13-year-old girl, Safah Yunis Salem, said she survived by pretending to be dead after marines killed several family members, including her 3-year-old sister and 5-year-old brother, government officials said.

One person who has read the N.C.I.S. report and who is sympathetic to the marines’ account of events said that its thousands of pages provides evidence for both prosecution and defense teams, and that drawing conclusions from it about the guilt of any of the accused marines is difficult.

“For every statement that said X happened, there’s another statement that said Y happened,” this person said, speaking only after being granted anonymity, because he was not authorized to discuss the report.

An N.C.I.S. spokesman declined to comment on the report, which it has not officially released, and said the agency was troubled by the leak of it to The Post. “N.C.I.S. strives to ensure the integrity of every investigation and finds the idea that someone might leak any of its investigative products to be deeply troubling,” the spokesman said.

Several lawyers representing the accused marines expressed anger at the Defense Department, which they blamed for allowing the report to be given surreptitiously to a newspaper and, they said, potentially damaging their clients’ cases.

“The defense lawyers are extremely upset,” said Mark Zaid, a lawyer for Sergeant Wuterich, the squad leader who is charged with killing at least a dozen Iraqis. “The release of the entire evidentiary set is unethical and appears to have been done by certain Pentagon officials with the intent to harm the defendant’s defense.”

The report offer some contradictory evidence, and omits other issues about how the marine chain of command handled the aftermath of the attack that have rankled certain people within the military and defense department. One issue is the cash payments that commanders approved giving to families of people killed in the attacks.

Maj. Gen. Richard A. Huck, the commander of the Second Marine Division at the time, and Col. Stephen W. Davis, then the regimental commander, should have suspected the killings were improper, one Defense Department official said yesterday. Though the Marine Corps’ official view of the Haditha matter remained that 15 Iraqis were killed by the roadside bomb, the Marine Corps nonetheless approved $2,500 payments to each of at least 15 families of people killed in the episode.

“The numbers simply never added up, and the Marines never acknowledged it,” the Defense Department official said.

David S. Cloud contributed reporting.

    U.S. Inquiry Backs Charges of Killing by Marines in Iraq, NYT, 7.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/world/middleeast/07haditha.html

Bush Plan for Iraq Requests More Troops and More Jobs

January 7, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 — President Bush’s new Iraq strategy calls for a rapid influx of forces that could add as many as 20,000 American combat troops to Baghdad, supplemented with a jobs program costing as much as $1 billion intended to employ Iraqis in projects including painting schools and cleaning streets, according to American officials who are piecing together the last parts of the initiative.

The American officials said Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, formally agreed in a long teleconference on Thursday with Mr. Bush to match the American troop increase, made up of five combat brigades that would go in at a rate of roughly one a month, by sending three more Iraqi brigades to Baghdad over the next month and a half.

Nonetheless, even in outlining the plan, some American officials acknowledged deep skepticism about whether the new plan could succeed.

They said two-thirds of the promised Iraqi force would consist of Kurdish pesh merga units to be sent from northern Iraq, and they said some doubts remained about whether they would show up in Baghdad and were truly committed to quelling sectarian fighting.

The call for an increase in troops would also put Mr. Bush in direct confrontation with the leaders of the new Democratic Congress, who said in a letter to the president on Friday that the United States should move instead toward a phased withdrawal of American troops, to begin in the next four months.

Mr. Bush is expected to make the plan public in coming days, probably in a speech to the country on Wednesday that will cast the initiative as a joint effort by the United States and Iraq to reclaim control of Baghdad neighborhoods racked by sectarian violence. Officials said Mr. Bush was likely to be vague on the question of how long the additional American forces would remain on the streets of Baghdad. But they said American planners intended for the push to last for less than a year.

A crucial element of the plan would include more than doubling the State Department’s reconstruction efforts throughout the country, an initiative intended by the administration to signal that the new strategy would emphasize rebuilding as much as fighting.

But previous American reconstruction efforts in Iraq have failed to translate into support from the Iraqi population, and some Republicans as well as the new Democratic leadership in Congress have questioned if a troop increase would do more than postpone the inevitable and precarious moment when Iraqi forces have to stand on their own.

Congress has the power to halt the increases by cutting off money for Mr. Bush’s proposals. But some Democrats are torn about whether to press ahead with such a move for fear that it will appear that they are not supporting the troops.

When Mr. Bush gives his speech, he will cast much of the program as an effort to bolster Iraq’s efforts to take command over their own forces and territory, the American officials said. He will express confidence that Mr. Maliki is committed to bringing under control both the Sunni-led insurgency and the Shiite militias that have emerged as the source of most of the violence. Mr. Maliki picked up those themes in a speech in Baghdad on Saturday in which he said that multinational troops would support an Iraqi effort to secure the capital.

Some aspects of the plan were reported by The Wall Street Journal on Friday.

The officials would not say specifically whether the American troop increase would be carried out if the Iraqis failed to make good on their commitment to add to their own ranks. But they emphasized that the American influx, which would be focused in Baghdad and Anbar Province but could also include a contingency force in Kuwait, could be re-evaluated at any point.

The American officials who described the plan included some who said they were increasingly concerned about Mr. Maliki’s intentions and his ability to deliver. They said senior Bush administration officials had been deeply disturbed by accounts from witnesses to last Saturday’s hanging of Saddam Hussein, who said they believed that guards involved in carrying out the execution were linked to the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia that is headed by Moktada al-Sadr, whose name some of the executioners shouted while Mr. Hussein stood on the gallows.

“If that’s an indication of how Maliki is operating these days, we’ve got a deeper problem with the bigger effort,” said one official, who insisted on anonymity because he was discussing internal administration deliberations over a strategy that Mr. Bush has not yet publicly announced.

The White House has refused to talk publicly about any of the decisions that Mr. Bush has made about his plan, which is tentatively titled “A New Way Forward.” Even though speechwriters are already drafting Mr. Bush’s comments, several of the crucial elements are not final, officials warned. That apparently includes the exact amounts of money Mr. Bush will ask of Congress to finance the jobs program or a longer-term job-training effort that will also be part of the strategy.

Mr. Bush has previously promised to remake American reconstruction efforts in Iraq, most notably in December 2005, when he said that the United States had learned from the failure of efforts to rebuild major infrastructure, mostly run by American companies. But subsequent efforts to focus on programs that would bring more immediate benefits to Iraqis have also faltered.

The details of Mr. Bush’s latest military, economic and political initiatives were described by several sources, including some who said they doubted it would work. The jobs program, noted one, “would have been great in 2003 or even 2004, but we are trying it now in a very different Iraq,” one in which the passion for fighting for sectarian control of neighborhoods may outweigh interests in obtaining employment.

The American officials who described the program included both advocates and critics of Mr. Bush’s new strategy and representatives of three different executive branch departments. They would speak only on condition of anonymity because they were discussing internal deliberations about a plan that Mr. Bush had not yet announced.

The most immediate element of the new jobs program would amount to a major expansion of what is known in the military as the Commander’s Emergency Response Program, which provides money to local officers to put civilians to work as a way of reducing resistance to the American presence in neighborhoods. While the effort has had some successes, they have largely been temporary. As a senior White House official noted in an interview recently, “You’d go into a neighborhood, clear it, try to hold it, and come back later and discover that it’s all been shattered.”

The new effort, officials said, would cost between a half billion and a billion dollars, some of which would be spent on other efforts to achieve stability and train Iraqis for more permanent jobs. The State Department and the Treasury Department have been brought into that effort.

The plan also calls for a more than doubling of the “Provincial Reconstruction Teams,” relatively small groups of State Department officials empowered to coordinate local reconstruction efforts, chiefly hiring Iraqi companies. For much of the first half of 2006, the State Department was engaged in a bureaucratic dispute with the Defense Department about how these teams would be protected, including exploration of a plan to hire private protective forces that a White House official said “was too expensive.” Now those teams will be expanded and embedded with combat brigades, officials said, in what would amount to the latest effort to demonstrate to Iraqis that the American forces in their midst were not simply occupiers.

Much of the plan described by officials seemed to be consistent with views supported by Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, who will soon take over as the commander of ground forces in Iraq and who has been a strong advocate of an everyday American troop presence in neighborhoods.

Mr. Bush’s speech is widely expected to make the case that Americans needed to commit to greater national sacrifice as part of what Bush administration officials acknowledge amounted to a last-ditch effort to salvage the mission in Iraq.

But almost as soon as his speech is done, a series of hearings will begin on Capitol Hill that Democrats intend to use to pick apart the details of the plan, with lawmakers questioning administration officials about whether a troop increase of any size can succeed this late in the war. Those hearings will also likely focus on whether the expanded American military commitment is linked to Iraqi military performance, a point that Bush administration officials would not address directly.

As described by those officials, Mr. Bush is stopping well short of declaring that the beefed-up American force will be sent only if the Iraqis also increase their own forces. But under the increase being contemplated, the reality is that every month between now and April or May, Mr. Bush will have a chance to decide whether to send an additional combat brigade into the country. “That’s our moment of leverage,” a White House official said.

Officials said a larger American troop commitment also would be used to illustrate Washington’s increased resolve to deter adventurism by regional adversaries, especially Iran. Mr. Bush’s speech is expected to include talk of a new diplomatic initiative to shore up confidence among Washington’s Islamic allies in the region as well as to warn its adversaries. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is expected to begin that initiative almost immediately after the speech, leaving for the Middle East by next weekend.

Parallel to an enlarged Baghdad security operation, Mr. Bush has signaled his desire to expand the number of American military trainers working with Iraqi security forces.

In a speech in Baghdad on Saturday, Mr. Maliki said he was going to renew his efforts to rid the Iraqi Army and other security forces of sectarian influences.

“I announce here that all parties and political organizations, without exception, are forbidden from practicing their activities among the armed forces,” he said during a speech given to mark Army Day.

In his speech, he mentioned the new Baghdad security plan, saying multinational forces would “support and back up our forces.” But he said little specifically about an increase in American troops. Officials familiar with his thinking have said privately that he opposes any measure that would delay giving his administration complete control over Iraq’s armed forces as soon as possible.

He once again tried to reassure critics of his administration that no outlaws could expect protection.

“The Baghdad security plan will not provide safe haven for all outlaws, regardless of their political or sectarian identities,” he said.

Thom Shanker contributed reporting from Washington, and Marc Santora from Baghdad.

    Bush Plan for Iraq Requests More Troops and More Jobs, NYT, 7.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/world/middleeast/07prexy.html?hp&ex=1168232400&en=06d06428c9e6d658&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Army mistakenly asks deceased to re-enlist

Fri Jan 5, 2007 10:39 PM ET
Reuters



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Army said on Friday that it will apologize to the families of deceased and wounded officers that it mistakenly encouraged to re-enlist via letters sent out in late December.

About 75 families of deceased officers and 200 families of wounded officers received such letters sent to more than 5,100 officers between December 26 and 28, the Army said in a statement.

"Unfortunately, the database used to address those letters contained names of officers who were killed in action or wounded," the Army said. "Army personnel officials are contacting those officers' families now to personally apologize for erroneously sending the letters."

The names of these soldiers had been removed from the database, but an earlier version of the list was mistakenly used, the Army said.

The Army said it is taking steps to ensure this mistake does not happen again.

On Thursday, a U.S. soldier was killed in western Baghdad, bringing the total to 3,006 the number of U.S. soldiers killed so far since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

The United States has 132,000 troops in Iraq and President George W. Bush plans to unveil a new Iraq strategy as early as next Wednesday that could include a short-term increase of up to 20,000 U.S. troops in the country.

    Army mistakenly asks deceased to re-enlist, R, 6.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2007-01-06T033902Z_01_N05308122_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-ARMY-APOLOGY.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C2-TopNews-newsOne-5

Iraq PM says to launch big new Baghdad crackdown

Sat Jan 6, 2007 7:52 AM ET
Reuters
By Alastair Macdonald

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's prime minister on Saturday announced a major crackdown on both Shi'ite militias and Sunni insurgents in Baghdad to stem the rise of killings that are now running at hundreds a week.

Nuri al-Maliki, who has been under pressure from Washington to stamp out death squad killings and ethnic cleansing in the city that is blamed on militias loyal to fellow Shi'ite leaders, said commanders in each neighborhood would come down hard on illegal groups, "regardless of their sect or politics".

But there was no sign of the crackdown on the streets of the capital.

As President Bush shuffled his diplomatic and military leadership in Iraq and prepared a new strategy that many expect will involve thousands more American soldiers for Baghdad, Maliki said U.S. troops would support Iraqi forces.

A U.S.-drafted plan to clear Baghdad of militants, block-by-block, was launched in August but, after a brief initial success, the daily death tolls started to rise once again. Analysts have said time is running out to prevent an all-out sectarian civil war.

"We completely reject any interference from any political parties in this plan. There will be no refuge from this plan for anyone who is operating beyond the law, regardless of their sect or their political affiliation," Maliki said, adding that the plan would continue until its objectives had been achieved.

"We will come down hard on anyone who does not carry out their orders and who does their job according to his political or sectarian background. We will pursue those people under the law and punish them most severely," he said, in an Army Day address to troops at a parade ground built by Saddam Hussein.

OFFENSIVE

Senior Shi'ite politicians told Reuters last week that the U.S. and Iraqi force planned a new, limited offensive specifically against the Mehdi Army militia of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, blamed by many in Saddam's once dominant Sunni Arab community for the worst of the atrocities.

Sadr, whose supporters played a key role in Maliki's appointment as a compromise prime minister in April, denies any involvement in such violence. Maliki has repeatedly rejected criticism that he has not confronted the Mehdi Army before, saying the Shi'ite armed groups can be tamed through politics.

U.S. commanders say that one of the key difficulties in controlling sectarian violence has been the questionable loyalties of the hastily recruited police and army. As such, any new crackdown in Baghdad will be a crucial test for the ability of Iraqi forces to take over from Americans, as Washington's current plans dictate, over the course of this year.

The U.S. military urged Maliki last week to reach out to the disaffected Sunni minority after the sectarian tension generated by his decision to rush through the execution of Saddam before the New Year and by an Internet video showing pro-Sadr officials taunting the former president on the gallows.

Possibly responding to fierce criticism of the conduct of the execution on Friday by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who called it "revolting and barbaric", Maliki defended the judicial process and said the government would "review its relations with any country that does not respect the will of the Iraqi people".

Like most Arab states, Egypt, the biggest Arab nation, does not have a full ambassador in Baghdad. Its envoy to Iraq was kidnapped and killed by al Qaeda Sunni militants in 2005.

The rise to power of Iraq's Shi'ite majority, many of whose leaders have close ties to non-Arab, Shi'ite Iran, has fueled wider sectarian tensions in the Middle East, with the mostly Sunni leaders of the rest of the Arab world suspicious of Iraq.

    Iraq PM says to launch big new Baghdad crackdown, R, 6.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2007-01-06T125145Z_01_MAC638878_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C1-TopStories-newsOne-2

Saudi Arabia urges U.S. to change course in Iraq

Sat Jan 6, 2007 7:46 AM ET
Reuters



DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has urged the United States to change course in Iraq and warned against the break-up of the country along ethnic or religious lines amid growing sectarian violence, a newspaper said on Saturday.

"The coalition forces in Iraq should review the aims of their presence and the strategy of remaining there because the question that should be asked is: what have these forces achieved since their arrival on Iraqi land?" Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz told the London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper.

"Has the strategy that these forces are using achieved anything positive? Are there strategic alternatives that should be considered as the existing situation in Iraq deteriorates?"

The comments come as President George W. Bush prepares to announce a shift in Iraq policy next week.

On Friday, Bush shuffled the U.S. military commanders responsible for Iraq, but Democrats, who now control Congress, are resisting a proposal to raise troop levels in Iraq.

Bush may propose a temporary increase of up to 20,000 troops to try to stabilize a country gripped by sectarian violence bordering on civil war.

Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally in the region, is concerned that such violence could lead to the disintegration of Iraq into Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish regions.

"We have warned and continue to warn against calls for the division of Iraq, which come up now and then, calling for sectarian rights or minority freedoms," Prince Sultan said.

Prince Sultan also called on Iraqis to launch a national dialogue to end the bloodshed and, in a veiled swipe at Shi'ite Iran, urged Iraq's neighbors to stop meddling in its affairs.

The Washington Times reported last month that a security report commissioned by the Saudi government said Iran had effectively created a Shi'ite "state within a state" in Iraq.

"There are a series of factors affecting the deterioration of the security and political situation in Iraq. Here, we call on some neighboring countries to ... stop backing sects and movements in Iraq," Prince Sultan told the Saudi-owned paper.

The New York Times cited unnamed U.S. officials and Arab diplomats in December as saying Riyadh would refrain from aiding the Sunni insurgency only as long as U.S. forces remained in Iraq.

"The kingdom has not and will not interfere in Iraq's domestic affairs, leaving room for its people to find a way out of the crisis they are living through," Prince Sultan said.

    Saudi Arabia urges U.S. to change course in Iraq, R, 6.1.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyid=2007-01-06T124509Z_01_L06731248_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L1-RelatedNews-2

Inquiry Reportedly Cites Evidence Against Marines in Iraq Deaths

January 6, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 5:59 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Marine squad that had just endured casualties from a roadside bombing ordered five unarmed Iraqi civilians out of a taxi, and the squad leader shot them, eyewitnesses say in a new report obtained by The Washington Post.

The report by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, which reveals previously undisclosed details about the incident, says a white taxi happened upon the scene shortly after the explosion. Witnesses told investigators the Marines' squad leader, Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, ordered the passengers out of the car.

The Post, in its Saturday editions, said naval investigators found that the defenseless Iraqis were then shot one by one by Wuterich as they stood next to the vehicle and about 10 feet from Wuterich.

Another Marine allegedly fired shots into the victims' bodies as they lay on the ground.

''They didn't even try to run away,'' according to one witness, a young Iraqi soldier working with the Marine squad. ''We were afraid from Marines and we saw them behaving like crazy. They were yelling and screaming.''

Four Marines have been charged in the deaths of 24 civilians, including women and children, that occurred immediately after a bombing in Haditha on Nov. 19, 2005, killed one Marine and injured two others. In addition, four officers who were not there during the killings but were accused of failures in investigating and reporting the deaths have been charged.

The killings have led to the biggest U.S. criminal case involving civilian deaths to come out of the Iraq war.

After the taxi passengers were shot, the report found, the Marines raided nearby houses, firing indiscriminately, using both grenades and guns, in a bloody, door-to-door sweep, killing 14 unarmed inhabitants, in just 10 minutes.

One 13-year-old girl was the lone survivor in the second house, losing five family members, including her mother and 3-year-old sister and 5-year-old brother.

''He fired and killed everybody. The American fired and killed everybody,'' Safah Yunis Salem told investigators.

The four Marines charged last month with murder for the Haditha deaths are: Wuterich; Sgt. Sanick P. Dela Cruz; Lance Cpl. Justin L. Sharratt; and Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum. They all face a maximum penalty of life in prison.

Defense attorneys have disputed the idea that the shootings were in revenge for the roadside bombing, saying their clients were doing what they had been trained to do: responding to a perceived threat with legitimate force.

Navy investigators interviewed hundreds of witnesses, including Marines, Iraqi soldiers and civilians. The Post said the report is sometimes fragmented and contains conflicting testimony of the events that day.

    Inquiry Reportedly Cites Evidence Against Marines in Iraq Deaths, NYT, 6.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Haditha-Investigation.html?hp&ex=1168146000&en=2240c4838e312406&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Man in the News

Ryan Clark Crocker, a Diplomat Used to Danger

January 6, 2007
The New York Times
By SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 — When Ryan C. Crocker was trying to improve his Arabic in the late 1970s, he traveled to Jordan, made contact with a desert tribe and settled in for some hands-on training a little different from the standard State Department regimen.

“He wound up being a shepherd for a week or two, chasing down stray sheep and living with the Bedouin,” said Frederic C. Hof, a retired Army officer and author on the Middle East who recalls reading Mr. Crocker’s official report on the trip when they were in language training.

Mr. Crocker, President Bush’s choice as the new ambassador to Iraq, has brought the same intensity to his three-decade diplomatic career, amassing a record of Middle East and South Asia experience possibly unrivaled in the United States Foreign Service.

He has served as ambassador to Lebanon, Kuwait, Syria and, since 2004, Pakistan. He reopened the American Embassy in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. And he knows Iraq well; he worked there in the 1970s, led the State Department’s Iraq-Kuwait task force during the Persian Gulf war in 1991 and returned to Baghdad for four months after the 2003 invasion as director of governance for the Coalition Provisional Authority.

In confronting Iraq’s sectarian mayhem and the baffling mix of religious, political and tribal interests, he will be able to draw on many years of immersion in trouble spots with similar problems, including Beirut, where he survived the embassy bombing in 1983.

“He’s an absolutely first-rate professional who will manage the job with skill and sensitivity,” said Edward S. Walker Jr., president of the Middle East Institute and a former American ambassador to Egypt and Israel. “He has the cultural understanding that’s so important to working in that region and that country.”

Still, Mr. Walker said, the situation in Iraq is so intractable that it may prove impossible for any envoy to affect events decisively. “We’re facing a division in Iraq that may be beyond anyone’s capacity to heal,” he said.

Assuming he is formally nominated and confirmed by the Senate, Mr. Crocker, 57, will succeed three men who had very different approaches to the job of top American representative in Baghdad. L. Paul Bremer III, who led the Coalition Provisional Authority, had little experience in the region and exercised control over emerging Iraqi leaders that critics found heavy-handed.

John D. Negroponte, the first ambassador to the new government, took the opposite approach, encouraging Iraqis to take on responsibility and trying to remain in the background. Zalmay M. Khalilzad, who succeeded Mr. Negroponte, has taken a far stronger hand in pressing for reconciliation between the Shiite majority and the Sunni minority.

Former colleagues say Mr. Crocker is likely to be a less public presence in the Iraqi capital than Mr. Khalilzad, though they say he will work assiduously behind the scenes for the political accommodation necessary to reverse the slide to civil war.

They describe Mr. Crocker as a tough boss who drives himself as hard as he drives his staff. An accomplished marathon runner, he runs several miles early every morning, even in such danger spots as Beirut, where he was trailed by burly security guards who sometimes had to hop on bicycles to keep up.

Robin L. Raphel, a senior diplomat who worked with Mr. Crocker in Baghdad in 2003, said he was responsible for helping to put together the Iraqi Governing Council, the provisional government that oversaw the country for a year after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

“He’s a very good persuader and negotiator,” Ms. Raphel said. “He has the background on a lot of the important figures in Iraq, and he’s very good at sussing out who’s who.”

A former colleague who agreed to speak of Mr. Crocker candidly on condition of anonymity called him “incredibly hard-working, very serious, a little introverted.”

“I’d say he’s more respected than loved in the State Department,” the colleague said, “but he certainly is respected. He’s done the dirtiest, hardest assignments you can imagine.”

In Pakistan, Mr. Crocker has proved to be an “old school” ambassador who has put only limited pressure on President Pervez Musharraf, the military ruler who has sometimes frustrated the Bush administration by failing to act decisively against Al Qaeda and other militant groups, said Husain Haqqani, professor of international relations at Boston University.

“He’s not somebody who will come up with a new grand strategy to change the world,” said Mr. Haqqani, a former Pakistani government official. “But attempts to craft grand strategy have caused a lot of upheaval in American diplomacy.”

Born June 19, 1949, in Spokane, Wash., Ryan Clark Crocker grew up in an Air Force family and attended school in Morocco, Turkey and Canada, as well as the United States. He graduated from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash., in 1971 and took his first Foreign Service assignment to the American Consulate in Khorramshahr, Iran, in 1972. He later worked in the embassies in Qatar, Iraq and Egypt. Because he prefers working overseas, he has rarely worked in Washington, but did hold a few posts there, including deputy assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs.

He is married to Christine Barnes, a retired Foreign Service secretary, whom he met in Baghdad in 1979. Friends say they own property in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, where a friend said they discussed retiring before Mr. Crocker was named to his current post.

Now Mr. Crocker will face what is likely to be the most demanding assignment of his long career. “He’s capable of doing the juggling act required in Iraq,” Mr. Haqqani said. “Let’s hope he does it well.”

    Ryan Clark Crocker, a Diplomat Used to Danger, R, 6.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/06/world/middleeast/06crocker.html

Bush Facing a Deep Divide With Democrats Over Talk of Increasing Troops in Iraq

January 6, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER and JEFF ZELENY

WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 — The new Democratic leaders of the Senate and the House warned President Bush on Friday against sending additional troops to Iraq, setting the stage for what could become a major confrontation over a new war strategy.

Mr. Bush is expected to call for more troops in a speech as soon as Wednesday, as part of a renewed effort to secure Baghdad. But Nancy Pelosi, the new speaker of the House, and Harry Reid, the new Senate majority leader, dismissed that approach as a strategy “that has already failed.”

“Adding more combat troops will only endanger more Americans and stretch our military to the breaking point for no strategic gain,” Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Reid wrote in a letter to Mr. Bush. “We are well past the point of more troops for Iraq,” they added, urging Mr. Bush to begin a “phased redeployment,” or gradual withdrawal.

Not all Democrats agree with the position their leaders staked out in the letter on Friday, just days before Mr. Bush is expected to announce a broad strategy involving more troops, accelerated training of Iraqi forces and a large increase in economic and reconstruction aid to Iraq. But the release of the letter suggests that a major political battle may be brewing.

Mr. Bush appeared to be trying to head off any confrontation when he invited 13 Democratic and Republican senators to the White House Friday for what administration officials called a “consultation” on Iraq.

At a later meeting, Mr. Bush met with the former chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, who cautioned that Congress would want to take time to consider the strategy before Mr. Bush began implementing it.

“The president has had this opportunity now for some weeks, and I think Congress is entitled to an opportunity to independently look at the situation,” Mr. Warner said.

Mr. Bush has begun to put parts of his plan in place, making official on Friday some changes that will insure new faces are associated with a new approach.

He announced the nomination of Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus as the new commander in Iraq, to succeed Gen. George W. Casey Jr., whom Mr. Bush said he intended to elevate to Army chief of staff.

Mr. Bush praised General Casey, who spent much of 2006 pressing for a gradual withdrawal of troops, as “strong and effective”; he hailed General Petraeus, who has reportedly backed an increase, as “a soldier of vision and determination.”

Mr. Bush is also remaking his diplomatic team, nominating John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, to be deputy secretary of state.

Ryan C. Crocker is expected to be nominated ambassador to Iraq. His nomination would for the first time place an Arabist with experience in sectarian conflicts, mostly in Lebanon, at the head of the embassy in Baghdad.

Administration and Congressional officials said they expected the military and diplomatic nominations to receive Senate approval, though senators might use the hearings to air dissent about any troop increase and draw attention to the perceived failings of Iraq strategy.

The bigger question is whether Congress will seek to stop the troop increase. In theory, it could cut off financing, the only way it could actually interfere with the commander in chief’s plans. But Democrats have said they would not take such a step, largely out of fear of being accused of undercutting the troops.

That leaves them with only one option: holding a series of hearings, which start next week, immediately after the president’s speech, that are intended to expose the divisions within the military over the wisdom of increasing troops. Many senior officers, including General Casey, have argued that adding American troops will undercut the effort to get the Iraqi government to defend itself.

Some Republican leaders insisted that Congress should not go down that path. “I don’t think that we should be dictating military strategy in Iraq from Capitol Hill,” said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican minority leader in the House.

In addition to the 13 senators, Democrats and Republicans, invited to the White House on Friday afternoon, those attending the meeting included Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the Joint Chiefs chairman, Gen. Peter Pace, and Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser.

Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, who both are considering a presidential candidacy, arrived at the White House at nearly the same time. After the meeting, Mrs. Clinton did not issue a statement, while Mr. Obama spoke to reporters about his conversation with Mr. Bush.

“I personally indicated that an escalation of troop levels in Iraq was a mistake and that we need a political accommodation, rather than a military approach to the sectarian violence there,” he said. “I think he recognizes that the status quo is unacceptable and has to change.”

Senator Mary L. Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat, said she would consider supporting an increase in troops for a short time if the president could articulate “specific opportunities for success,” particularly cities that troops would be dispatched to and how long they would stay. Ms. Landrieu also said she would need to be convinced that there was a broader solution to limit American involvement in Iraq.

“The American people’s patience is wearing thin with the vagueness,” she said, speaking to reporters as she left the White House.

In interviews after the meeting, several senators said they could not tell whether Mr. Bush had made a decision whether to call for a troop increase. The senators described the meeting as frank but not confrontational. But even those who have supported the administration’s Iraq policy said it was time for a change of course.

“I don’t know that the American people will see the surge as a new direction,” said Senator Ben Nelson, a Democrat from Nebraska. “The American people want to see a change in direction, not just a change in slogans.”

Senator Blanche Lincoln, an Arkansas Democrat at the meeting, said an increase in troops would face considerable scrutiny in Congress from Democrats and Republicans.

“I asked the president, ‘Where would that surge come from?’ ” Ms. Lincoln said. “He said that was a very good question.”

Thom Shanker and Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting.

    Bush Facing a Deep Divide With Democrats Over Talk of Increasing Troops in Iraq, NYT, 6.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/06/world/middleeast/06prexy.html

Military Analysis

A New Commander, in Step With White House on Iraq

January 6, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON

WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 — The selection of Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus to serve as the senior American commander in Iraq signals an important turn in United States strategy.

As a supporter of increased forces in Iraq, General Petraeus is expected to back a rapid five-brigade expansion, in sharp contrast to his predecessor, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., who has been openly skeptical that additional troops would help stabilize the country.

Having overseen the recent drafting of the military’s counterinsurgency manual, General Petraeus is also likely to change the American military operation in Baghdad. American forces can be expected to take up positions in neighborhoods throughout the capital instead of limiting themselves to conducting patrols from large, fortified bases in and around the city.

The overarching goal of the American military operation may be altered as well. Under General Casey, the principal focus has been on transferring security responsibilities to the Iraqi security forces, so American troops could gradually withdraw. Now, the emphasis will shift to protecting the Iraqi population from sectarian strife and insurgent attacks.

Since his appointment was disclosed Thursday, General Petraeus has not spoken publicly about his plans for Iraq. But the doctrine he has advocated suggests that he will want all five of the combat brigades slated to go to Iraq as quickly as possible instead of waiting for them to be phased in.

Before the selection of General Petraeus, there was some doubt about whether the top Iraq commander would be an enthusiastic executor of the new strategy President Bush is preparing to unveil next week — one that could send 20,000 new troops to Iraq. Now, the White House will have an articulate officer to champion and shape that strategy, an important asset for an administration that has decided to buck the tide of public opinion by deepening the American military involvement in Iraq. While some Democratic lawmakers have insisted that any increase be limited to a few months, neither the While House nor General Petraeus would support such a deadline.

To many civilians, the military seems monolithic. But in fact, there has been a lively debate behind the scenes about the best way to achieve the United States’ objectives in Iraq — or at least to preserve a measure of stability as sectarian passions threaten to engulf the country.

At one end of the spectrum have been General Casey, Gen. John P. Abizaid, the head of the United States Central Command, and Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, who is in charge of training Iraqi security forces.

They have advocated plans to hand over security responsibilities to the Iraqis while gradually reducing American forces and shrinking the number of American bases in Iraq, as conditions permit. Their argument has been that a lengthy expansion of American forces in Iraq will simply put off the day when Iraqis take more responsibility for their security.

Taking a different view, other officers have argued for sending more troops while stepping up economic efforts, the better to apply the military’s new counterinsurgency doctrine. Progress in stabilizing Iraq, they argue, will come only when the Iraqi public does not feel that it needs militias or insurgent groups to ensure its security, and when it concludes that its basic economic needs are being met.

Training and advising the Iraqi forces should continue to be an important priority, these officers have argued, but the Iraqis cannot be expected to shoulder the brunt of the security effort so quickly.

General Petraeus has been squarely in this camp, as was reflected in the military’s new counterinsurgency field manual.

The United States has sought to apply the basic lessons of counterinsurgency operations in Baghdad before — most notably during Operation Together Forward II, the second phase of an effort begun over the summer to reduce violence in Baghdad.

But that effort foundered when the United States and Iraqi authorities failed to marshal sufficient forces to hold neighborhoods after they were cleared of insurgents and militias, and when the Iraqis failed to follow through with the job and reconstruction programs that were intended to win over Iraqi citizens.

By all accounts, Mr. Bush plans to announce an expanded military and economic push. But the United States will still have to contend with the political realities in Iraq, including a Shiite-dominated government that has often seemed more sectarian than inclusive, and may not prove enthusiastic about a larger and more visible role for the Americans.

At 54, General Petraeus has a long Army record and a diverse array of contacts and supporters. Having earned a Ph.D. in international relations from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School, he invited experts from Harvard, nongovernmental organizations and policy groups to review an early draft of the counterinsurgency manual.

During the invasion, he led the 101st Airborne Division, which sought to emphasize economic and political reconstruction efforts in northern Iraq.

When L. Paul Bremer III, the second American civilian administrator of Iraq, formally abolished the Iraqi Army without announcing a plan to pay the former soldiers, General Petraeus approached one of Mr. Bremer’s aides and delivered a clear message. The decision to leave Iraqi soldiers without a livelihood was prompting angry protests and putting the lives of American soldiers at risk. Mr. Bremer later decided to pay the Iraqi troops.

In June 2004, General Petraeus was charged with training the new Iraqi Army, a position he held for more than a year. It is a mission that is critical to American efforts in Iraq but which is as yet a mixed success.

As the senior American officer in Iraq, General Petraeus will work with Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, a subordinate who has day-to-day command of the forces and who also supports a troop increase.

Instead of immediately confronting the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia led by the cleric Moktada al-Sadr, the initial strategy is likely to be more subtle: by trying to tamp down sectarian killings, American troops — and the Iraqi forces they are partnered with — will try to reduce the population’s reliance on militias for security, making it easier for the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to take the long-promised step of limiting the role of the militias.

Whether a modicum of stability can be achieved amid the violence and sectarian agendas in Iraq is uncertain at best. But General Petraeus seems determined to give the military’s new counterinsurgency plan its most ambitious field test.

    A New Commander, in Step With White House on Iraq, NYT, 6.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/06/world/middleeast/06petraeus.html?hp&ex=1168146000&en=689c1f2b896c5559&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Images of Hanging Make Hussein a Martyr to Many

January 6, 2007
The New York Times
By HASSAN M. FATTAH

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Jan. 5 — In the week since Saddam Hussein was hanged in an execution steeped in sectarian overtones, his public image in the Arab world, formerly that of a convicted dictator, has undergone a resurgence of admiration and awe.

On the streets, in newspapers and over the Internet, Mr. Hussein has emerged as a Sunni Arab hero who stood calm and composed as his Shiite executioners tormented and abused him.

“No one will ever forget the way in which Saddam was executed,” President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt remarked in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot published Friday and distributed by the official Egyptian news agency. “They turned him into a martyr.”

In Libya, which canceled celebrations of the feast of Id al-Adha after the execution, a government statement said a statue depicting Mr. Hussein in the gallows would be erected, along with a monument to Omar al-Mukhtar, who resisted the Italian invasion of Libya and was hanged by the Italians in 1931.

In Morocco and the Palestinian territories, demonstrators held aloft photographs of Mr. Hussein and condemned the United States.

Here in Beirut, hundreds of members of the Lebanese Baath Party and Palestinian activists marched Friday in a predominantly Sunni neighborhood behind a symbolic coffin representing that of Mr. Hussein and later offered a funeral prayer. Photographs of Mr. Hussein standing up in court, against a backdrop of the Dome of the Rock shrine in Jerusalem, were pasted on city walls near Palestinian refugee camps, praising “Saddam the martyr.”

“God damn America and its spies,” a banner across one major Beirut thoroughfare read. “Our condolences to the nation for the assassination of Saddam, and victory to the Iraqi resistance.”

By standing up to the United States and its client government in Baghdad and dying with seeming dignity, Mr. Hussein appears to have been virtually cleansed of his past.

“Suddenly we forgot that he was a dictator and that he killed thousands of people,” said Roula Haddad, 33, a Lebanese Christian. “All our hatred for him suddenly turned into sympathy, sympathy with someone who was treated unjustly by an occupation force and its collaborators.”

Just a month ago Mr. Hussein was widely dismissed as a criminal who deserved the death penalty, even if his trial was seen as flawed. Much of the Middle East reacted with a collective shrug when he was found guilty of crimes against humanity in November.

But shortly after his execution last Saturday, a video emerged that showed Shiite guards taunting Mr. Hussein, who responded calmly but firmly to them. From then on, many across the region began looking at him as a martyr.

“The Arab world has been devoid of pride for a long time,” said Ahmad Mazin al-Shugairi, who hosts a television show at the Middle East Broadcasting Center that promotes a moderate version of Islam in Saudi Arabia. “The way Saddam acted in court and just before he was executed, with dignity and no fear, struck a chord with Arabs who are desperate for their own leaders to have pride too.”

Ayman Safadi, editor in chief of the independent Jordanian daily Al Ghad, said, “The last image for many was of Saddam taken out of a hole. That has all changed now.”

At the heart of the sudden reversal of opinion was the symbolism of the hasty execution, now framed as an act of sectarian vengeance shrouded in political theater and overseen by the American occupation.

In much of the predominantly Sunni Arab world, the timing of the execution in the early hours of Id al-Adha, which is among the holiest days of the Muslim year, when violence is forbidden and when even Mr. Hussein himself sometimes released prisoners, was seen as a direct insult to the Sunni world.

The contrast between the official video aired without sound on Iraqi television of Mr. Hussein being taken to the gallows and fitted with a noose around his neck and the unauthorized grainy, chaotic recording of the same scene with sound, depicting Shiite militiamen taunting Mr. Hussein with his hands tied, damning him to hell and praising the militant Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, touched a sectarian nerve.

“He stood as strong as a mountain while he was being hanged,” said Ahmed el-Ghamrawi, a former Egyptian ambassador to Iraq. “He died a strong president and lived as a strong president. This is the image people are left with.”

Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian media critic and director of the online radio station Ammannet.net, said: “If Saddam had media planners, he could not have planned it better than this. Nobody could ever have imagined that Saddam would have gone down with such dignity.”

Writers and commentators have stopped short of eulogizing the dictator but have looked right past his bloody history as they compare Iraq’s present circumstances with Iraq under Mr. Hussein.

In Jordan, long a bastion of support for Mr. Hussein, many are lionizing him, decrying the timing of the execution and the taunts as part of a Sunni-Shiite conflict.

“Was it a coincidence that Israel, Iran and the United States all welcomed Saddam’s execution?” wrote Hamadeh Faraneh, a columnist for the daily Al Rai. “Was it also a coincidence when Saddam said bravely in front of his tormentors, ‘Long live the nation,’ and that Palestine is Arab, then uttered the declaration of faith? His last words expressed his depth and what he died for.”

Another Jordanian journalist, Muhammad Abu Rumman, wrote in Al Ghad on Thursday: “For the vast majority Saddam is a martyr, even if he made mistakes in his first years of rule. He cleansed himself later by confronting the Americans and by rejecting to negotiate with them.”

Even the pro-Saudi news media, normally critical of Mr. Hussein, chimed in with a more sentimental tone.

In the London-based pan-Arab daily Al Hayat, Bilal Khubbaiz, commenting on Iranian and Israeli praise of the execution, wrote, “Saddam, as Iraq’s ruler, was an iron curtain that prevented the Iranian influence from reaching into the Arab world,” as well as “a formidable party in the Arab-Israeli conflict.”

Zuhayr Qusaybati, also writing in Al Hayat, said the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, “gave Saddam what he most wanted: he turned him into a martyr in the eyes of many Iraqis, who can now demand revenge.”

“The height of idiocy,” Mr. Qusaybati said, “is for the man who rules Baghdad under American protection not to realize the purpose of rushing the execution, and that the guillotine carries the signature of a Shiite figure as the flames of sectarian division do not spare Shiites or Sunnis in a country grieving for its butchered citizens.”

In Saudi Arabia, poems eulogizing Mr. Hussein have been passed around on cellphones and in e-mail messages.

“Prepare the gun that will avenge Saddam,” a poem published in a Saudi newspaper warned. “The criminal who signed the execution order without valid reason cheated us on our celebration day. How beautiful it will be when the bullet goes through the heart of him who betrayed Arabism.”

Mr. Safadi, the Jordanian editor, said: “In the public’s perception Saddam was terrible, but those people were worse. That final act has really jeopardized the future of Iraq immensely. And we all know this is a blow to the moderate camp in the Arab world.”

Reporting was contributed by Mona el-Naggar from Cairo, Nada Bakri from Beirut, Rasheed Abou al-Samh from Jidda, Saudi Arabia, and Suha Maayeh from Amman.

    Images of Hanging Make Hussein a Martyr to Many, NYT, 6.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/06/world/middleeast/06arabs.html?hp&ex=1168146000&en=c2e8e35861a46754&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Army mistakenly asks deceased to re-enlist

Fri Jan 5, 2007 10:39 PM ET
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Army said on Friday that it will apologize to the families of deceased and wounded officers that it mistakenly encouraged to re-enlist via letters sent out in late December.

About 75 families of deceased officers and 200 families of wounded officers received such letters sent to more than 5,100 officers between December 26 and 28, the Army said in a statement.

"Unfortunately, the database used to address those letters contained names of officers who were killed in action or wounded," the Army said. "Army personnel officials are contacting those officers' families now to personally apologize for erroneously sending the letters."

The names of these soldiers had been removed from the database, but an earlier version of the list was mistakenly used, the Army said.

The Army said it is taking steps to ensure this mistake does not happen again.

On Thursday, a U.S. soldier was killed in western Baghdad, bringing the total to 3,006 the number of U.S. soldiers killed so far since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

The United States has 132,000 troops in Iraq and President George W. Bush plans to unveil a new Iraq strategy as early as next Wednesday that could include a short-term increase of up to 20,000 U.S. troops in the country.

    Army mistakenly asks deceased to re-enlist, R, 6.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2007-01-06T033902Z_01_N05308122_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-ARMY-APOLOGY.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C2-TopNews-newsOne-5

Guards in Saddam video named; Bush supports probe

Fri Jan 5, 2007 5:33 AM ET
Reuters
By Ibon Villelabeitia

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Investigators have identified two guards who illicitly filmed Saddam Hussein's execution, an official said on Thursday, as the Iraqi government sought to dampen growing outrage from Sunni Arabs over the unruly hanging.

The mobile phone video of Shi'ite officials taunting Saddam on the gallows has inflamed sectarian passions in a country on the brink of civil war.

"Two Justice Ministry guards have been arrested. Other guards have identified them as having filmed the hanging," Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's aide Sami al-Askari told Reuters.

President Bush said that Saddam's execution should have been carried out in a "more dignified way."

"We expect there to be a full investigation of what took place," Bush said at a White House news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in his first public comments on the matter.

"I wish, obviously, that the proceedings had been -- gone in a more dignified way. But nevertheless, he was given justice," Bush said. "The thousands of people he killed were not."

Bush also promised to unveil his new Iraq strategy next week. One option under consideration is a temporary increase in troops, though on Thursday he would not tip his hand about the upcoming changes.

"I'm in the process of making up my final decision as to what to recommend, what recommendations to accept," he said. "One thing is for certain, I will want to make sure that the mission is clear and specific and can be accomplished."

Michigan Democrat Senator Carl Levin, incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Bush was likely to link any short-term increase in U.S. troop levels to certain conditions.

Levin said he believed Bush would "at a minimum" reverse the open-ended nature of the U.S. troop commitment in Iraq.

Bush is planning to name a new ambassador to Iraq and will likely pick new military commanders there, moves that would wrap up a virtually complete change of top U.S. officials responsible for the prosecuting the war. This follows the departure of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who was replaced with former CIA chief Robert Gates.

NO RADICAL SHIFT

But there is little expectation that changing faces will mean a radical shift in policy called for by some opposition Democrats, who took control of the U.S. Congress on Thursday after an election dominated by the Iraq debate.

As U.S. military casualties in Iraq climbed above 3,000, an American soldier was killed in western Baghdad on Thursday after his patrol came under attack from small arms fire, the U.S. military said in a statement.

Two bombs exploded earlier near a petrol station in Baghdad's western Mansour district, killing at least 13 people and wounding 22, police said.

A prosecutor who attended Saddam's execution told Reuters he had seen two senior officials filming the hanging, prompting suggestions among some Iraqis that the guards might be used as scapegoats.

Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani told a news conference: "The investigation is ongoing and we have identified those who flouted the rules ... Even for a dictator like Saddam, the law must be obeyed."

The images, which show observers yelling "Go to hell" and chanting the name of a radical Shi'ite cleric before Saddam falls through the trap, have sparked angry demonstrations by Saddam's fellow Sunnis, fearful of Shi'ite ascendancy. Moderate Sunnis say it deals a blow to Maliki's call for reconciliation.

In Ramadi, the capital of Iraq's restive western province of Anbar, U.S. commanders met tribal chief Sheikh Sattar al-Buzayi, the U.S. military said in a statement Thursday.

They discussed action being taken by Iraqi security troops with the help of U.S.-led forces in the region, the statement said but gave no further details. U.S. forces conducted a string of raids in Ramadi Wednesday and detained 23 suspects with ties to senior Al Qaeda leaders.

Buzayi is head of the Anbar Salvation Council, an umbrella group of tribes in Anbar frustrated with al Qaeda's growing influence in the province.

Barzan al-Tikriti, one of Saddam's half-brothers and his former intelligence chief, and Awad al-Bander, a former judge, were found guilty with Saddam two months ago over the killings of 148 Shi'ite men from the town of Dujail in the 1980s. Bander presided over the court that ordered the men's deaths.

Officials have said they will take more precautions for the executions of Barzan and Bander, including checking witnesses for cameras and mobile phones.

(Additional reporting by Mussab Al-Khairalla in Baghdad)

    Guards in Saddam video named; Bush supports probe, R, 5.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2007-01-05T103234Z_01_L308031_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-worldNews-5

Kashmir protests Saddam hanging, Taj tourists hurt

Fri Jan 5, 2007 5:33 AM ET
Reuters



SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - Shops and markets closed and streets were deserted in Indian Kashmir's main city and other towns in the troubled region on Friday in a second day of protests over the execution of Saddam Hussein, police said.

Muslim protesters took to the streets in Srinagar, summer capital of the largely Sunni state, chanting "Down with Bush" and other slogans.

"This is a barbaric incident," businessman Imtiyaz Ahmad said of the hanging of the former Iraqi president. "Americans have humiliated Sunni Muslims and we should strongly protest against it."

Police said Friday's demonstrations were peaceful after at least nine people were hurt the previous day when officers fired rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse hundreds of protesters.

The former Iraqi leader's execution also sparked sporadic protests in India's northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where authorities said on Friday they were investigating an attack on tourists by groups of Muslims protesters the day before.

The protesters pelted a tourist bus with stones in the Taj Mahal town of Agra, wounding some. The tourists were from India's southern state of Goa which has a sizeable Christian population.

"The Agra police were trying to identify the culprits and suitable action will be taken against them," an official spokesman told Reuters in Lucknow, capital of Uttar Pradesh.

    Kashmir protests Saddam hanging, Taj tourists hurt, R, 5.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyid=2007-01-05T103230Z_01_B560071_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L1-RelatedNews-1

Mubarak calls Saddam execution pictures "barbaric"

Fri Jan 5, 2007 5:24 AM ET
Reuters

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has said pictures of the execution of Saddam Hussein were "revolting and barbaric" and that experts considered his trial under occupation illegal.

In his first comments on the execution, which took place on the first day of Eid al-Adha, the Muslim Feast of the Sacrifice, last Saturday, Mubarak told the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth the timing was "unreasonable".

In the interview, he said he had written to President Bush asking him to postpone the execution, arguing that it would not be helpful at that time. He did not say how Bush responded.

"Then the pictures of the execution were revolting and barbaric, and I am not discussing here whether he deserved it or not. As for the trial, all experts in international law said it was an illegal trial because it was under occupation.

"Also, there was a conspiracy to carry out the execution before the end of the year," he added.

Mubarak and Saddam were friendly in the 1980s but fell out over the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Mubarak had advised the United States not to invade Iraq to overthrow Saddam, saying that it would lead to chaos.

The Egyptian state news agency MENA published an Arabic version of the interview with Mubarak on Friday.

    Mubarak calls Saddam execution pictures "barbaric", R, 5.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2007-01-05T102342Z_01_L05574183_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-SADDAM-MUBARAK.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C2-TopNews-newsOne-6

Deadly Blasts in Baghdad Leave Gruesome Traces

January 5, 2007
The New York Times
By MARC SANTORA and JOHAN SPANNER

BAGHDAD, Jan. 4 — The foot was balanced on a shopping bag after being scooped up off the dirty street by a man in a track suit. There was no person to go with the limb. Nearby a charred body was still smoldering, smoke coming off the black corpse 45 minutes after the attack.

For 50 yards, the dead were scattered about, some in pieces, some whole but badly burned.

This violence on Thursday involved two bombs timed to go off one after another in the formerly upscale neighborhood of Mansour, which continues to be ripped apart by sectarian violence. Thirteen people were killed and 22 wounded, just a small fraction of the civilians killed across the country this week.

The first device went off at 10:15 a.m., probably a roadside bomb set on a timer, officials said.

The attack was apparently aimed at a gasoline station. Cars were lined up around the block waiting for fuel, and dozens of people, grasping large plastic jugs, hoped to buy heating fuel.

Just moments after the first explosion, a second, larger, car bomb detonated.

The neighborhood has traditionally been a mixed Sunni and Shiite one. Although the Abu Jaffar gas station, where the attack was centered, is in what is considered a Sunni area, the method of the attack — multiple bombs timed to explode in succession — is usually thought of as a trademark of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a Sunni insurgent group.

An hour after the explosion, there was still a strong stench of burning gasoline and fire. The road was slick with sludge from the water used to douse the fire. Blood pooled in areas. Scores of armed men were running about, including members of the Iraqi Army and the police. Some of those with machine guns had no uniforms at all.

Shots rang out, mostly in warning. Neighbors gathered outside, oddly calm and seemingly accustomed to such carnage.

A tanker truck filled with fuel was parked near the station, having escaped the blast.

Not surprisingly, residents living near the area blamed everyone from the government to the Americans to terrorists for what had happened.

“We are just innocent people,” said Nafia Abdul Jabbar. “The people killed were poor, in need of kerosene that they cannot afford to buy on the black market because the price is 10 times more than it is at the station.”

Elsewhere, a mortar attack was directed at the Shiite neighborhood of Huriya, wounding three people, officials said.

Clashes on the outskirts of the Sunni neighborhood of Ghazaliya left two people dead and 25 people wounded, Iraqi officials said. A grenade attack in the Amin neighborhood killed five people.

Across the city on Thursday, officials said, 47 bodies were found mutilated — 4 of them with their heads cut off.

An interview with the family of a man recently mutilated and killed, a prominent sheik considered to be the prince of the Tamim tribes, gives a glimpse into the complicated underworld that is, in part, responsible for the trucks full of bodies collected around this city every day.

The man, Sheik Hamid Mohammed al-Suhail, 75, was found Wednesday in the Shuala neighborhood of Baghdad, a Shiite redoubt, by members of his tribe, which is mixed Shiite and Sunni, who were searching for him. He disappeared last Sunday, and his mutilated body was found wrapped in a blanket, covered in blood. The search party recognized his body by the distinctive way the beard was trimmed.

He had been an outspoken critic of the sectarian fighting and participated in a recent conference in Cairo on national reconciliation.

The kidnappers, whom his relatives hinted they knew but would describe only as “militiamen” for fear of reprisal, initially called his family asking for $100,000, said a nephew, Sheik Ali Sammi al-Suhail.

The family told the kidnappers they did not have the money, the nephew said.

“The body was mutilated in a brutal way,” he said. “They used a drill on him and perhaps other tools.”

One hand and one leg were almost completely severed.

The nephew said he had been told by people who said they witnessed the killing that after his uncle was tortured, his body was thrown from a two-story building. He survived the fall but was brutalized further before finally being killed.

Another prominent Iraqi figure, Sheik Akram al-Zubeidi, was killed Thursday in Karbala, a Shiite holy city where there has been little sectarian strife. Sheik Zubeidi was assassinated when he was stopped at a fake checkpoint, a local hospital official said.

Three other people in the car with him were also killed by the gunmen, whose motive was unclear.

There was continued fallout Thursday from the execution of Saddam Hussein, as Sunnis, from Kashmir to Libya, used his death as a rallying point.

The Libyan government announced that it would erect a statue of him to stand next to one of Libya’s own national heroes, news agencies reported.

At least nine people were hurt in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir when the police fired rubber-coated bullets to break up a large group of people protesting the execution, Reuters reported.

Two Iraqi officials involved in the investigation of the distribution of a graphic video of the hanging said Thursday that a second guard was being held for questioning. Officials announced the arrest of the first guard on Wednesday.

There is increasing pressure, including from the White House, on the Iraqi government to proceed with caution in carrying out the execution of Mr. Hussein’s two co-defendants, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Mr. Hussein’s half brother, and Awad al-Bandar, a former judge.

Despite the international reaction directed at the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, Mr. Maliki’s popularity among Shiites in southern Iraq seems to have increased.

In Basra, Iraq’s second largest city, hundreds of demonstrators representing Islamist parties rallied in the streets, praising Mr. Maliki and setting photos of Mr. Hussein on fire.

Ahmad Fadam contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Karbala, Basra and Hilla.

    Deadly Blasts in Baghdad Leave Gruesome Traces, NYT, 5.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/world/middleeast/05iraq.html

Bush to Name a New General to Oversee Iraq

January 5, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 — President Bush has decided to name Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus as the top American military commander in Iraq, part of a broad revamping of the military team that will carry out the administration’s new Iraq strategy, administration officials said Thursday.

In addition to the promotion of General Petraeus, who will replace Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the choice to succeed Gen. John P. Abizaid as the head of the Central Command is expected to be Adm. William J. Fallon, who is the top American military officer in the Pacific, officials said.

The changes are being made as the White House is considering an option to increase American combat power in Baghdad by five brigades as well as adding two battalions of reinforcements to the volatile province of Anbar in western Iraq.

Mr. Bush, who said Thursday that he would present details of his overall strategy for Iraq next week, and several top aides held a video teleconference on Thursday, speaking with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq and his top deputies about plans to add forces in the capital and other matters. The session lasted roughly an hour and 45 minutes.

“I said that ‘You show the will, we will help you,’ ” Mr. Bush told reporters.

Echoing the comments of both military and political advisers in recent weeks, he added, “One thing is for certain: I will want to make sure that the mission is clear and specific and can be accomplished.”

Senior administration officials said that the choice of General Petraeus was part of a broader effort to change almost all of the top American officials in Iraq as Mr. Bush changes his strategy there.

“The idea is to put the whole new team in at roughly the same time, and send some clear messages that we are trying a new approach,” a senior administration official said Thursday.

In addition to the military changes, Mr. Bush intends to appoint the ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, as the new United States ambassador to the United Nations, a senior administration official said Thursday.

“It was clearly time to move the players around on the field,” said the senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because Mr. Bush had yet to announce the changes. “This helps the president to make the case that this is a fresh start.”

Admiral Fallon would be the first Navy officer to serve as the senior officer of the Central Command, which is managing simultaneous ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Admiral Fallon is regarded within the military as one of its stronger regional combat commanders, and his possible appointment also reflects a greater emphasis on countering Iranian power, a mission that relies heavily on naval forces and combat airpower to project American influence in the Persian Gulf.

General Petraeus, who is now the head of the Army’s Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., helped oversee the drafting of the military’s comprehensive new manual on counterinsurgency. He has served two previous tours in Iraq, and some former officers say he sees the need for additional troops in Baghdad.

He will replace General Casey, whose plan for troop reductions in Iraq faltered last year in the face of escalating sectarian strife and who initially expressed public wariness about any short-term increase in troops in Iraq, a move that is now a leading option under consideration by the White House.

The departures of both General Casey and General Abizaid were expected, though in General Casey’s case it appears to have been moved up several months from the originally anticipated shift in spring or summer. General Abizaid’s tour had already been extended for a full year beyond the typical two-year stint, and he has announced that he will retire soon.

The troop increase option under discussion would focus on improving security in Baghdad. Under this approach, two Army combat brigades would be sent to the capital during the first phase of the operation. A combat brigade generally consists of about 3,500 soldiers. At the same time, a third brigade would be positioned in Kuwait as a reserve, and two more brigades would be on call in the United States.

The expectation is that these three brigades would eventually be sent to Baghdad as well, though the president would have the option to limit the reinforcements. Part of the increase could be achieved by holding some units past their currently scheduled return home.

Scaling up by five brigades would more than double the number of American combat troops involved in security operations in the Iraqi capital. The emphasis on Baghdad reflects the view that stability in the capital is a precondition for any broader effort to bring calm to the whole country. It is also a recognition that the administration sees sectarian violence as a greater threat to Iraq’s stability than the Sunni Arab insurgency.

While Baghdad is the principal focus, the option also provides for sending two battalions of reinforcements to Anbar, where overstretched Marine and Army forces have been battling Sunni Arab insurgents. A basic battalion generally consists of 1,200 troops.

One issue under discussion is how to mesh the emerging American strategy with the Iraqis’ capabilities. Bush administration officials say they want the increase in American troops to be paralleled by a considerable rise in the number of functional Iraqi troops. But the Iraqis failed in the summer to send all the reinforcements that had been requested, and some Iraqi security forces, particularly the police, have been infiltrated by militias.

Another point of contention is that some senior aides to Mr. Maliki have been notably unenthusiastic about an increase in American troops in Baghdad. During his meeting with Mr. Bush in Jordan in November, Mr. Maliki presented a plan that would shift most Americans to the periphery of Baghdad so they could concentrate on fighting Sunni insurgents while the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government asserted more control over the capital. That has left some American officials wondering whether the Maliki government was making a legitimate bid to exercise sovereignty or is committed to a sectarian Shiite agenda.

Bush administration officials believe that their new Iraqi strategy must involve political steps toward reconciliation and reconstruction programs to produce jobs.

In their teleconference, Mr. Bush and Mr. Maliki discussed the Iraqi government’s efforts at political reconciliation and the Iraqi prime minister’s vows to rein in militias, the pace of which American officials have found painfully slow. Discussing the execution of Saddam Hussein, Mr. Bush said the Maliki government was right to investigate the circumstances surrounding the hanging.

General Petraeus participated in the initial invasion of Iraq as the commander of the 101st Airborne Division. The division fought its way toward Baghdad and was later sent to Mosul in northern Iraq, where the general focused on political and economic reconstruction efforts.

“We are in a race to win over the people,” read a sign in his Mosul headquarters. “What have you and your element done today to contribute to victory?”

General Petraeus did a second tour in Iraq in which he oversaw the efforts to train the Iraqi Army. At his current post at Fort Leavenworth, he has been involved in the push to change the United States Army’s training and education to emphasize counterinsurgency operations.

Jack Keane, the retired Army general who served as vice chief of the Army, called General Petraeus an “imaginative commander who is experienced and knows how to deal with irregular warfare,” as the Army refers to insurgencies.

The Iraq commander post is considered a four-star general’s command, a promotion that would add a star to General Petraeus’s shoulder.

Officials also said Admiral Fallon received a persuasive recommendation from the Joint Chiefs as one of the military’s stronger commanders of a geographic theater, with his current command including the challenges of North Korea and China.

In that capacity, he also took the unusual and punitive move in December of canceling a large, annual field exercise with the Philippines over a local judge’s failure to honor the bilateral treaty governing protections for American military personnel. The judge refused to honor the agreement’s rule that American military personnel remain in American custody pending final appeal of all criminal proceedings against them, and ordered a marine convicted of rape held in a local jail even though the case was on appeal.

David E. Sanger and Jim Rutenberg contributed reporting.

    Bush to Name a New General to Oversee Iraq, NYT, 5.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/world/middleeast/05military.html?hp&ex=1168059600&en=b4d8f52e64339832&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Op-Ed Contributor

Denying the Facts, Finding the Truth

January 5, 2007
The New York Times
By SLAVOJ ZIZEK

London

ONE of the pop heroes of the Iraq war was undoubtedly Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf, the unfortunate Iraqi information minister who, in his daily press conferences during the invasion, heroically denied even the most evident facts and stuck to the Iraqi line. Even with American tanks only a few hundred yards from his office, he continued to claim that the televised shots of tanks on the Baghdad streets were just Hollywood special effects.

In his very performance as an excessive caricature, Mr. Sahhaf thereby revealed the hidden truth of the “normal” reporting: there were no refined spins in his comments, just a plain denial. There was something refreshingly liberating about his interventions, which displayed a striving to be liberated from the hold of facts and thus of the need to spin away their unpleasant aspects: his stance was, “Whom do you believe, your eyes or my words?”

Furthermore, sometimes, he even struck a strange truth — when confronted with claims that Americans were in control of parts of Baghdad, he snapped back: “They are not in control of anything — they don’t even control themselves!”

What, exactly, do they not control? Back in 1979, in her essay “Dictatorship and Double Standards,” published in Commentary, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick elaborated the distinction between “authoritarian” and “totalitarian” regimes. This concept served as the justification of the American policy of collaborating with right-wing dictators while treating Communist regimes much more harshly: authoritarian dictators are pragmatic rulers who care about their power and wealth and are indifferent toward ideological issues, even if they pay lip service to some big cause; in contrast, totalitarian leaders are selfless fanatics who believe in their ideology and are ready to put everything at stake for their ideals.

Her point was that, while one can deal with authoritarian rulers who react rationally and predictably to material and military threats, totalitarian leaders are much more dangerous and have to be directly confronted.

The irony is that this distinction encapsulates perfectly what went wrong with the United States occupation of Iraq: Saddam Hussein was a corrupt authoritarian dictator striving to keep his hold on power and guided by brutal pragmatic considerations (which led him to collaborate with the United States in the 1980s). The ultimate proof of his regime’s secular nature is the fact that in the Iraqi elections of October 2002 — in which Saddam Hussein got a 100 percent endorsement, and thus overdid the best Stalinist results of 99.95 percent — the campaign song played again and again on all the state media was Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You.”

One outcome of the American invasion is that it has generated a much more uncompromising “fundamentalist” politico-ideological constellation in Iraq. This has led to a predominance of the pro-Iranian political forces there — the intervention basically delivered Iraq to Iranian influence. One can imagine how, if President Bush were to be court-martialed by a Stalinist judge, he would be instantly condemned as an “Iranian agent.” The violent outbursts of the recent Bush politics are thus not exercises in power, but rather exercises in panic.

Recall the old story about the factory worker suspected of stealing: every evening, when he was leaving work, the wheelbarrow he rolled in front of him was carefully inspected, but the guards could not find anything, it was always empty. Finally, they got the point: what the worker was stealing were the wheelbarrows themselves.

This is the trick being attempted by those who claim today, “But the world is nonetheless better off without Saddam!” They forget to factor into the account the effects of the very military intervention against him. Yes, the world is better without Saddam Hussein — but is it better if we include into the overall picture the ideological and political effects of this very occupation?

The United States as a global policeman — why not? The post-cold-war situation effectively called for some global power to fill the void. The problem resides elsewhere: recall the common perception of the United States as a new Roman Empire. The problem with today’s America is not that it is a new global empire, but that it is not one. That is, while pretending to be an empire, it continues to act like a nation-state, ruthlessly pursuing its interests. It is as if the guiding vision of recent American politics is a weird reversal of the well-known motto of the ecologists — act globally, think locally.

After 9/11, the United States was given the opportunity to realize what kind of world it was part of. It might have used the opportunity — but it did not, instead opting to reassert its traditional ideological commitments: out with the responsibility and guilt with respect to the impoverished third world — we are the victims now!

Apropos of the Hague tribunal, the British writer Timothy Garton Ash pathetically claimed: “No Führer or Duce, no Pinochet, Amin or Pol Pot, should ever again feel themselves protected from the reach of international law by the palace gates of sovereignty.” One should simply take note of what is missing in this series of names which, apart from the standard couple of Hitler and Mussolini, contains three third world dictators: where is at least one name from the major powers who might sleep a bit uneasily?

Or, closer to the standard list of the bad guys, why was there little talk of delivering Saddam Hussein or, say, Manuel Noriega to The Hague? Why was the only trial against Mr. Noriega for drug trafficking, rather than for his murderous abuses as a dictator? Was it because he would have disclosed his past ties with the C.I.A.?

In a similar way, Saddam Hussein’s regime was an abominable authoritarian state, guilty of many crimes, mostly toward its own people. However, one should note the strange but key fact that, when the United States representatives and the Iraqi prosecutors were enumerating his evil deeds, they systematically omitted what was undoubtedly his greatest crime in terms of human suffering and of violating international justice: his invasion of Iran. Why? Because the United States and the majority of foreign states were actively helping Iraq in this aggression.

And now the United States is continuing, through other means, this greatest crime of Saddam Hussein: his never-ending attempt to topple the Iranian government. This is the price you have to pay when the struggle against the enemies is the struggle against the evil ghosts in your own closet: you don’t even control yourself.

Slavoj Zizek, the international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, is the author, most recently, of “The Parallax View.”

    Denying the Facts, Finding the Truth, NYT, 5.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/opinion/05zizek.html

The Debacle in the Gallows (7 Letters)

January 5, 2007
The New York Times
 

To the Editor:

“The Ugly Death of Saddam Hussein” (editorial, Jan. 4) emphasizes the lack of planning and oversight by the Bush administration. To say that the execution was “a shaming embarrassment” and that “all Americans will be blamed” is an understatement.

If the United States’ pre-emptive invasion of Iraq is considered one of the major strategic blunders in American history, the execution of Saddam Hussein while the United States was the occupying force in Iraq may come close to rivaling that blunder.

Why couldn’t Iraqi justice be served once there was a functioning Iraqi government and United States forces were out of Iraq, and why couldn’t the Bush administration have insisted that this be so?

Leonard Cohen

Sugar Land, Tex., Jan. 4, 2007

•

To the Editor:

Lies were told to go to this war, and lies were told to extend it. Now there are brand-new lies that promise victory only if we add more troops.

A debacle needs no reinforcements. Let our young people come home to start their lives anew. And let President Bush reap his whirlwind. Christopher Woods

Houston, Jan. 4, 2007

•

To the Editor:

Your editorial doesn’t mention the fact that President Bush has not yet watched the cellphone video of Saddam Hussein’s execution, according to White House spokesmen.

Let me get this straight: the delivery of Saddam Hussein to justice was one of the president’s only legitimate reasons left standing for the invasion of Iraq; the United States held him in custody until the Iraqi government requested that he be delivered to pay the ultimate price; the United States may have delivered him “into the hands of a Shiite lynch mob”; there is a worldwide outcry about the circumstances surrounding the execution; and the Bush administration is struggling to distance itself from the execution.

And yet the president has not even bothered to watch the video to assess the situation? With our worldwide credibility once again on the line, how can we ever trust that he knows what he is talking about?

Rick Smith

Los Angeles, Jan. 4, 2007

•

To the Editor:

Re “Iraq to Examine Abusive Conduct Toward Hussein” (front page, Jan. 3):

The “trial” of Saddam Hussein, measured by most American judicial standards, might be considered a farce. It is ironic that there is now some upset that during the execution of Mr. Hussein, after his release from American custody, there seemed to be a lack of dignity and courtesy among the participants. Could it be that it is the execution itself that lacks dignity and courtesy?

John Maguire

Oakland, Calif., Jan. 3, 2007

•

To the Editor:

Such a fuss in your paper over the “abusive conduct” toward Saddam Hussein! Perhaps the Shiites should have consulted Miss Manners on the proper decorum for the execution of a mass murderer?

Donald Hoffmann

Kansas City, Mo., Jan. 3, 2007

•

To the Editor:

Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, when asked about the appalling cellphone video of Saddam Hussein’s execution, declared that “the most important thing to keep in mind is, this is a guy who killed hundreds of thousands of people and received justice,” while absolving the Americans of responsibility for handing him over to the Shiite Iraqi regime just minutes before he was hanged (“Despite Misgivings, White House Says Little Against Hanging,” news article, Jan. 4).

Supervising hasty executions, of course, was one of George W. Bush’s precious few qualifications for office six years ago. Still, the White House cannot have it both ways, extolling the virtues of democracy while overlooking the expanding disaster in Iraq.

The world’s democracies, many of which have banned the death penalty, can only conclude that America cares little for the rule of law.

Timothy Stewart-Winter

Chicago, Jan. 4, 2007

•

To the Editor:

Why is it so hard for our elected officials to admit error? The lynching of Saddam Hussein was wrong, whether or not you agree with capital punishment and irrespective of the magnitude of his crimes.

This administration is quick to condemn homosexuality, abortion and euthanasia. For once, I’d like it to condemn true immorality. Only then we will regain the moral authority we once enjoyed. Bill Schrier

Carmel, Calif., Jan. 3, 2007

    The Debacle in the Gallows (7 Letters), NYT, 5.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/opinion/l05iraq.html

No date for hanging Saddam aides

Thu Jan 4, 2007 5:32 AM ET
Reuters
By Ibon Villelabeitia

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq has not set an execution date for two of Saddam Hussein's aides, an official said on Thursday, as the government faced anger from Sunnis over Saddam's unruly hanging.

There had been reports that Saddam's half-brother, former intelligence boss Barzan al-Tikriti and former judge Awad al-Bander, would hang on Thursday. But an aide to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said no date had been set.

Barzan and Bander were found guilty along with Saddam of crimes against humanity in the killings of 148 Shi'ite men from Dujail in the 1980s.

Bahaa al-Araji, a lawmaker for radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's political group, said he believed the executions would be delayed until Sunday, the first working day after the weekend and the Eid al-Adha holiday.

"As far as I know, the executions will take place on Sunday, if things stand as they are," al-Araji said. "I'm not sure about what time, but I doubt it will be in the same place."

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour urged Iraq on Wednesday not to execute the two men out of respect for international law and concerns over the fairness and impartiality of the trial.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's spokeswoman said he fully endorsed Arbour's statement.

Maliki had brushed aside a similar appeal from Arbour before Saddam was executed, and shocked many in Iraq and the rest of the Muslim world by having him hanged on the first day of Eid.

VIDEO CONTROVERSY

Facing growing criticism over a video of Shi'ite officials mocking Saddam on the gallows, which has hardened perceptions of Shi'ite triumphalism among Sunni Arabs and discomfited the United States, officials said a number of guards had been detained as part of a government probe into who filmed and leaked the video.

The images, which show observers yelling "Go to hell" and chanting the name of a radical Shi'ite cleric before Saddam falls through the trap, has inflamed sectarian passions in a country on the brink of sectarian civil war.

Thousands of Sunni Arabs have marched to vent anger at the execution, and mourners have flocked to his grave in his home village of Awja.

Although the Interior Ministry's investigation has so far centered on the guards, it could implicate senior government officials present at the execution, dealing a further blow to Maliki's calls for national reconciliation.

The U.S. military, which said it played no role in the hanging and would have done things "differently", urged Maliki in unusually direct advice to reach out to disillusioned Sunnis.

U.S. Major General William Caldwell said on Wednesday there had been a lull in violence over the Eid al-Adha holiday, but that U.S. forces were still braced for a possible backlash.

On Thursday, two bombs exploded near a petrol station in Baghdad's western Mansour district, killing at least 13 people and wounding 22, police said.

As President Bush weighs alternatives for a war in which more than 3,000 U.S. soldiers have died, there were signs he is considering a short-term troop increase in Iraq.

Such a "surge" is one of many changes under consideration, but is the one that has gained most attention in Washington.

(Additional reporting by Mussab Al-Khairalla in Baghdad)

    No date for hanging Saddam aides, R, 4.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2007-01-04T102505Z_01_L308031_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C2-TopNews-newsOne-2

FACTBOX-Security developments in Iraq, Jan 4

Thu Jan 4, 2007 5:30 AM ET
Reuters



(Reuters) - Following are security developments in Iraq as of 1000 GMT on Thursday:

BAGHDAD - Two car bombs near a petrol station killed 13 people and wounded 22 others in Baghdad's western upscale Mansour district, an Interior Ministry source said. Police said it was a roadside bomb followed by a car bomb.

BAGHDAD - Clashes erupted between gunmen and residents of a mainly Sunni district after the gunmen attacked Baghdad's western Gazaliya district and killed two people and wounded 25 others on Wednesday, an Interior Ministry source said.

HILLA - The bodies of four people were found shot dead in and around the city of Hilla, 100 km (60 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

ISKANDARIYA - A roadside bomb targeting a police check point killed an Iraqi soldier and wounded four in the town of Iskandariya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

    FACTBOX-Security developments in Iraq, Jan 4, NYT, 4.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyid=2007-01-04T101919Z_01_L04347809_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L1-RelatedNews-9

Two bombs kill 13 at petrol station in Baghdad

Thu Jan 4, 2007 5:30 AM ET
Reuters

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Two bombs exploded at a petrol station in Baghdad's western Mansour district on Thursday, killing 13 people and wounding 22, police and an interior ministry source said.

The first blast was a roadside bomb that hit people lining up for fuel at the petrol station, police said. When rescue services arrived on the scene, a car bomb exploded. The interior ministry source said both were car bombs.

Mansour is an upscale neighborhood with a mixed population of Shi'ites and Sunni Arabs.

There has been a relative lull in major attacks and violence over the Eid al-Adha holiday, which ended on Wednesday.

But U.S. Major General William Caldwell warned on Wednesday that U.S. and Iraqi forces were braced for a possible violent backlash after Saddam Hussein was hanged on Saturday and an illicitly filmed video of the hanging showed him being taunted by Shi'ite officials just before his death.

The video has inflamed sectarian tensions in a country already on the brink of civil war. U.N. statistics say an average of more than 100 people a day are killed in bombings, mortar attacks and sectarian death squad killings.

    Two bombs kill 13 at petrol station in Baghdad, R, 4.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyid=2007-01-04T101919Z_01_PAR429279_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L1-RelatedNews-2

Peter Brookes        The Times        January 4, 2007

George W. Bush

US military planners assess surge options for Iraq

Thu Jan 4, 2007 4:45 AM ET
Reuters
By Kristin Roberts

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. military planners ordered to draft options for a quick boost to troop levels in Iraq are weighing moves to send another Army brigade or delay the departure of Marines already in the war zone, defense officials said this week.

The ongoing review, which has yielded a variety of distinct scenarios, is aimed at giving President George W. Bush a set of alternatives as he considers a broad new policy for the deteriorating situation in Iraq.

A quick, short-term troop increase, or "surge," is just one of many policy changes under consideration. But it is the one that has garnered the most attention in Washington, as American military casualties in Iraq have climbed above 3,000 and analysts question whether a troop increase can stem violence.

Surge options developed by military planners have ranged widely and could include as many as 10,000 to 30,000 additional troops, according to defense officials speaking on condition of anonymity. The United States now has 132,000 troops in Iraq.

The plans also differ in how quickly more troops could be deployed, officials said.

Under one plan, the Pentagon could most quickly increase troop levels by 7,000 to 8,000 by moving in two Army brigades -- one now headed to Kuwait to serve as a standby force and another that has not been announced.

The Pentagon also could boost troop levels quickly in Baghdad by delaying the anticipated departure of two Marine Corps units now in violent Anbar province, defense officials have said. That option could provide an additional 13,000 to 15,000 troops to Iraq's capital.

Other plans, including those aimed at providing 20,000 or more troops, could take longer to implement, until as late as April, some officials said.

MILITARY CONCERN

Some generals, including Gen. John Abizaid, the U.S. Middle East commander due to retire early this year, have raised concerns about the concept of a surge, saying it would heighten opposition to the American presence.

Some critics have said the plan helps Bush satisfy political interests rather than military goals.

That is because the mission, defense officials say, is to train Iraqi forces to help them take responsibility for security. Repeatedly, commanders on the ground have said they do not need more troops to accomplish that mission.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who has not disclosed what options he prefers, also said commanders were worried that additional forces would allow Iraqis to ease away from taking security responsibility.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said Bush is "fairly far along" in deciding how to proceed on Iraq but has not completed his new plan.

Bush is expected to unveil a new Iraq policy as early as next week.

"If he goes forward with the idea presumably it means he thinks it will have a positive effect," said incoming House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat.

"But of course the president has been almost uniformly wrong on what his premise is, of what his actions in Iraq were going to result in, whether it is cost or success, stabilization, support, sectarian violence," Hoyer said. "You name it, their observations have been wrong."

(Additional reporting by Steve Holland and Susan Cornwell)

    US military planners assess surge options for Iraq, R, 4.7.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyid=2007-01-04T094331Z_01_N03292663_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L1-RelatedNews-3

Steve Sack        Minnesota, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune        Cagle        4.1.2007

http://cagle.com/sack/

Saddam death raises

tribal, religious ire in Saudi

Thu Jan 4, 2007 4:38 AM ET
Reuters
By Andrew Hammond

RIYADH (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein's unruly execution on the feast of Eid al-Adha by masked Shi'ite hangmen taunting him on the gallows has revived Sunni Arab fears that the Iraqi government is run by vengeful sectarian Shi'ites backed by Iran.

Feelings run particularly high in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the two main bastions of Sunni Islam.

For clerics from Saudi Arabia's hardline Wahhabi branch of Islam, the execution proved that Iraqi Shi'ites, in alliance with Iran, are infidels who have declared war on Sunni Islam.

For ordinary Saudis, it was an affront to their sense of Arab tribal honor.

"This was a death squad that did this, a mob. But we should thank the high-level government officials who were there for filming it and allowing us to see the truth," said Turki Rasheed, who hails from a major Saudi tribe.

"But the best thing was the way he (Saddam) handled the situation. He fought them with this body language, with his eyes and his talk. He became a hero," he said.

The unofficial film of Saddam's hanging, apparently filmed on a mobile phone, showed Shi'ite officials bullying Sadddam, chanting the name of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and cursing him just before he was hanged.

Saddam, standing on the scaffold, appeared dignified in the face of jeering and insults, making the execution look like an act of revenge and not justice for crimes against humanity.

The U.S.-allied Iraqi government says it is investigating how footage of the execution managed to reached the media. The grainy clips shown on Arab television resembled infamous beheading videos by Sunni Iraqi insurgent groups like al Qaeda.

Some Saudis have been passing around a flood of pro-Saddam poetry on mobile phone text messages. One Gulf newspaper carried a poem that Saudis suspect was penned by a government official.

One piece of verse threatened revenge for Saddam's death.

"Prepare the gun that will avenge Saddam. The criminal who signed the execution order without valid reason cheated us on our celebration day. How beautiful it will be when the bullet goes through the heart of him who betrayed Arabism," it said.

EID REVENGE

Baghdad put Saddam to death on Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, which falls within the haj pilgrimage to Mecca and is the most important day in the Islamic calendar.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia both criticised Iraq over the timing, which provoked an outpouring of pro-Saddam feeling in Egypt too.

"Everyone inside and outside Iraq understands the poor timing as a message aimed at humiliating every Arab," Makram Mohamed Ahmed said in Egypt's main daily al-Ahram on Wednesday.

Several hundred people gathered at the Egyptian lawyers' syndicate building in Cairo on Wednesday to say prayers for the soul of a man who for three decades ran one of the most brutal dictatorships of modern times.

Saudi clerics, who have stepped up their anti-Shi'ite rhetoric in recent months as sectarian violence takes Iraq to the brink of civil war, were also indignant over the execution, although they had despised Saddam as a heretical secular tyrant.

"The timing shows how much Shi'ites hate Sunnis in Iraq and all the Islamic world," Nasser al-Omar, one of the leading authorities of Wahhabi Islam, said this week on his Web site.

"They want to link Saddam to Sunni Islam, blame Sunnis for his mistakes and show his execution as a victory for Shi'ites."

Saudi Arabia has made clear it wants U.S. forces to remain in Iraq for fear of massacres of Sunnis by Shi'ites.

Al-Omar employed sectarian language used by militant groups such as al Qaeda in Iraq, describing Shi'ites as "Safavids" after a 15th-century dynasty that made Shi'ism the state religion in Iran, and "sons of Ibn Alqami" after a Shi'ite minister who Sunnis say connived to let the Mongols sack Baghdad in 1258.

Saudis are thought to make up a significant proportion of the Arab fighters who joined al Qaeda in Iraq after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that ended Saddam's rule and brought Shi'ites to power.

Al Qaeda -- which is inspired by Wahhabi ideology and headed by a Saudi, Osama bin Laden -- has used suicide bombings to wreak carnage among Shi'ite civilians in Iraq. Shi'ites say attacks on Sunnis are revenge for the suicide bombs.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Wright)

    Saddam death raises tribal, religious ire in Saudi, R, 4.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyid=2007-01-04T093639Z_01_L04631572_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L1-RelatedNews-1

Intelligence Chief Is Shifted

to Deputy State Dept. Post

January 4, 2007
The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON, Jan. 3 — John D. Negroponte, whom President Bush installed less than two years ago as the first director of national intelligence, will soon leave his post to become the State Department’s second-ranking official, administration officials said Wednesday.

Mr. Negroponte will fill a critical job that has been vacant for months, and he is expected to play a leading role in shaping policy in Iraq. But his transfer is another blow to an intelligence community that has seen little continuity at the top since the departure of George J. Tenet in 2004 as director of central intelligence.

Mr. Negroponte had been brought to the intelligence job to help restore credibility and effectiveness to agencies whose reputations were badly damaged by failures related to the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and mistaken prewar assessments of Iraq’s illicit weapons. He has maintained a low public profile but provides Mr. Bush with a briefing most mornings.

President Bush has hailed the establishment of the intelligence post as an essential step in helping prevent another terrorist attack. On paper, the director of national intelligence outranks the deputy secretary of state, raising questions about why the White House would seek — and why Mr. Negroponte would agree to — the shift.

The move, expected to be announced this week, comes as the president prepares to announce a new strategy for Iraq as sectarian violence worsens there and approval ratings sag at home.

The administration has had great difficulty filling the State Department position. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has asked several people who have turned down the post, according to senior State Department officials.

But administration officials interviewed on Wednesday would not say whether Mr. Negroponte was moving because the White House saw him as uniquely qualified for the diplomatic post, or because President Bush was dissatisfied with his performance as intelligence chief, or whether it was a combination of the two.

Mr. Negroponte has served as ambassador to the United Nations and to Iraq, and administration officials say Ms. Rice was trying to recruit him to bring more Iraq expertise to her office.

Administration officials from two different agencies said Wednesday that the leading candidate to become the new intelligence chief is J. Michael McConnell, a retired vice admiral who led the National Security Agency from 1992 to 1996. Admiral McConnell was head of intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Gen. Colin L. Powell during the first Persian Gulf war, in 1991.

Mr. Bush had at first been reluctant to set up the intelligence post, but ultimately bowed to Congressional pressure and made the office a cabinet-level position.

As deputy secretary of state, Mr. Negroponte, who would need Senate confirmation for the post, would fill a pivotal foreign policy position that has been vacant since Robert B. Zoellick resigned to take a post at Goldman Sachs.

The shift of Mr. Negroponte, first reported Wednesday evening by NBC News, reflects a further transformation in President Bush’s foreign policy team that has already seen Robert M. Gates take over as defense secretary from Donald H. Rumsfeld. Mr. Bush still has other top posts to fill, including that of ambassador to the United Nations, left vacant with the departure of John R. Bolton.

Mr. Negroponte would move to the State Department as the administration is preparing a shift in Iraq strategy.

As a career diplomat who also served as ambassador to Mexico, the Philippines and Honduras, Mr. Negroponte brought a policy maker’s perspective to the role of intelligence chief, a post established by Congress at the end of 2004 to address a lack of coordination among intelligence agencies. He took over the job in April 2005, and said in an interview on C-Span last month that he expected to stay in his position until the end of the Bush administration.

Admiral McConnell is a career intelligence officer who is a senior vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton, an international consulting firm. During his tenure at the Pentagon and as director of the National Security Agency, Admiral McConnell worked closely with Mr. Gates during Mr. Gates’s time as deputy national security adviser and as director of central intelligence, and with Dick Cheney while he was defense secretary during the first Persian Gulf war.

Senator Susan M. Collins, Republican of Maine and chairwoman of the Senate Government Reform Committee, was a major backer of the intelligence post, and on Wednesday she said of the reported transfer: “The director of national intelligence is an absolutely critical position. I’m disappointed that Negroponte would leave this critical position when it’s still in its infancy. There are a number of people who could ably serve as deputy secretary of state, but few who can handle the challenges of chief of intelligence.”

Representative Jane Harman, a California Democrat who also pressed for establishment of the intelligence job, said: “I’m worrying that our deficit in intelligence will not be corrected. I’m sorry Negroponte isn’t completing his term because he at least understood intelligence.”

Mr. Negroponte’s move to the State Department has been rumored for months. Ms. Rice was pushing to bring Mr. Negroponte in as her deputy, and officials in Washington speculated that the career diplomat might be more comfortable returning to the State Department.

The White House press secretary, Tony Snow, declined to comment on the change. “We don’t comment on personnel matters until the president has announced his intentions,” Mr. Snow said in an e-mail message Wednesday night.

Officials said one priority in replacing Mr. Negroponte had been to select someone who could pass swiftly through the Senate confirmation process. They also cautioned that the choice of Admiral McConnell was not final.

The job of deputy director of national intelligence is also vacant, and the White House is conscious that a long nomination battle in the Senate, where Democrats are now in the majority, could throw the intelligence office into disarray.

Helene Cooper and Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting.

    Intelligence Chief Is Shifted to Deputy State Dept. Post, NYT, 4.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/washington/04secretary.html

Op-Ed Contributor

Getting the Middle East

Back on Our Side

January 4, 2007
By BRENT SCOWCROFT
Washington

THE Iraq Study Group report was released into a sea of unrealistic expectations. Inevitably, it disappointed hopes for a clear path through the morass of Iraq, because there is no “silver bullet” solution to the difficulties in which we find ourselves.

But the report accomplished a great deal. It brought together some of America’s best minds across party lines, and it outlined with clarity and precision the key factors at issue in Iraq. In doing so, it helped catalyze the debate about our Iraq policy and crystallize the choices we face. Above all, it emphasized the importance of focusing on American national interests, not only in Iraq but in the region.

However, the report, which calls the situation in Iraq “grave and deteriorating,” does not focus on what could be the most likely outcome of its analysis. Should the Iraqis be unable or unwilling to play the role required of them, the report implies that we would have no choice but to withdraw, and then blame our withdrawal on Iraqi failures. But here the report essentially stops.

An American withdrawal before Iraq can, in the words of the president, “govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself” would be a strategic defeat for American interests, with potentially catastrophic consequences both in the region and beyond. Our opponents would be hugely emboldened, our friends deeply demoralized.

Iran, heady with the withdrawal of its principal adversary, would expand its influence through Hezbollah and Hamas more deeply into Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and Jordan. Our Arab friends would rightly feel we had abandoned them to face alone a radicalism that has been greatly inflamed by American actions in the region and which could pose a serious threat to their own governments.

The effects would not be confined to Iraq and the Middle East. Energy resources and transit choke points vital to the global economy would be subjected to greatly increased risk. Terrorists and extremists elsewhere would be emboldened. And the perception, worldwide, would be that the American colossus had stumbled, was losing its resolve and could no longer be considered a reliable ally or friend — or the guarantor of peace and stability in this critical region.

To avoid these dire consequences, we need to secure the support of the countries of the region themselves. It is greatly in their self-interest to give that support, just as they did in the 1991 Persian Gulf conflict. Unfortunately, in recent years they have come to see it as dangerous to identify with the United States, and so they have largely stood on the sidelines.

A vigorously renewed effort to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict could fundamentally change both the dynamics in the region and the strategic calculus of key leaders. Real progress would push Iran into a more defensive posture. Hezbollah and Hamas would lose their rallying principle. American allies like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the gulf states would be liberated to assist in stabilizing Iraq. And Iraq would finally be seen by all as a key country that had to be set right in the pursuit of regional security.

Arab leaders are now keen to resolve the 50-year-old dispute. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel may be as well. His nation’s long-term security can only be assured by resolving this issue once and for all. However, only the American president can bring them to the same table.

Resuming the Arab-Israeli peace process is not a matter of forcing concessions from Israel or dragooning the Palestinians into surrender. Most of the elements of a settlement are already agreed as a result of the negotiations of 2000 and the “road map” of 2002. What is required is to summon the will of Arab and Israeli leaders, led by a determined American president, to forge the various elements into a conclusion that all parties have already publicly accepted in principle.

As for Syria and Iran, we should not be afraid of opening channels of communication, but neither should we rush to engage them as negotiating “partners.” Moreover, these two countries have differing interests, expectations and points of leverage and should not be treated as though they are indistinguishable.

Syria cannot be comfortable clutched solely in the embrace of Iran, and thus prying it away may be possible. Syria also has much to gain from a settlement with Israel and internal problems that such a deal might greatly ease. If we can make progress on the Palestinian front before adding Syria to the mix, it would both avoid overloading Israel’s negotiating capacity and increase the incentives for Damascus to negotiate seriously.

Iran is different. It may not be wise to make Iran integral to the regional strategy at the outset. And the nuclear issue should be dealt with on a separate track. In its present state of euphoria, Iran has little interest in making things easier for us. If, however, we make clear our determination, and if the other regional states become more engaged in stabilizing Iraq, the Iranians might grow more inclined to negotiate seriously.

WHILE negotiations on the Arab-Israel peace process are under way, we should establish some political parameters inside Iraq that encourage moves toward reconciliation and unified government in Iraq. Other suggested options, such as an “80 percent solution” that excludes the Sunnis, or the division of the country into three parts, are not only inconsistent with reconciliation but would almost certainly pave the way to broader regional conflict and must be avoided.

American combat troops should be gradually redeployed away from intervening in sectarian conflict. That necessarily is a task for Iraqi troops, however poorly prepared they may be. Our troops should be redirected toward training the Iraqi Army, providing support and backup, combating insurgents, attenuating outside intervention and assisting in major infrastructure protection.

That does not mean the American presence should be reduced. Indeed, in the immediate future, the opposite may be true, though any increase in troop strength should be directed at accomplishing specific, defined missions. A generalized increase would be unlikely to demonstrably change the situation and, consequently, could result in increased clamor for withdrawal. But the central point is that withdrawing combat forces should not be a policy objective, but rather, the result of changes in our strategy and success in our efforts.

As we work our way through this seemingly intractable problem in Iraq, we must constantly remember that this is not just a troublesome issue from which we can walk away if it seems too costly to continue. What is at stake is not only Iraq and the stability of the Middle East, but the global perception of the reliability of the United States as a partner in a deeply troubled world. We cannot afford to fail that test.

Brent Scowcroft was national security adviser to Presidents Gerald R. Ford and George H. W. Bush. He is now president of the Forum for International Policy.

    Getting the Middle East Back on Our Side, NYT, 4.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/opinion/04scowcroft.html

Editorial

The Ugly Death of Saddam Hussein

January 4, 2007
The New York Times

Saddam Hussein deserves no one’s pity. But as anyone who has seen the graphic cellphone video of his hanging can testify, his execution bore little resemblance to dispassionate, state-administered justice. The condemned dictator appeared to have been delivered from United States military custody into the hands of a Shiite lynch mob.

For the Bush administration, which insists it went to war in Iraq to implant democracy and justice, those globally viewed images were a shaming embarrassment. Unfortunately, all Americans will be blamed, while the Iraqi people are now likely to suffer still more. What should have been a symbolic passage out of Iraq’s darkest era will instead fuel a grim new era of spiraling sectarian vengeance.

The ugly episode shows why Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is never likely to produce the national unity government that Washington keeps demanding and that Iraq so desperately needs.

Mr. Maliki is now scrambling to extricate himself from the public relations disaster. Yesterday, his office announced the arrest of a guard who allegedly took the unauthorized video. But the fundamental blame belongs to Mr. Maliki, who personally orchestrated the timing and circumstances of last Saturday’s execution.

Mr. Maliki ignored pleas for delay from Washington and the legal niceties of Iraq’s Constitution. He rushed to deliver Mr. Hussein’s death as a holiday gift to his hard-line Shiite constituency, especially followers of the radical cleric and militia leader Moktada al-Sadr, who were allowed to chant abuse at the condemned dictator while he stood at the gallows with the noose around his neck.

Mr. Maliki’s usual cheerleaders, President Bush and Britain’s prime minister, Tony Blair, have distanced themselves from this repellent spectacle. Yet the Bush administration again finds that it has little credibility to lecture anyone on the basic dignity due to detainees. The Washington Post reported yesterday on an internal F.B.I. investigation that revealed a pattern of deliberate taunting of the religious beliefs of Muslim prisoners at Guantánamo.

As Mr. Bush prepares his latest plan for Iraq, he must face up to bleak realities. As of January, 2007, Iraq lacks an army capable of standing on its own. It lacks a justice system that puts the rule of law over political expediency, while its police force is dominated by sectarian militias and thugs. Most crucially, it lacks a government committed to protect the rights and personal safety of all Iraqis.

Most Americans, whatever their view of the war, understand that the rule of Saddam Hussein brought a murderous curse and untold suffering upon the Iraqi people. Mr. Hussein has now gone to his grave. But the outrageous manner of his killing, deliberately mimicking his own depraved methods, assures that his cruelty will outlive him.

    The Ugly Death of Saddam Hussein, NYT, 4.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/opinion/04thur1.html

Iraq Defends Hanging,

but Holds Hussein Guard

January 4, 2007
The New York Times
By JAMES GLANZ and JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, Jan. 3 — The Iraqi prime minister’s office on Wednesday mounted its first public defense of the way the government carried out the execution of Saddam Hussein, and said that Iraqi authorities had detained a guard who they believed was involved in recording the moment in a macabre and unauthorized video that has generated revulsion around the world.

Iraqi officials, in their effort to dampen the video’s impact, tried to challenge the impression it conveyed that Mr. Hussein, for all his brutal crimes, had behaved with far more dignity in his final minutes than his seemingly thuggish executioners.

“The execution operation has been mischaracterized for political purposes,” said Sadiq al-Rikabi, an adviser to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who was present at the execution. Mr. Rikabi asserted that it had been carried out properly. “What has happened is not an insult or degradation,” he said.

But even as Mr. Maliki’s government tried to defend its actions, the United States military, which had held Mr. Hussein in custody until it transferred him to Iraqi authorities about an hour before he was hanged, sought to distance itself from any responsibility for the scenes revealed in the video.

“You know, if you’re asking me, ‘Would we have done things differently,’ yes, we would have,” said Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, an American military spokesman in Baghdad, at a news briefing on Wednesday.

“But that’s not our decision,” he added. “That’s an Iraqi government decision.”

The reaction from the American military seemed to widen a rift that has been opening recently between the Shiite-led government of Mr. Maliki and its American supporters on a range of issues. They include the government’s tolerance of militias, the recent discovery of the unofficial presence of Iranian military officers in Baghdad and the swiftness with which the Iraqis put Mr. Hussein to death after his appeals had been exhausted.

Mr. Maliki’s office confirmed Wednesday that until Mr. Hussein’s final hours, the American Embassy had sought to delay the execution long enough to avoid having it on a Muslim holiday and to resolve some remaining legal issues.

“The Americans wanted to postpone it,” said Maryam al-Rayas, a legal adviser to the prime minister. The decision to go ahead, Ms. Rayas said, was “a victory for the Iraqi government.”

The prime minister had decided that beginning the new year with Mr. Hussein dead trumped all other considerations, including the advice of the embassy, said Ms. Rayas, who also characterized the time frame as reasonable.

“There was no rush,” she said.

The Iraqi government’s detention of one of the guards generated some skepticism, with some Iraqi officials suggesting that Iraq was seeking a low-level scapegoat to blame for the almost Gothic display of intimidation and death that the images depict.

Mr. Rikabi refused to name or otherwise characterize the guard who had been arrested other than to say that he was being held in Baghdad after an investigation had determined that he had shot the video with a cellphone camera.

But Munkith al-Faroun, who was the prosecutor at Mr. Hussein’s trial and was present at the execution, has said publicly that 2 of the 14 Iraqi officials and court representatives flown in by American helicopters to witness it were openly videotaping the event with cellphones.

When asked about Mr. Faroun’s statements, Mr. Rikabi said, “I do not have this information.”

On Wednesday, The New York Times erroneously quoted Mr. Faroun as saying that one of the officials he had seen holding up a cellphone during the execution was Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Mr. Maliki’s national security adviser. Mr. Rubaie, in a telephone interview from London, said that along with all the Iraqi officials who were flown to the execution block by American helicopter, he had been searched at the Green Zone helipad and that his cellphone and even his keys were taken from him.

“I did not have a cellphone in the execution chamber,” he said.

But, further undermining the assertion that only a single guard had videotaped the execution, Mr. Rubaie said he had seen “two or three” others in the official contingent who did have cellphones. He suggested that they might have been among officials who arrived at Camp Justice, the American camp in northern Baghdad where the hanging took place, by car.

The failure to call more senior officials to account raised suspicions among some Iraqis. “They want to blame it on a guard,” one senior Iraqi official said.

Mr. Rubaie told CNN that there could have been as many as two others in the guard contingent who were associated with that scheme.

In the wake of the video’s release, there were continuing condemnations of the way justice was meted out to Mr. Hussein after he lost his case in a court specially set up to judge crimes committed during his rule. On Wednesday, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Louise Arbour, renewed a previous call for restraint in carrying out the executions of two of Mr. Hussein’s co-defendants who were also sentenced to death.

The manner of Mr. Hussein’s execution appeared to give a boost to the remnants of his outlawed Baath Party. In the town of Huwaish, north of Baghdad, hundreds of people led by gunmen calling themselves the “mujahedeen of the Baath Party” marched in protest, and in the once prosperous Baghdad neighborhood of Monsour, a large black banner proclaimed that Mr. Hussein’s death would set off fighting against “the Americans and their followers.”

The banner was signed, in nicely printed lettering, “Baath Party.”

At the same time, one of Mr. Hussein’s most ruthless enforcers, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, who has eluded his American pursuers for nearly four years, was named the Baath Party leader on one of its Web sites. Although the claim could not be independently verified, Mr. Douri has long been considered a leader of the Baathist insurgency.

Asked repeatedly to describe how the American military would have carried out the execution differently, General Caldwell declined to elaborate, saying that the question was hypothetical, since the Iraqis were in control once they received custody of Mr. Hussein outside the execution block.

“It was not our decision as to what occurred at that point, but we would have done it differently,” General Caldwell said.

Still, Mr. Rikabi, the prime minister’s political adviser, said that the government rejected all criticism of the execution, including the point at which one of the guards shouted, “Moktada! Moktada! Moktada!” as Mr. Hussein stood on the trapdoor of the gallows — a reference to Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric who leads the militia called the Mahdi Army.

The exclamation came at the end of a standard Muslim prayer that both the guards and Mr. Hussein were saying aloud, Mr. Rikabi said. But the guards were from the Shiite south, where Mr. Sadr is popular, and the prayer there typically ends with the reference to him, Mr. Rikabi said.

“If you go to any mosque in Karbala or Najaf you will hear them shouting like that,” he said. “This is their habit.”

Seemingly contradicting his own government, Mr. Rubaie said he was ashamed of what had happened during the execution, which he described as “unacceptable” and “disgusting.”

“It is not professional, it’s the wrong thing to do, and it should not have happened,” he said. “But it shouldn’t divert the mind of the people from the crimes that Saddam has been condemned to death for.”

Reporting was contributed by Marc Santora, Sabrina Tavernise, Khalid W. Hassan, Khalid al-Ansary, and Ali Adeeb from Baghdad, and David Stout from Washington.

    Iraq Defends Hanging, but Holds Hussein Guard, NYT, 4.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/world/middleeast/04iraq.html

Guard accused of recording hanging

Updated 1/3/2007 10:07 PM ET
USA Today
By James Palmer, Special for USA TODAY

BAGHDAD — The person suspected of illicitly recording Saddam Hussein's execution was arrested Wednesday, an adviser to Iraq's prime minister said.

Mariam al-Rayes, a Shiite lawmaker with close ties to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's office, said a security guard had been arrested and accused of shooting video at the execution at dawn Saturday. The guard was not identified.

The clandestine footage, which was widely available around the world, showed an unruly scene in which the former Iraqi dictator was taunted and cursed in the moments before his death. The video sparked protests among Saddam's fellow Sunni Arabs and some international condemnation.

Britain's Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott described the manner of Saddam's hanging as "deplorable" and the leaking of the mobile phone recoding as "totally unacceptable."

Al-Rayes called the recording and subsequent replay by Iraqi TV stations "an act by those working against the Iraqi government." She said the government had appointed a three-man commission to determine who shouted taunts at Saddam as he stood on the gallows.

There were conflicting reports about how many people have been targeted in the government investigation into the execution.

"The investigation has already had an arrest warrant against one person and two to follow," Iraqi national security adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie told CNN. He said the guard force at the execution was infiltrated by an Arab television station or another outsider.

The United States distanced itself from the way in which Saddam, who was convicted for the killings of 148 Shiites in 1982, was executed.

"We had absolutely nothing to do with the facility where the execution took place," said Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, a U.S. military spokesman. "We did not dictate any requirements."

Caldwell said the United States would have handled the execution differently. "That was not our decision. That was the government of Iraq's decision. This is a sovereign nation, and they're going to learn from each thing they do," he said.

Caldwell said the military had no alternative but to release Saddam into the custody of the Iraqi government once his final appeal of the death sentence was denied. He said Saddam had been courteous to his American captors and thanked the guards and medical personnel who had cared for him.

The official video of the hanging, which never showed Saddam's actual death, was muted and gave the impression of a dignified execution.

The illicit video, apparently shot on a cellphone camera, showed Shiite officials mocking Saddam. The video inflamed sectarian passions in a country already on the brink of civil war.

Some of the last words Saddam heard, according to the video, were a chant of "Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada," a reference to Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical anti-American Shiite cleric whose Mahdi Army militia is believed responsible for killings that have targeted Sunnis and driven many from their homes.

In other Iraq news:

U.S. troops detained 23 people suspected of having ties to senior al-Qaeda leaders during raids in western Iraq, the military said. The raids took place in Ramadi, the capital of Iraq's volatile western Anbar province.

Four Americans and an Austrian abducted in November in southern Iraq spoke briefly and appeared uninjured in a video believed to have been recorded nearly two weeks ago and delivered Wednesday to the Associated Press.

Contributing: Rick Jervis and wire reports

    Guard accused of recording hanging, UT, 3.1.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-01-03-saddam-video_x.htm

Bush not seen Saddam execution video:

White House

Wed Jan 3, 2007 12:18 PM ET
Reuters



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush has not seen the illicit video of Saddam Hussein's execution because he is focused on the "way forward" in Iraq, the White House said on Wednesday.

Iraqi officials are facing criticism over a video of Saddam's hanging, apparently filmed on a mobile phone, that shows Shi'ite officials mocking the former Iraqi leader on the gallows.

It has angered Saddam's fellow Sunni Arabs and sparked international condemnation.

The White House said U.S. concerns about the way Saddam's execution was carried out were expressed to the Iraqi government through the U.S. Embassy and military officials in Baghdad.

Bush's focus was on the judicial process that was followed in Iraq and "the way forward," White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said.

"The president has said that he was pleased that the Iraqi people carried forward a judicial process, tried someone who has murdered hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens, and carried forward justice that was unimaginable during his reign. And that's where the president's focus was," he said.

Asked why Bush had not seen the video, Stanzel replied: "Because that's not his focus."

The controversy over the execution video erupted as Bush is preparing to unveil a new strategy on Iraq that could come as early as Tuesday.

"Certainly the president is narrowing the choices," Stanzel said. "But this is an entire package of options, whether it's on the military front, the economic front, the political front. He wants to announce that as a whole."

He said a date had not yet been set for Bush's announcement.

    Bush not seen Saddam execution video: White House, R, 3.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2007-01-03T171838Z_01_N03396878_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-BUSH-SADDAM.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-politicsNews-3

U.S. military sees Iraq control,

purchases in 2007

Wed Jan 3, 2007 12:02 PM ET
Reuters



BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. commanders in Iraq expect to have handed over full control of the country's security and armed forces to the Iraqi authorities by the end of this year, a U.S. general said on Wednesday.

Major General William Caldwell, a spokesman, also told a news conference that Iraq's military and police planned to buy hundreds of armoured vehicles, as well as helicopters, under a $150 million agreement signed last month with the United States.

Describing 2007 as the "Year of Transition", Caldwell said that by summer all 11 Iraqi army divisions to have been formed by that time would be directly under the command of the Iraqi government and by autumn all of Iraq's 18 provincial governors would be in charge of security in their regions.

"By the end of this year, the dynamics will be entirely different," he said.

The timetable he sketched out is longer than one Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki forecast after he took office eight months ago, when he said Iraqi control of the divisions and provinces could be complete by the spring or summer.

However, it is in line with remarks in recent months by General George Casey, the U.S. commander in Iraq, about when he believes Iraqi forces will be able to cope largely without U.S. help.

Caldwell said the United States would continue to provide logistical and intelligence support, as well as work to ensure the "loyalty" of some units of the Iraqi forces -- many in Saddam Hussein's once dominant Sunni Arab minority accuse some of being loyal not to the government but to sectarian Shi'ite militias.

"Iraq's security forces must not only continue to improve their capabilities but must also work to gain the confidence of all Iraqi people," Caldwell said.

He urged the Shi'ite-led government to make "hard compromises" for national reconciliation and to reach out to Sunnis after Saddam's televised hanging angered many Sunnis.

Caldwell said that Iraq planned to buy 300 armored personnel carriers, 600 heavily armored Humvee patrol vehicles and a number of UH-2 Huey helicopters as part of a $150 million foreign military sales agreement with Washington.

He declined comment on speculation that President George W. Bush may announce a temporary increase in the number of U.S. troops in Iraq as part of a new strategy to try to arrest a slide toward all-out sectarian civil war.

(Reporting by Alastair Macdonald, editing by Fredrik Dahl)

    U.S. military sees Iraq control, purchases in 2007, R, 3.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2007-01-03T170218Z_01_MAC354655_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L1-RelatedNews-6

U.S. on Saddam: "Would have done it differently"

Wed Jan 3, 2007 3:39 PM ET
Reuters
By Alastair Macdonald and Claudia Parsons

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. forces had no role in Saddam Hussein's hanging, but would have handled it differently, a U.S. general said on Wednesday as Iraqi authorities questioned a guard over a video of officials taunting Saddam on the gallows.

National Security Adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie said a committee investigating who had illicitly filmed and leaked a video of the hanging was questioning one of the guards at the prison facility where Saddam was hanged at dawn on Saturday.

There were conflicting reports of whether Saddam's two co- defendants, including his half-brother Barzan, would be hanged on Thursday at dawn. Rubaie said the date had not been set.

As the White House said President George W. Bush had not seen the video, Major General William Caldwell urged the Iraqi government to reach out to disillusioned Sunni Arabs, who have warned that the execution and film are blows to the Shi'ite-led government's efforts at national reconciliation.

Caldwell said U.S. forces, who had physical custody of Saddam for three years, left all security measures at Saddam's hanging, including access to the execution chamber, to Iraqis.

"Had we been physically in charge at that point we would have done things differently," Caldwell told a news conference.

"At this point the government of Iraq has the opportunity to take advantage of what has occurred and really reach out now in an attempt to bring more people back into the political process and bring the Sunnis back," he said, singling out a need to ease restrictions on former members of Saddam's Baath party.

"It's a real critical juncture."

In unusually direct advice from the U.S. military to Iraqi leaders, Caldwell said the country's government and parliament "will have to rise above past divisions".

"This will entail difficult decisions ... and hard compromises necessary for national reconciliation."

VIDEO STIRS ANGER

Caldwell said there had been a lull in violence over the Eid al-Adha holiday which started on Saturday, but U.S. forces were braced for a possible violent backlash still to come.

Thousands of Saddam's fellow Sunni Arabs have marched to vent anger at the execution in Sunni Arab strongholds. More mourners came to visit his grave in his home village of Awja on Wednesday, and other towns also saw further demonstrations.

In Falluja, in western Iraq, posters were plastered on walls promising revenge for the "martyr" Saddam.

The unofficial video of the hanging, apparently filmed on a mobile phone, showed Shi'ite officials mocking Saddam just before he was hanged, inflaming sectarian passions in a country already on the brink of sectarian civil war.

Rubaie blamed the video on people trying to raise tension.

"Whoever leaked this video meant to harm national reconciliation and drive a wedge between Shi'ites and Sunnis," said Rubaie, one of some 20 official witnesses at the hanging.

Sadiq al-Rikabi, an adviser to the prime minister, told Iraqiya state television that a number of guards at the facility had been taken in for questioning and investigators had identified a person suspected of filming the hanging.

Prosecutor Munkith al-Faroon, heard appealing for order on the video, told Reuters on Tuesday that two senior officials had filmed the hanging, challenging government claims guards did it.

TIMING

The timing of the execution, just four days after an appeal failed and on the first day of Eid, shocked many, both in Iraq and in the rest of the Muslim world.

A senior U.S. official told the New York Times Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was concerned that if Saddam was not hanged quickly he would somehow escape the noose.

"His concern was security, and that ... maybe there would be a mass kidnapping to bargain for Saddam Hussein's release," he said. "He was concerned that he might somehow get free."

Rubaie confirmed that Iraqi officials had been concerned Saddam might escape justice: "The question is not 'Why the rush in the execution?' The question is 'Why the delay?'

"Some people were talking about the Americans, saying they might take him to one of these islands controlled by the United States and exile him there."

Rubaie, Faroon and Sami al-Askari, a senior aide to Maliki, all said the date had not been set for the hanging of Barzan al -Tikriti, Saddam's half brother and former intelligence chief, and Awad al-Bander, a former chief judge, despite other officials telling media they would hang on Thursday at dawn.

Before Saddam's hanging, there were similarly conflicting reports about when it would happen and the government took the final decision only a few hours before the dawn execution.

(Additional reporting by Aseel Kami, Ibon Villelabeitia and Alastair Macdonald)

    U.S. on Saddam: "Would have done it differently", R, 3.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2007-01-03T203711Z_01_L308031_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ.xml&src=010307_1618_TOPSTORY_u.s._responds_to_saddam_hanging

U.N. rights chief asks Iraq to stop executions

Wed Jan 3, 2007 1:40 PM ET
Reuters



GENEVA (Reuters) - United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour on Wednesday appealed to Iraq not to execute two ex-officials from the administration of former president Saddam Hussein.

An earlier appeal from Arbour not to carry out a death sentence on Saddam himself, executed last Saturday, was brushed aside by the authorities in Baghdad.

Arbour said she had sent her latest appeal -- referring to Saddam's half-brother and former intelligence chief Barzan al-Tikriti and a former chief judge, Awad al-Bander -- directly to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

"International law, as it currently stands, only allows the imposition of the death penalty as an exceptional measure within rigorous legal constraints," said the former Canadian High Court justice.

She said concerns that she expressed about the fairness and impartiality of Saddam's trial applied equally to the other two men, whose appeals against sentence -- like that of Saddam -- have been rejected.

"I have therefore today directly appealed to the President of the Republic of Iraq to refrain from carrying out these sentences," Arbour declared.

Under Iraq's international obligations, she said, the Baghdad government was bound to give the two men the opportunity to seek commutation of the sentence or pardon.

    U.N. rights chief asks Iraq to stop executions, R, 3.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyid=2007-01-03T183935Z_01_L03223714_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L1-RelatedNews-5

FACTBOX-Security developments in Iraq, Jan 3

Wed Jan 3, 2007 1:37 PM ET
Reuters



(Reuters) - Following are security developments in Iraq as of 1700 GMT on Wednesday:

* denotes a new or updated item.

* BAGHDAD - Police found 27 bodies in Baghdad over the past 24 hours, many bearing signs of torture and gunshot wounds, an interior ministry source said.

* BAGHDAD - Five mortars hit the Shi'ite neighborhood of Shula in northwest Baghdad, wounding nine people, an interior ministry source said.

* RAMADI - A woman and five children were wounded by an insurgent mortar attack in Ramadi on Tuesday, the U.S. military said on Wednesday.

YATHRIB - Gunmen stormed a house and killed six members of a Shi'ite family on Tuesday in the mainly Sunni town of Yathrib, near Balad, 80 km (50 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

HILLA - Gunmen killed two former Baath party officials near the town of Hilla, 100 km south of Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - The Central Criminal Court of Iraq convicted 48 security detainees between December 8 to 28, for various crimes including murder, kidnapping and illegal possession of weapons, the U.S. military said. The court sentenced a Syrian, a Saudi and a Sudanese man to death in connection with "terrorist acts".

BAGHDAD - A car bomb near an intersection wounded one person in Mansour district in west-central Baghdad, police said.

KIRKUK - The corpse of a man was found shot dead and tortured in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, 250 km north of Baghdad, police said.

RAMADI - U.S. forces conducted a string of raids in Ramadi, the capital of Iraq's restive western province of Anbar, and detained 23 suspects with ties to senior Al Qaeda leaders, the U.S. military said.

BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb killed a U.S. soldier when it exploded near his patrol south of Baghdad on Sunday, the U.S. military said on Wednesday.

    FACTBOX-Security developments in Iraq, Jan 3, NYT, 3.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyid=2007-01-03T183723Z_01_L03128274_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L1-RelatedNews-7

Hussein Guard Is Arrested,

Officials Say

January 3, 2007
The New York Times
By JOHN F. BURNS and JAMES GLANZ

BAGHDAD, Jan. 3 — Aides to Iraq’s prime minister said today that one of the guards at the hanging of Saddam Hussein had been detained in connection with the unofficial cellphone video that showed Mr. Hussein being taunted just before his death — scenes that sparked outrage among Sunni loyalists when the video was posted on the Internet.

The aides to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki also sought to downplay the disorder depicted in the video, which showed Mr. Hussein being subjected to a battery of taunts by official Shiite witnesses and guards. The aides said the execution was more dignified than the illicit video makes it appear, and argued that in any case the focus should be on the crimes Mr. Hussein had committed.

Their assertions that a guard may have been responsible for the Internet video ran counter to the statements of witnesses to the hanging, who said that two people were using cellphone cameras to record the event, and that both were officials, not guards.

The American military, in its first public comments on the hanging, sought today to distance itself from the Maliki government’s handling of the execution.

“Had we been physically in charge at that point, we would have done things differently,” said Maj. Gen. William Caldwell IV, the senior spokesman for the military command in Baghdad.

General Caldwell said that the United States troops guarding Mr. Hussein had no choice but to turn him over to Iraqi officials, since Iraq had “legal custody” of the former dictator.

“We’ve only had physical custody of him, and so, all we did is return physical custody of him back to the Iraqis, who’ve always had the legal custody of him,” General Caldwell said. “It’s their system, they make those decisions.”

He also described a very different scene at Mr. Hussein’s departure from the American-run prison where he had been held. General Caldwell said that Mr. Hussein had been “dignified, as always,” and had thanked his American military guards for the way he had been treated.

The White House sought today to distance President Bush from the growing uproar over the execution. “The president is focused on the new way forward in Iraq, so these issues are best addressed out of Iraq, out of Baghdad,” said Scott Stanzel, the deputy White House press secretary. Prime Minister Maliki has made no public comment about the hanging. On Tuesday, top aides to him announced an investigation into the events, saying that a three-man Interior Ministry committee would look into the conduct of the execution.

Also on Tuesday, as the reaction to the unofficial video reached new heights in Iraq, American officials said that they had worked until the last hours of Mr. Hussein’s life to persuade Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to delay the execution.

The American officials, who spoke on condition that they not be identified, said they appealed to Mr. Maliki not to execute Mr. Hussein at dawn on Saturday because of the onset of a major Islamic festival, and because of constitutional and legal questions that the Americans believed threw the legitimacy of the execution into doubt.

But when Mr. Maliki decided to go ahead with the hanging, the Americans said they made no further attempts to stop it, having concluded that they could advise the Iraqis against proceeding but could not prevent them for doing so, out of respect for Iraqi sovereignty.

When asked if that decision had been made in the White House, the Americans refused to say, noting only that it came some time before the final exchanges on Friday night. Mr. Hussein was hanged at 6:10 a.m. Baghdad time on Saturday, about seven hours after what the American officials said was their final attempt to postpone the hanging.

“We told the prime minister that going forward on the first day of Id would have a negative reaction in the Islamic world, and among the Iraqi people,” a senior American official said, recounting a telephone conversation with Mr. Maliki that began at 10:30 p.m. Baghdad time on Friday. The reference was to the Id al-Adha holiday, which began for Sunnis on Saturday, marking the end of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. “Therefore,” the official said, “we said we thought it would be better if they delayed until after Id, and use the delay to resolve the legal issues.”The senior American official earlier said that Mr. Maliki had never fully explained his urgency in carrying out the death sentence, which was upheld last Tuesday in an appeals court ruling that set off a 30-day countdown for executions to be carried out after a final appeal has been turned down. But the prime minister gave one explanation that appeared to weigh heavily on his mind, the American said, and that was his fear that Mr. Hussein might be the subject of an insurgent attempt to free him if the procedural wrangling over the execution were protracted.

“His concern was security, and that there was a danger that if it continued, maybe there would be a mass kidnapping to bargain for Saddam Hussein’s release,” the official said. “He was concerned that he might somehow get free.”

The American decision to confirm that they had opposed the quick execution came after days of silence from the American Embassy and the United States military command in Baghdad, which appeared to have been shocked, like so many others, by the unofficial video recording that showed the bedlam at the gallows.

Mr. Stanzel, the White House spokesman, declined today to discuss what role, if any, the White House had had in the discussions leading up to the execution, saying only that the White House had been kept abreast of developments.

Mr. Stanzel said the president had not seen the video of the dictator on the gallows. Mr. Bush declined to respond when he was asked, after a Cabinet meeting this morning, if he thought the execution had been “handled appropriately.”

With some Iraqi politicians raising fresh demands for Mr. Maliki’s dismissal, the Americans, in offering to have a senior official discuss the matter in a telephone interview with The New York Times, appeared eager to protect the Bush administration from a fresh surge of criticism for its handling of events in Iraq.

The official who spoke in the telephone interview said that among the Americans in Iraq who had tried to stop Mr. Maliki from rushing Mr. Hussein to the gallows, the reaction to the scenes of abuse had been one of dismay.

“Well, yes, when I think of the behavior of the people who were there, I’m disappointed and distressed, that’s true,” the official who spoke in the telephone interview said. He said he had been one of the Americans who intervened with Mr. Maliki on Friday night and earlier last week to try to delay the hanging.

Mr. Maliki seemed equally eager to ward off the opprobrium stirred by the execution. His aides announced that the events at the hanging would be the subject of an inquiry. A prosecutor who attended the execution, Munkith al-Faroun, said he thought one of the invited witnesses had recorded the session on a cellphone, but he could not recall his name.

On Tuesday, a reporter for The New York Times spoke by telephone with Mr. Faroun and understood him to say that the prime minister’s national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, was one of two men at the execution seen holding a cellphone camera aloft. An earlier version of this article and the version that appeared in The Times’s print edition today included that assertion. But Mr. Rubaie denied that to The Times today, and Mr. Faroun also said today that he was misquoted.

The government inquiry was ordered as a groundswell of protest grew at Sunni population centers across Iraq. The protests, sporadic in the first 72 hours after the hanging, appeared to be building in intensity as Iraqi and American troops relaxed security cordons that had been thrown around centers of diehard support for Mr. Hussein, including his hometown, Tikrit, 100 miles north of Baghdad, and Awja, the village where he was born, a few miles away. The protesters carried portraits of Mr. Hussein, chanted his name, and fired weapons in the air.

Thousands of mourners flocked to Awja, where Mr. Hussein’s body has lain in a reception hall. The body, in a plain wood coffin draped in an Iraqi flag, has become a point of pilgrimage for loyalists. Many of those reaching Awja have wept as they filed past the coffin, shouting slogans of fealty of the kind that were universal in Iraq when Mr. Hussein was the country’s dictator.

“Maliki, you coward, you are an American agent,” cried one demonstrator in Tikrit, referring to the prime minister. “Iran, out, out!” another man shouted, echoing anger among Sunnis at the rise to power in Baghdad of Shiite religious groups backed by Iran, including Mr. Maliki’s Dawa Party.

After Mr. Maliki made it clear to the Americans in Baghdad that his decision was final, the official who discussed the events on Friday night said, American commanders were told to deliver Mr. Hussein to an execution bloc in the Kadhimiya district of northern Baghdad that Mr. Hussein’s military intelligence agency used to execute countless opponents of his government. At 4 a.m., Mr. Hussein was flown by an American military helicopter from an American detention center and handed over to the Iraqis. He was hanged with only Iraqis present, in a group of about 25, including executioners and guards, according to accounts by American and Iraqi officials.

A postponement of the execution until after the holiday would have delayed it at least until Thursday of this week. But the American officials said they had made no stipulation as to how long the delay should be, since their concern, beyond respecting the sanctity of the Id al-Adha holiday, had been that Mr. Maliki should await a formal judicial ruling resolving the legal issues before going ahead with the hanging.

The Americans said Mr. Maliki had agreed, as the Americans had urged, to ask the chief judge of Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council, Midhat al-Mahmoud, to issue a formal written judgment saying that the uncompleted legal procedures that concerned the Americans were not necessary to the lawfulness of the hanging. But Judge Mahmoud refused, the Americans said, and around midnight on Friday the Iraqi leader decided to go ahead with the execution, signing a decree ordering that Mr. Hussein be “hanged by the neck until dead.”

The legal issues the Americans said they urged Mr. Maliki to resolve before the hanging centered on a constitutional provision requiring Iraq’s three-man presidency council to affirm all executions before they are carried out. That posed a potential obstacle to the hanging because Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, is opposed to the death penalty. One of the other members of the council, Tariq al-Hashemi, is a Sunni from a moderate party that has disavowed Mr. Hussein, but has been careful not to endorse his trial and execution.

Mr. Maliki, in pushing ahead with the hanging, relied on a provision in the statute that established the Iraqi High Tribunal, which convicted Mr. Hussein, which said that the tribunal’s verdicts, once upheld by its own appeal bench, were final and not subject to presidential review. It was that conflict the Americans said they wanted resolved by a written ruling from Judge Mahmoud. “Mr. Maliki said that Judge Mahmoud had given that opinion orally, but we said it would be better for everybody if he said it in writing,” the American official who discussed the standoff said.

Sami al-Askari, a political adviser to Mr. Maliki who attended the hanging, said in a telephone interview that the committee would question everyone present at the execution. He said those who used their cellphones to record the event would be one focus of the inquiry. He said his own observation was that the worst sectarian taunts had come from a guard he described as a poorly educated Shiite man with a thick Arabic accent. “It was horrible, it was terrible, it was a mistake,” he said. “We were supposed to sit there quietly, just looking at what’s going on.”

The first images of the execution that were released were in the form of an official video recording without sound. The unofficial cellphone images showed Mr. Hussein, with the noose around his neck, facing shouts of “Go to hell!” and taunts of “Moktada! Moktada! Moktada!” in reference to an unruly Shiite cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, who has become a populist hero among Shiites.

Speaking of those protesting the abuse of Mr. Hussein, Mr. Faroun, the prosecutor, asked, “Where were these critics when Saddam’s people were executing whole prisons full of innocent people?” He said he had been deeply offended by the taunting of Mr. Hussein, and had tried to stop it. “You heard my voice on the cellphone recording,” he said. “I was the one shouting, ‘Please, no. The man is about to be executed.’ ”

Reporting was contributed by Ali Adeeb, Qais Mizher, Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi, Marc Santora and Sabrina Tavernise in Baghdad, an Iraqi employee of The New York Times in Awja, and David Stout in Washington.

    Hussein Guard Is Arrested, Officials Say, NYT, 3.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/world/middleeast/03cnd-iraq.html

Saddam bid "courteous" adieu

to U.S. captors

Wed Jan 3, 2007 10:26 AM ET
Reuters



BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein thanked his American jailers as they sent him to his death on Saturday but he lost some of his composure when they handed him over to the Iraqis who would hang him, a U.S. general said on Wednesday.

"Saddam ... was dignified, as always, he was courteous as he always had been to his U.S. military police guards," Major General William Caldwell told a news conference in Baghdad.

"He thanked them for the way he had been treated and said goodbye to them," Caldwell said.

He said it was clear Saddam knew he was about to die when, an hour before the dawn execution, the former president of Iraq was bundled aboard a U.S. military helicopter for the 10-minute flight to an Iraqi-run prison in northern Baghdad.

"His characterization did change at this prison facility where Iraqi guards were assuming control of him," Caldwell said.

At that point, the U.S. troops who had guarded Saddam for three years left him to his fate at the hands of his enemies, whose failure to prevent observers from taunting Saddam on the gallows and filming the proceedings have fueled sectarian tensions and clearly discomfited Washington.

U.S. forces "would have done things differently," Caldwell said.

A senior court official who took part in the execution, prosecutor Munkith al-Faroon, said Saddam appeared "frightened" when first brought by Iraqi guards to a room next to the execution chamber. But he recovered his poise as details of his conviction for crimes against humanity were read out.

Speaking on Al Jazeera, Faroon gave no explanation for the change. It may be that Saddam was reassured by the judicial formalities being followed that he was indeed to be executed according to legal norms and not about to face other violence.

U.S. troops kept physical custody of Saddam after capturing him three years ago, partly out of concern for his treatment at the hands of Iraqi officials who had suffered during his three decades in power.

"He spoke well to our military police as he always had ... He said farewell to his interpreter," Caldwell said, describing the "cordial manner" of a man once aided by the United States but later vilified as a tyrant and part of an "axis of evil".

A U.S. military medic who cared for Saddam in prison said this week he was prepared for his end and never complained as he passed his final days writing, tending plants and feeding birds.

    Saddam bid "courteous" adieu to U.S. captors, R, 3.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2007-01-03T152503Z_01_L03187486_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L1-RelatedNews-3

UPDATE 2-Iraq says Saddam video

meant to stir trouble

Wed Jan 3, 2007 8:28am ET
Reuters
By Ibon Villelabeitia

BAGHDAD, Jan 3 (Reuters) - Facing outrage over a video showing Shi'ite witnesses mocking Saddam Hussein on the gallows, Iraqi officials said on Wednesday the execution chamber had been infiltrated by outsiders bent on inflaming sectarian tensions.

An aide to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Sadiq al-Rikabi, said a number of guards had been taken in for questioning and that one person had been identified as a suspect in filming the illicit video, which has caused demonstrations among Saddam's fellow Sunni Arabs and sparked international condemnation.

The images, showing a composed Saddam subjected to sectarian taunts as a noose is slipped on his neck, have discomfited the United States, which kept physical custody of the ousted leader for three years, partly out of concern for his treatment at the hands of his Iraqi enemies who put him on trial.

"Whoever leaked this video meant to harm national reconciliation and drive a wedge between Shi'ites and Sunnis," said National Security Adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, one of a group of 20 officials and other witnesses who were present at the execution at dawn on Saturday.

"There was an infiltration at the execution chamber."

Echoing those accusations, a senior Interior Ministry official said the hanging was supposed to be carried out by hangmen employed by the Interior Ministry but that "militias" had managed to infiltrate the executioners' team.

"The execution was carried out by militias and outsiders. They put aside the team from the Interior Ministry that was supposed to carry it out," the official said.

An official execution video, which had no sound and ended before Saddam falls through the trapdoor, boosted Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's authority among his fractious Shi'ite allies.

But the mobile phone images have hardened perceptions among Saddam's disillusioned fellow Sunnis about triumphant Shi'ites and dealt a blow to Maliki's efforts for reconciliation.


U.S. SAYS IT HAD NO ROLE

The U.S. military, which had kept physical custody of Saddam for three years until he was handed to Iraqis minutes before the execution, said on Wednesday it had no role in the hanging but that it would have handled it differently.

"Had we been physically in charge at that point we would have done things differently," U.S. military spokesman Major General William Caldwell told a news conference in Baghdad.

Caldwell said U.S. forces left all security measures at Saddam's execution, including searching witnesses for mobile phones, to Iraqi authorities. He said U.S. troops immediately left the building where Saddam was executed after handing him over at 5:30 a.m., 25 minutes after he left his U.S. prison on a 10-minute helicopter ride to the execution site.

"We had absolutely nothing to do with the facility where the execution took place," Caldwell said.

Rubaie said he handed over his mobile phone before boarding a U.S. helicopter that transported an official delegation of a little more than a dozen people from the Green Zone government compound to the execution.

Prosecutor Munkith al-Faroon, who also attended the execution and told Reuters he saw two senior government officials film the hanging with their mobiles, said on Wednesday the taunts came from guards who were outside the chamber.

"These shouts were spontaneous. The guards who called out were outside the chamber," he told Al Jazeera.

In the video, however, Saddam is seen reacting to people standing below him.

    UPDATE 2-Iraq says Saddam video meant to stir trouble, R, 3.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlebusiness.aspx?type=tnBusinessNews&storyID=nIBO357385&from=business

Iraqi official says

no date set for Barzan hanging

Wed Jan 3, 2007 6:02 AM ET
Reuters



BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi authorities have not yet set a date to hang Saddam Hussein's half-brother and a former judge convicted with him for crimes against humanity, a senior adviser to the prime minister said on Wednesday.

Arabic news channels reported that Barzan al-Tikriti, Saddam's half-brother and former intelligence chief, and Awad al-Bander, a former chief judge, could be hanged as early as Thursday morning, but Sami Al-Askari, a senior aide to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, said no date had been set.

"This is not accurate information. Most probably they will be executed next week after the holiday," Askari told Reuters.

The two were found guilty along with Saddam in the killings of 148 Shi'ite men from Dujail in the 1980s.

Saddam was hanged on Saturday, the first day of the Eid al- Adha holiday, just four days after the failure of their appeal.

Wednesday is the last day of the religious holiday for Shi'ites in Iraq, but the government has declared a public holiday lasting until Saturday.

Before Saddam's hanging, there were conflicting reports about when it would happen and the government took the final decision only a few hours before the execution.

    Iraqi official says no date set for Barzan hanging, R, 3.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2007-01-03T110159Z_01_PAR336852_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L1-RelatedNews-4

Iraq: 12, 000 Civilians Killed in '06

January 3, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:08 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- The number of civilians killed in the violence in Iraq rose sharply over the last three months, accounting for 5,000, or about 40 percent, of the more than 12,000 who died in 2006, the Iraqi government says.

In the third full year since the U.S.-led invasion, only about half as many Iraqi soldiers died in 2006 as American troops, the government reported Tuesday.

But the number of Iraqi security forces killed jumped to 1,539 -- nearly double the American death count of 823 for the year -- when the deaths of police, who conduct paramilitary operations, are added to the number of slain Iraqi soldiers.

The civilian toll of 12,357 coupled with the security force deaths bring the overall figure reported by the ministries of Health, Defense and Interior to 13,896 -- 162 more than the tally kept by The Associated Press.

The AP count, assembled from its daily news reports, was always believed to be substantially lower than the actual number of deaths because the news cooperative does not have daily access to official accounting by the Iraqi ministries. Many deaths were thought to have gone unreported by AP.

Counts kept by other groups, including the United Nations, list far higher death tolls, which are disputed by the Iraqi government.

While the U.S. government and military provide no death totals for Iraqis, the U.N. Assistance Ministry for Iraq, UNAMI, does keep a count based on reports it gathers from the Baghdad morgue, Ministry of Health, and Medico-Legal Institute.

The figures for November and December are not yet available from the U.N. But as of the end of October, the organization had reported 26,782 deaths in the first 10 months of 2006, nearly double what the Iraqi government and the AP reported for the entire year.

In its last report, the U.N. said 3,709 Iraqi civilians were killed in October alone and that citizens were fleeing the country at a pace of 100,000 each month. The organization estimated at least 1.6 million Iraqis had left since the war began in March 2003.

At the time of the last U.N. report, Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh called it ''inaccurate and exaggerated'' because it was not based on official government reports.

The U.N. report said Iraq's heavily armed Shiite militias were gaining strength and influence and that torture was rampant, despite the Iraqi government's vow to reduce 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 last UNAMI 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 Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is heavily dependent. Al-Maliki has repeatedly rejected U.S. demands that he disband the heavily armed groups, especially the Mahdi Army of radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

''I think the type of violence is different in the past few months,'' Gianni Magazzeni, the UNAMI chief in Baghdad, said when the last report was issued in late November. ''There was a great increase in sectarian violence in activities by terrorists and insurgents, but also by militias and criminal gangs.''

He noted that religious clashes have been common 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 have either been infiltrated by 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 and drive-by shootings. Others have been caught in the crossfire between rival gangs.

In its September 2006 issue, The Lancet, an independent and authoritative journal, published a study on mortality rates in Iraq.

The study estimated that 654,965 excess Iraqi deaths, including 601,027 from violence, had occurred in Iraq since the invasion of the country in March 2003.

The ''confidence range'' for the number of excess Iraqi deaths because of violence has been estimated at between 426,369 and 793,663, with 601,027 as the median number.

The U.S. government and Iraq as well as others, including the Iraq Body Count, an organization that has conducted other types of surveys, denied the validity of the study's findings.

The Iraqi Minister of Health, in a statement made in Vienna in early November, indicated that as many as 150,000 Iraqi civilians might have been violently killed since 2003. But there are no known statistics for the early months of the U.S.-led invasion.

    Iraq: 12, 000 Civilians Killed in '06, NYT, 3.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq-Casualties.html

3,000 Americans: Let Us Remember (6 Letters)

January 3, 2007
The New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “3,000 Deaths in Iraq, Countless Tears at Home” (front page, Jan. 1):

The new year offers little hope that our brave soldiers and marines will face anything but more death, maiming and grief for their loving families.

I’m saddened, baffled and very angry as to why the American people are not demonstrating their frustration and outrage with President Bush’s continued failed policies and incompetence.

Demonstrating — now there’s something we haven’t seen in a long while. Involved citizens across the land marching in peaceful protest demanding that this administration put an end to this folly, and not waiting for another grand plan to “achieve victory in Iraq.”

Blogging is great, and calling one’s representative (which I do) is important, but I implore those with national networking and organizational skills to rally us in towns and cities so that our voices will finally be heard.

John Cappadona
Bridgewater, N.J., Jan. 1, 2007

•

To the Editor:

The announcement that our 3,000th service member had made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq came while Americans were popping Champagne corks and reveling in Times Square and elsewhere throughout our country. How surreal!

The grim milestone occurred almost 20 days after our president announced that he was “not going to be rushed” into a new strategy for Iraq and some 70 American fatalities later. How tragic!

At this rate and with this administration’s mind-set, Americans will be mourning another 1,000 deaths, and parents, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters will be shedding countless more tears in another 12 months.

How pathetic and, yes, how preventable!

Dorian de Wind
Austin, Tex., Jan. 1, 2007

•

To the Editor:

Thank you for publishing “The Roster of the Dead” (Jan. 1) — pictures of the third thousand United States service members killed in Iraq — putting names and faces on what are otherwise nonembodied statistics.

These are statistics that the Bush administration chooses to play down, much less honor by not even allowing photographs of their coffins as they arrive in the United States.

We need to be reminded more often — monthly? weekly? — of the sacrifice that these, America’s most sacred and valuable treasure, are making in a war that lacks foreseeable end and valid purpose, if it ever really had one.

Pierre E. Biscaye
Westwood, N.J., Jan. 1, 2007

•

To the Editor:

How many more milestones must be reached for this president and his administration to realize the human suffering he has caused in pursuit of an unattainable goal?

The faces of the dead soldiers are a horrible reminder not only of the pain and destruction of their families and friends, but also of those many others who have been maimed and emotionally destroyed on both the American and Iraqi sides.

And still there is no end in sight while the rich in this country get richer and the power brokers ignore the inequality of the cost of this war.

The chain reaction of events throughout this whole fiasco will only continue to cause further deaths and injuries while President Bush and his cabinet continue to take their vacations and their sweet time in bringing this to an end.

Muriel Eagle
West Paterson, N.J., Jan. 1, 2007

•

To the Editor:

Re “From Father to Son, Last Words to Live By” (An Appreciation, front page, Jan. 1):

Thank you, Dana Canedy, for sharing the powerful story of your fiancé’s journal to your son.

What wisdom and strength and character we see in First Sgt. Charles Monroe King’s words, and the deeds that you and he describe.

I pray that Ms. Canedy finds the strength and peace to live on without him, and to share with her son to the greatest extent that she can the fine and admirable man that her husband-to-be was.

To Ms. Canedy and the King family, I also offer my heartfelt gratitude for his service, to our nation and his fellow soldiers.

Karen Courtright
Evanston, Ill., Jan. 1, 2007

•

To the Editor:

In my 35 years as a Times reader, I don’t recall being as moved as I was by Dana Canedy’s “Appreciation.” Thanks to Ms. Canedy for so vividly bringing the war “home” and for sharing her loss.

Peter Zahn
San Diego, Jan. 1, 2007

    3,000 Americans: Let Us Remember (6 Letters), NYT, 3.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/opinion/l03iraq.html

An American University for Iraq

but Not in Baghdad

January 3, 2007
The New York Times
By EDWARD WONG

SULAIMANIYA, Iraq — It would be an ambitious project even in a Middle Eastern country not embroiled in war: build an American-style university where classes are taught in English, teachers come from around the world and graduates compete for lucrative jobs in fields like business and computer science.

Yet some of the leading lights of Iraq’s political and intellectual classes are doing exactly that, even as the bloodshed widens.

Their planned American University of Iraq is modeled after the famous private universities in Cairo and Beirut. The project’s managers have a board of trustees; a business plan recently completed by McKinsey & Company, an international consulting firm; three candidates for university president; and $25 million, much of it in pledges from the American government and Kurdish sources. To fulfill their dream, they need much more: $200 million to $250 million over 15 years, said Azzam Alwash, the board’s executive secretary.

But if it does become a reality, the university will not be built in Baghdad, which for centuries was a beacon of learning in the Arab world.

Instead, it is slated for what is the most non-Iraqi part of Iraq. The site is on a windswept hilltop along the outskirts of Sulaimaniya, the eastern capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, 150 miles north of Baghdad and far from the car bombs and death squads that are tearing apart the Arab regions of Iraq. Because of its relative safety so far, Kurdistan can more easily attract aid and reconstruction money.

With doctors, engineers, businesspeople, academics and students among the hundreds of thousands fleeing to neighboring countries or the West, the university raises hopes of stanching the country’s enormous brain drain and pushing Iraq forward. “You really need to develop the political elite of the future, the educated elite of the future,” said Barham Salih, the project’s Kurdish founder, a deputy prime minister who received a doctorate in statistics and computer modeling from Liverpool University in Britain, and whose daughter attends Princeton. “The focus is also to stimulate reform in the Iraqi education system.”

However, some Arab education officials in Baghdad, the capital, have argued that the university should be built there, not in a part of Iraq where secessionist ambitions are well known.

Baghdad first achieved fame for its schools and scholars during the Abbasid caliphate, which reached its height in the eighth century. Even in the 20th century, before the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s and international economic sanctions of the 1990s, students from the region flocked to Baghdad.

But because of security threats, many universities in Baghdad have been closed since October. Up to 150 employees from the Ministry of Higher Education were abducted by men in commando uniforms in mid-November. Jihadist groups have threatened to kill students on campuses.

So intellectuals like Kanan Makiya, the prominent former exile and writer who strongly advocated for the American invasion, say they plan to move their research projects to the American University. Mr. Makiya founded the Iraq Memory Foundation, an organization based in the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad that is documenting Saddam Hussein’s atrocities.

“The problem is nobody can thrive in Baghdad anymore,” said Mr. Makiya, who teaches Middle Eastern studies at Brandeis University and sits on the new university’s board of trustees. “The north is much more stable, growing, prosperous.”

“There is a sadness that we’re being driven out of Baghdad,” he added.

The university’s planners plan to make Mr. Makiya’s documentary project the core of the humanities department. Mr. Alwash, an environmental scientist, has said he will use the university as a base for his research project, which is about rejuvenating the southern marshlands.

Other prominent intellectual and political figures, many of whom supported the American invasion, are on the board. They include Fouad Ajami, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at Johns Hopkins, and John Agresto, an education adviser in the Coalition Provisional Authority who, as he ended his tenure there in 2004, told a reporter he was “a neoconservative who’s been mugged by reality.”

The planners have sketched a rough schedule. Construction would start in the spring, and the first 15 to 30 students could begin a six-month intensive English course, to be taught in rented space here in Sulaimaniya, before they start a two-year master’s program in business administration. The first class to earn bachelor’s degrees would start in fall 2008; the program would take five years, with the first devoted to the study of English, Mr. Alwash said.

Although the university has regional aspirations like its counterparts in Cairo and Beirut, the first undergraduate class would be mostly Iraqis, Mr. Alwash said, and a majority probably Kurds.

In the university’s first five years, degree programs would focus on subjects that the board judges to be crucial to Iraq’s development: business, petroleum engineering and computer science, for example. “This has to have immediate practical consequences for the economy of Iraq and the politics of Iraq,” Mr. Salih, the founder, said.

After five years, the university may add humanities degree programs.

“We want them to study the ideas of Locke, the ideas and writings of Paine and Madison,” Mr. Alwash, the executive secretary, said. “We want them to understand what democracy is — not only majority rule, but also the rights of minorities. They should be well rounded.”

Projected undergraduate enrollment is 1,000 students by 2011 and 5,000 by 2021. The numbers are small compared with enrollment at Baghdad University, the country’s flagship public university, which has 70,000 students. Sulaimaniya University here has about 12,000 students.

In total, about 475,000 Iraqis are pursuing college-level degrees across the country, in 21 public universities or colleges, 18 private ones and about 40 technical institutes, according to the American Embassy.

Tuition at American University would be $8,500 to $10,000 a year, Mr. Alwash said. That places the university beyond the reach of the average middle-class Iraqi family. But Mr. Salih said the school planned to give loans and scholarships.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador and an alumnus of the university in Beirut, has promised that American agencies will give the school $10.5 million, possibly the largest donation by the United States to any single education project in Iraq, if American officials approve the business plan. Mr. Khalilzad, a native Afghan, helped found the American University of Kabul after the American military ousted the Taliban from Afghanistan in 2001.

Some Kurds fear that the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the governing party of eastern Kurdistan led by Mr. Talabani and Mr. Salih, could end up diverting money from the university for its own purposes. Among many Kurds, the main Kurdish parties have a reputation for corruption and authoritarian rule.

“I hope this will not just be party propaganda, because we need a real academic center for this society,” said Asos Hardi, the editor in chief of a weekly newspaper here. “Having a Western-style university in Iraq would help strengthen education here and across the country.”

    An American University for Iraq but Not in Baghdad, NYT, 3.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/world/middleeast/03university.html


 

Iraqis at the grave of Saddam Hussein in Awja,

the ex-leader’s hometown, Tuesday.

Thousands of mourners have flocked there to view his coffin.

Bassim Daham/Associated Press

Iraq to Review Abusive Acts at Hussein’s Execution        NYT        3.1.2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/world/middleeast/03iraq.html

Iraq to Review Abusive Acts

at Hussein’s Execution

January 3, 2007
The New York Times
By JOHN F. BURNS and JAMES GLANZ

BAGHDAD, Jan. 2 — Iraq’s Shiite-led government said Tuesday that it had ordered an investigation into the abusive behavior at the execution of Saddam Hussein, who was subjected to a battery of taunts by official Shiite witnesses and guards as he awaited his hanging.

Officials said a three-man Interior Ministry committee would look into the scenes that have caused outrage and public demonstrations among Mr. Hussein’s Sunni Arab loyalists in Iraq, and widespread dismay elsewhere, especially in the Middle East. In an unofficial cellphone video recording that was broadcast around the world and posted on countless Web sites, Mr. Hussein is shown standing on the gallows platform with the noose around his neck at dawn on Saturday, facing a barrage of mockery and derision from unseen tormentors below the gallows.

As the shock of those scenes reached a new crescendo in Iraq, American officials said that they had worked until the last hours of Mr. Hussein’s life to persuade Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to delay the execution. The officials, who spoke on condition that they not be identified, said they appealed to Mr. Maliki not to execute Mr. Hussein at dawn on Saturday because of the onset of a major Islamic festival, and because of constitutional and legal questions that the Americans believed threw the legitimacy of the execution into doubt.

But when Mr. Maliki decided to go ahead with the hanging, the Americans said they made no further attempts to stop it, having concluded that they could advise the Iraqis against the execution, but not prevent it if the Iraqis persisted, out of respect for Iraqi sovereignty.

When asked if that decision had been made in the White House, the Americans refused to say, noting only that it came some time before the final exchanges on Friday night. Mr. Hussein was hanged at 6:10 a.m. on Saturday, about seven hours after what the officials said was their final attempt to postpone the hanging.

“We told the prime minister that going forward on the first day of Id would have a negative reaction in the Islamic world, and among the Iraqi people,” a senior American official said, recounting a telephone conversation with Mr. Maliki that began at 10:30 p.m. Baghdad time on Friday. The reference was to the Id al-Adha holiday, which began for Sunnis on Saturday, marking the end of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. “Therefore,” the official said, “we said we thought it would be better if they delayed until after Id, and use the delay to resolve the legal issues.”

The American official said that Mr. Maliki had never fully explained his urgency in carrying out the death sentence, which was upheld last Tuesday in an appeals court ruling that set off a 30-day countdown for executions to be carried out after a final appeal has been turned down. But the prime minister gave one explanation that appeared to weigh heavily on his mind, the American said, and that was his fear that Mr. Hussein might be the subject of an insurgent attempt to free him if the procedural wrangling over the execution were protracted.

“His concern was security, and that there was a danger that if it continued, maybe there would be a mass kidnapping to bargain for Saddam Hussein’s release,” the official said. “He was concerned that he might somehow get free.”

The American decision to confirm that they had opposed the quick execution came after days of silence from the American Embassy and the United States military command in Baghdad, which appeared to have been shocked, like so many others, by the unofficial video recording that showed the bedlam at the gallows.

With some Iraqi politicians raising fresh demands for Mr. Maliki’s dismissal, the Americans, in offering to have a senior official discuss the matter in a telephone interview with The New York Times, appeared eager to protect the Bush administration from a fresh surge of criticism for its handling of events in Iraq.

The official said that among American officials in Iraq who had tried to stop Mr. Maliki from rushing Mr. Hussein to the gallows, the reaction to the scenes of abuse had been one of dismay.

“Well, yes, when I think of the behavior of the people who were there, I’m disappointed and distressed, that’s true,” the official who spoke in the telephone interview said. He said he had been one of the Americans who intervened with Mr. Maliki on Friday night and earlier last week to try to delay the hanging.

Mr. Maliki seemed equally eager to ward off the opprobrium stirred by the execution. As his aides announced that the events at the hanging would be the subject of an inquiry, one of the officials who attended the hanging, a prosecutor at the trial that condemned Mr. Hussein to death, said that one of two men he had seen holding a cellphone camera aloft to make a video of Mr. Hussein’s last moments — up to and past the point where he fell through the trapdoor — was Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Mr. Maliki’s national security adviser. Attempts to reach Mr. Rubaie were unsuccessful. The prosecutor, Munkith al-Faroun, said the other man holding a cellphone above his head was also an official, but he could not recall his name.

The government inquiry was ordered as a groundswell of protest grew at Sunni population centers across Iraq. The protests, sporadic in the first 72 hours after the hanging, appeared to be building in intensity as Iraqi and American troops relaxed security cordons that had been thrown around centers of diehard support for Mr. Hussein, including his hometown, Tikrit, 100 miles north of Baghdad, and Awja, the village where he was born, a few miles away. The protesters carried portraits of Mr. Hussein, chanted his name, and fired weapons in the air.

Thousands of mourners flocked to Awja, where Mr. Hussein’s body has lain in a reception hall. The body, in a plain wood coffin draped in an Iraqi flag, has become a point of pilgrimage for loyalists. Many of those reaching Awja have wept as they filed past the coffin, shouting slogans of fealty of the kind that were universal in Iraq when Mr. Hussein was the country’s dictator.

“Maliki, you coward, you are an American agent,” cried one demonstrator in Tikrit, referring to the prime minister. “Iran, out, out!” another man shouted, echoing anger among Sunnis at the rise to power in Baghdad of Shiite religious groups backed by Iran, including Mr. Maliki’s Dawa Party.

After Mr. Maliki made it clear to the Americans in Baghdad that his decision was final, the official who discussed the events on Friday night said, American commanders were told to deliver Mr. Hussein to an execution bloc in the Kadhimiya district of northern Baghdad that Mr. Hussein’s military intelligence agency used to execute countless opponents of his government. At 4 a.m., Mr. Hussein was flown by an American military helicopter from an American detention center and handed over to the Iraqis. He was hanged with only Iraqis present, in a group of about 25, including executioners and guards, according to accounts by American and Iraqi officials.

A postponement of the execution until after the holiday would have delayed it at least until Thursday of this week. But the American officials said they had made no stipulation as to how long the delay should be, since their concern, beyond respecting the sanctity of the Id al-Adha holiday, had been that Mr. Maliki should await a formal judicial ruling resolving the legal issues before going ahead with the hanging.

The Americans said Mr. Maliki had agreed, as the Americans had urged, to ask the chief judge of Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council, Midhat al-Mahmoud, to issue a formal written judgment saying that the uncompleted legal procedures that concerned the Americans were not necessary to the lawfulness of the hanging. But Judge Mahmoud refused, the Americans said, and around midnight on Friday the Iraqi leader decided to go ahead with the execution, signing a decree ordering that Mr. Hussein be “hanged by the neck until dead.”

The legal issues the Americans said they urged Mr. Maliki to resolve before the hanging centered on a constitutional provision requiring Iraq’s three-man presidency council to affirm all executions before they are carried out. That posed a potential obstacle to the hanging because Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, is opposed to the death penalty. One of the other members of the council, Tariq al-Hashemi, is a Sunni from a moderate party that has disavowed Mr. Hussein, but has been careful not to endorse his trial and execution.

Mr. Maliki, in pushing ahead with the hanging, relied on a provision in the statute that established the Iraqi High Tribunal, which convicted Mr. Hussein, which said that the tribunal’s verdicts, once upheld by its own appeal bench, were final and not subject to presidential review. It was that conflict the Americans said they wanted resolved by a written ruling from Judge Mahmoud. “Mr. Maliki said that Judge Mahmoud had given that opinion orally, but we said it would be better for everybody if he said it in writing,” the American official who discussed the standoff said.

Sami al-Askari, a political adviser to Mr. Maliki who attended the hanging, said in a telephone interview that the committee would question everyone present at the execution. He said those who used their cellphones to record the event would be one focus of the inquiry. He said his own observation was that the worst sectarian taunts had come from a guard he described as a poorly educated Shiite man with a thick Arabic accent. “It was horrible, it was terrible, it was a mistake,” he said. “We were supposed to sit there quietly, just looking at what’s going on.”

The first images of the execution that were released were in the form of an official video recording without sound. The unofficial cellphone images showed Mr. Hussein, with the noose around his neck, facing shouts of “Go to hell!” and taunts of “Moktada! Moktada! Moktada!” in reference to an unruly Shiite cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, who has become a populist hero among Shiites.

Speaking of those protesting the abuse of Mr. Hussein, Mr. Faroun, the prosecutor, asked, “Where were these critics when Saddam’s people were executing whole prisons full of innocent people?” He said he had been deeply offended by the taunting of Mr. Hussein, and had tried to stop it. “You heard my voice on the cellphone recording,” he said. “I was the one shouting, ‘Please, no. The man is about to be executed.’ ”

Reporting was contributed by Ali Adeeb, Qais Mizher, Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi, Marc Santora and Sabrina Tavernise in Baghdad, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times in Awja.

    Iraq to Review Abusive Acts at Hussein’s Execution, NYT, 3.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/world/middleeast/03iraq.html

An Iraqi watches video footage of the execution of Saddam Hussein

on a mobile phone at a shop in central Baghdad.

By Wissam Sami, AFP/Getty Images

Iraqi PM orders investigation into Saddam's execution        UT        2.1.2007

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-01-02-roadside-bomb_x.htm

Iraqi PM orders investigation

into Saddam's execution

Updated 1/2/2007 8:59 PM ET
AP
USA Today

BAGHDAD (AP) — Grainy cellphone video of Saddam Hussein's execution triggered international criticism Tuesday, with Britain's deputy prime minister calling the leaked images "unacceptable" and the Vatican decrying the footage as a "spectacle" violating human rights.

Meanwhile, the Italian government pushed for a U.N. moratorium on the death penalty, Cuba called the execution "an illegal act," and Sunnis in Iraq took to the streets in mainly peaceful demonstrations across the country.

The unofficial video showed a scene that stopped just short of pandemonium, during which one person is heard shouting "To hell!" at the deposed president and Saddam is heard exchanging insults with his executioners. The inflammatory footage also showed Saddam plummeting through the gallows trapdoor and dangling in death.

The grainy video appeared on the Internet and Al-Jazeera television late Saturday. On Tuesday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered an investigation into the execution to try to uncover who taunted the former dictator, and who leaked the cellphone footage.

At the United Nations, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon ran into trouble on his first day of work when he failed to state the U.N.'s official stance opposing capital punishment and said it should be a decision of individual countries.

"Saddam Hussein was responsible for committing heinous crimes and unspeakable atrocities against Iraqi people and we should never forget victims of his crime," Ban said in response to a reporter's question about Saddam's execution Saturday for crimes against humanity. "The issue of capital punishment is for each and every member state to decide."

His ambiguous answer put a question mark over the U.N.'s stance on the death penalty, although Ban's spokeswoman said there was no change in policy.

British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott said those who leaked the footage should be condemned.

"I think the manner was quite deplorable really. I don't think one can endorse in any way that, whatever your views about capital punishment," Prescott said in an interview with British Broadcasting Corp. radio.

"Frankly, to get the kind of recorded messages coming out is totally unacceptable and I think whoever is involved and responsible for it should be ashamed of themselves."

The Holy See's daily, L'Osservatore Romano, lamented that "making a spectacle" of the execution had turned capital punishment into "an expression of political hubris."

The execution "represented, for the ways in which it happened and for the media attention it received, another example of the violation of the most basic rights of man," L'Osservatore wrote.

The office of Italian Premier Romano Prodi said Italy would seek the support of other countries that oppose capital punishment to put the issue of a moratorium to the U.N. General Assembly. Italy and all other European Union countries ban capital punishment.

Italy, which is one of the rotating members of the U.N. Security Council, has lobbied unsuccessfully for U.N. action against the death penalty.

On Monday, a crowd of Sunni mourners in Samarra marched to a bomb-damaged Shiite shrine, the Golden Dome, and were allowed by guards and police to enter the holy place carrying a mock coffin and photos of the former dictator.

The shrine was bombed by Sunni extremists 10 months ago, an attack that triggered the current cycle of retaliatory attacks between Sunnis and Shiites.

Communist Cuba, which allows capital punishment, called Saddam's execution "an illegal act in a country that has been driven toward an internal conflict in which millions of citizens have been exiled or lost their lives."

The Foreign Ministry statement Monday said the island nation "has a moral duty to express its point of view about the assassination committed by the occupying power."

The U.S. military had held Saddam since capturing him in December 2003 but turned him over to the Iraqi government for his execution.

    Iraqi PM orders investigation into Saddam's execution, UT, 2.1.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-01-02-roadside-bomb_x.htm

Number 3,000:

the soccer-mad dropout

who dreamt of going back to college

January 02, 2007
The Times
James Bone in New York

Soldier killed in Sunni stronghold
W Republicans fear for 2008 election

A soccer-loving college dropout from Texas with a weakness for trance music and ham-and-pineapple pizza has become the 3,000th American soldier killed in Iraq.

Dustin Donica, 22, an army specialist from the 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment, was killed by small-arms fire on Thursday during a counter-insurgency operations in Karmah in the Sunni stronghold of al-Anbar province.

His father, David, learnt that his son’s death was the 3,000th by logging on to the internet after reporters began calling at his home.

“We had no idea why we were getting, within an hour, almost eight or nine people at the door,” he said. “That was a surprise to us because none of them mentioned why they were there. Perhaps they were embarrassed. One guy was standing there shaking like a leaf.”

Specialist Donica, known as “DD” to his friends, was brought up in the town of Spring on the outskirts of Houston. He enlisted after a short spell at the University of Texas in Austin.

On his MySpace page he wrote that he wanted to die “young”. But he also said that he hoped to go back to college and that his greatest fear was “the slight chance of re-enlistment seeming smart”. Asked: “What do you want to be when you Grow Up?”, he wrote: “if i knew, i wouldn’t be here.”

President Bush, who has spent the week at his ranch in Texas devising a new Iraq policy, consulting Tony Blair by telephone, refused to issue a statement on the death.

Scott Stanzel, a White House spokesman, said that Mr Bush “grieves for each one that is lost” and “will ensure their sacrifice was not made in vain”.

The latest fatality fuelled Democratic anger at the prospect of a troop “surge” in Iraq. Many Republican legislators are concerned that it could cost them the 2008 presidential election — and their own seats.

Robert Novak, a well-connected conservative columnist, estimated yesterday that Mr Bush would struggle to muster support from more than 12 of the 49 Republican senators for the extra 30,000 troops now thought to be under consideration.

Senator Chuck Hagel, the second-ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said that the plan was “Alice in Wonderland”.

He added: “I’m absolutely opposed to sending any more troops to Iraq. It is folly.”

The US death toll in Iraq, which last month surpassed the 2,976 fatalities in the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, reached the new grim milestone at the end of a year that cost 820 American lives. At least 112 personnel died last month, the worst single month for two years.

If the fighting continues into March, the war will become the third longest in American history, after the Vietnam War and the American Revolution.

The US military announced yesterday that two more soldiers were killed on Sunday in an explosion in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad.

Britain has lost 127 soldiers. Estimates of civilian deaths, now running at about 90 a day, vary widely from 52,000 by the independent Iraq Body Count to more than 600,000 by a study in The Lancet.

At least 22,000 American troops have been injured. Experts say that battlefield techniques, such as leaving wounds open to prevent infection, have saved many lives. Only 9 per cent of wounded soldiers die in Iraq, compared with 24 per cent in the Vietnam War and 30 per cent during the Second World War.

Mr Bush is expected to unveil his new Iraq policy before his State of the Union address to Congress on January 23. On Friday he spoke by telephone with Mr Blair during the Prime Minister’s holiday in Florida.

In his new year message to the nation, Mr Bush vowed: “We will remain on the offensive against the enemies of freedom, advance the security of our country, and work toward a free and unified Iraq.”

Senator John McCain, a leading Republican presidential candidate and former Vietnam prisoner of war, returned recently from Iraq calling for a troop “surge” to win the war. But the new Democratic majority in Congress is expected to resist what John Edwards, the Democratic presidential hopeful, has dubbed the “McCain doctrine”.

Senator Joe Biden, the incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a likely Democratic presidential candidate, plans hearings to oppose any troop increase.

Republicans are becoming nervous that the proposed “surge” could lose them next year’s election. Senator Arlen Specter, of Pennsylvania, said: “If there is a road map to victory, then I would be prepared to listen to what the President has to say about more troops. But on this date . . . I do not see it.”

GROWING FORCE


Iraqi security forces have increased from 96,000 personnel in September 2004 to a current size of 323,000

Three of the country’s 18 provinces are now under Iraqi control, though coalition troops still provide logistical and emergency help

During last year, control of Muthana province was transferred on July 14, Dhiqar on September 21 and Najaf on December 20

The 92 Iraqi army battalions outnumber coalition troops in half the country

Iraqi authorities are also reponsible for security in most of Baghdad

Source: US Department of Defence

    Number 3,000: the soccer-mad dropout who dreamt of going back to college, Ts, 2.1.2007, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-2527028_1,00.html

Chaos Overran Iraq Plan in ’06,

Bush Team Says

January 2, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER, MICHAEL R. GORDON and JOHN F. BURNS

WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 — President Bush began 2006 assuring the country that he had a “strategy for victory in Iraq.” He ended the year closeted with his war cabinet on his ranch trying to devise a new strategy, because the existing one had collapsed.

The original plan, championed by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top commander in Baghdad, and backed by Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, called for turning over responsibility for security to the Iraqis, shrinking the number of American bases and beginning the gradual withdrawal of American troops. But the plan collided with Iraq’s ferocious unraveling, which took most of Mr. Bush’s war council by surprise.

In interviews in Washington and Baghdad, senior officials said the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department had also failed to take seriously warnings, including some from its own ambassador in Baghdad, that sectarian violence could rip the country apart and turn Mr. Bush’s promise to “clear, hold and build” Iraqi neighborhoods and towns into an empty slogan.

This left the president and his advisers constantly lagging a step or two behind events on the ground.

“We could not clear and hold,” Stephen J. Hadley, the president’s national security adviser, acknowledged in a recent interview, in a frank admission of how American strategy had crumbled. “Iraqi forces were not able to hold neighborhoods, and the effort to build did not show up. The sectarian violence continued to mount, so we did not make the progress on security we had hoped. We did not bring the moderate Sunnis off the fence, as we had hoped. The Shia lost patience, and began to see the militias as their protectors.”

Over the past 12 months, as optimism collided with reality, Mr. Bush increasingly found himself uneasy with General Casey’s strategy. And now, as the image of Saddam Hussein at the gallows recedes, Mr. Bush seems all but certain not only to reverse the strategy that General Casey championed, but also to accelerate the general’s departure from Iraq, according to senior military officials.

General Casey repeatedly argued that his plan offered the best prospect for reducing the perception that the United States remained an occupier — and it was a path he thought matched Mr. Bush’s wishes. Earlier in the year, it had.

But as Baghdad spun further out of control, some of the president’s advisers now say, Mr. Bush grew concerned that General Casey, among others, had become more fixated on withdrawal than victory.

Now, having ousted Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Bush sees a chance to bring in a new commander as he announces a new strategy, senior military officials say. General Casey was scheduled to shift out of Iraq in the summer. But now it appears that it may happen in February or March.

By mid-September, Mr. Bush was disappointed with the results in Iraq and signed off on a complete review of Iraq strategy — a review centered in Washington, not in Baghdad. Whatever form the new strategy takes, it seems almost certain to include a “surge” in forces, something that General Casey insisted earlier this year he did not need and which might even be counterproductive.

In a telephone interview on Friday, General Casey continued to caution against a lengthy expansion in the American military role. “The longer we in the U.S. forces continue to bear the main burden of Iraq’s security, it lengthens the time that the government of Iraq has to take the hard decisions about reconciliation and dealing with the militias,” he said. “And the other thing is that they can continue to blame us for all of Iraq’s problems, which are at base their problems.”

Yet if Mr. Bush does send in more American forces, historians may well ask why it took him so long. Some Bush officials argue that the administration erred by refusing to send in a bigger force in 2003, or by sufficiently bolstering it when the insurgency began to take hold.

This year, decisions on a new strategy were clearly slowed by political calculations. Many of Mr. Bush’s advisers say their timetable for completing an Iraq review had been based in part on a judgment that for Mr. Bush to have voiced doubts about his strategy before the midterm elections in November would have been politically catastrophic.

Mr. Bush came to worry that it was not just his critics and Democrats in Congress who were looking for what he dismissed last month as a strategy of “graceful exit.” Visiting the Pentagon a few weeks ago for a classified briefing on Iraq with his generals, Mr. Bush made it clear that he was not interested in any ideas that would simply allow American forces to stabilize the violence. Gen. James T. Conway, the Marine commandant, later told marines about the president’s message.

“What I want to hear from you is how we’re going to win,” he quoted the president as warning his commanders, “not how we’re going to leave.”

Sectarian Killings Escalate

When 2006 began, the United States military did not have a systematic means of tabulating sectarian attacks in Iraq. The Sunni-led insurgency was the focus of Mr. Bush’s statements, and its destruction the focus of American military strategy.

The Bush administration was jolted on Feb. 22 when Al Qaeda blew up the Askariya Mosque in Samarra, a carefully plotted effort to fan sectarian passions, prompt Shiite retaliation and make Iraq ungovernable.

The day of the explosion, Shiites in Sadr City poured into the streets carrying banners and flags. Men, some dressed in black, the traditional dress for the Shiite militia in the area, piled into open back trucks, carrying weapons and shouting slogans of loyalty to Shiite saints. In Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Iraq, went to Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari to insist that the Iraqi government impose a 24-hour nationwide curfew. Mr. Jaafari, a member of the Shiite Dawa Party, was not persuaded.

“You’ve been here six months, and all of a sudden you know my country better than I do,” Mr. Jaafari replied, according to an official who witnessed the exchange. But even some Iraqi leaders, including the current national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, echoed Mr. Khalilzad’s advice. “I remember saying to him: ‘this is going to be the trigger of an all-out civil war,’ ” Mr. Rubaie said.

Mr. Jaafari insisted that he had a plan, which involved closing the Sunni television stations in the country, though as the violence grew he belatedly imposed a curfew that evening. It was the beginning of a debilitating pattern. The Shiite-dominated government did too little to protect Sunni citizens. Shiite militias took matters into their own hands. And the American military struggled to hold the city together with overstretched units.

It was clear that the retaliation was highly organized. Sunnis in the eastern portion of Baghdad, in an area called Rusafa, reported that Shiites in SUV’s were pulling up, knocking on doors, and seeking specific people. Bodies surfaced in sewers and garbage heaps days later.

When the killing abated, President Bush and his top aides declared that the worst had passed. Both Sunnis and Shiites had “looked into the abyss and did not like what they saw,” the president said.

Renegade militias were a concern but “not a major long-term problem as long as the Iraqi armed forces and the Iraqi police continue to be loyal to the central government, as they have been,” Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a March 5 appearance on the NBC News program “Meet the Press.”

Sectarian-inspired executions, however, rose from almost 200 in January to more than 700 in March, and continued upward, according to the Pentagon.

Even as the violence grew, General Casey, the top American commander in Iraq, appeared confident. He had served as a senior aide for the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon, where he gained the confidence of Mr. Rumsfeld before being sent to Baghdad in 2004. At 58, the four-star general reported directly to the defense secretary.

Mr. Rumsfeld had mused publicly that history showed that it could take a decade or so to defeat an insurgency. He was eager to turn over responsibility for the war to the Iraqis and to reduce the American footprint in Iraq as quickly as possible.

General Casey and Gen. John P. Abizaid, head of the United States Central Command, appeared to be like-minded. During the summer of 2005, General Casey had forecast “fairly significant reductions” in American troops by the summer of 2006, an assessment that the commander said reflected “feelers” from Sunni insurgents that they might be willing to negotiate and lay down their arms.

Some of General Casey’s aides have said that in developing troop withdrawal plans they were cognizant that the Bush administration had not taken any steps to expand the American military presence despite a persistent insurgency, and seemed to have little appetite for substantially expanding the war effort.

No Wish to Stay Indefinitely

For his part, General Casey said that his plan was aimed at showing Iraqis that the United States did not want to perpetuate its role as an occupier indefinitely, and stressed that he was following a strategy to match the “convoluted” political and military situation in Iraq, and not seeking to advance his career with plans that suited the Bush administration’s political agenda.

“I have worked very hard to ask for what I need, for what I thought I needed to accomplish the mission,” he said Friday. “It’s always been my view that a heavy and sustained American military presence was not going to solve the problems in Iraq over the long term.”

By late 2005, the White House accepted the main tenets of the hand-over strategy. “Casey and Abizaid had what seemed like a plausible plan at the time,” Mr. Hadley recalled. “It was well thought out, and after the elections in January looked like the direction we were headed in.”

President Bush promoted the strategy in a speech to cheering midshipmen at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., on Nov. 30, 2005: “We will continue to shift from providing security and conducting operations against the enemy nationwide to conducting more specialized operations targeted at the most dangerous terrorists. We will increasingly move out of Iraqi cities, reduce the number of bases from which we operate, and conduct fewer patrols and convoys.”

Yet not everybody at the Pentagon shared General’s Casey’s confidence. The Defense Intelligence Agency had briefed the White House in early 2006 that the insurgency was winning in Iraq, according to a former military officer. The briefing, which chronicled the steady rise in the number of attacks, prompted a counter-briefing from General Casey’s intelligence chief, who prepared an analysis tracing the positive trends in Iraq.

Data gathered by General Casey’s own command, which showed a steady increase in weekly attacks and civilian casualties, lent support to the Defense Intelligence Agency assessment.

At the State Department, skepticism about General Casey’s strategy ran deep. Philip D. Zelikow, the counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice until he resigned in December, went to Iraq in late 2005, and returned with a recommendation that the first part of 2006 be devoted to a big push — military, economic and political — to boost the soon-to-be-formed Iraqi government. His approach contradicted the commitment to reductions.

Still, the general was reluctant to abandon his basic strategy. According to a senior administration official, General Casey told the White House in April, May and June of 2006 that the American military was having success against Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia and the Sunni-based insurgency, and that sectarian violence could be managed.

Calls for a Review of Strategy

By May 2006, uneasy officials at the State Department and the National Security Council argued for a review of Iraq strategy. A meeting was convened at Camp David to consider those approaches, according to participants in the session, but Mr. Bush left early for a secret visit to Baghdad, where he reviewed the war plans with General Casey and Mr. Maliki, and met with the American pilot whose plane’s missiles killed Iraq’s Al Qaeda leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He returned to Washington in a buoyant mood.

The visit meant that the reconsideration of strategy was not as thorough as some officials hoped.

Later in June, General Casey flew to Washington to give briefings on the latest version of his troop reduction plan at the Pentagon and White House. The number of American combat brigades, which then totaled 14, would be reduced by two in September and might shrink to 10 by December, if conditions allowed. If the Iraqis continued to assume more responsibility for their security, there would be only five or six combat brigades in Iraq by December 2007.

Yet already President Bush was signaling to top aides that he wanted to re-evaluate how to keep stability before proceeding with troop withdrawals. His caution matched a growing unease among American field commanders in Iraq, and officers on the streets of Baghdad, who said they were surprised by General Casey’s continued advocacy of withdrawals and consolidating bases. They said that American forces should be focusing on a greater counterinsurgency effort, which would require that a substantial number of troops be dispersed to protect that population against insurgent and militia attacks.

Events overtook the White House. In early August, the United States was forced to reverse course and add troops in Baghdad. On reflection, Mr. Hadley said, “Finally the patience of the Shia had worn thin,” and, “By the time the unity government took over the cycle of sectarian violence had begun. And they and we have not been able to get ahead of it .”

The administration’s summer strategy seemed simple: American and Iraqi forces would clear selected neighborhoods of insurgents and militia leaders, hold them with the Iraqi police, and win over the population with job-creating reconstruction programs.

But carrying out the strategy proved maddeningly difficult. The American troop commitment was modest at best. With the addition of roughly 7,000 troops the American military force assigned to carry out the operation in Baghdad was brought to some 15,000. (During one discussion of the operation in August, President Bush asked General Casey whether he had sufficient troops to secure Baghdad; the general assured him that he did.)

The Iraqis never delivered four of the six Iraqi Army battalions that they had committed to the effort. Some of the Iraqi police units proved to be so infiltrated by Shiite militias that they had to be pulled off duty for retraining.

Weaknesses in the Iraqi Forces

In the Sunni stronghold of Dora, in southwestern Baghdad, American troops were forced to clear thousands of homes twice: the Iraqi security forces who moved in behind them were too few, and too little dedicated to the task, to keep the insurgents from returning.

In neighborhoods like Baya, the Shiite-dominated Iraqi National Police set up menacing checkpoints on the routes Sunnis used to seek medical attention or buy fuel.

“They were trying to dominate the Sunni population and terrorize them to the point that they would leave Baghdad or leave the neighborhood,” recalled Lt. Col. James Danna, who had led the Second Battalion, Sixth Infantry Regiment, which oversaw those areas. He said that like the first Baghdad security operation, the second also failed. As the American elections approached, White House officials say, they believed it would amount to political suicide to announce a broad reassessment of Iraq strategy. But they recognized that unless they began such a review, they would be forced to accept the conclusions of the final report of the Iraq Study Group — headed by James A. Baker III, the former Republican secretary of state, and Lee H. Hamilton, the former Democratic congressman.

The effort started in September, around the time Mr. Bush decided to oust Mr. Rumsfeld. In the days before the election, Mr. Bush suggested during an interview that Mr. Rumsfeld could stay until the end of his term — a deliberately misleading statement that Mr. Bush said later was necessitated by the political season. Similarly, it was days after the election that the White House revealed that a major Iraq review was under way.

In public, Mr. Bush continues to insist that he and Mr. Maliki share the same vision. In private, one of his former aides said, “he questions whether Maliki has the will or the power” to make good on any commitments.

American military officers have also wondered if the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government and the Americans share the same vision. Were the Iraqis not pulling their weight because they did not have the capability to provide security and proceed with reconstruction? Or did the Iraqi authorities have a sectarian agenda?

As security efforts in Baghdad faltered, a confidential briefing on possible “end states” in Iraq was prepared by officials under the command of Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarielli, who until a few weeks ago led the day-to-day operations in Iraq. It suggested the dark vision of a divided nation that haunts the administration.

Unless the United States persuaded the Iraqi government to change course, those who prepared the briefing foresaw an Iraq run by a relatively weak central government, which would include a largely autonomous nine-province Shiite region in the south and a Shiite-dominated Baghdad. The Kurds would retain their autonomy in the north. The Sunnis would essentially be relegated to the western Anbar Province and other enclaves.

The briefing posed a question: was this an outcome the United States could live with? If so, what could the United States do to minimize the bloodshed? If not, what should be done to alter this course?

Mr. Bush still insists on talking about victory, even if his own advisers differ about how to define it. “It’s a word the American people understand,” he told members of the Iraq Study Group who came to see him at the White House in November, according to two commission members who attended. “And if I start to change it, it will look like I’m beginning to change my policy.”

David E. Sanger and Michael R. Gordon reported from Washington, and John F. Burns from Cambridge, England, and Baghdad. Reporting was contributed by James Glanz, Sabrina Tavernise and Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi from Baghdad.

    Chaos Overran Iraq Plan in ’06, Bush Team Says, NYT, 2.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/02/washington/02war.html?hp&ex=1167800400&en=23c364788b8d276e&ei=5094&partner=homepage
 

Few Iraqis Are Gaining U.S. Sanctuary

January 2, 2007
The New York Times
By SABRINA TAVERNISE and ROBERT F. WORTH

BAGHDAD, Jan. 1 — With thousands of Iraqis desperately fleeing this country every day, advocates for refugees, and even some American officials, say there is an urgent need to allow more Iraqi refugees into the United States.

Until recently the Bush administration had planned to resettle just 500 Iraqis this year, a mere fraction of the tens of thousands of Iraqis who are now believed to be fleeing their country each month. State Department officials say they are open to admitting larger numbers, but are limited by a cumbersome and poorly financed United Nations referral system.

“We’re not even meeting our basic obligation to the Iraqis who’ve been imperiled because they worked for the U.S. government,” said Kirk W. Johnson, who worked for the United States Agency for International Development in Falluja in 2005. “We could not have functioned without their hard work, and it’s shameful that we’ve nothing to offer them in their bleakest hour.”

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat who is taking over the immigration, border security and refugee subcommittee, plans hearings this month on America’s responsibility to help vulnerable Iraqis. An estimated 1.8 million Iraqis are living outside Iraq. The pace of the exodus has quickened significantly in the past nine months.

Some critics say the Bush administration has been reluctant to create a significant refugee program because to do so would be tantamount to conceding failure in Iraq. They say a major change in policy could happen only as part of a broader White House shift on Iraq.

“I don’t know of anyone inside the administration who sees this as a priority area,” said Lavinia Limón, president of the United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, a nongovernmental refugee resettlement agency based in Washington. “If you think you’re winning, you think they’re going to go back soon.”

For Iraqis, a tie to the United States is a life-threatening liability, particularly in harder-line Sunni neighborhoods. In 2003, Laith, an Army interpreter who would allow only his first name to be used, got a note threatening his family if he did not quit his job. His neighborhood, Adhamiya, was full of Baath Party loyalists. A month later, his father opened the door to a stranger, who shot him dead.

Laith’s mother begged him to stop working, but his salary, $700 a month at the time, supported the entire family. Then someone threw a sound grenade at the house. Graffiti appeared on a wall in ugly black paint accusing Laith of selling information about insurgents to the military. Laith and his family moved out of the house. Soon after, it was broken into and photographs of him with American soldiers were found in a family photo album.

“They know me,” he said, sitting in one of Baghdad’s hotels, because his family would not allow a Western reporter inside the house. “They know when I come and go.”

Many Iraqis who worked for Americans have already fled the capital or the country, and many plead for help or asylum on a daily basis. Of some 40 nationalities seeking asylum in European countries in the first half of 2006, Iraqis ranked first with more than 8,100 applications, according to the United Nations.

Remarkably few apply for refugee status in the United States, mainly because most Iraqis, even those who have worked for the United States government here, simply assume that getting American status is all but impossible. Iraqis cannot apply directly for refugee status in the American Embassy in Baghdad.

Another interpreter, Amar, who did not want his full name used, went to at least 10 embassies during a trip to Jordan last fall, but found only blank faces. He counts his sacrifice for America in bones and skin. He is missing a finger, an eye and part of his skull, after a large bomb exploded next to his Humvee last year. He has received two threats to his life. Two bodyguards accompany him everywhere. He stays in three different houses to confuse potential attackers.

“They said they have nothing for Iraqis,” said Amar, sitting in a small house in western Baghdad. “We feel just like stupid trash.”

Until recently, the administration did not appear to understand the gravity of the problem. State Department officials say they are now open to increasing the number of refugee slots the administration formally requested for Iraqis in September. That request already allows for as many as 20,000 more refugees from unspecified countries.

But advocates for refugees say that such an increase is unlikely if no special measures are taken, namely designating Iraqis as a group in peril and formalizing a system for receiving them.

Ellen R. Sauerbrey, the assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, said the United States was hoping to identify the most vulnerable Iraqi refugees but was also dependent on the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to do that.

Officials at the United Nations refugee branch acknowledge that they have moved slowly in identifying refugees, largely because of procedural obstacles and lack of money. The agency’s budget for Syria last year was $700,000, less than one dollar for each Iraqi refugee in that country. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said in October that its Iraq program was $9 million short and that some employees were going without salaries.

The State Department spent $35 million on Iraqi refugees in Iraq and the region in 2006. The United States spends approximately $8 billion a month on the war.

But there is no legal requirement for the United States to rely on the United Nations. It has run its own programs in the past, notably in Southeast Asia. Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese were ultimately resettled in the United States after the American withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975. In that instance, a number of aid groups in neighboring countries divided the work of interviewing and assessing refugees, a system Ms. Limón and many other advocates for refugees are pushing for Iraqis today.

The United States has even run similar programs in Iraq, helping to resettle about 40,000 Iraqi refugees in the United States and other countries after a failed uprising against Saddam Hussein in 1991. In 1996, about 6,500 Iraqis who had links to an American-sponsored coup attempt against Mr. Hussein were granted asylum.

The Bush administration suspended resettlement of Iraqi refugees after the Sept. 11 attacks, and it did not resume until April 2005, after the process had begun for other Arab countries. A total of 198 Iraqis were resettled in the United States as refugees in the fiscal year of 2005, and 202 in 2006, but most were in the pipeline before the 2003 invasion, and few of the cases address the increasingly dire situation for Iraqis today.

Iraqis who work with the military often have to live separately from their families, to avoid putting them in danger. One 25-year-old interpreter left home when his parents in Mosul, in northern Iraq, learned of his work. Now in Baghdad, he has been back home rarely.

Laith lives with an aunt, away from his wife, in an area where no one knows him. After a visit to his parents several months ago, a stranger asked about his 8-year-old brother at a boys’ school. The family fears that it was the early stages of a kidnapping.

“I bring a lot of troubles when I go to visit my family,” he said, smoking a cigarette.

Congress approved one program last year to help get special immigrant status for Iraqi interpreters who have worked for the United States military. Laith has tried to apply. The law, which also applies to Afghan interpreters, is capped at 50 a year. Laith was told he needed a senior officer to vouch for him, but he has not worked with one recently, and the one he had worked with is now back in the United States.

Getting such letters, Laith said, has become increasing difficult, because the interpreters for the most senior American officers now tend to be Arabic speakers hired from the United States, not from Iraq.

The State Department has made it clear that it is deeply concerned about the fate of Iraq’s religious minorities, including Christians. Officials at the department say that any refugee program must also be geared to those vulnerable groups.

As many as 100,000 exiled Iraqi Christians have relatives in the United States and would want to resettle there if given the chance, said Joseph T. Kassab, the executive director of the Chaldean Federation of America, a Michigan-based umbrella group that represents Iraqi Christians. Mr. Kassab said his group’s estimates were based on questionnaires devised by University of Michigan professors and filled out by several thousand Iraqi Christian refugees in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon in recent months.

State Department officials and some advocates for refugees agree that the United States is not likely to begin resettling large numbers of Iraqis anytime soon. New counterterrorism laws after Sept. 11 have slowed immigration, particularly from countries in the Middle East, and Iraqi applications would be bogged down by those security issues.

A State Department refugee official said that any American resettlement effort would deal with only a small part of the overall refugee problem in the region.

Ms. Limón agreed, saying, “We’ll have trouble with the few thousand who work in the Green Zone.”

A quicker way to help would be to increase financing to countries that are accepting Iraqis — Jordan, Syria and Lebanon — and press those governments to improve their treatment of Iraqis by allowing them to work and travel, officials and advocates said.

That would be a real service for Iraqis in Jordan, who speak of rude and sometimes abusive treatment. Jordanians often do not allow Iraqis to bring in suitcases, travelers said, and have been known to turn away young men, forcing families to continue on without them.

“Put yourself in my shoes,” said an Iraqi working in an American Army base who spent eight hours in the January cold last year with his wife and infant at the Jordanian border. “You take your family to another country and they interview you like you are a terrorist.”

A residency permit is required, and Iraqis must deposit 50,000 Jordanian dinars — about $70,000 — in a bank without drawing on it for a year to obtain one. The worker, who wanted to be identified only as Abu Hussein, eventually moved his family back to Iraq, to the south, because he could not afford to stay in Jordan.

“The Americans are in control of this country,” he said, talking about Jordan. “Why don’t they become angry at how they are treating us?”

Abu Hussein is lucky: He lives on the Army base where he works. Laith does not have that luxury. He pays $400 to two guards and a driver to bring him to Baghdad from an American base near Beiji. Insurgents pay taxi drivers near the base to call them when they see a single man with a large overnight bag, he said. Once a cab driver recognized his face.

“I worked for three years, I lost a lot of things,” he said, his voice urgent. “It’s supposed to be some respect for me.”

Sabrina Tavernise reported from Baghdad and Robert F. Worth from New York.

    Few Iraqis Are Gaining U.S. Sanctuary, NYT, 2.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/02/world/middleeast/02refugees.html?hp&ex=1167800400&en=bc3cf6876e373820&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Angry Protests in Iraq

Suggest Sunni Arab Shift to Militants

January 2, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

BAGHDAD, Jan. 1 (AP) — Enraged crowds protested the hanging of Saddam Hussein across Iraq’s Sunni heartland on Monday, as a mob in Samarra broke the locks off a bomb-damaged Shiite shrine and marched through carrying a mock coffin and a photo of the executed dictator.

The demonstration at the Golden Dome shrine, shattered in a bombing by Sunni extremists 10 months ago, suggests that many Sunni Arabs may now more actively support the small number of Sunni militants fighting the country’s Shiite-dominated government. The Feb. 22 bombing of the shrine set off the current cycle of retaliatory attacks between Sunnis and Shiites.

The Sunni protests, which appeared to be building, could signal a spreading militancy. Sunnis were outraged by Mr. Hussein’s hurried hanging on Saturday, just four days after an appeals court upheld his conviction and sentence, and many were incensed by the unruly scene in the execution chamber, captured on a cellphone, in which Mr. Hussein was taunted with chants of “Moktada! Moktada! Moktada!” — the name of the Shiite cleric who runs one of Iraq’s most violent militias.

Many Sunnis are also upset that Mr. Hussein was put to death during the Id al-Adha holiday.

In a Sunni neighborhood in northern Baghdad, hundreds of demonstrators mourned Mr. Hussein. Some praised the ousted Baath Party, which Mr. Hussein rode to power.

In Ad Dwar, about 80 miles north of Baghdad, hundreds more took to the streets to attend the dedication of a giant mosaic of Mr. Hussein. Children carried toy guns, and men fired weapons into the air.

Mourners at a mosque in Mr. Hussein’s hometown, Tikrit, slaughtered sheep as a sacrifice for their former leader. The mosque’s walls were lined with condolence cards from tribes in southern Iraq and Jordan who could not travel to the memorial.

Mr. Hussein’s eldest daughter, Raghad, briefly attended a protest on Monday in Jordan, where she sought refuge after the American invasion in 2003. It was her first public appearance since her father was hanged.

“God bless you, and I thank you for honoring Saddam, the martyr,” she said, according to two witnesses. She addressed members of the Professional Associations, an umbrella group of unions representing doctors, engineers and lawyers, in the group’s office parking lot.

In the midst of the protests, American forces continued operations in Iraq. Six Iraqis were killed in an American-led raid on the Baghdad offices of a top Sunni politician, Saleh Mutlaq, a former member of the Baath Party. The United States military and Iraqi police said they suspected that the offices were being used as a safe house by Al Qaeda. Mr. Mutlaq is a senior member of the National Dialogue Front, which holds 11 of the 275 seats in Parliament.

American forces said they took heavy fire from automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades as they tried to enter the building. Ground troops were backed by helicopters that “engaged the enemy with precision-point target machine gun fire,” the military said.

It was unclear whether the deaths resulted from the ground assault or fire from American helicopters.

Meanwhile, the American military reported the deaths of two more soldiers in an explosion on Sunday in Diyala Province, northeast of the capital, bringing the list of American military fatalities in Iraq to 3,002. With the announcement, The Associated Press count of fatalities showed that at least 113 American service members died in December, making it the bloodiest month of 2006.

Iraqi authorities reported that 16,273 Iraqis —among them 14,298 civilians, 1,348 policemen and 627 soldiers — died violent deaths in 2006. The total exceeds The A. P. count by more than 2,500.

The police reported finding the bodies of 40 handcuffed, blindfolded and bullet-riddled bodies in Baghdad on Monday. A police official said 15 of the bodies were discovered in the mainly industrial Sheik Omar District of northern Baghdad.

An Iraqi worker for the Algerian Embassy in Baghdad was shot to death, the police said.

Also on Monday, the government raided and sealed the offices of a privately owned television station, charging that it had incited violence and hatred in its programming. In its coverage of the execution of Mr. Hussein over the weekend, a newscaster wore black mourning clothes.

    Angry Protests in Iraq Suggest Sunni Arab Shift to Militants, NYT, 2.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/02/world/middleeast/02Iraq.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Shocked by Saddam,

Italy seeks U.N. death penalty ban

Tue Jan 2, 2007 11:14 AM ET
Reuters



ROME (Reuters) - Italy will campaign at the United Nations for a global ban on the death penalty, Prime Minister Romano Prodi said on Tuesday, after graphic images of Saddam Hussein's hanging shocked people around the world.

Italian politicians of all political parties expressed disgust at Saddam's execution, with even former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi calling it a "political and historic error".

Pressured by a week-long hunger strike by a 76-year-old campaigner against Saddam's execution and the death penalty in general, Prodi said Italy would push the U.N. for a "universal moratorium" on capital punishment.

Prodi said Italy, which has just taken up a temporary Security Council seat, aimed to involve the 85 U.N. countries which signed a non-binding declaration in December against the death penalty in lobbying for a ban.

The Iraqi government has hit back at Italy for its criticism of Saddam's execution, accusing it of hypocrisy, especially after World War Two dictator Benito Mussolini was killed by partisans and hanged upside down in a Milan square in 1945.

"They have no right interfering in the affairs of another country," government official, Yaseen Majeed, was quoted as saying in La Repubblica daily. "Mussolini's trial only lasted one minute."

While Italy's divided political class is united in its opposition of the death penalty -- outlawed in all European Union countries -- the mention of Mussolini reopened wounds between left and right.

Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of the fascist dictator and a member of the European Parliament, said her "blood ran cold" when she watched the pictures of Saddam's execution.

"My mind immediately flicked to pictures of my grandfather, who also had his face uncovered exposed to the public for ridicule."

    Shocked by Saddam, Italy seeks U.N. death penalty ban, R, 2.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyid=2007-01-02T161357Z_01_L022516_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L1-RelatedNews-4

Saddam video inquiry promised

Tue Jan 2, 2007 11:16 AM ET
Reuters
By Claudia Parsons

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Hundreds of Sunni Arabs gathered to show their anger and grief for Saddam Hussein on Tuesday as the Iraqi government promised an investigation into illicitly filmed footage of Shi'ite officials taunting him on the gallows.

The sectarian passions that have pushed Iraq toward civil war could be further inflamed by the video of the execution, apparently shot on a mobile phone, showing people chanting the name of Shi'ite cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr.

As President Bush pondered a new strategy for the unpopular war, new figures from the Iraqi Interior Ministry showed the number of civilians killed in political violence reached a record high in December.

Hailed by Washington as a milestone for Iraqi democracy, Saddam's execution seems to have deepened sectarian divisions.

A leading member of the Sunni Arab's largest parliamentary bloc said on Tuesday footage showing Shi'ite officials mocking Saddam as he was about to he hanged had damaged Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's attempts at national reconciliation.

"The big question now is how serious is the government in calling for national reconciliation. It now has to prove it," Saleem al-Jibouri of the Iraqi Accordance Front told Reuters.

Saddam's grave in his native village, Awja, drew hundreds more mourners on Tuesday, as it has each day since he was buried in the dead of night early on Sunday.

Several hundred people marched through the northern city of Mosul carrying portraits of Saddam and banners proclaiming him a martyr and a hero. Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad and other towns have seen similar demonstrations since Saturday.

The rapid execution, just four days after the failure of an appeal, boosted Maliki's fragile authority among his fractious Shi'ite supporters but angered many Sunnis. The timing, on the first day of the Eid al-Adha holiday, has caused particular outrage, along with the video.

INVESTIGATION PROMISED

An aide to the prime minister said the government was investigating how people filmed and taunted Saddam on the gallows, turning his execution into a televised spectacle.

Khudayer al-Khuzai, deputizing for the justice minister who was abroad, said it appeared some guards violated instructions not to bring mobile phones or cameras.

"The Iraqi government is going to have an investigation into what happened," he said. "This operation should be done with the highest standards of discipline and with respect for the condemned man, both when he's alive and once he's dead.

"Anything that did not meet those standards should be accounted for."

Washington has identified the Mehdi Army, a militia loyal to Sadr, as the biggest threat to Iraq and has urged Maliki to crack down on its illegal activities.

Maliki relies on the support of Sadr's political movement in parliament and government -- an uneasy relationship illustrated by the presence of Sadr supporters at Saddam's execution.

There has been no significant repeat of a series of car bombings that killed more than 70 people in Shi'ite neighborhoods on Saturday within hours of the dawn execution, but the government and U.S. forces are on alert.

Iraqi Interior Ministry figures, almost certain to be an underestimate, showed 12,320 civilians were killed in 2006 in what officials term "terrorist" violence.

The figures are generally viewed as a guide to trends but give only a partial sampling of deaths.

The ministry figure of 1,930 civilian deaths in December is three-and-a-half times the equivalent of 548 last January, before last year's surge in sectarian killing which followed the destruction of a major Shi'ite shrine in February.

The figures also showed 1,231 policemen were killed in 2006 and 602 Iraqi soldiers.

All such statistics are controversial in Iraq. A figure of 3,700 civilian deaths in October, the latest tally by the United Nations based on data from the Health Ministry and the Baghdad morgue, was described as exaggerated by the Iraqi government.

The U.N. figure shows about 120 civilians died each day.

Bush plans to unveil a new strategy this month after the 3,000th soldier to die in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion was killed just before New Year. At least 112 Americans died in December, the deadliest month for them in more than two years.

(Additional reporting by Alastair Macdonald and Ibon Villelabeitia)

    Saddam video inquiry promised, R, 2.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2007-01-02T161548Z_01_L308031_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C2-TopNews-newsOne-2

Saddam hanging nearly halted over jeers:

prosecutor

Tue Jan 2, 2007 11:16 AM ET
Reuters

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A senior Iraqi court official nearly halted Saddam Hussein's execution when supporters of a radical Shi'ite cleric and militia leader taunted the former president as he stood on the gallows.

Prosecutor Munkith al-Faroon, who is heard appealing for order on explicit Internet video of Saturday's hanging that has inflamed sectarian passions, said on Tuesday he threatened to leave if the jeering did not stop -- and that would have halted the execution as a prosecution observer must be present by law.

"I threatened to leave," Faroon told Reuters. "They knew that if I left, the execution could not go ahead."

Many in Saddam's Sunni minority, and moderate Shi'ites and Kurds, have been angered and embarrassed by the video. In it, observers chant "Moqtada, Moqtada, Moqtada!" for Shi'ite militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr. Saddam by contrast looks dignified on the gallows and replies: "Is this what you call manhood?"

As the Iraqi government mounted an investigation into how officials smuggled in mobile phone cameras, he also challenged the accounts of the justice minister and an adviser to the prime minister who said the film was shot by a guard -- Faroon said one of two people taking video was a senior government official.

"Two officials were holding mobile phone cameras," said Faroon, who was a deputy prosecutor in the case for which Saddam was hanged and is the chief prosecutor in a second trial that will continue against his aides for genocide against the Kurds.

"One of them I know. He's a high-ranking government official," Faroon said, declining to name the man. "The other I also know by sight, though not his name. He is also senior.

"I don't know how they got their mobiles in because the Americans took all our phones, even mine which has no camera."

Faroon said he was the only prosecutor from Saddam's trial for crimes against humanity against the people of the Shi'ite town of Dujail who was present in Baghdad. The Penal Code stipulates that one prosecutor must be present at any execution.

INTERNET VIDEO

The government released brief silent footage showing only the hangman placing the noose over Saddam's head. The illicit video shows, as well as the taunts, the former president drop through the trap and swing, broken-necked, on the rope.

U.S. forces had kept custody of Saddam since they captured him three years ago, partly over fears about his treatment by the Shi'ite Muslim majority he oppressed while in power and now the main force in Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government.

Officials, witnesses and journalists attending his trial over the past year were subjected to rigorous background and security checks before entering the court and U.S. troops handed Saddam over to Iraqi guards only at the last moment on Saturday.

Americans flew him by helicopter from the Camp Cropper jail at Baghdad airport to the former secret police base in the north of the capital where he was hanged after negotiations between Maliki and the U.S. ambassador that lasted late into the night.

The Americans screened an official delegation before escorting them to the execution site.

U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad urged Maliki to delay the dawn execution for two weeks, till after the long Eid al-Adha Muslim holiday, a senior Iraqi government official told Reuters. But he relented when Maliki insisted and provided an authorization also from Iraq's Kurdish president, the official said on Monday.

    Saddam hanging nearly halted over jeers: prosecutor, R, 2.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyid=2007-01-02T161545Z_01_MAC250766_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L1-RelatedNews-2

FACTBOX-Security developments in Iraq, Jan 2

Tue Jan 2, 2007 10:28 AM ET
(Reuters) - Following are security developments in Iraq as of 1500 GMT on Tuesday:

* indicates a new or updated entry

* FALLUJA - A U.S. Marine killed an Iraqi soldier during what the U.S. military described as an "altercation" at a security post in Falluja on Saturday. The Marine has been assigned to administrative duties and a criminal investigation is under way, a U.S. statement said.

BAQUBA - Gunmen shot dead Ali Majeed Salbokh, a member of the Diyala provincial council, along with three of his aides, 20 km (12 miles) east of Baquba on Monday, police said.

BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb exploded near a U.S. patrol, killing one soldier and wounding three, including an interpreter, southwest of Baghdad on Monday, the U.S. military said in a statement.

BAGHDAD - U.S. forces killed three insurgents and wounded one, and detained two other suspected insurgents, in a raid on an al Qaeda weapons dealer in Baghdad early on Tuesday, the U.S military said in a statement.

MADAEN - Gunmen forced a minibus to stop and kidnapped a family in the town of Madaen, 45 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, Interior Ministry sources said. It was not known exactly how many people were missing.

NAHRAWAN - Police found five bodies bearing signs of torture and bullet wounds in the town of Nahrawan, 30 km (20 miles) southeast of Baghdad, police said.

MOSUL - The hospital in Mosul received the bullet-riddled bodies of three brothers on Monday, hospital and morgue sources said.

    FACTBOX-Security developments in Iraq, Jan 2, R, 2.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyid=2007-01-02T152759Z_01_PAR232101_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L1-RelatedNews-6

FACTBOX-Military and civilian deaths in Iraq

Tue Jan 2, 2007 9:02 AM ET
reuters



(Reuters) - A roadside bomb exploded southwest of Baghdad on Monday, killing one soldier, the U.S military said in a statement.

Two U.S. soldiers were killed in an explosion in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad on Sunday, the U.S. military said.

Following are the latest figures for military deaths in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003:

U.S.-LED COALITION FORCES:

United States 3,003

Britain 127

Other nations 123

IRAQIS:

Military Between 4,900 and 6,375#

Civilians Between 52,139 and 57,707*

# = Think-tank estimates for military under Saddam Hussein killed during the 2003 war. No reliable official figures have been issued since new security forces were set up in late 2003.

* = From www.iraqbodycount.net (IBC), run by academics and peace activists, based on reports from at least two media sources. The IBC says on its Web site that the figure underestimates the true number of casualties.