History > 2007 > USA > War > Iraq (III)

"Seventeen times of trying to commit suicide,

I think it’s time to give up," Mr. Ross said.

"Lots of them were screaming out cries for help,

and nobody paid attention. But finally somebody has."

Photograph: Fred R. Conrad

The New York Times

Injured in Iraq, a Soldier Is Shattered at Home

NYT        5.4.2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/us/05VET.html

9 U.S. Troops Die

in Iraq Battle, Blasts

April 29, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:45 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BAGHDAD (AP) -- A suicide car bomb exploded Saturday in the Shiite holy city of Karbala as the streets were packed with people heading for evening prayers, killing at least 63 and wounding scores near some of the country's most sacred shrines. Separately, the U.S. military announced the deaths of nine American troops, including three killed Saturday in a single roadside bombing outside Baghdad.

With black smoke clogging the skies above Karbala, angry crowds hurled stones at police and later stormed the provincial governor's house, accusing authorities of failing to protect them from the unrelenting bombings usually blamed on Sunni insurgents. It was the second car bomb to strike the city's central area in two weeks.

Near the blast site, survivors frantically searched for missing relatives. Iraqi television showed one man carrying the charred body of a small girl above his head as he ran down the street while ambulances rushed to retrieve the wounded and firefighters sprayed water at fires in the wreckage, leaving pools of bloody water.

The Americans killed in Iraq included five who died in fighting Friday in Anbar province, three killed when a roadside bomb struck their patrol southeast of Baghdad and one killed in a separate roadside bombing south of the capital.

The deaths raised to 99 the number of members of the U.S. military who have died this month and at least 3,346 who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The blast took place about 7 p.m. in a crowded commercial area near the shrines of Imam Abbas and Imam Hussein, major Shiite saints.

Ghalib al-Daami, a provincial council member who oversees security matters, said the bomber detonated his payload about 200 yards from the Imam Abbas shrine, which with the others draws thousands of Shiite pilgrims from Iran and other countries.

That suggested the attack, which occurred two weeks after 47 people were killed and 224 were wounded in a car bombing in the same area on April 14, was aimed at killing as many Shiite worshippers as possible.

Salim Kazim, the head of the health department in Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad, said Sunday that 63 people were killed and 169 wounded. The figures were confirmed by Abdul-Al al-Yassiri, the head of Karbala's provincial council.

''I did not expect this explosion because I thought the place was well protected by the police,'' said Qassim Hassan, a clothing merchant who was injured by the blast. ''I demand a trial for the people in charge of the security in Karbala.''

Hassan, who spoke to a reporter from his hospital bed, said his brother and a cousin were still missing.

''I regret that I voted for those traitors who only care about their posts, not the people who voted for them,'' he said.

The U.S. military has warned that such bombings were intended to provoke retaliatory violence by Shiite militias, whose members have largely complied with political pressure to avoid confrontations with Americans during the U.S. troop buildup.

The radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr launched a strong attack earlier Saturday on President Bush, calling him the ''greatest evil'' for refusing to withdraw American troops from Iraq.

Al-Sadr's statement was read during a parliament session by his cousin, Liqaa al-Yassin, after Congress ordered U.S. troops to begin leaving Iraq by Oct. 1. Bush pledged to veto the measure and neither the House nor the Senate had enough votes to override him.

''Here are the Democrats calling you to withdraw or even set a timetable and you are not responding,'' al-Sadr's statement said. ''It is not only them who are calling for this but also Republicans, to whom you belong.''

''If you are ignoring your friends and partners, then it is no wonder that you ignore the international and Iraqi points of view,'' he added.

Al-Sadr led two armed uprisings against U.S. forces in 2004, and his Mahdi militia is believed responsible for much of Iraq's sectarian killing. The U.S. military says he has fled to Iran, although his followers insist he is hiding in Iraq.

Abdul-Al al-Yassiri, the head of the Karbala provincial council, said local authorities had raised fears that militants fleeing the Baghdad security crackdown were infiltrating their area.

''We have contacted the interior minister and asked them to supply us with equipment that can detect explosives,'' he said.

Ali Mohammed, 31, who sells prayer beads in the area, said he heard the blast and felt himself hurled into the air.

''The next thing I knew I opened my eyes in the hospital with my legs and chest burned,'' he said. ''This is a disaster. What is the guilt of the children and women killed today by this terrorist attack?''

Crowds stormed the provincial government offices and the governor's house, burning part of it along with three cars and scuffling with guards. Security forces detained several armed protesters, al-Daami said.

Saturday's bombing was the deadliest attack in Iraq since April 18, when 127 people were killed in a car bombing near the Sadriyah market in Baghdad -- one of four bombings that killed a total of 183 people in the bloodiest day since a U.S.-Iraq security operation began in the capital more than 10 weeks ago.

In all, at least 124 people were killed or found dead, including the bodies of 38 people killed execution-style -- apparent victims of the so-called sectarian death squads mostly run by Shiite militias.

In Baghdad, a mortar attack killed two people and wounded seven in the Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah, where the U.S. military recently announced it was building a three-mile long, 12-foot high concrete wall despite protests from residents and Sunni politicians that they were being isolated.

The U.S. military also said Saturday that a suicide truck bomber attacked the home of a city police chief the day before in the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Anbar province, killing nine Iraqi security forces and six civilians.

Police chief Hamid Ibrahim al-Numrawi and his family escaped injury after Iraqi forces opened fire on the truck before it reached the concrete barrier outside the home in Hit, 85 miles west of Baghdad.

9 U.S. Troops Die in Iraq Battle, Blasts, NYT, 29.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq.html

Rebuilt Iraq Projects Found Crumbling

April 29, 2007
By JAMES GLANZ
The New York Times

In a troubling sign for the American-financed rebuilding program in Iraq, inspectors for a federal oversight agency have found that in a sampling of eight projects that the United States had declared successes, seven were no longer operating as designed because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting and expensive equipment that lay idle.

The United States has previously admitted, sometimes under pressure from federal inspectors, that some of its reconstruction projects have been abandoned, delayed or poorly constructed. But this is the first time inspectors have found that projects officially declared a success — in some cases, as little as six months before the latest inspections — were no longer working properly.

The inspections ranged geographically from northern to southern Iraq and covered projects as varied as a maternity hospital, barracks for an Iraqi special forces unit and a power station for Baghdad International Airport.

At the airport, crucially important for the functioning of the country, inspectors found that while $11.8 million had been spent on new electrical generators, $8.6 million worth were no longer functioning.

At the maternity hospital, a rehabilitation project in the northern city of Erbil, an expensive incinerator for medical waste was padlocked — Iraqis at the hospital could not find the key when inspectors asked to see the equipment — and partly as a result, medical waste including syringes, used bandages and empty drug vials were clogging the sewage system and probably contaminating the water system.

The newly built water purification system was not functioning either.

Officials at the oversight agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, said they had made an effort to sample different regions and various types of projects, but that they were constrained from taking a true random sample in part because many projects were in areas too unsafe to visit. So, they said, the initial set of eight projects — which cost a total of about $150 million — cannot be seen as a true statistical measure of the thousands of projects in the roughly $30 billion American rebuilding program.

But the officials said the initial findings raised serious new concerns about the effort.

The reconstruction effort was originally designed as nearly equal to the military push to stabilize Iraq, allow the government to function and business to flourish, and promote good will toward the United States.

“These first inspections indicate that the concerns that we and others have had about the Iraqis sustaining our investments in these projects are valid,” Stuart W. Bowen Jr., who leads the office of the special inspector general, said in an interview on Friday.

The conclusions will be summarized in the latest quarterly report by Mr. Bowen’s office on Monday. Individual reports on each of the projects were released on Thursday and Friday.

Mr. Bowen said that because he suspected that completed projects were not being maintained, he had ordered his inspectors to undertake a wider program of returning to examine projects that had been completed for at least six months, a phase known as sustainment.

Exactly who is to blame for the poor record on sustainment for the first sample of eight projects was not laid out in the report, but the American reconstruction program has been repeatedly criticized for not including in its rebuilding budget enough of the costs for spare parts, training, stronger construction and other elements that would enable projects continue to function once they have been built.

The new reports provide some support for that position: a sophisticated system for distributing oxygen throughout the Erbil hospital had been ignored by medical staff members, who told inspectors that they distrusted the new equipment and had gone back to using tried-and-true oxygen tanks — which were stored unsafely throughout the building.

The Iraqis themselves appear to share responsibility for the latest problems, which cropped up after the United States turned the projects over to the Iraqi government. Still, the new findings show that the enormous American investment in the reconstruction program is at risk, Mr. Bowen said.

Besides the airport, hospital and special forces barracks, places where inspectors found serious problems included two projects at a military base near Nasiriya and one at a military recruiting center in Hilla — both cities in the south — and a police station in Mosul, a northern city. A second police station in Mosul was found to be in good condition.

The dates when the projects were completed and deemed successful ranged from six months to almost a year and a half before the latest inspections. But those inspections found numerous instances of power generators that no longer operated; sewage systems that had clogged and overflowed, damaging sections of buildings; electrical systems that had been jury-rigged or stripped of components; floors that had buckled; concrete that had crumbled; and expensive equipment that was simply not in use.

Curiously, most of the problems seemed unrelated to sabotage stemming from Iraq’s parlous security situation, but instead were the product of poor initial construction, petty looting, a lack of any maintenance and simple neglect.

A case in point was the $5.2 million project undertaken by the United States Army Corps of Engineers to build the special forces barracks in Baghdad. The project was completed in September 2005, but by the time inspectors visited last month, there were numerous problems caused by faulty plumbing throughout the buildings, and four large electrical generators, each costing $50,000, were no longer operating.

The problems with the generators were seemingly minor: missing batteries, a failure to maintain adequate oil levels in the engines, fuel lines that had been pilfered or broken. That kind of neglect is typical of rebuilding programs in developing countries when local nationals are not closely involved in planning efforts, said Rick Barton, co-director of the postconflict reconstruction project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research organization in Washington.

“What ultimately makes any project sustainable is local ownership from the beginning in designing the project, establishing the priorities,” Mr. Barton said. “If you don’t have those elements it’s an extension of colonialism and generally it’s resented.”

Mr. Barton, who has closely monitored reconstruction efforts in Iraq and other countries, said the American rebuilding program had too often created that resentment by imposing projects on Iraqis or relying solely on the advice of a local tribal chief or some “self-appointed representative” of local Iraqis.

The new findings come after years of insistence by American officials in Baghdad that too much attention has been paid to the failures in Iraq and not enough to the successes.

Brig. Gen. Michael Walsh, commander of the Gulf Region Division of the Army Corps, told a news conference in Baghdad late last month that with so much coverage of violence in Iraq “what you don’t see are the successes in the reconstruction program, how reconstruction is making a difference in the lives of everyday Iraqi people.”

And those declared successes are heavily promoted by the United States government. A 2006 news release by the Army Corps, titled “Erbil Maternity and Pediatric Hospital — not just bricks and mortar!” praises both the new water purification system and the incinerator. The incinerator, the release said, would “keep medical waste from entering into the solid waste and water systems.”

But when Mr. Bowen’s office presented the Army Corps with the finding that neither system was working at the struggling hospital and recommended a training program so that Iraqis could properly operate the equipment, General Walsh tersely disagreed with the recommendation in a letter appended to the report, which also noted that the building had suffered damage because workers used excess amounts of water to clean the floors.

The bureau within the United States Embassy in Baghdad that oversees reconstruction in Iraq was even more dismissive, disagreeing with all four of the inspector general’s recommendations, including those suggesting that the United States should lend advice on disposing of the waste and maintaining the floors.

“Recommendations such as how much water to use in cleaning floors or disposal of medical waste could be deemed as an intrusion on, or attempt to micromanage operations of an Iraqi entity that we have no controlling interest over,” wrote William Lynch, acting director of the embassy bureau, called the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office.

    Rebuilt Iraq Projects Found Crumbling, NYT, 29.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/world/middleeast/29reconstruct.html?hp

Uneasy Alliance

Is Taming One Insurgent Bastion

April 29, 2007
The New York Times
By KIRK SEMPLE

RAMADI, Iraq — Anbar Province, long the lawless heartland of the tenacious Sunni Arab resistance, is undergoing a surprising transformation. Violence is ebbing in many areas, shops and schools are reopening, police forces are growing and the insurgency appears to be in retreat.

“Many people are challenging the insurgents,” said the governor of Anbar, Maamoon S. Rahid, though he quickly added, “We know we haven’t eliminated the threat 100 percent.”

Many Sunni tribal leaders, once openly hostile to the American presence, have formed a united front with American and Iraqi government forces against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. With the tribal leaders’ encouragement, thousands of local residents have joined the police force. About 10,000 police officers are now in Anbar, up from several thousand a year ago. During the same period, the police force here in Ramadi, the provincial capital, has grown from fewer than 200 to about 4,500, American military officials say.

At the same time, American and Iraqi forces have been conducting sweeps of insurgent strongholds, particularly in and around Ramadi, leaving behind a network of police stations and military garrisons, a strategy that is also being used in Baghdad, Iraq’s capital, as part of its new security plan.

Yet for all the indications of a heartening turnaround in Anbar, the situation, as it appeared during more than a week spent with American troops in Ramadi and Falluja in early April, is at best uneasy and fragile.

Municipal services remain a wreck; local governments, while reviving, are still barely functioning; and years of fighting have damaged much of Ramadi.

The insurgency in Anbar — a mix of Islamic militants, former Baathists and recalcitrant tribesmen — still thrives among the province’s overwhelmingly Sunni population, killing American and Iraqi security forces and civilians alike. [This was underscored by three suicide car-bomb attacks in Ramadi on Monday and Tuesday, in which at least 15 people were killed and 47 were wounded, American officials said. Eight American service members — five marines and three soldiers — were killed in two attacks on Thursday and Friday in Anbar, the American military said.]

Furthermore, some American officials readily acknowledge that they have entered an uncertain marriage of convenience with the tribes, some of whom were themselves involved in the insurgency, to one extent or another. American officials are also negotiating with elements of the 1920 Revolution Brigades, a leading insurgent group in Anbar, to join their fight against Al Qaeda.

These sudden changes have raised questions about the ultimate loyalties of the United States’ new allies. “One day they’re laying I.E.D.’s, the next they’re police collecting a pay check,” said Lt. Thomas R. Mackesy, an adviser to an Iraqi Army unit in Juwayba, east of Ramadi, referring to improvised explosive devices.

And it remains unclear whether any of the gains in Anbar will transfer to other troubled areas of Iraq — like Baghdad, Diyala Province, Mosul and Kirkuk, where violence rages and the ethnic and sectarian landscape is far more complicated.

Still, the progress has inspired an optimism in the American command that, among some officials, borders on giddiness. It comes after years of fruitless efforts to drive a wedge between moderate resistance fighters and those, like Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, who seem beyond compromise.

“There are some people who would say we’ve won the war out here,” said Col. John. A. Koenig, a planning officer for the Marines who oversees governing and economic development issues in Anbar. “I’m cautiously optimistic as we’re going forward.”

A New Calm

For most of the past few years, the Government Center in downtown Ramadi, the seat of the provincial government, was under near-continual siege by insurgents, who reduced it to little more than a bullet-ridden bunker of broken concrete, sandbags and trapped marines. Entering meant sprinting from an armored vehicle to the front door of the building to evade snipers’ bullets.

Now, however, the compound and nearby buildings are being renovated to create offices for the provincial administration, council and governor. Hotels are being built next door for the waves of visitors the government expects once it is back in business.

On the roof of the main building, Capt. Jason Arthaud, commander of Company B, First Battalion, Sixth Marines, said the building had taken no sniper fire since November. “Just hours of peace and quiet,” he deadpanned. “And boredom.”

Violence has fallen swiftly throughout Ramadi and its sprawling rural environs, residents and American and Iraqi officials said. Last summer, the American military recorded as many as 25 violent acts a day in the Ramadi region, ranging from shootings and kidnappings to roadside bombs and suicide attacks. In the past several weeks, the average has dropped to four acts of violence a day, American military officials said.

On a recent morning, American and Iraqi troops, accompanied by several police officers, went on a foot patrol through a market in the Malaab neighborhood of Ramadi. Only a couple of months ago, American and Iraqi forces would enter the area only in armored vehicles. People stopped and stared. The sight of police and military forces in the area, particularly on foot, was still novel.

The new calm is eerie and unsettling, particularly for anyone who knew the city even several months ago.

“The complete change from night to day gives me pause,” said Capt. Brice Cooper, 26, executive officer of Company B, First Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment, First Infantry Division, which has been stationed in the city and its outskirts since last summer. “A month and a half ago we were getting shot up. Now we’re doing civil affairs work.”

A Moderate Front

The turnabout began last September, when a federation of tribes in the Ramadi area came together as the Anbar Salvation Council to oppose the fundamentalist militants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

Among the council’s founders were members of the Abu Ali Jassem tribe, based in a rural area of northern Ramadi. The tribe’s leader, Sheik Tahir Sabbar Badawie, said in a recent interview that members of his tribe had fought in the insurgency that kept the Americans pinned down on their bases in Anbar for most of the last four years.

“If your country was occupied by Iraq, would you fight?” he asked. “Enough said.”

But while the anti-American sheiks in Anbar and Al Qaeda both opposed the Americans, their goals were different. The sheiks were part of a relatively moderate front that sought to drive the Americans out of Iraq; some were also fighting to restore Sunni Arab power. But Al Qaeda wanted to go even further and impose a fundamentalist Islamic state in Anbar, a plan that many of the sheiks did not share.

Al Qaeda’s fighters began to use killing, intimidation and financial coercion to divide the tribes and win support for their agenda. They killed about 210 people in the Abu Ali Jassem tribe alone and kidnapped others, demanding ransoms as high as $65,000 per person, Sheik Badawie said.

For all the sheiks’ hostility toward the Americans, they realized that they had a bigger enemy, or at least one that needed to be fought first, as a matter of survival.

The council sought financial and military support from the Iraqi and American governments. In return the sheiks volunteered hundreds of tribesmen for duty as police officers and agreed to allow the construction of joint American-Iraqi police and military outposts throughout their tribal territories.

A similar dynamic is playing out elsewhere in Anbar, a desert region the size of New York State that stretches west of Baghdad to the Syrian and Jordanian borders. Tribal cooperation with the American and Iraqi commands has led to expanded police forces in the cities of Husayba, Hit, Rutba, Baghdadi and Falluja, officials say.

With the help of the Anbar sheiks, the military equation immediately became simpler for the Americans in Ramadi. The number of enemies they faced suddenly diminished, American and Iraqi officials said. They were able to move more freely through large areas. With the addition of the tribal recruits, the Americans had enough troops to build and operate garrisons in areas they cleared, many of which had never seen any government security presence before.

And the Americans were now fighting alongside people with a deep knowledge of the local population and terrain, and with a sense of duty, vengeance and righteousness.

“We know this area, we know the best way to talk to the people and get information from them,” said Capt. Hussein Abd Nusaif, a police commander in a neighborhood in western Ramadi, who carries a Kalashnikov with an Al Capone-style “snail drum” magazine. “We are not afraid of Al Qaeda. We will fight them anywhere and anytime.”

Beginning last summer and continuing through March, the American-led joint forces pressed into the city, block by block, and swept the farmlands on its outskirts. In many places the troops met fierce resistance. Scores of American and Iraqi security troops were killed or wounded.

The Ramadi region is essentially a police state now, with some 6,000 American troops, 4,000 Iraqi soldiers and 4,500 Iraqi police officers, including an auxiliary police force of about 2,000, all local tribesmen, known as the Provincial Security Force. The security forces are garrisoned in more than 65 police stations, military bases and joint American-Iraqi combat outposts, up from no more than 10 a year ago. The population of the city is officially about 400,000, though the current number appears to be much lower.

To help control the flow of traffic and forestall attacks, the American military has installed an elaborate system of barricades and checkpoints. In some of the enclaves created by this system, which American commanders frequently call “gated communities,” no vehicles except bicycles and pushcarts are allowed for fear of car bombs.

American commanders see the progress in Anbar as a bellwether for the rest of country. “One of the things I worry about in Baghdad is we won’t have the time to do the same kind of thing,” Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, commander of day-to-day war operations in Iraq, said in an interview here.

Yet the fact that Anbar is almost entirely Sunni and not riven by the same sectarian feuds as other violent places, like Baghdad and Diyala Province, has helped to establish order. Elsewhere, security forces are largely Shiite and are perceived by many Sunnis as part of the problem. In Anbar, however, the new police force reflects the homogeneous face of the province and appears to enjoy the support of the people.

A Growing Police Force

Military commanders say they cannot completely account for the whereabouts of the insurgency. They say they believe that many guerrillas have been killed, while others have gone underground, laid down their arms or migrated to other parts of Anbar, particularly the corridor between Ramadi and Falluja, the town of Karma north of Falluja and the sprawling rural zones around Falluja, including Zaidon and Amariyat al-Falluja on the banks of the Euphrates River. American forces come under attack in these areas every day.

Still other guerrillas, the commanders acknowledge, have joined the police force, sneaking through a vetting procedure that is set up to catch only known suspects. Many insurgents “are fighting for a different side now,” said Brig. Gen. Mark Gurganus, commander of ground forces in Anbar. “I think that’s where the majority have gone.”

But American commanders say they are not particularly worried about infiltrators among the new recruits. Many of the former insurgents now in the police, they say, were probably low-level operatives who were mainly in it for the money and did relatively menial tasks, like planting roadside bombs.

The speed of the buildup has led to other problems. Hiring has outpaced the building of police academies, meaning that many new officers have been deployed with little or no training. Without enough uniforms, many new officers patrol in civilian clothes, some with their heads wrapped in scarves or covered in balaclavas to conceal their identities. They look no different than the insurgents shown in mujahedeen videos.

Commanders seem to regard these issues as a necessary cost of quickly building a police force in a political environment that is, in the words of Colonel Koenig, “sort of like looking through smoke.” The police force, they say, has been the most critical component of the new security plan in Anbar.

Yet, oversight of the police forces by American forces and the central Iraqi government is weak, leaving open the possibility that some local leaders are using newly armed tribal members as their personal death squads to settle old scores.

Several American officers who work with the Iraqi police said a lot of police work was conducted out of their view, particularly at night. “It’s like the Mafia,” one American soldier in Juwayba said.

General Odierno said, “We have to watch them very closely to make sure we’re not forming militias.”

But there is a new sense of commitment by the police, American and Iraqi officials say, in part because they are patrolling their own neighborhoods. Many were motivated to join after they or their communities were attacked by Al Qaeda, and their successes have made them an even greater target of insurgent car bombs and suicide attacks.

Abd Muhammad Khalaf, 28, a policeman in the Jazeera district on Ramadi’s northern edge, is typical. He joined the police after Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia killed two of his brothers, he said. “I will die when God wills it,” he said. “But before I die, I will support my friends and kill some terrorists.”

The Tasks Ahead

Some tribal leaders now working with the Americans say they harbor deep resentment toward the Shiite-led administration of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, accusing it of pursuing a sectarian agenda. Yet they also say they are invested in the democratic process now.

After boycotting the national elections in 2005, many are now planning to participate in the next round of provincial elections, which have yet to be scheduled, as a way to build on the political and military gains they have made in recent months.

“Since I was a little boy, I have seen nothing but warfare — against the Kurds, Iranians, Kuwait, the Americans,” Sheik Badawie said. “We are tired of war. We are going to fight through the ballot box.”

Already, tribal leaders are participating in local councils that have been formed recently throughout the Ramadi area under the guidance of the American military.

Iraqi and American officials say the sheiks’ embrace of representative government reflects the new realities of power in Anbar. “Out here it’s been, ‘Who can defend his people?’ ” said Brig. Gen. John R. Allen, deputy commanding general of coalition forces in Anbar. “After the war it’s, ‘Who was able to reconstruct?’ ”

Indeed, American and Iraqi officials say that to hold on to the security gains and the public’s support, they must provide services to residents in areas they have tamed.

But successful development, they argue, will depend on closing the divide between the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad, which has long ignored the province, and the local leadership in Anbar, which has long tried to remain independent from the capital. If that fails, they say, the Iraqi and American governments may have helped to organize and arm a potent enemy.

    Uneasy Alliance Is Taming One Insurgent Bastion, NYT, 29.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/world/middleeast/29ramadi.html?hp

Army Officer Criticizes Generals on Iraq

April 27, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:46 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BAGHDAD (AP) -- An active duty U.S. Army officer warns the United States faces the prospect of defeat in Iraq, blaming American generals for failing to prepare their forces for an insurgency and misleading Congress about the situation here.

''For reasons that are not yet clear, America's general officer corps underestimated the strength of the enemy, overestimated the capabilities of Iraq's government and security forces, and failed to provide Congress with an accurate assessment of security conditions in Iraq,'' Lt. Col. Paul Yingling said in the article published Friday in the Armed Forces Journal.

Several retired generals have made similar comments, but such public criticism from an active duty officer is rare. It suggests that misgivings about the conduct of the Iraq war are widespread in the officer corps at a critical time in the troubled U.S. military mission here.

U.S. spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said Yingling was expressing ''his personal opinions in a professional journal'' and the military was focused on ''executing the mission at hand.''

Yingling served as deputy commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. He has served two tours in Iraq, another in Bosnia and a fourth in Iraq's Operation Desert Storm in 1991. He attended the Army's elite School for Advanced Military Studies and has written for one of the Army's top professional journals, Military Review.

In the article published Friday, Yingling wrote that the generals not only went into Iraq preparing for a high-technology conventional war with too few soldiers, they also had no coherent plan for postwar stabilization. The generals also failed to tell the American public about the intensity of the insurgency their forces were facing, Yingling wrote.

''The intellectual and moral failures common to America's general officer corps in Vietnam and Iraq constitute a crisis in American generalship,'' he said.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said the Iraqi government plans to take full control of security from the American-led forces before the end of the year. In February, coalition forces launched the Baghdad security plan, which calls for 28,000 additional American troops, as well as thousands of Iraqi soldiers, most of whom will be deployed in violent Baghdad.

Yingling appeared to welcome that change, but suggested it is too little too late.

''For most of the war American forces in Iraq have concentrated on large forward operating bases, isolated from the Iraqi people and focused on capturing or killing insurgents,'' he wrote. ''In 2007, Iraq's grave and deteriorating condition offers diminishing hope for an American victory and portends an even wider and more destructive regional war.''

During the past decade, U.S. forces have done little to prepare for the kind of brutal, adaptive insurgencies they are now fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, Yingling said.

''Given the lack of troop strength, not even the most brilliant general could have devised the ways necessary to stabilize post-Saddam Iraq,'' he wrote.

Yingling said he believes that no single civilian or military leader has caused what he regards as the current failure in Iraq.

He said Congress must reform and better monitor the military officer promotion system it has to choose generals. The Senate should use its confirmation powers to hold accountable officers who fail to achieve U.S. aims, he said.

''We still have time to select as our generals those who possess the intelligence to visualize future conflicts and the moral courage to advise civilian policy makers on the preparations needed for our security,'' he wrote.

The Armed Forces Journal and its Web site are published by Army Times Publishing Co., a part of Gannett Company, Inc., and the world's largest publisher of professional military and defense periodicals. The company's publications serve all branches of the U.S. military, the global defense community and the U.S. federal government.

------

On the Net:

The Armed Forces Journal: http://www.armedforcesjournal.com.

    Army Officer Criticizes Generals on Iraq, NYT, 27.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq-Officers-Assessment.html

Ex-C.I.A. Chief, in Book,

Assails Cheney on Iraq

April 27, 2007
The New York Times
By SCOTT SHANE and MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON, April 26 — George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, has lashed out against Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials in a new book, saying they pushed the country to war in Iraq without ever conducting a “serious debate” about whether Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to the United States.

The 549-page book, “At the Center of the Storm,” is to be published by HarperCollins on Monday. By turns accusatory, defensive, and modestly self-critical, it is the first detailed account by a member of the president’s inner circle of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the decision to invade Iraq and the failure to find the unconventional weapons that were a major justification for the war.

“There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat,” Mr. Tenet writes in a devastating judgment that is likely to be debated for many years. Nor, he adds, “was there ever a significant discussion” about the possibility of containing Iraq without an invasion.

Mr. Tenet admits that he made his famous “slam dunk” remark about the evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But he argues that the quote was taken out of context and that it had little impact on President Bush’s decision to go to war. He also makes clear his bitter view that the administration made him a scapegoat for the Iraq war.

A copy of the book was purchased at retail price in advance of publication by a reporter for The New York Times. Mr. Tenet described with sarcasm watching an episode of “Meet the Press” last September in which Mr. Cheney twice referred to Mr. Tenet’s “slam dunk” remark as the basis for the decision to go to war.

“I remember watching and thinking, ‘As if you needed me to say ‘slam dunk’ to convince you to go to war with Iraq,’ ” Mr. Tenet writes.

As violence in Iraq spiraled beginning in late 2003, Mr. Tenet writes, “rather than acknowledge responsibility, the administration’s message was: Don’t blame us. George Tenet and the C.I.A. got us into this mess.”

Mr. Tenet takes blame for the flawed 2002 National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq’s weapons programs, calling the episode “one of the lowest moments of my seven-year tenure.” He expresses regret that the document was not more nuanced, but says there was no doubt in his mind at the time that Saddam Hussein possessed unconventional weapons. “In retrospect, we got it wrong partly because the truth was so implausible,” he writes.

Despite such sweeping indictments, Mr. Bush, who in 2004 awarded Mr. Tenet a Presidential Medal of Freedom, is portrayed personally in a largely positive light, with particular praise for the his leadership after the 2001 attacks. “He was absolutely in charge, determined, and directed,” Mr. Tenet writes of the president, whom he describes as a blunt-spoken kindred spirit.

But Mr. Tenet largely endorses the view of administration critics that Mr. Cheney and a handful of Pentagon officials, including Paul D. Wolfowitz and Douglas J. Feith, were focused on Iraq as a threat in late 2001 and 2002 even as Mr. Tenet and the C.I.A. concentrated mostly on Al Qaeda.

Mr. Tenet describes helping to kill a planned speech by Mr. Cheney on the eve of the invasion because its claims of links between Al Qaeda and Iraq went “way beyond what the intelligence shows.”

“Mr. President, we cannot support the speech and it should not be given,” Mr. Tenet wrote that he told Mr. Bush. Mr. Cheney never delivered the remarks.

Mr. Tenet hints at some score-settling in the book. He describes in particular the extraordinary tension between him and Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser, and her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, in internal debate over how the president came to say erroneously in his 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa.

He describes an episode in 2003, shortly after he issued a statement taking partial responsibility for that error. He said he was invited over for a Sunday afternoon, back-patio lemonade by Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state. Mr. Powell described what Mr. Tenet called “a lively debate” on Air Force One a few days before about whether the White House should continue to support Mr. Tenet as C.I.A. director.

“In the end, the president said yes, and said so publicly,” Mr. Tenet wrote. “But Colin let me know that other officials, particularly the vice president, had quite another view.”

He writes that the controversy over who was to blame for the State of the Union error was the beginning of the end of his tenure. After the finger-pointing between the White House and the C.I.A., he wrote, “My relationship with the administration was forever changed.”

Mr. Tenet also says in the book that he had been “not at all sure I wanted to accept” the Medal of Freedom. He agreed after he saw that the citation “was all about the C.I.A.’s work against terrorism, not Iraq.”

He also expresses skepticism about whether the increase in troops in Iraq will prove successful. “It may have worked more than three years ago,” he wrote. “My fear is that sectarian violence in Iraq has taken on a life of its own and that U.S. forces are becoming more and more irrelevant to the management of that violence.”

Mr. Tenet says he decided to write the memoir in part because the infamous “slam dunk” episode had come to define his tenure at C.I.A.

He gives a detailed account of the episode, which occurred during an Oval Office meeting in December 2002 when the administration was preparing to make public its case for war against Iraq.

During the meeting, the deputy C.I.A. director, John McLaughlin, unveiled a draft of a proposed public presentation that left the group unimpressed. Mr. Tenet recalls that Mr. Bush suggested that they could “add punch” by bringing in lawyers trained to argue cases before a jury.

“I told the president that strengthening the public presentation was a ‘slam dunk,’ a phrase that was later taken completely out of context,” Mr. Tenet writes. “If I had simply said, ‘I’m sure we can do better,’ I wouldn’t be writing this chapter — or maybe even this book.”

Mr. Tenet has spoken rarely in public, and never so caustically, since stepping down in July 2004.

Asked about Mr. Tenet’s assertions, a White House spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe, defended the prewar deliberations on Thursday. “The president made the decision to remove Saddam Hussein for a number of reasons, mainly the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq and Saddam Hussein’s own actions, and only after a thorough and lengthy assessment of all available information as well as Congressional authorization,” the spokesman said.

The book recounts C.I.A. efforts to fight Al Qaeda in the years before the Sept. 11 attacks, and Mr. Tenet’s early warnings about Osama bin Laden. He contends that the urgent appeals of the C.I.A. on terrorism received a lukewarm reception at the Bush White House through most of 2001.

“The bureaucracy moved slowly,” and only after the Sept. 11 attacks was the C.I.A. given the counterterrorism powers it had requested earlier in the year.

Mr. Tenet confesses to “a black, black time” two months after the 2001 attacks when, sitting in front of his house in his favorite Adirondack chair, he “just lost it.”

“I thought about all the people who had died and what we had been through in the months since,” he writes. “What am I doing here? Why me?” Mr. Tenet gives a vigorous defense of the C.I.A.’s program to hold captured Qaeda members in secret overseas jails and to question them with harsh techniques, which he does not explicitly describe.

Mr. Tenet expresses puzzlement that, since 2001, Al Qaeda has not sent “suicide bombers to cause chaos in a half-dozen American shopping malls on any given day.”

“I do know one thing in my gut,” he writes. “Al Qaeda is here and waiting.”

David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington, and Julie Bosman from New York.

    Ex-C.I.A. Chief, in Book, Assails Cheney on Iraq, NYT, 27.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/washington/27intel.html?hp

U.S. Commander Says

Fall Pullback in Iraq

Would Lead to More Sectarian Killings

April 27, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID S. CLOUD and MICHAEL R. GORDON

WASHINGTON, April 26 — The top military commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, warned Thursday that an American troop pullback this fall would lead to an escalation in sectarian killings and worsening violence.

“My sense is that there would be an increase in sectarian violence, a resumption of sectarian violence, were the presence of our forces and Iraqi forces at that time to be reduced,” General Petraeus said at a Pentagon news conference.

His comments came just hours before the Senate approved a plan calling for beginning troop reductions in October at the latest, a measure that President Bush has pledged to veto. The House passed the plan on Wednesday.

The administration has put forward General Petraeus, who took up his command in January and was a principal architect of the new American military approach in Iraq, at the peak of the clash between Congress and the president over Iraq, in part because he is highly regarded by many in Congress.

Although General Petraeus did not address the political debate over a withdrawal deadline in his briefing or in a later interview, he said there would be risks to beginning a troop pullout before the end of the year.

In his comments on Thursday, as well as in private briefings to lawmakers a day earlier, according to one lawmaker who was involved, he talked about numerous obstacles to stabilizing the country, including evidence of new assistance going to Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia from outside Iraq and what he called “exceedingly unhelpful activities” by Iranian-backed Shiite militants.

American forces, he said, found evidence of this in a 22-page document on a computer seized during a raid last month that outlined details of a Jan. 20 attack on the provincial headquarters in Karbala in which five American soldiers were abducted and killed.

General Petraeus also said that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq lacked enough power to single-handedly push through measures sought by the United States that were aimed at easing tensions between Shiite and Sunni Arabs. In order to have any hope of results, the general said, pressure would be needed on factional leaders in the government and Parliament.

Though some Democrats in Congress have insisted in recent days that Iraq had grown so unstable that an American pullback would not greatly worsen the situation, General Petraeus disagreed.

“It can get much, much worse,” he said. “Right now it’s a good bit better, but again I am not trying in any way, shape or form to indicate that this is a satisfactory situation whatsoever.”

American officials, along with moderate Iraqi politicians, have said that the key to peace in Iraq and ultimately to an American withdrawal is power-sharing between Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds. They are pressing Mr. Maliki and the Iraqi Parliament to remain in session this summer until the passage of legislation on sharing oil revenues, easing the purges of former Baath Party members from government positions and setting a date for provincial elections.

General Petraeus said he considered passage of the oil law, which would distribute revenues from oil production among Iraq’s regions, a priority among the so-called benchmark items that the Americans would like to see become law.

“The hydrocarbon law is of enormous importance, and I think it is reasonably doable as well,” General Petraeus said in the interview.

Another law that has been bogged down in the Baghdad Parliament would rewrite rules on de-Baathification, the policy that makes it hard for former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, mostly Sunnis, to play roles in the government.

General Petraeus said he and the American ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker, intended to stick by a vow to offer the White House and the Pentagon an assessment of the progress of the new strategy by early September. And he signaled that he hoped for political progress in Iraq, not just military improvements.

“We’ll have seen whether in fact our efforts in these areas have helped produce the kind of progress that they are designed in fact to produce,” he said. “One would certainly hope that the Iraqi legislators would match that with their own hard work. That’s our expectation.”

On the security issues, he cited progress in fielding more Iraqi forces, but called it a “work in progress.”

He said that sectarian killings had declined two-thirds from their level in January, in part because of construction of walls around some neighborhoods that had allowed security forces to maintain control of areas as they were cleared.

But he conceded that the overall violence had not subsided, and he warned that large-scale attacks using car bombs against markets and other locations filled with civilians could still occur and set off more Sunni and Shiite revenge killings.

Also worrisome, he said, was the continued evidence that Iran was providing support to Shiite militants.

Citing the computer document American troops seized in the Karbala raid last month, he said that while there was no direct evidence that Iranians were involved specifically in the killing of the five American soldiers there, the document appeared to be a record of attacks by a militant cell that it intended to hand over to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

“There are numerous documents which detailed a number of different attacks on coalition forces, and our sense is that these records were kept so they could be handed in to whoever it is who is financing them,” General Petraeus said.

    U.S. Commander Says Fall Pullback in Iraq Would Lead to More Sectarian Killings, NYT, 27.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/washington/27military.html?hp

Base Mourns 9 Soldiers Killed in Iraq

April 25, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:44 a.m. ET
The New York Times

FORT BRAGG, N.C. (AP) -- There was shock and dismay at the home base of the 82nd Airborne Division, as people mourned the deadliest day of combat in the division's history since the Vietnam War.

Nine paratroopers died and 20 others were injured Monday when suicide bombers blew up a large dump truck near a patrol base, according to a senior Pentagon official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the details of the attack had not been released.

The deaths marked the division's largest one-day combat loss since June 1969, when 12 paratroopers were ambushed and killed in Vietnam, division spokesman Maj. Tom Earnhardt said Tuesday.

Sgt. 1st Class Ricardo Pryor, 36, a logistics specialist for the brigade who has served in Iraq and Afghanistan, said some soldiers remaining at Fort Bragg were stunned by the loss of life.

''I think they're cowards for doing what they're doing,'' said Pryor. ''These guys can't fight us head on, so they use tactics like that. But we will prevail.''

The dead were members of the 5th Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 82nd and had been sent to Iraq in August. A civilian interpreter was also wounded.

Of the wounded, 15 suffered superficial injuries and returned to duty. Five others were taken to a military hospital, but none has life-threatening injuries, Earnhardt said.

The Army was still notifying victims' families on Tuesday, and the military had not publicly identified those killed.

''Typically when you're in our own patrol base you don't expect the enemy to come in,'' said Kara Honbarger, whose husband is the chaplain for the 73rd Cavalry Regiment, which the nine killed paratroopers belonged to. ''I'd say it's cowardly.''

An insurgent group that includes al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack, according to a statement posted Tuesday on the Internet.

The attack was the deadliest for American ground forces in Iraq since Dec. 1, 2005, when a roadside bomb killed 10 Marines and wounded 11 in an abandoned building near Fallujah.

Since the deployment began, the brigade has lost 37 soldiers, including 20 from the 73rd Cavalry, Earnhardt said.

The 82nd Airborne is one of the nation's most celebrated military units, having played roles in many of the Army's biggest operations.

Its paratroopers were nicknamed the ''All-Americans'' in World War II, when they jumped into Italy, flew on gliders into Normandy and parachuted into Holland. In 1989, soldiers parachuted into Panama to help oust dictator Manuel Noriega.

The paratroopers' unit deployed in August to Iraq.

The deaths raised to 85 the number of U.S. service members who have died in Iraq in April, making it the deadliest month for American troops since December, when 112 died.

    Base Mourns 9 Soldiers Killed in Iraq, NYT, 25.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Iraq-Paratrooper-Deaths.html

U.S. wall

seen worsening division of Baghdad

Wed Apr 25, 2007
7:38AM EDT
Reuters
By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent - Analysis

BEIRUT (Reuters) - A U.S. military project to wall off a mainly Sunni Arab enclave in Baghdad evokes images of Israel's West Bank barrier for many Iraqis who believe the plan will widen sectarian rifts tearing their capital asunder.

Physically sealing Adhamiya and other troubled areas may have a fleeting impact on the level of bloodshed, analysts said. But it will further fray the social fabric of a city that has ripped very roughly into a Shi'ite east and Sunni west.

"All of this is trying to find solutions to violence short of what is actually required, which is to find a political compromise between all the groups," said Joost Hiltermann, a senior International Crisis Group analyst in Amman.

"I know the Americans are trying to suppress violence in order to bring people to the table, but I see no real effort to bring people to the table."

U.S. soldiers began erecting the 5-km (3-mile) barrier of 3.5-metre (12-foot) high concrete blocks around Adhamiya, hemmed in on three sides by Shi'ite districts, on April 10. Their plan is to create at least five "gated communities" in Baghdad.

Local protests and a political outcry prompted Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Sunday to order the scheme halted, but U.S. officials have defended it and its fate is unclear.

"I said that I fear this wall might have repercussions which remind us of other walls, which we reject," Maliki said.

Sunni Arabs in particular find a sinister parallel with Israel's network of walls, fences and checkpoints in the West Bank. These help protect Israelis from suicide bombers, but also slice up Palestinian land and severely disrupt movement.

"Whether the Americans like it or not, Iraqis think that what they are doing in Iraq is what the Israelis are doing in the West Bank," said Dubai-based security analyst Mustafa Alani.

"The Americans say the barriers are moveable and temporary, but they will establish a sort of de facto separation within the capital, with an impact on the whole country."

POLITICAL BACKLASH

U.S. officials say the aim is to protect neighborhoods under a security drive regarded as Washington's final bid to avert all-out war between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs.

"The intention is not to segregate communities," the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, said on Monday. "In some areas where there are clear faultlines it seems to us that a line of barriers makes good security sense."

The U.S. military may reckon the walls will help it get more of a grip on rebels within neighborhoods like Adhamiya, as well as keeping out vengeful car bombers and gunmen from elsewhere.

"The Americans have no clear strategy in Iraq," said Sunni politician Hussein al-Falluji. "Now they are trying to find a temporary solution even if it is at the expense of the Iraqis."

Some Shi'ite leaders were just as hostile.

"After the occupation forces failed to build psychological barriers among the Iraqi people, they start to put up real barriers," declared Nassar al-Rubaie, head of the parliamentary bloc loyal to radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Work on the Adhamiya barrier began well after the start in mid-February of the latest U.S. security plan, which also involves a "surge" of around 30,000 extra American troops.

Too little, too late, said London-based defense analyst Paul Beaver. "If you don't have sufficient troops, you have to take strange measures. And the Americans don't have sufficient troops. The Iraqi army and police are ineffective."

STILL VULNERABLE

Walls may obstruct car bombers, but civilians in protected areas will remain exposed to the threat of mortar fire or individual suicide attackers.

Sunni Arabs in Baghdad, proud of their heritage and their capital's ancient glory, are quick to suspect ill intent from the Americans and from Maliki's Shi'ite-dominated government.

"Many of them always saw themselves as Iraqis first and then as Sunnis, but secular," said Hiltermann. "To cast them now as Sunnis and confine them to a neighborhood is the ultimate insult. They see it as Shi'ites trying to exclude them."

One Sunni woman in Adhamiya, who would not give her name, said the wall was not needed. "They want to strangle us and create sectarian strife among this Muslim population," she said.

Such conflict is already a grim Iraqi reality. It was partly provoked by al Qaeda-linked Sunni Islamist insurgents whose attacks on Shi'ites now often draw swift militia retaliation.

"This Iraqi government is not capable, and probably not willing, to effect the kind of reconciliation that would bring about a new national compact," Hiltermann said.

(Additional reporting by Waleed Ibrahim and Aseel Kami in Baghdad)

    U.S. wall seen worsening division of Baghdad, R, 25.4.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL2550509320070425

Bush and Cheney

Chide Democrats on Iraq Deadline

April 25, 2007
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE and JEFF ZELENY

WASHINGTON, April 24 — President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney aggressively challenged the motives of Congressional Democrats on Tuesday, as the House and Senate prepared to consider a war spending bill that would order troops to be withdrawn from Iraq beginning later this year.

In separate appearances that served as a prelude to an inevitable veto showdown, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney accused Democrats of political opportunism in forging ahead with a $124 billion measure that sets a timetable for leaving Iraq.

“Instead of fashioning a bill I could sign, the Democratic leaders chose to further delay funding our troops, and they chose to make a political statement,” Mr. Bush said Tuesday morning before leaving for New York. “That’s their right. But it is wrong for our troops and it’s wrong for our country.”

Mr. Cheney was even tougher as he spoke to reporters after a private weekly lunch for Republican senators. He lashed out at Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, who delivered stinging comments of his own on Monday, portraying Mr. Bush as being in denial about the war and saying Mr. Cheney had tarnished his own office.

“What’s most troubling about Senator Reid’s comments yesterday is his defeatism,” said Mr. Cheney. “And the timetable legislation that he is now pursuing would guarantee defeat. Maybe it is a political calculation.”

Democrats, bolstered by what they see as strong public sentiment for the administration to wind down the war, were confident they could win approval of the measure in the House and in the Senate on Thursday. While acknowledging that Mr. Bush would send the bill back, they said they were determined to force him to formally reject legislation that provides more money for the military than sought by the White House, but puts conditions on its use.

“For the first time, the president will have to face up, will have to be accountable for this war in Iraq,” the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said. “And he doesn’t want to face that reality.”

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq, is scheduled to visit Capitol Hill on Wednesday to ask that lawmakers allow more time for the troop increase initiated by the administration to work. Members of the House are set to hear from him in a closed briefing on Wednesday afternoon, just hours before the spending measure is to reach the floor. He is then scheduled to brief senators.

Democrats were skeptical that he would change many minds. “He’s the commander,” said Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, chairman of the Armed Services Committee. “We always know that commanders are optimistic about their policies.”

General Petraeus’s briefing will come in a week when war-related developments are not running in the administration’s favor. Nine American soldiers were killed in Iraq on Monday and 20 others were wounded. And members of the family of Cpl. Pat Tillman, the former professional football player and Army Ranger accidentally killed by other American soldiers in Afghanistan in 2004, appeared at an emotional House hearing Tuesday and accused the Pentagon and administration of misrepresenting the circumstances of his death.

Even as Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney repeated their claim that a deadline for beginning a troop withdrawal would cede Iraq to America’s enemies, it has quietly been setting targets of its own for the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to show progress on long-delayed political accommodations.

In a telephone interview from Baghdad, the new American ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker, said President Bush and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates had bluntly told Mr. Maliki that failure to show results would undermine the administration’s efforts to buy him more time.

“There is Iraqi time and American time,” said Mr. Crocker. “And American time is running away from us, while Iraqi time is running at a slower place.”

Under the legislation before Congress, the United States would establish benchmarks for the Iraqi government to meet to show progress in securing the country. If the president determines the Iraqis are complying, he would be directed to begin removing troops by Oct. 1, with a goal of having most combat forces out within six months. If the president concludes the Iraqis are not making progress on the benchmarks, the pullout would begin earlier, by July.

The House narrowly approved its version of the spending measure last month when it required a full withdrawal by fall of 2008 to mollify antiwar Democrats. Several House Democrats said they would support the latest version of the legislation, even though the withdrawal date is now in the form of a goal.

“It is the best we can do under the circumstances,” said Representative Hank Johnson, a first-term Democrat from Georgia.

While Republicans have argued strongly against the Democratic-sponsored Iraq spending plan, they have put forth little resistance to the actual legislation, saying they are simply waiting for the president’s veto so lawmakers can try again to come up with a war spending bill.

Instead, Republicans have turned their fire on Mr. Reid, who last week declared “this war is lost.”

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, took his turn on Tuesday, saying such comments damage the morale of the troops. “We should not be pulling the rug out from under them and declaring their whole effort lost before it’s even completed,” he said.

And the Republican National Committee aired radio ads in Nevada, featuring a former Army captain criticizing Mr. Reid’s remarks.

Discussing the Democratic approach on “The Charlie Rose Show” on PBS taped Tuesday, Mr. Bush was asked what evidence he had that a hard withdrawal date would have a negative impact in Iraq. “Just logic,” Mr. Bush replied. “I mean, you say we start moving troops out. Don’t you think an enemy is going to wait and adjust based upon an announced timetable of withdrawal?”

In his criticism of Mr. Reid, Mr. Cheney noted that the Democratic leader had said the administration’s troop increase ran counter to the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group.

The study group said that a troop increase might be advisable if commanders thought it would be useful. But Mr. Cheney failed to mention that it also recommended a withdrawal of combat units by the end of the first quarter of 2008, about the same time envisioned in the legislation.

Mr. Reid fired back directly at Mr. Cheney on Tuesday, appearing at the same microphones just moments after the vice president.

“The president sends out his attack dog often,” said Mr. Reid. “That’s also known as Dick Cheney.”

Defending the legislation up for a vote this week, he said, “We believe the troops should get every penny they need and we have put our money where our mouth is with supplemental appropriations, but we believe there must be a change of direction in the war in Iraq.”

Mr. Reid said he was not going to engage in a tit-for-tat with the vice president. “I’m not going to get into a name-calling match with somebody who has a 9 percent approval rating,” Mr. Reid said.

David E. Sanger and David S. Cloud contributed reporting from Washington, and Jim Rutenberg from New York.

    Bush and Cheney Chide Democrats on Iraq Deadline, NYT, 25.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/25/washington/25cong.html?hp

Bush Won't Accept Iraq War Timetable

April 24, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:23 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush, standing firmly against a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, said Tuesday that he will veto the latest war spending bill approved by Congress.

''I'm disappointed that the Democratic leadership has chosen this course,'' Bush said.

''They chose to make a political statement,'' he said. ''That's their right but it is wrong for our troops and it's wrong for our country. To accept the bill proposed by the Democratic leadership would be to accept a policy that directly contradicts the judgment of our military commanders.''

    Bush Won't Accept Iraq War Timetable, NYT, 24.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Iraq.html

9 U.S. Soldiers Killed

in Suicide Bombing in Iraq

April 24, 2007
The New York Times
By ALISSA J. RUBIN

BAGHDAD, Tuesday, April 24 — A devastating suicide car bombing on Monday killed nine American soldiers and wounded 20 others near a patrol base in Diyala Province, the military announced early today.

The Islamic State of Iraq, an insurgent group that includes Al Qaeda in Iraq, claimed responsibility for the attack, which also wounded an Iraqi civilian.

The American soldiers were all paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division.

It was one of the most lethal suicide bomb attacks on American troops in Iraq. Another occurred on Dec. 21, 2004, when a suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest walked into a mess tent on an American base in Mosul and detonated his charge, killing 14 United States soldiers.

In the past six months, Diyala Province, where several Sunni Arab insurgent groups are active, has become one of the most dangerous places in Iraq for American soldiers.

The soldiers were members of the 82nd Airborne’s 5th Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, the A.P. reported, citing Maj. Tom Earnhardt, a spokesman for the 82nd Airborne at Fort Bragg.

”Fifteen of the wounded were superficial and they were treated on the spot and returned to duty,” Maj. Earnhardt said, according to the A.P. “Five were evacuated to a military hospital, but none of the five have life-threatening injuries.”

Maj. Earnhardt said the unit deployed in August to Iraq, the A.P. reported. It is one of three of the division’s four brigade combat teams now in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Other attacks in which large numbers of American military personnel have died include several instances in which insurgents shot down helicopters carrying numerous troops and one attack on United States marines serving in Anbar Province.

In that attack, on Aug. 3, 2005, a huge roadside bomb exploded near Haditha, killing 14 marines who were involved in combat operations and traveling in an amphibious vehicle. On Monday, an American soldier also died in Muqdadiya when a roadside bomb exploded, the military said in a news release.

Today, two car bombs exploded in a parking lot in front of the Iranian embassy in Baghdad, wounding four people, a day after two bombs exploded in the same area, news services reported. American officials accuse Iranians of fueling Iraq’s sectarian conflict by supplying weapons and training to Shiite militias.

On Monday, five car bombs exploded across Iraq, killing a total of 22 people, and a suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest walked into a popular restaurant near Baghdad’s fortified International Zone, formerly known as the Green Zone, and detonated his explosives, killing six people.

Ten people were killed in northern Iraq when a suicide car bomber struck a Kurdish Democratic Party outpost on Monday.

In Baquba, in Diyala Province, a suicide car bomber attacked a group of police cars parked at an intersection, killing six policemen and a seventh, who was injured, later died, according to a government official in Baquba.

In Hilla, a suicide car bomber attacked a restaurant, killing two people.

In Falluja, two suicide truck bombs exploded near the Huriyah neighborhood, killing three people, according to a statement from the United States military.

Jon Elsen contributed reporting from New York.

    9 U.S. Soldiers Killed in Suicide Bombing in Iraq, NYT, 24.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/24/world/middleeast/24bombing.html?hp

US generals see

mixed results from Iraq build-up

Sun Apr 22, 2007
Reuters
4:06AM EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. troop build-up in Iraq has yielded modest progress but a rise in suicide bombings helps make the ultimate success of the security crackdown uncertain, the top U.S. commander in the country said in remarks published on Sunday.

Gen. David Petraeus and other senior U.S. officers in Iraq told The Washington Post in interviews that the increase in U.S. and Iraqi troops since February had improved security in Baghdad and restive Anbar province but that attacks had risen sharply in other regions.

They said it was critical that Iraqi leaders make the political compromises needed to ensure long-term stability.

U.S. President George W. Bush has committed almost 30,000 additional troops mostly to Baghdad, the center of violence between minority Sunnis and majority Shi'ites, for a major U.S-Iraqi offensive aimed at halting a descent to all-out civil war.

Bush opposes a push by the Democratic-led U.S. Congress to set a timeline for withdrawing troops from Iraq, where more than 3,300 U.S. soldiers have been killed since the U.S.-led invasion of the country in 2003.

On Friday, he asserted progress in Iraq despite the violence and rebuffed comments by Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid that "this war is lost" and that the troop build-up was "not accomplishing anything."

The military commanders told the Post that sectarian killings in Baghdad fell to fewer than 400 in March from 1,200 in January, with markets reopening and a few thousand families returning to areas they had fled.

"We have certainly pulled neighborhoods back from the brink," Petraeus was quoted as saying.

But the commanders said the increase in suicide bomb attacks, including those on Wednesday that killed nearly 200 people in Baghdad, was troubling because of the danger of reigniting sectarian revenge killings and undermining the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

The Post cited military data showing that suicide bombings increased 30 percent over the six weeks that ended in early April.

"I don't think you're ever going to get rid of all the car bombs," Petraeus said. "Iraq is going to have to learn -- as did, say, Northern Ireland, to live with some degree of sensational attacks."

He said a more realistic goal was preventing the bombings from causing "horrific damage."

    US generals see mixed results from Iraq build-up, R, 22.4.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN2220264720070422

Military Cites ‘Negligence’

in Aftermath of Iraq Killings

April 22, 2007
The New York Times
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER

A military investigation has found that senior Marine Corps commanders in Iraq showed a routine disregard for the lives of Iraqi civilians that contributed to a “willful” failure to investigate the killing of 24 unarmed Iraqis by marines in 2005, lawyers involved in the case said.

The report, completed last summer but never made public, also found that a Marine Corps general and colonel in Iraq learned of the killings within hours that day, Nov. 19, 2005, in the town of Haditha, but failed to begin a thorough inquiry into how they occurred.

The 130-page report, by Maj. Gen. Eldon A. Bargewell of the Army, did not conclude that the senior officers covered up evidence or committed a crime. But it said the Marine Corps command in Iraq was far too willing to tolerate civilian casualties and dismiss Iraqi claims of abuse by marines as insurgent propaganda, according to lawyers who have read it.

“All levels of command tended to view civilian casualties, even in significant numbers, as routine and as the natural and intended result of insurgent tactics,” General Bargewell wrote in his report, according to two people who have read it. “Statements made by the chain of command during interviews for this investigation, taken as a whole, suggest that Iraqi civilian lives are not as important as U.S. lives, their deaths are just the cost of doing business, and that the Marines need to get the job done no matter what it takes.”

The killings in Haditha, in Anbar Province, began with a roadside bombing that killed one American marine and wounded two. Several marines then began methodically killing civilians in the area, eventually going door to door in the village and killing women and children, some in their beds, according to a Naval criminal investigation.

General Bargewell’s report, completed at the request of Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the day-to-day commander of American forces in Iraq at the time, did not focus on the killings themselves, but rather on commanders’ handling of the aftermath.

The Washington Post published details of the report’s findings on Saturday. Spokesmen for the Marine Corps declined to comment, citing hearings for the three enlisted marines charged with murder in the case and for four officers charged with dereliction of duty for failing to ensure a proper investigation.

General Bargewell’s report was said to have found what it called “inattention and negligence, in certain cases willful negligence,” among Marine officers who reported the civilian deaths immediately up their chain of command in ways that the report said were “untimely, inaccurate and incomplete.”

It is critical of the Marine division commander, Maj. Gen. Richard A. Huck, and the regimental commander, Col. Stephen W. Davis, for fostering a perception that civilian Iraqi lives were not as important as American lives and for failing to investigate the civilian deaths in Haditha, lawyers who read the report said.

Lawyers for the four officers charged with dereliction of duty — a lieutenant colonel, two captains and a first lieutenant — disagreed Saturday with the report’s conclusions about them.

“Colonel Chessani, Colonel Davis and General Huck all viewed this — and still do — as a legitimate combat action,” said Brian J. Rooney, a civilian lawyer for Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani, who was relieved of his command and is the highest-ranking officer known publicly to be punished in the Haditha matter. “That same night and the next morning Colonel Chessani reported up the chain of command what he had learned about the attacks,” including that marines had killed civilians. “I don’t know how that’s untimely, accurate and incomplete.”

The Bargewell report, which was recently declassified, also established that junior officers, including a captain who issued a news release on the episode that blamed a roadside bomb planted by insurgents for most of the deaths, knew from the beginning that marines had killed the civilians, the lawyers said.

The captain, Jeffrey S. Pool, told General Bargewell’s investigators that he was given reports from battalion commanders that accurately described the marines’ killing of civilians, said lawyers who read the report. But Captain Pool said he issued a news release blaming insurgents for the deaths because he believed that the killings were ultimately a direct result of the roadside bombing of the marines, the lawyers said.

“The way I saw it was this,” Captain Pool told two colonels questioning him, according to a lawyer who read the report to a reporter. “A bomb blast went off, or was initiated, that is what started, that is the reason they’re getting this, is a bomb blew up, killed people. We killed people back, and that’s the story.” (Since the investigation, the captain has been promoted to major and is again working as a public affairs officer in Anbar Province.)

Lawyers for the four officers charged with failing to properly investigate the civilian killings blame the inaccurate news release for creating the false perception that the Marine Corps chain of command had covered up the killing of civilians. But one lawyer also said that the captain’s thinking reflected that of his superiors, who believed that civilian casualties, though regrettable, were an inevitable part of war.

“That’s the rubric that the whole division was operating under,” the lawyer said. The report, he said, came to a similar conclusion. “It just was the culture of the Marine Corps,” he said, paraphrasing the report, “to think that the Iraqis’ story was propaganda, and didn’t investigate.”

    Military Cites ‘Negligence’ in Aftermath of Iraq Killings, NYT, 22.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/world/middleeast/22haditha.html

Analysis: Iraq Surge May Be Extended

April 21, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:37 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon is laying the groundwork to extend the U.S. troop buildup in Iraq. At the same time, the administration is warning Iraqi leaders that the boost in forces could be reversed if political reconciliation is not evident by summer.

This approach underscores the central difficulty facing President Bush. If political progress is not possible in the relatively short term, then the justification for sending thousands more U.S. troops to Baghdad -- and accepting the rising U.S. combat death toll that has resulted -- will disappear. That in turn would put even more pressure on Bush to yield to the Democratic-led push to wind down the war in coming months.

If the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki does manage to achieve the political milestones demanded by Washington, then the U.S. military probably will be told to sustain the troop buildup much longer than originally foreseen -- possibly well into 2008. Thus the early planning for keeping it up beyond late summer.

More than half of the extra 21,500 combat troops designated for Baghdad duty have arrived; the rest are due by June. Already it is evident that putting them in the most hotly contested parts of the capital is taking a toll. An average of 22 U.S. troops have died per week in April, the highest rate so far this year.

''This is certainly a price that we're paying for this increased security,'' Adm. William Fallon, the senior U.S. commander in the Middle East, told a House committee Wednesday. He also said the United States does not have ''a ghost of a chance'' of success in Iraq unless it can create ''stability and security.''

The idea of the troop increase, originally billed by the administration as a temporary ''surge,'' is not to defeat the insurgency. That is not thought possible in the near term. The purpose is to contain the violence -- in particular, the sect-on-sect killings in Baghdad -- long enough to create an environment in which Iraqi political leaders can move toward conciliation and ordinary Iraqis are persuaded of a viable future.

So far the results are mixed, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates said this week during a visit to Iraq that he wants to see faster political progress by the Iraqis. ''The clock is ticking,'' he said, referring to the limited time the administration can pursue its strategy before the American public demands an end to the war.

Gates also said he told al-Maliki that the United States will not keep fighting indefinitely.

Gates' remarks reflected the administration's effort to strike a balance between reassuring the Iraqis of U.S. support and pressuring their leaders to show they can bring the country together and avert a full-scale civil war.

On Saturday, one American soldier was killed and two were wounded by a roadside bomb southwest of Baghdad, the military said. A separate roadside bombing, in Diwaniyah about 80 miles south of the capital, killed a Polish soldier late Friday.

Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq watcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Friday that even if the Iraqis pass the desired legislation, it probably would take months longer to find out if it proves workable.

''The U.S. should definitely keep up the pressure on the Iraqis, but we should have no illusions,'' Cordesman said. ''Iraqis are driven more by their own politics than outside pressure.''

When Bush announced the troop boost in January, administration officials pointedly left unclear how long the extra troops would remain in Iraq. Some, including Gates, suggested that troop levels could be reduced to the previous standard of about 135,000 as early as September -- assuming the addition of 21,500 combat troops and roughly 8,000 support troops this spring proved to be an overwhelming success or a clear-cut failure.

Three months later, with troops still flowing into Baghdad, the Pentagon is beginning to take steps that suggests it expects to maintain higher troop levels into 2008 and beyond, yet officials still won't say whether the increase is intended as a short-term move. Some believe the lack of clarity is a mistake because it adds to the strain on troops and their families and it may lessen the psychological pressure on the belligerents.

Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, whose January report on changing the U.S. military strategy in Iraq was largely adopted as part of Bush's new approach to the war, said in an interview Thursday that it appears the administration believes it will have to sustain the troop buildup much longer.

''They seem to be taking the steps that would make it possible to sustain it for longer, which is good,'' Kagan said. ''But they seem to be reluctant to commit to a willingness to do that, which I think is unfortunate.''

Kagan says the troops, the Iraqi government and the insurgents all ought to be convinced that U.S. forces will keep up the pressure, particularly in the most contested neighborhoods in Baghdad, for at least another year.

''If I were running the show I would say, 'Look, everyone should assume that we're going to sustain this through 2008 -- the Iraqis should assume that, too -- and if we can turn it off sooner, then everyone would be happy,'' Kagan said.

Gen. James T. Conway, the commandant of the Marine Corps, takes a similar view. In an interview earlier this month he pondered the thought process of a U.S. commander in Iraq evaluating the way ahead. ''In six months, if it's working, is he going to say, 'OK, it worked, now you guys can go home'?'' Conway thinks there is a reasonable chance for success, and for planning purposes he is preparing to sustain the troop buildup.

The Marines added about 4,000 to their contingent in western Anbar province, the focal point of the Sunni Arab insurgency. In March the Marines made a little-noticed move that gives them the flexibility to continue at the higher rate in Iraq at least into 2008. They extended the tours of Marines in Okinawa, Japan, which freed up other Marine units in the United States to deploy to Iraq later this year instead of Okinawa.

Also, the Pentagon announced earlier this month that normal tours of duty in Iraq will be 15 months instead of 12 months. Gates said that gives the military the capability to maintain the higher troop levels in Iraq until next spring.

EDITOR'S NOTE -- Robert Burns has covered the military for The Associated Press since 1990.

    Analysis: Iraq Surge May Be Extended, NYT, 21.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Iraq-Troop-Boost.html

U.S. Erects Baghdad Wall to Keep Sects Apart

April 21, 2007
The New York Times
By EDWARD WONG and DAVID S. CLOUD

BAGHDAD, April 20 — American military commanders in Baghdad are trying a radical new strategy to quell the widening sectarian violence by building a 12-foot-high, three-mile-long wall separating a historic Sunni enclave from Shiite neighborhoods.

Soldiers in the Adhamiya district of northern Baghdad, a Sunni Arab stronghold, began construction of the wall last week and expect to finish it within a month. Iraqi Army soldiers would then control movement through a few checkpoints. The wall has already drawn intense criticism from residents of the neighborhood, who say that it will increase sectarian tensions and that it is part of a plan by the Shiite-led Iraqi government to box in the minority Sunnis.

A doctor in Adhamiya, Abu Hassan, said the wall would transform the residents into caged animals.

“It’s unbelievable that they treat us in such an inhumane manner,” he said in a telephone interview. “They’re trying to isolate us from other parts of Baghdad. The hatred will be much greater between the two sects.”

“The Native Americans were treated better than us,” he added.

The American military said in a written statement that “the wall is one of the centerpieces of a new strategy by coalition and Iraqi forces to break the cycle of sectarian violence.”

As soldiers pushed forward with the construction, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates insisted to the Iraqi government that it had to pass by late summer a series of measures long sought by the White House that were aimed at advancing reconciliation between the warring Sunni Arabs and Shiite Arabs.

Whether Parliament meets that benchmark could affect a decision that the Bush administration plans to make in late summer on extending the nearly 30,000 additional troops ordered to Iraq earlier this year, Mr. Gates said.

His words were the bluntest yet by an American official in tying the American military commitment here to the Iraqi political process. It reflected a growing frustration among Bush administration officials at Iraq’s failure to move on the political elements of the new strategy. President Bush’s new security plan here is aimed at buying time for the feuding Iraqi factions to come to political settlements that would, in theory, reduce the violence.

In recent weeks, Democrats in Congress have been intensifying pressure on the president, through negotiations on financing for the war, to set political deadlines for the Iraqis and tie them to the withdrawal of American troops.

Speaking to reporters after talks with the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, Mr. Gates urged Parliament not to adjourn for a planned summer recess without passing legislation on sharing oil revenues, easing the purges of former Baath Party members from government positions and setting a date for provincial elections.

“Our commitment to Iraq is long term, but it is not a commitment to have our young men and women patrolling Iraq’s streets open-endedly,” he said, adding that he told Mr. Maliki that “progress in reconciliation will be an important element of our evaluation in the late summer.”

This is not the first time the Bush administration has set a timetable for Iraq to pass the reconciliation measures. Late last year, the White House gave the Iraqi government a goal of March to pass the legislation. March came and went, and senior administration officials shrugged off the missed target, saying it was counterproductive to press the Iraqis on the issue.

Mr. Gates’s demand, with its strong hint of conditions attached, could force the Bush administration into a corner.

If progress on the reconciliation measures proves impossible before the target date, as many Iraqi politicians say they believe, American officials will have to decide whether to follow through with the veiled threat. American military commanders have already indicated privately that it may be necessary to extend the troop reinforcements because the time between now and August is not be long enough for the new strategy to work.

A senior White House official in Washington said that Mr. Gates had not threatened to remove American troops if Mr. Maliki cannot act by midsummer. Instead, the official argued, “He simply said what everyone has said, which is that the process of political accommodation has to speed up.”

President Bush spoke with Mr. Maliki in a secure video conference on Monday morning and also emphasized the need to pass the legislation, aides said.

Mr. Maliki’s office issued a statement on Friday saying that the prime minister was confident that steps toward reconciliation could be achieved this year.

Mr. Gates delivered his message at the end of a week of major political turmoil and security setbacks for Mr. Maliki’s government. Mr. Maliki’s strongest political supporter, the firebrand Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, withdrew his six ministers from the cabinet. Car bombs in Baghdad killed at least 171 people on Wednesday, puncturing Iraqi confidence in the security plan.

Ceaseless violence is what led American commanders in Adhamiya to build a wall to break contact between Sunnis and Shiites. It is the first time the Americans have tried a project of that scope in Baghdad. The soldiers jokingly call it “The Great Wall of Adhamiya,” according to military officials.

Commanders have sealed off a few other neighborhoods into what they call “gated communities,” but not with a lengthy wall. In the earlier efforts, American and Iraqi soldiers placed concrete barriers blocking off roads leading into the neighborhoods and left open one or more avenues of egress where people and vehicles were searched.

Soldiers did that to a degree in the volatile district of Dora during a security push there last summer. More recently, American and Iraqi Army units have closed off almost all roads into the western Sunni Arab neighborhoods of Amiriya and Daoudi. Residents of Amiriya say violence dropped when the roads were first blocked off late last year, but has gradually increased again.

Adhamiya is different, because it involves the building of a three-mile wall along streets on its eastern flank. It consists of a series of concrete barriers, each weighing 14,000 pounds, that have been transported down to Baghdad in flatbed trucks from Camp Taji, north of the city. Soldiers are using cranes to put the barriers in place.

Once the wall is complete, Iraqi Army soldiers will operate entry and exit checkpoints, Capt. Marc Sanborn, a brigade engineer for the Second Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, said in a news release on the project issued this week by the American military.

The wall “is on a fault line of Sunni and Shia, and the idea is to curb some of the self-sustaining violence by controlling who has access to the neighborhoods,” Captain Sanborn said.

Adhamiya has been rife with violence throughout the war. It is a stalwart Sunni Arab neighborhood, home to the hard-line Abu Hanifa mosque, and the last place where Saddam Hussein made a public appearance before he went into hiding in 2003. Shiite militiamen from Sadr City and other Shiite enclaves to the east often attack its residents, and Sunni insurgent groups battle there among themselves.

“Shiites are coming in and hitting Sunnis, and Sunnis are retaliating across the street,” Capt. Scott McLearn, an operations officer in the area, said in a written statement.

Abu Hassan, the doctor in Adhamiya, said his neighborhood “is a small area.”

“The Americans and Iraqi government should be able to control it” without building a wall, he said.

Many Sunnis across Baghdad complain that the Shiite-led government has choked off basic services to their neighborhoods, allowing trash to pile up in the streets, banks to shut down and health clinics to languish. So the wall raises fears of further isolation.

A spokesman for the American military, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, said at a news conference on Wednesday that the military did not have a policy of sealing off neighborhoods.

The American military has tried sealing off entire cities during the war. The most famous example is Falluja, in the insurgent stronghold of Anbar Province, where marines began operating checkpoints on all main roads into and out of the city after laying siege to it in late 2004.

On Friday, a child was killed and nine people were wounded in a mortar attack in Baghdad, and 19 bodies were found across the capital. Hospital officials in Mosul said they were treating 130 Iraqi Army trainees suffering from stomach illness, in a possible case of mass poisoning at a training center north of the city.

An American soldier was killed and two wounded in a rocket attack on a base in Mahmudiya on Thursday night, the military said.

Sahar Nageeb and Ahmad Fadam contributed reporting from Baghdad, and David E. Sanger from Washington.

    U.S. Erects Baghdad Wall to Keep Sects Apart, NYT, 21.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/world/middleeast/21iraq.html?hp

Bush: Sectarian Killings Drop in Baghdad

April 21, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:50 a.m. ET
The New York Times

EAST GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) -- President Bush said Friday that sectarian murders have dropped by half in Baghdad since the U.S.-Iraqi military buildup began in February, rejecting a Democratic leader's claim that the war is lost. The president said early signs show the operation to quell violence is meeting expectations.

''There are still horrific attacks in Iraq, such as the bombings in Baghdad on Wednesday, but the direction of the fight is beginning to shift,'' Bush said in his second speech on terrorism in two days.

Bush spoke at a high school in suburban Grand Rapids to about 500 students and members of the World Affairs Council of Western Michigan. Outside, dozens of protesters shouted anti-war chants and held signs that said ''No blood for oil,'' ''End imperialism now'' and ''Sieg heil Bush.''

Bush urged Americans not to be swayed by the violence inflicted by suicide bombers and focus, instead, on incremental gains Iraqi and U.S. forces are making day by day, block by block in Baghdad. Weapons stockpiles are being seized, extremists are being captured and displaced families are returning home, he said.

''When a family decides to stop depending on militias to protect them or a young man rejects insurgency and joins the Iraqi army, it doesn't usually make the evening news,'' Bush said.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., says the war in Iraq is ''lost'' and can only be won through political and economic diplomatic means. He said the surge is not accomplishing anything. Republicans have pounced on Reid for his comments, accusing him of turning his back on the troops and hurting military morale in Iraq.

Sen. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who chairs the Armed Services Committee, defended Reid on Friday. Levin said he agreed the military fight in Iraq cannot be won and that Bush's strategy lacks the necessary leverage to force Iraqi politicians to reach a settlement.

Bush ''doesn't have the teeth,'' Levin told reporters in a conference call. ''He doesn't have the pressure on the Iraqi leaders by just repeating, which he's done now for a month, that our patience is not unlimited.''

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said the United States needs to send a clear message to the Iraqi government that American troops won't stay there indefinitely. Klobuchar, who visited Baghdad and Fallujah last month, said the best thing America can do for its troops is to get its Iraq policy right.

''This means, as recommended by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, that we begin the process of redeploying our troops with the goal of withdrawing combat forces by next year,'' she said in remarks prepared for broadcast Saturday following the president's weekly radio address.

Klobuchar said it might be necessary for some troops to stay in Iraq to train Iraqi police, to provide security for American forces that remain behind, and to conduct special operations.

''This means not a surge in troops but a surge in diplomacy, economy and Iraqi responsibility,'' she said.

Pushing back against Democrats, Bush said that not all the troops that he ordered in January in a military buildup have arrived. It's too early to assume defeat, he said.

''Ultimately, withdrawal would increase the probability that American troops would have to return to Iraq -- and confront an enemy that is even more dangerous,'' Bush said.

In past addresses on the war, Bush has worked to paint a rose-colored picture of progress in Iraq. This time, he showed the audience in Michigan maps and a photograph of the rubble left by a massive bombing earlier this week.

Bush acknowledged that since the new security operation began in Baghdad and Anbar Province, a stronghold of Sunni insurgents, some of the highest casualty levels of the war have been reported. That likely will continue as more troops move into more dangerous neighborhoods in Baghdad, he said.

''We must also expect the terrorists and insurgents to continue mounting terrible attacks,'' he said, and then showed the audience a photograph of what was left after four large bombs exploded in mostly Shiite areas of Baghdad and killed 230 people at a bus stop. He said it had all the ''hallmarks of an al-Qaida attack.''

It was the deadliest day in the city since the mid-February start of the U.S.-Iraqi campaign to reduce violence in the capital and Anbar Province.

''Anbar province is still not safe,'' Bush said.

After the speech, Bush made an unscheduled stop at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, where the former president was buried in January. He laid a bouquet of white roses on a stone wall that marks Ford's grave and paused there for a few moments. The 38th president, who grew up in Grand Rapids, died Dec. 26 at age 93.

Associated Press writers James Prichard in Grand Rapids, Mich., and Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

    Bush: Sectarian Killings Drop in Baghdad, NYT, 21.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush.html

Reid: U.S. Can't Win the War in Iraq

April 20, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:18 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday the war in Iraq is ''lost,'' triggering an angry backlash by Republicans, who said the top Democrat had turned his back on the troops.

The bleak assessment -- the most pointed yet from Reid -- came as the House voted 215-199 to uphold legislation ordering troops out of Iraq next year.

Reid said he told President Bush on Wednesday he thought the war could not be won through military force, although he said the U.S. could still pursue political, economic and diplomatic means to bring peace to Iraq.

''I believe myself that the secretary of state, secretary of defense and -- you have to make your own decisions as to what the president knows -- (know) this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday,'' said Reid, D-Nev.

Republicans pounced on the comment as evidence, they said, that Democrats do not support the troops.

''I can't begin to imagine how our troops in the field, who are risking their lives every day, are going to react when they get back to base and hear that the Democrat leader of the United States Senate has declared the war is lost,'' said Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

The exchange came before the House voted to endorse legislation it passed last month that would fund the war in Iraq but require combat missions to end by September 2008. The Senate passed similar, less-sweeping legislation that would set a nonbinding goal of bringing combat troops home by March 31, 2008.

''Our troops won the war clearly, cleanly and quickly,'' said Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., chairman of the Appropriations Committee. ''But now they are stuck in a civil war,'' and the only solution is a political and diplomatic compromise. ''And there is no soldier who can get that done,'' he added.

The House voted mostly along party lines to insist congressional negotiators trying to reconcile the House and Senate bills retain the firm timetable.

Despite the vote, which was orchestrated by Republicans to try to embarrass Democrats, aides said Democrats were leaning toward accepting the Senate's nonbinding goal. The compromise bill also is expected to retain House provisions preventing military units from being worn out by excessive combat deployments; however, the president could waive these standards if he states so publicly.

Bush pledged to veto either measure and said troops were being harmed by Congress' failure to deliver the funds quickly.

The Pentagon says it has enough money to pay for the Iraq war through June. The Army is taking ''prudent measures'' aimed at ensuring that delays in the bill financing the war do not harm troop readiness, according to instructions sent to Army commanders and budget officials April 14.

While $70 billion that Congress provided in September for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan has mostly run out, the Army has told department officials to slow the purchase of nonessential repair parts and other supplies, restrict the use of government charge cards and limit travel.

The Army also will delay contracts for facilities repair and environmental restoration, according to instructions from Army Comptroller Nelson Ford. He said the accounting moves are similar to those enacted last year when the Republican-led Congress did not deliver a war funding bill to Bush until mid-June.

More stringent steps would be taken in May, such as a hiring freeze and firing temporary employees, but exceptions are made for any war-related activities or anything that ''would result immediately in the degradation of readiness standards'' for troops in Iraq or those slated for deployment.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino called the Democrats' stance ''disturbing'' and all but dared Reid to cut off funding for the war.

''If this is his true feeling, then it makes one wonder if he has the courage of his convictions and therefore will decide to de-fund the war,'' she said.

Reid has left that possibility open. The majority leader supports separate legislation that would cut off funding for combat missions after March 2008. The proposal would allow money to be spent on such efforts as counterterrorism and training Iraqi security forces.

Reid and other Democrats were initially reluctant to discuss such draconian measures to end the war, but no longer.

''I'm not sure much is impossible legislatively,'' Reid said Thursday. ''The American people have indicated . . . that they are fed up with what's going on.''

Associated Press writer Andrew Taylor contributed to this report.

    Reid: U.S. Can't Win the War in Iraq, NYT, 20.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Iraq.html

Gates Says 'Clock Is Ticking' on Iraq

April 19, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:26 p.m. ET
The New York Times

FALLUJAH, Iraq (AP) -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates slipped into Iraq Thursday to warn Iraqi leaders that the U.S. commitment to a military buildup there is not open-ended.

Gates said the political tumult in Washington over financing the military presence in Iraq shows that both the American public and the Bush administration are running out of patience with the war.

''I'm sympathetic with some of the challenges that they face,'' Gates said of the Iraqis during his surprise visit. But, he said, ''the clock is ticking.''

Gates added, ''Frankly I would like to see faster progress.''

He said that the Iraqis need to push through legislation on political reconciliation and sharing oil revenues. ''It's not that these laws are going to change the situation immediately, but I think ... the ability to get them done communicates a willingness to work together.''

He said that, in turn, would create an environment in which violence could be reduced.

Underscoring the urgency in controlling the violence, police said a suicide car bomber rammed into a fuel truck in central Baghdad only hours before Gates' arrival, killing at least a dozen people. The attack came a day after one of the bloodiest days in Baghdad since the U.S. troop increase began nine weeks ago, with four strikes killing more than 230 people.

''It is very important they make every effort to get this done as soon as possible,'' Gates said, noting that an attack last week by a suicide bomber on a cafeteria at the Iraqi parliament inside the U.S.-guarded Green Zone made people particularly nervous.

After landing in Baghdad, Gates flew by helicopter to Camp Fallujah, for a briefing by Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and Gen. Peter Pace, the Joint Chiefs chairman. Fallujah, where U.S. Marines make up the bulk of the U.S. force, is a stronghold for Sunni insurgents. But commanders there have been saying violence has dipped and they are optimistic about progress in western Iraq.

Gates, who stopped in Iraq on a trip through the Middle East, also planned to meet with Iraqi political leaders. His visit, the third to Iraq since taking over as defense secretary in December, came a day after Bush met with congressional leaders to discuss the impasse over legislation to provide funds for the war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Gates said the White House has not asked him whether there is a compromise on a deadline for withdrawal from Iraq that the U.S. military could accept.

Three of the five brigades ordered into Iraq by President Bush to stem Baghdad violence have arrived, bringing the U.S. forces in the country to 146,000. Officials want the rest in place by June, for a total of 160,000.

Soon after that they plan to assess how much longer the higher troop level -- about 30,000 more than before the buildup -- will be needed.

Officials have struggled to find troops from within the stretched U.S. military to sustain the increase. Gates last week took the difficult step of lengthening tours of duty to the war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan to 15 months from a year.

During an hourlong meeting Wednesday at the White House, the president told lawmakers directly he will not sign any bill that includes a timetable for troop withdrawal, and they made it clear Congress will send him one anyway.

''We believe he must search his soul, his conscience and find out what is the right thing for the American people,'' Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada told reporters after the session. ''I believe signing this bill will do that.''

But White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said, ''It appears that they are determined to send a bill to the president that he won't accept. They fundamentally disagree.''

Democrats hope to complete work on a House-Senate compromise in time to send it to the White House by the end of next week, with Bush's veto a certainty.

Given the narrow Democratic majority in the Senate, it appears unlikely the compromise will include a mandatory date for a complete withdrawal.

In any event, after an expected presidential veto attention would turn quickly to a new bill with provisions acceptable to the president.

    Gates Says 'Clock Is Ticking' on Iraq, NYT, 19.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Gates-Iraq.html

No Solution in Sight

as Bush and Lawmakers

Discuss Iraq Spending Measure

April 19, 2007
The New York Times
By JEFF ZELENY and JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, April 18 — After weeks of acrimonious sparring over financing the next phase of the war, President Bush and Congressional leaders softened their tone on Wednesday but failed to resolve their differences over a timeline for removing most American combat troops from Iraq next year.

Mr. Bush met with a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the White House for nearly an hour, the first face-to-face discussion since the House and Senate passed emergency Iraq spending bills last month with provisions to end the war. Democrats said they would send the president legislation by the end of next week, despite his pledge to veto it.

“We believe he must search his soul, his conscience, and find out what is the right thing for the American people,” Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, told reporters after the meeting. “I believe signing this bill will do that.”

The White House, though, said Mr. Bush had no intention of signing any legislation that included a call for a troop withdrawal. Democrats do not have enough support to override a veto, so the debate over financing the troops remains at an impasse.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said, “The president, obviously, as you already know, is not going to accept language that specifies a date for surrender or language that micromanages the efforts of our military in Iraq.”

The discussions took place on one of the deadliest days of the year in Baghdad, where at least 171 people were killed in bombings. Democrats said the violence underscored the urgency of finding a new direction in Iraq, one that did not place American troops in the middle of a civil war.

At the beginning of the meeting, Mr. Bush declared, “People have strong opinions around the table and I’m looking forward to listening to them.” And for the next hour, according to participants and aides in the room, a frank conversation unfolded between the president and the 10 legislative leaders seated around the table in the Cabinet Room.

A White House official who attended the meeting, and spoke on condition of anonymity in order to describe details, said Mr. Bush’s first question to the Democratic leaders was, “When can you get me a bill?”

And, this official said, Mr. Bush told the Democrats that he hoped to ultimately follow several of the guidelines set forth last year in a report by the Iraq Study Group, which called for an eventual draw-down of American troops. According to the official, Mr. Bush noted that the Study Group, whose co-chairman was his father’s former political aide, James A. Baker III, had suggested that a temporary troop increase could be a necessary step on the way to an eventual withdrawal.

For weeks, White House officials have said they are eager for Democrats to send a bill to the president that he will veto, so they can begin negotiating a financing measure both sides can agree on. But first, Democrats must reconcile differences between the House and Senate versions of the legislation, which include different timetables for troops to be removed from Iraq.

The House passed a bill calling for troops to be withdrawn no later than Sept. 1, 2008, or earlier if the Iraqi government does not meet a series of benchmarks. The Senate measure would begin a gradual redeployment of troops in four months, but set a goal for troops to be removed by March 31, 2008.

According to several participants at the meeting, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi offered to accept the Senate timelines. But Mr. Bush and Republican leaders said they would not support any deadlines.

As she left the White House, Ms. Pelosi called the session a “productive meeting.”

“We came here in a spirit of hope,” she said, “recognizing that this is an historic opportunity for the executive branch, for the president and the Congress to work together to wind down this war and to ensure the security of our country and the stability of the region.”

During the meeting, Mr. Bush was the only administration official who spoke, though he was accompanied by Vice President Dick Cheney, the White House chief of staff, Joshua B. Bolten, the national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, and others.

Members of the group, which included four senators and six representatives, all spoke, including Mr. Reid, who compared the Iraq war to the Vietnam War and suggested to Mr. Bush that he should not continue with the war simply to protect his legacy. The president was visibly angered by the comment, according to aides, but he did not respond directly.

The session was the beginning of a fresh round of negotiating between the Democratic-led Congress and the White House. While neither Democrats nor Republicans seemed willing to compromise their main objectives, both sides are also keenly aware that in the coming weeks they must authorize financing for the troops in Iraq.

Next week, as the House and Senate are scheduled to vote on the compromise Iraq legislation, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior commander in Iraq, is scheduled to come to Washington to press the administration’s case. Initially, some Democrats rejected the offer to meet with General Petraeus, but said they changed their minds to avoid being cast as unwilling to compromise.

Still, despite a fresh air of civility, it remained an open question whether anything was accomplished on Wednesday. When asked whether anything had changed as a result of the meeting, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader, replied, “No.”

    No Solution in Sight as Bush and Lawmakers Discuss Iraq Spending Measure, NYT, 19.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/washington/19prexy.html

4 Blasts in Baghdad Kill at Least 183

April 19, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:36 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BAGHDAD (AP) -- Suspected Sunni insurgents penetrated the Baghdad security net Wednesday, hitting Shiite targets with four bomb attacks that killed 183 people -- the bloodiest day since the U.S. troop increase began nine weeks ago.

The most devastating blast struck the Sadriyah market as workers were leaving for the day, charring a lineup of minibuses that came to pick them up. At least 127 people were killed and 148 wounded, including men who were rebuilding the market after a Feb. 3 bombing left 137 dead.

Wednesday's car bombing appeared meticulously planned. It took place at a pedestrian entrance where tall concrete barriers had been erected after the earlier attack. It was the only way out of the compound, and the construction workers were widely known to leave at about 4 p.m. -- the time of the bombing.

One builder, 28-year-old Salih Mustafa, said he was waiting for a bus home when the bomb exploded.

''I rushed with others to give a hand and help the victims,'' he said. ''I saw three bodies in a wooden cart, and civilian cars were helping to take away the victims. It was really a horrible scene.''

U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell told The Associated Press that al-Qaida in Iraq was suspected in the bombing. ''Initial indications based on intelligence sources show that it was linked to al-Qaida,'' Caldwell said in a late-night telephone interview.

Echoing those remarks, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates called the bombings ''horrifying'' and accused al-Qaida of being behind them.

The attacks appeared to be yet another attempt by Sunni insurgents and al-Qaida to force Shiite militiamen back onto the streets. Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr had ordered his Mahdi Army fighters to put away their weapons and go underground before the security crackdown began, leaving regions like those bombed on Wednesday highly vulnerable.

An outburst of violence from the Shiite militia would also ease pressure on the Sunni insurgents, creating a second front for U.S. and Iraqi soldiers struggling to diminish violence in the capital and provide time for the Iraqi government to gather momentum for sectarian reconciliation.

U.S. officials have reported a decrease in sectarian killings in Baghdad since the U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown was launched Feb. 14. But the past week has seen several spectacular attacks in the capital, including a suicide bombing inside parliament and a powerful blast that collapsed a landmark bridge across the Tigris River. The number of bodies dumped in the streets of Baghdad also has risen significantly.

Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, the Iraqi military spokesman, said, ''We have not seen such a wave of attacks since the security plan began. These are terrorist challenges. Ninety-five percent of those killed today were civilians.''

Late Wednesday, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered the arrest of the Iraqi army colonel who was in charge of security in the region around the Sadriyah market. The colonel's name was not given.

''Our Iraqi people are being subjected to a brutal attack that does not differentiate between an old man, a child or a woman. This targeting of civilian populations brings back to our minds the mass crimes and genocide committed by the Saddamist dictatorial regime,'' said a statement from al-Maliki's office.

The 127 deaths in the market bombing were recorded by Raad Muhsin, an official at al-Kindi Hospital morgue where the victims were taken. A police official confirmed the toll, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

Besides the market attack, bombs struck Shiite targets in the capital at a police checkpoint, near a hospital and in a small bus.

Nationwide the number of people killed or found dead was 233, which was second only to a total of 281 killed or found dead on Nov. 23, 2006. Those figures are according to AP record-keeping, which began in May 2005.

Caldwell said militants were ''attempting to destroy any sense of security the people of Baghdad were beginning to feel with the security operation in Baghdad.''

He called insurgents a ''vicious cancer on the body of Iraq. You've got to keep fighting it. We're not going to give up.''

Many of the most devastating bomb attacks in the country have come in the past several months, indicating insurgents have developed more sophisticated or powerful explosives.

U.S. military officials announced that last week they found 3,000 gallons of nitric acid hidden in a warehouse in downtown Baghdad. U.S. forces discovered the acid, a key fertilizer component that can also be used in explosives, during a routine search April 12, the military said.

Timothy M. Swager, head of the chemistry department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that aside from being used to make explosives, nitric acid could cause dangerous burns if used directly on people.

''Like all strong acids, if you sprayed people directly with it would burn them very badly,'' he said.

Steve Kornguth, director of the biological and chemical defense program at the University of Texas in Austin, said nitric acid is less toxic than chlorine gas at the same concentration, but could also be lethal.

He said in his opinion, insurgents are probably ''experimenting with different ways of releasing harmful materials as an indirect effect of explosions.''

Hospital officials have been reporting more serious burn victims, both among the dead and wounded, in recent attacks.

About an hour before the market was hit, a suicide car bomber crashed into an Iraqi police checkpoint at an entrance to Sadr City, the capital's biggest Shiite Muslim neighborhood and a stronghold for the Mahdi Army militia.

The explosion killed at least 41 people, including five Iraqi security officers, and wounded 76, police and hospital officials said.

A towering column of black smoke rose from a tangle of eight incinerated vehicles that were in a jam of cars stopped at the checkpoint. Bystanders scrambled over twisted metal to drag victims from the smoldering wreckage. Iraqi guards who survived the bombing staggered through the carnage, apparently stunned.

During the noon hour, a parked car exploded near a private hospital in Karradah, a predominantly Shiite district in the center of Baghdad. At least 11 people died and 13 were wounded, police said. The blast damaged the Abdul-Majid hospital and other nearby buildings.

The fourth bombing exploded in a small bus in the central Rusafi area, killing four people and wounding six, police said.

In other violence, a suicide bomber struck a police patrol at nightfall in the Saydiyah neighborhood, a mixed Sunni-Shiite district in southwest Baghdad. Four died, including two policemen, and eight were wounded, five of them police, police officials said.

The U.S. military also said a suspected insurgent was killed and eight captured in two raids north of Baghdad on Wednesday. Some of the suspects were believed linked to al-Qaida in Iraq and to a militant cell that has used chlorine in truck bombings, the statement said.

    4 Blasts in Baghdad Kill at Least 183, NYT, 19.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq.html

U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq at 3, 309

April 18, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:03 a.m. ET
The New York Times

As of Tuesday, April 17, 2007, at least 3,309 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes seven military civilians. At least 2,689 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

The AP count is two higher than the Defense Department's tally, last updated Tuesday at 10 a.m. EDT.

The British military has reported 142 deaths; Italy, 33; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 19; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Denmark, six; El Salvador, five; Slovakia, four; Latvia, three; Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand, two each; and Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Romania, one death each.

------

The latest deaths reported by the military:

-- No deaths reported.

------

The latest identifications reported by the military:

-- Army Spc. Ryan A. Bishop, 32, Euless, Texas; died Saturday in Baghdad of wounds sustained from an explosive; assigned to the 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry), Fort Drum, N.Y.

-- Marine 1st Lt. Shaun M. Blue, 25, Munster, Ind.; died Monday of wounds sustained in Anbar province; assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Twentynine Palms, Calif.

-- Marine Lance Cpl. Jesse D. Delatorre, 29, Aurora, Ill.; died Monday of wounds sustained in Anbar province; assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Twentynine Palms, Calif.

-- Marine Lance Cpl. Daniel R. Scherry, 20, Rocky River, Ohio; died Monday after a non-hostile accident in Anbar province; assigned to the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C.

-- Army Pfc. Lucas V. Starcevich, 25, St. Charles, Ill.; died Monday in Baghdad when an explosive struck his vehicle; assigned to the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, Schweinfurt, Germany.

-- Army Sgt. Joshua A. Schmit, 26, Willmar, Minn.; killed Saturday when an explosive struck his vehicle in Fallujah; assigned to the 1451st Transportation Company, 13th Support Command, Iraq.

-- Army Sgt. Brandon L. Wallace, 27, St. Louis, Mo.; killed Saturday when an explosive struck his vehicle in Fallujah; assigned to the 1451st Transportation Company, 13th Support Command, Iraq.

-- Army Pfc. Aaron M. Genevie, 22, Chambersburg, Pa.; killed Monday in Baghdad when his vehicle struck an explosive; assigned to the 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment, 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, Fort Riley, Kan.

-- Army Pfc. Steven J. Walberg, 18, Paradise, Calif.; killed Sunday in Baghdad by small-arms fire; assigned to the 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment, 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, Fort Riley, Kan.

-- Army Sgt. Mario K. De Leon, 26, San Francisco; killed Monday in Baghdad by small-arms fire; assigned to the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, Schweinfurt, Germany.

------

On the Net:

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/

(SUBS 13th graf 'Army Pfc...' to correct soldier's hometown, St. Charles sted Canton, Ill.)

    U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq at 3, 309, NYT, 19.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Iraq-US-Deaths.html

Deadliest Days in Iraq Since 2006

April 18, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:57 p.m. ET
The Newx York Times

Some of the deadliest days in Iraq since January 2006:

--April 18, 2007: At least 157 people are killed in four bombings in mostly Shiite areas of Baghdad, including 112 in an explosion at a market.

--March 29, 2007: At least 179 people are killed, including 104 by multiple suicide bombers in the town of Khalis and in predominantly Shiite markets in Baghdad.

--March 27, 2007: Truck bombs hit markets in the northwestern city Tal Afar, killing at least 198 and wounding more than 150 people.

--March 6, 2007: Officials report 194 deaths, including 120 by two suicide bombers in a crowd of Shiite pilgrims in Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad.

--Feb. 3, 2007: Officials report 167 deaths, including 137 by a suicide truck bomber at a market in a predominantly Shiite area of Baghdad.

--Feb. 1, 2007: Officials say 138 people are killed nationwide, including 73 who die in two suicide bombers in a crowded market in Hillah.

--Jan. 22, 2007: Officials report 138 deaths, including 88 by a parked car bomb followed immediately by a suicide car bomber in a predominantly Shiite area in Baghdad.

--Jan. 16, 2007: Violence throughout the country kills 142 people, including 70 in bombings at a university in Baghdad.

--Dec. 12, 2006: A suicide bomber strikes a crowd of mostly poor Shiites in Baghdad, killing at least 63 people and wounding more than 200. At least 59 other Iraqis are killed or found dead.

--Dec. 2, 2006: A triple car bombing strikes a food market in a predominantly Shiite area in central Baghdad, killing at least 51 and wounding 90 people.

--Nov. 23, 2006: Mortar rounds and five car bombs kill 215 people in the Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City.

--Nov. 12, 2006: Raging sectarian violence across the country claims at least 159 lives, including 35 men blown apart while waiting to join Iraq's police force.

--Jan. 5, 2006: Suicide bombers infiltrate a line of police recruits and a crowd of Shiite pilgrims in Baghdad as insurgents kill 125 civilians and five U.S. soldiers.

    Deadliest Days in Iraq Since 2006, NYT, 18.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq-Deadliest-Days-Glance.html

Car Bomb Kills at Least 115

in Shiite Area in Baghdad

April 18, 2007
The New York Times
By GRAHAM BOWLEY

A huge car bomb exploded in a predominantly Shiite district of Baghdad today, killing at least 115 people and wounding 137 others, the government said.

The explosion, inside a public parking lot near the Sadriya marketplace in Baghdad, struck the busy area at a time when market workers were folding up their stands, finishing their work and heading home for the day.

The bomb seemed to be a premeditated attack against Shiites, since the parking lot is in a heavily Shiite area and is used as a boarding station for buses traveling to Sadr City, a Shiite neighborhood.

The explosion left a scene of chaos, with more than 25 charred vehicles and major damage to the surrounding shops and buildings. Witnesses said that five minibuses filled with passengers were caught in the explosion.

Two months ago, another large bomb caused severe damage to the Sadriya marketplace, killed more than 135 people and wounded 305 others.

Bombs struck today in three other areas of Baghdad as well, killing more than 20 people, making the day one of the deadliest in Iraq since American and Iraqi forces began a new effort to secure the capital two months ago.

A suicide bomber detonated a car bomb near an entrance to Sadr City, killing 10 people and injuring 5. In the Karradah district, a parked car exploded close to a private hospital, killing 10 people and wounding 13, police said. An explosion on a minibus killed two people and wounded five others.

Iraqi employees of The New York Times contributed reporting for this article.

    Car Bomb Kills at Least 115 in Shiite Area in Baghdad, NYT, 18.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/18/world/middleeast/18cnd-baghdad.html?hp

Attacks Surge

as Iraq Militants Overshadow City

April 16, 2007
The New York Times
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.

BAQUBA, Iraq — They maneuver in squads, like the American infantrymen they try to kill. One squad fires furiously so another can attack from a better position. They operate in bad weather, knowing American helicopters and surveillance drones are grounded. Some carry G.P.S. receivers so mortar teams can calculate the coordinates of American armored vehicles. They kidnap and massacre police officers.

The Sunni guerrillas and extremists who now overshadow this city demonstrate a sophistication and lethality born of years of confronting American military tactics. While the “surge” plays out in Baghdad just 35 miles to the south, Baquba has emerged as a magnet for insurgents from around the country and, perhaps, the next major headache for the American military.

Some insurgents have moved into Baquba to escape the escalation in Baghdad. But the city has been attracting insurgents for years, particularly after American officials in Baghdad proclaimed it and surrounding Diyala Province relatively pacified over a year ago and drew down their troop presence.

When 70 insurgents broke out of a Mosul jail in March, for example, escapees from Chad, Yemen, Syria and Afghanistan were apprehended here, the Iraqi police said. And Sunni fighters continue to heed calls by insurgent leaders to converge here.

It is impossible to say how many insurgents are in Baquba now. Using a broad definition that comprises not just those who actively fight, but also those who place bombs and others paid by insurgents, some military officials put the number around 2,000. It is a nasty stew that includes former members of the Saddam Hussein army and paramilitary forces, the Fedayeen; angry and impoverished Sunni men; criminal gangs; Wahhabi Islamists; and foreigners.

While most insurgents here are not as hardened, that is similar to the numbers in Falluja in 2004, before a bloody Marine offensive to retake the city, said Lt. Col. Scott Jackson, deputy head of the provincial reconstruction team in Diyala, who fought in Falluja.

As the insurgent ranks have swelled, attacks on American troops have soared. The 5,000-member brigade that patrols Diyala Province has had 44 soldiers killed in five months, more than twice the number who died in the preceding year.

On the ground in Baquba, it is not hard to see why. Despite recent seizures of stockpiles, the insurgents have a ready supply of artillery shells and material to make bombs, the biggest killer of American troops here. Some bombs destroy American vehicles. Some are used to booby-trap houses to crash down on Americans. Some are used in larger battle plans: Before overrunning an Iraqi Army outpost south of Baquba, guerrillas laid bombs on the road that Iraqi and American forces would later use to try to rescue the outpost. The minefield blocked the reinforcements, and the Iraqi soldiers at the outpost fled.

The guerrillas seem increasingly well organized and trained. An insurgent force trying to overrun an American outpost in southern Baquba was repelled only after American soldiers fired more than 2,000 Coke-bottle-size rounds from Bradley fighting vehicles and 13,000 rounds from M-240 machine guns.

“They were firing from every direction, trying to get us to concentrate on one spot while the other guys were maneuvering,” said Cpl. Bill McGrath, who said the M-240 barrels glowed cherry red and had to be swapped out a half-dozen times. “These were well-trained military types, not like the guys who shoot tanks with AK-47s. A lot of these guys we never saw. We’d just see muzzle flashes.”

The tactics reflect the skill and resolve of the insurgency here, soldiers say. “To say the guys we are fighting are any less smarter than me, that would be crazy,” said Lt. Col. Morris Goins, commander of the 1-12 Combined Arms Battalion.

The Sunni groups seem to be cooperating like mob families, with ever-shifting alliances. Colonel Goins likens it to the HBO series “The Sopranos.” “We’ll work together today, but when they are no longer of any value,” he said, they part company.

They are capable of disciplined and sustained operations. In early March, a guerrilla force chased a four-man American sniper team through palm groves around the Diyala River for more than two hours, after cutting off the Americans’ escape routes. The snipers were cornered in a sharp bend of the river, officers said, before helicopters finally flew in to rescue them.

Some are purely fanatical. American forces on the main road in western Baquba reported their astonishment during a night in which, over the course of an hour and 15 minutes, they gunned down four teams of guerrillas trying one after the other to plant a bomb in the same spot.

There are many reasons for the mayhem. Diyala and Baquba had significant Shiite and Sunni populations. Shiite-dominated security forces in the city inflamed tensions by persecuting Sunnis, but remain ill prepared to fight the insurgents without support of American forces. Basic government services like food and fuel deliveries have collapsed.

Sunni extremists operate with an extraordinary ruthlessness that terrorizes residents into submission. And Baquba has always had a heavy population of former Baathists and Fedayeen, providing a sympathetic backdrop for the insurgency. Some fighters still wear black Fedayeen uniforms, American officers say.

“Our city has become ruins, even its people,” said one Baquba resident, Mohammed al-Zaidi, 34. “We have no hope to live for.”

Colonel Jackson said he believed that the largest portion of insurgents were disgruntled men or others who just needed money. The rest are homegrown Sunni insurgents, Wahhabis, foreigners and their rivals, Shiite militiamen. Falluja, he said, had a significantly higher proportion of hardened and skilled fighters.

However, he added, “the core of the insurgents in Baquba are as well trained as they were in Falluja.”

Fighters from the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia largely loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American cleric, have also flooded north from Baghdad and now control villages west of Baquba and north of Sadr City. The police chief of Khalis, a city controlled by the Mahdi Army, was arrested by American forces in March for sectarian wrongdoing.

Thousands of Shiites have been killed or displaced in Baquba. But the roots of the gruesome toll that Sunni killers have taken here is partly a consequence of Shiite aggression in Baghdad, where Shiite death squads drove Sunnis out. Many angry Sunnis sought refuge in Baquba, and helped fuel the insurgency.

The human disaster that unfolded in Baquba was a mirror image of much of Baghdad — Sunni death squads wiping out Shiite families. The Shiite-dominated central government in Baghdad responded by sending a new Iraqi Army commander who arrested Sunnis with no evidence, while the recently fired provincial police chief stocked his ranks with Shiite Mahdi militiamen.

American soldiers cited repeated instances of Iraqi troops or police officers terrorizing Sunnis in Diyala. The Iraqi forces’ conduct induced some Sunnis to turn to the insurgency for protection, American officers said. Iraqi lawmakers in Baghdad continue to block provincial elections that would give Sunni Arabs — a majority in Diyala, but one that largely boycotted the last provincial elections — a real stake in government.

As the insurgency has swelled in Baquba, many soldiers here described an American force spread astonishingly thin. The 5,000-member Third Brigade Combat Team of the First Cavalry Division is based in Baquba. But its forces have responsibility over a wide region in Diyala, which is about the size of Maryland, and parts of neighboring Salahuddin Province.

American commanders began a strategy here similar to the new security plan in Baghdad, pushing soldiers into small forward bases deep in insurgent territory.

The troops say that before reinforcements arrived it had essentially been left up to a few dozen foot soldiers and a few tanks from Company B of the 1-12 Battalion to patrol from eastern Baquba to Zaganiya — an insurgent-dominated region of hundreds of thousands of people. “The takeaway was that we had freakin’ next to nothing” for an area with many terrorists, said Capt. Pete Chapman, the company commander.

With areas like Zaganiya receiving little attention, insurgent ranks grew unchecked. Eight of the 300 soldiers in the Fifth Squadron of the 73rd Cavalry Regiment have been killed near Zaganiya since they arrived in March to secure the village. The squadron has been sweeping the area northeast of Baquba, while the Fifth Battalion of the 20th Infantry Regiment rushed north from Taji in March to reinforce Baquba.

A number of officers said additional battalions were still needed for new patrol bases and operations. None would speak for the record. The senior American commander in Diyala, Col. David Sutherland, said he believed there were enough troops in Baquba now.

At one newly built outpost in Baquba, nicknamed Disneyland, soldiers staff lookouts and sniper posts and sleep on cots. They say they control little outside the tall concrete barriers. “You see anybody out there with binoculars, you light them up!” Sgt. Gary Rojas barked on a radio to American snipers one recent afternoon, after an Iraqi insurgent bullet struck the second floor.

Later, Iraqi and American troops walked out of Disneyland, sprinted alongside a wall on the deserted street and then broke into a house 200 yards away. They found the sniper’s nest on the second floor, along with a shell casing. A perfect spot for a sniper, Sergeant Rojas said. The unit climbed into a Bradley to go search another nearby house. First Lt. Karim Branford ordered a move back to the outpost, fearing a trap, before they had gone two blocks from it. “I’m not going to take guys into a baited ambush,” he said.

The Americans said the Iraqis performed well. But the Iraqi soldiers said that most Iraqis assigned to the outpost had fled, kicking back some of their pay to commanders to avoid punishment. Colonel Sutherland said the Iraqi troops were accounted for.

The Iraqi soldiers fretted that the insurgents had better equipment compared with their two clips and rickety Kalashnikov rifles. Like Baquba’s residents, they are intimidated. An Iraqi, Sgt. Raad Rashid, said his countrymen would flee if Americans abandoned the outpost. “Twenty minutes later we’d be gone,” he said. “They would surround this place and kill us.”

The insurgency’s remarkable ability to terrorize residents, killing those who help Americans while coercing others, is undeniably one of its biggest weapons. It appears to be well financed, too.

“Some guys will give you $300 to put this in a hole in the ground and attach a wire,” said John M. Jones, head of the provincial reconstruction team in Diyala, explaining how insurgents recruit bomb emplacers. “Where are the other incentives?”

With the combination of threats and money, Mr. Jones said, the insurgents’ offers are hard for residents to refuse. “You might not agree with the philosophy of what he’s saying, but he’s got the big guns, and they live in the same neighborhood. It’s you, your wife and kids. What can you do?”

Such intimidation makes progress impossible. “We are not able to make even baby steps,” he said. “I hope we’re laying the framework for future baby steps. Right now, I’d say we are pretty much frustrated.”

An Iraqi reporter for The New York Times contributed to this report.

    Attacks Surge as Iraq Militants Overshadow City, NYT, 16.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/16/world/middleeast/16insurgency.html

34 People Are Killed

in Six Bombings in Baghdad;

2 Britons Die in Helicopter Crash

April 16, 2007
The New York Times
By JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, April 15 — At least 34 people were killed in Baghdad on Sunday in another day punctuated by car bombings and suicide vest attacks on civilian targets of the kind that the two-month-old American security crackdown has so far been unable to restrain.

All six bombs that caused fatalities were detonated in predominantly Shiite areas, which have been the persistent target of Sunni militant bombing attacks.

The day’s military casualties included the deaths of two British servicemen killed when two British Puma troop-carrying helicopters crashed northwest of Baghdad in a mission before dawn. The United States military announced three deaths on Sunday: two soldiers and a marine, killed in separate incidents.

Six British servicemen were injured in the helicopter crash, which Defense Minister Desmond Browne of Britain said appeared to be accidental rather than a result of insurgent ground fire, which had downed several American military helicopters in Iraq this year. News reports in Britain suggested that there had been a midair collision, possibly during a Special Operations raid of the kind that elite British and American troops frequently carry out from bases near the crash site, southwest of the Sunni town of Taji, on Baghdad’s outskirts.

One of the injured servicemen was said to be in critical condition in an American military hospital.

The worst of Sunday’s bombings in Baghdad occurred in the predominantly Shiite district of Shurta in southwest Baghdad, where two car bombs that exploded minutes apart killed at least 17 people and wounded 50, according to an Iraqi police official at Yarmouk hospital, where many of the casualties were taken. Witnesses said that the bombs detonated in a busy street market and at a nearby intersection, and that about half of those who died were women and children.

At midafternoon, a bomb in a parked minibus exploded in the Karada district of south-central Baghdad, an area with a mainly Shiite and Christian population. Police officials said nine people had been killed and 17 wounded. A few hours earlier, according to the police, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a minibus on a busy street that heads into the Kadhimiya district of north-central Baghdad, a mainly Shiite district, killing at least three people and wounding 11.

Two more bombs exploded in Karada at nightfall, killing five people and wounding 27, including three policemen, according to the police.

In the northern city of Mosul, the police said two oil trucks driven by suicide bombers had exploded outside an Iraqi military base in the Yarmouk neighborhood, killing at least four people, including two soldiers, and wounding more than 20 others. A police statement said there were other bodies in the rubble, and described the attack as having followed a familiar insurgent pattern, with the second bomber waiting to detonate until rescuers and bystanders gathered around the wreckage caused by the first.

Political followers of the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr said Sunday that their six cabinet ministers would quit their posts on Monday to protest attacks against his organization during the Baghdad security push. Bahaa al-Aaraji, a lawmaker from Mr. Sadr’s party, said that it would order Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to choose an “independent and technocrat” cabinet.

Mr. Sadr has issued threats to pull out of the government several times before but has not carried through on them. If his allies were to leave the cabinet, it would seriously weaken Mr. Maliki’s already shaky administration.

The bombings in Baghdad maintained a grim staccato of attacks that have marked the first phase of the American-led attempt to regain control of the capital with the so-called surge of nearly 30,000 additional troops that President Bush ordered deployed to Iraq late last year. American commanders say the effort has reduced the Sunni-Shiite sectarian violence that racked Baghdad after the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in the city of Samarra early last year, but that curbing insurgent bombings, many of them by groups linked to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, has so far eluded them.

Even the hopes generated by the falling numbers of unidentified bodies found daily around the capital, the main bright spot in the new security plan so far, were dimmed on Sunday when the police reported finding 30 bodies, the highest daily number in a month. The number of bodies found on wasteland, in sewers and elsewhere frequently averaged 30 or more a day last year, after the Samarra attack.

An indication of how Baghdad’s six million people are reacting to the new security crackdown came from the frustrated and angry mood at the scene of Sunday’s minibus bombing in the Karada district. Among survivors and others who helped extract victims from the carnage, there was widespread blame for the Qaeda terrorists who are said by the Americans to be responsible for many of the bombings. But there was reproach, too, for the Americans, and for the United States-supported government of Prime Minister Maliki, for failing to halt the attacks.

“I am asking myself, where is the security plan?” said Zahid Awad Slaman, a 30-year-old nighttime security guard who was riding his motorcycle nearby when the minibus blew up. He described seeing a fireball bursting from the parked vehicle, which enveloped people nearby as the blast from the bomb threw cars across the street.

The Americans “said they had rid us of the tyrant Saddam, but what have they done for us since then?” he said. “I blame the Americans and the government for this, because the violence grows day by day. The foreign troops have caused Muslims to kill their Muslim brothers.”

At a news conference in Baghdad, the hard choices the war has placed before American politicians were evident as Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, spoke with reporters about his two-day visit here, his fifth since the invasion in March 2003. Senator Hagel, who has said he is considering a presidential bid, broke with his party last month in voting for a Democratic-sponsored bill calling for an American troop withdrawal by March 31, 2008.

But he was reluctant to reaffirm support for a withdrawal deadline as he discussed what he had learned during a visit to American troops in Ramadi, in the heart of insurgent territory, and talks with top Iraqi and American officials in Baghdad.

He predicted that Congress would break the deadlock with President Bush by striking the withdrawal deadline that both houses had attached to bills approving about $100 billion in supplemental war financing for Iraq and Afghanistan. But he said the compromise would still involve Congressionally mandated “benchmarks” for progress in Iraq, which he did not specify.

The senator appeared eager during his visit to avoid political embarrassment of the kind that enveloped his fellow Republican senator, John McCain of Arizona, a strong supporter of the American troop buildup, when he toured a Baghdad market two weeks ago under the protection of 100 American troops and hovering helicopters and later told reporters that the scene at the market reflected the progress achieved by the buildup.

Asked on Sunday what he had done during his day in Baghdad, Senator Hagel, a close friend of Senator McCain’s, flashed a wry smile and said, “We did no shopping while we were here.”

Ali Adeeb, Qais Mizher and Wisam A. Habeeb contributed reporting.

    34 People Are Killed in Six Bombings in Baghdad; 2 Britons Die in Helicopter Crash, NYT, 16.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/16/world/middleeast/16iraq.html

Trauma severe for Iraqi children

15.4.2007
USA TODAY
By James Palmer

BAGHDAD — About 70% of primary school students in a Baghdad neighborhood suffer symptoms of trauma-related stress such as bed-wetting or stuttering, according to a survey by the Iraqi Ministry of Health.

The survey of about 2,500 youngsters is the most comprehensive look at how the war is affecting Iraqi children, said Iraq's national mental health adviser and author of the study, Mohammed Al-Aboudi.

"The fighting is happening in the streets in front of our houses and schools," al-Aboudi said. "This is very difficult for the children to adapt to."

The study is to be released next month. Al-Aboudi discussed the findings with USA TODAY.

Many Iraqi children have to pass dead bodies on the street as they walk to school in the morning, according to a separate report last week by the International Red Cross. Others have seen relatives killed or have been injured in mortar or bomb attacks.

"Some of these children are suffering one trauma after another, and it's severely damaging their development," said Said Al-Hashimi, a psychiatrist who teaches at Mustansiriya Medical School and runs a private clinic in west Baghdad. "We're not certain what will become of the next generation, even if there is peace one day," Al-Hashimi said.

The study was conducted last October in the Sha'ab district of northern Baghdad. The low- to middle-income neighborhood is inhabited by a mix of Shiites and Sunni Arabs. Al-Aboudi said he believes the sample was broadly representative of conditions throughout the capital.

In the study, schoolteachers were asked to determine whether randomly selected students showed any of 10 symptoms identified by the World Health Organization as signs of trauma. Other symptoms included voluntary muteness, declining performance in school or an increase in aggressive behavior.

The teachers received training from Iraqi psychologists on how to identify and help students cope with trauma-related stress, al-Aboudi said.

The study "shows the impact of the violence and insecurity on the children and on children's mental health," said Naeema Al-Gasseer, the Iraqi representative of the WHO. "They have fear every day."

The Iraqi government is aware of the problem but largely unequipped to address it, said Ali al-Dabbagh, a government spokesman. "Until we have proper security in Baghdad, there's not much we can do to help these children," Al-Dabbagh said in Washington.

Contributing: Brian Winter in Washington, Emily Bazar in McLean, Va.

    Trauma severe for Iraqi children, UT, 15.4.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-04-15-cover-war-children_N.htm

8 Iraqis Killed in Bomb Attack at Legislature

April 13, 2007
The New York Times
By ALISSA J. RUBIN

BAGHDAD, April 12 — A suicide bomber struck deep inside the heavily fortified International Zone on Thursday, killing eight people when he detonated his explosives inside the Parliament building, just a few feet from the main chamber.

In a separate and in some ways equally traumatic attack early in the day, a truck bomb destroyed the beloved 60-year-old Sarafiya bridge across the Tigris and killed six people. The heavily traveled bridge has long been a symbol of Baghdad, illustrated on old postcards and drawings from a more peaceful time.

The attack on Parliament was the worst in the International Zone since the area was established four years ago, when it was known as the Green Zone. At a time when Iraqis are increasingly questioning the government’s ability to protect them, the bombing raised the troubling possibility that it could not even fully protect itself, although the zone is at the wellspring of American and Iraqi military power in the city.

The bomber struck a half hour after the day’s session had closed, in a cafe area where lawmakers were lingering, across from the main chamber. Among the dead were at least two legislators, both from Sunni parties. Of the 23 people wounded, 11 were members of Parliament, the United States military reported.

“This is a cowardly act,” said Deputy Prime Minister Barham Ahmad Saleh, “and this proves that terrorism is indiscriminate. Sunnis, Shia, Kurds have been injured and maimed and killed in this attack. This should be a reminder that all Iraqis are targeted.” He visited the wounded at Ibn Sina Hospital, which is run by the United States military.

Mr. Saleh and Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the national security adviser, who was also visiting the wounded, called the attack a major security breach. Regulations in the zone require visitors to undergo several screenings by Iraqi forces, foreign contractors and American soldiers.

The image of the International Zone as an impregnable fortress had been on the wane. Regular rocket and mortar attacks on the United States Embassy compound in recent weeks have killed a civilian and a soldier, and wounded several others. And senior military officials said two suicide vests were found in a garbage bin about two weeks ago.

Accordingly, news of the attack on Thursday came less as a shock than as further evidence of the government’s impotence, even in the midst of a major security push in the city.

“I am not surprised this happened at the Parliament,” said Waqas al-Ubaidi, 30, who was standing outside the hospital waiting for news of his uncle, a member of Parliament, Salman al-Jumaili. “The coming days will be worse; every day is worse.”

But Baghdad residents had already been horrified by news of the bridge bombing, a demoralizing attack that stole one of the few remaining reminders of better days in the capital.

The bomber drove a tanker truck loaded with explosives onto the bridge at 7 a.m. and brought it to a halt midway, according to American military officials and witnesses. The driver examined the truck’s underside and then disappeared. With the truck blocking traffic, motorists stopped a police patrol crossing the bridge and asked them to do something about it.

Immediately suspicious, the police moved cars and people off the bridge and radioed to the patrols on the opposite side to stop people from starting across. One witness, a tractor driver, described a policeman opening the passenger door of the truck, seeing a mass of wires and batteries, and running away.

Ten minutes later the bomb exploded, so powerfully that it killed six people some distance away, sent several cars careening into the river and destroyed 65 percent to 75 percent of the steel structure. Politicians, immediately sensitive to the impact of the bombing, swiftly condemned it, eulogized the structure and promised to rebuild it.

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who was traveling in South Korea, released a statement describing the bridge as “one of the oldest and loveliest city bridges.”

In the Parliament attack, several lawmakers expressed bitterness at both the government and the Americans for failing to protect them and said the attack must have been carried out by someone who had security clearance and was able to avoid the multiple searches.

“This is a great blow to the government, which is always talking about security and how it is improving with the Americans, but it’s a great violation of their security plan,” Ali al-Mayali, an injured legislator from the bloc allied with the militant Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, said as he sat outside the hospital, holding gauze to his head to stanch bleeding from a shrapnel wound.

“This is the International Zone, protected by the Americans,” Mr. Mayali said. “It’s a big violation that they reached the center of decision-making.”

Another Sadr bloc legislator, Asma al-Musawi, who hurried to the hospital to find wounded colleagues, expressed similar dismay. But she said the attack was also a reminder to members of Parliament what life was like for their constituents, who lived with far less protection.

“We must expect this,” Ms. Musawi said. “It is worse outside in Baghdad, so the violence will definitely, eventually reach into the International Zone. If you are unable to protect your people, eventually you will be unable to protect yourself.

“But this is an alarm for the government, for security inside the International Zone, for the coalition forces, for the people leading Iraq.”

Maj. Gen. William Caldwell IV, the chief American military spokesman in Iraq, condemned the bombing, saying: “We in the multinational force Iraq condemn these attacks. These are clearly attacks on Iraqi institutions. We try to build hope and they are trying to instill fear. But we remain committed to the Iraqi people.”

The bomb exploded less than half an hour after Parliament had recessed for the day. Because it was Thursday afternoon and Friday is typically a day off, many people had already left when the bomber detonated his explosive, apparently in a vest.

But a handful of legislators were eating lunch in the cafe area, and one Shiite member, Imam Jalaluddin al-Sagheer, was giving an interview on television. When the explosion happened, he ducked and was engulfed in a cloud of smoke and dust.

The glass tables in the cafe shattered, becoming dangerous shards that left people bleeding from numerous small wounds, Mr. Mayali said.

The Parliament building has its own security arrangements, not managed by either the American military or by the Interior Ministry of Police or Ministry of Defense, said Mr. Rubaie, the security adviser to Prime Minister Maliki.

“We need to work out new measures,” Mr. Rubaie said. “We advised the Parliament that no visitors should go into the building, and secondly, that they should give us responsibility for the force protection and we would be in charge, but they didn’t want it.”

He added that three weeks ago, he had insisted on a top to bottom check of the entire building and that his security staff had found 19 pistols that were unaccounted for. The search “was a very unpopular move,” he said. “The Parliament didn’t like it.”

Several lawmakers said that their guards were often able to bully their way through checkpoints without being searched and that some carried high-level badges that made them and their vehicles exempt from being examined when the entered the zone.

“No one can bring bombs into this zone or this building except the lawmakers and their guards, and some of the lawmakers’ convoys are not searched,” said Wail Abdul Latif, a legislator from the secular Iraqiya bloc led by the former interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi. “Some of the lawmakers’ guards make trouble at the checkpoints, some of them refuse to be searched. They are not very professional.”

He added that he wanted the American military to take over securing the Parliament, as it had done before the new government was put in place.

After emerging from the hospital, Mr. Rubaie, a man who usually exudes confidence, seemed a little shaken by the two bombings. “These are historic things,” he said. “This is what the terrorists want to do to us.”

“What happened today, the Parliament, the bridge, the Mutanabi Street book market, these are places very dear to the hearts of Baghdadis, of Iraqis,” he said, referring to a bombing a few weeks ago at the city’s historic Mutanabi Street book market.

“These places are very dear, way dear to us,” he said. “This is what they want to destroy.”

Reporting was contributed by Ahmad Fadam, Qais Mizher, Khalid al-Ansary and Edward Wong.

    8 Iraqis Killed in Bomb Attack at Legislature, NYT, 13.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/13/world/middleeast/13iraq.html?hp

Blast at Iraqi Parliament

Kills at Least One Lawmaker

April 12, 2007
The New York Times
By EDWARD WONG and ALISSA J. RUBIN

BAGHDAD, April 12 — An explosion struck the cafeteria inside the Iraqi parliament in the heart of Baghdad today, killing at least one lawmaker and wounding at least 17 others, Iraqi lawmakers said.

The blast appeared to be caused by a bomb, though it was not clear if the explosive was detonated by a suicide bomber or had been planted. The attack would appear to be one of the most serious breaches of security of the heavily fortified Green Zone, where the parliament is located.

“This is a cowardly act,” said Barhem Saleh, Iraq’s deputy prime minister, who visited the hospital where many of those injured in the explosion had been taken. “This proves terrorism is indiscriminate. Sunnis, Shias, Kurds have been injured and this should be a reminder that all Iraqis are targets.”

He said that people who were present near the blast thought the explosion may have been caused by a suicide bomber who detonated a vest of explosives, but he said there was not yet sufficient forensic evidence to confirm this.

The parliament had ended its session about half an hour before the explosion. Many legislators had left the Iraqi Convention Center, where the parliament is based, but some were eating lunch in the cafeteria near the parliament chamber when the explosion struck.

The force of the blast was strong enough to knock down people who were on the lower level of the building, witnesses said.

Ali al-Mayali, a member of the Sadr bloc in parliament who was in the building, said: “There was a great explosion. I saw many people fall to the ground. I had no idea whether they were killed or injured.”

The attack comes as the Iraqi government is trying to prove to both Iraqis and to insurgents that it has control of the security situation in Baghdad, but the explosion serves to help undermine that claim.

“It was a huge explosion that damaged the building,” said Saad al-Barazanchi, a member of the main Kurdish political bloc. Mr. Barazanchi said he was in a meeting of a legislative committee assigned to revise the Constitution when the explosion took place about 200 feet away. The exact death toll was unclear but some witnesses said 2 people had been killed.

At least two members of the Kurdish bloc were lightly wounded, Mr. Barazanchi said.

A spokesman for the American embassy said early reports indicated that no American citizens were killed or wounded in the blast.

“We are aware of an explosion in the International Zone,” the spokesman, Lou Fintor, said in an e-mail message. “We are in the process of determining the source and nature of the explosion.”

Police or ambulance sirens could be heard from the east bank of the Tigris River, directly across from the Green Zone. By late afternoon, American helicopters were still swooping over the center of the fortified area.

The attack took place two months after the American military began a new security plan in Baghdad that the Bush administration calls “the surge.”

The president has announced the addition of 30,000 troops to Iraq, many of them to be placed in neighborhoods in the capital. Many have already arrived, and the rest are expected to be here by June. Killings from death squads have dropped in the capital, but overall civilian and American casualties across Iraq not improved, largely because of devastating suicide bombings like the one today.

The Convention Center is one of the most heavily guarded buildings inside the Green Zone, a four-square-mile area surrounded by blast walls and concertina wire that houses the offices of the Iraqi government and the American embassy. To enter the Convention Center from the area called the “red zone” — meaning the realm of ordinary Iraqis — one has to go through at least 6 checkpoints. The various checkpoints are guarded by Iraqi Army soldiers, Georgian soldiers, Peruvian security contractors, Iraqi policeman and other Iraqi employees.

The second checkpoint from the street has a sophisticated full-body scanning device, while guards at the third checkpoint use explosives-sniffing dogs. Security procedures were tightened after a bomb detonated several months ago inside a car in the convoy of the Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the speaker of Parliament. That bombing took place near the Convention Center, as the cars were leaving a parking area, but Mr. Mashhadani was not injured.

In October 2004, at the start of the holy month of Ramadan, two bombs exploded inside the Green Zone, killing at least 5 people, including 3 American security contractors. One of those bombings took place in a market, and the other inside a popular café.

More than 10,000 Iraqis live inside the Green Zone. The Iraqi government and American embassy have made plans to open up large swaths of the Green Zone to traffic sometime this year. The area with somewhat relaxed security would be known as the Orange Zone, and it would include the Convention Center.

The American embassy, which is now housed inside Saddam Hussein’s most prominent palace buildings, would move to a new site, one that would be inside the shrunken Green Zone. Construction has begun on the new embassy, the cranes now dominate the skyline of the Green Zone. When completed, that embassy will be the largest American one in the world.

Earlier in the morning today, a truck bomb exploded on Sarafiya Bridge, a historic metal bridge that spans the Tigris River, killing at least 10 people, police officials said.

Mr. Mashhadani said at the meeting of Parliament that insurgents had plans to try cutting off the mostly Shiite side of Baghdad, east of the Tigris, from the Sunni-dominated half, on the west bank.

Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi in Baghdad contributed reporting.

    Blast at Iraqi Parliament Kills at Least One Lawmaker, NYT, 12.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/world/middleeast/12cnd-iraq.html?hp

Editorial

Four Years Later in Iraq

April 12, 2007
The New York Times

Four years ago this week, as American troops made their first, triumphant entrance into Baghdad, joyous Iraqis pulled down a giant statue of Saddam Hussein. It was powerful symbolism — a murderous dictator toppled, Baghdadis taking to the streets without fear, American soldiers hailed as liberators.

After four years of occupation, untold numbers killed by death squads and suicide bombers, and searing experiences like Abu Ghraib, few Iraqis still look on American soldiers as liberators. Instead, thousands marked this week’s anniversary by burning American flags and marching through the streets of Najaf chanting, “Death to America.”

Once again, tens of thousands of American troops are pouring into Baghdad. Yesterday the Pentagon announced that battle-weary Army units in Iraq would have to stay on for an additional three months past their scheduled return dates.

Mr. Bush is desperately gambling that by stretching the Army to the absolute limits of its deployable strength, he may be able to impose some relative calm in the capital. And he seems to imagine that should that gamble succeed, the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki will, without any serious pressure from Washington, take the steps toward sharing political power and economic resources it has tenaciously resisted since the day it took office a year ago.

Unless Mr. Maliki takes those steps — eliminating militia and death squad members from the Iraqi Army and police, fairly sharing oil revenues, and rolling back laws that deny political and economic opportunities to the Sunni middle class — no lasting security gains are possible. More Iraqi and American lives will be sacrificed.

Even among Shiites, who suffered so much at the hands of Saddam Hussein and who are the supposed beneficiaries of Mr. Maliki’s shortsighted policies, there is a deep disillusionment and anger. This week, a Washington Post reporter interviewed Khadim al-Jubouri, who four years ago swung his sledgehammer to help knock down the dictator’s statue. Mr. Jubouri said that ever since he watched that statue being built he had nourished a dream of bringing it down and ushering in much better times.

Now, with friends and relatives killed, kidnapped or driven from their homes, the prices of basic necessities soaring and electricity rationed to four hours a day, Mr. Jubouri says the change of regimes “achieved nothing” and he has come to hate the American military presence he once welcomed.

Mr. Maliki’s supporters can be even more frightening to listen to. This week’s demonstration in Najaf was organized by the fiercely anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, whose political party and militia helped put Mr. Maliki in power and are still among his most important allies.

Two months into the Baghdad security drive, the gains Mr. Bush is banking on have not materialized. More American soldiers continue to arrive, and their commanders are talking about extending the troop buildup through the fall or into early next year. After four years, the political trend is even more discouraging.

There is no possible triumph in Iraq and very little hope left.

    Four Years Later in Iraq, NYT, 12.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/opinion/12thu1.html

U.S. Suspects

That Iran Aids Both Sunni and Shiite Militias

April 12, 2007
The New York Times
By ALISSA J. RUBIN

BAGHDAD, April 11 — Arms that American military officials say appear to have been manufactured in Iran as recently as last year have turned up in the past week in a Sunni-majority area, the chief spokesman for the American military command in Iraq said Wednesday in a news conference.

The spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, said that detainees in American custody had indicated that Iranian intelligence operatives had given support to Sunni insurgents and that surrogates for the Iranian intelligence service were training Shiite extremists in Iran. He gave no further description of the detainees and did not say why they would have that information.

“We have in fact found some cases recently where Iranian intelligence sources have provided to Sunni insurgent groups some support,” said General Caldwell, who sat near a table crowded with weapons that he said the military contended were largely of Iranian manufacture.

The weapons were found in a mostly Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad, he said, a rare instance of the American military suggesting any link between Iran and the Sunni insurgency. It has recently suggested a link with Shiite militants in Iraq.

The accusation of a link between the Iranian intelligence service and Sunni Arab insurgents is new. The American military has contended in the past that elements in Iran have given Shiite militants powerful Iranian-made roadside bombs known as explosively formed penetrators, and training in their use.

Critics have cast doubt on the American military statements about those bombs, saying the evidence linking them to Iran was circumstantial and inferential.

The weapons displayed on Wednesday were more conventional, and officials pointed to markings on them that they said indicated Iranian manufacture.

The display came as the military released figures showing that 26 percent fewer civilians were killed and wounded in Baghdad from Jan. 1 through March 31 than during the previous quarter, as the new American effort to secure Baghdad got under way, but that nationwide civilian casualties had risen.

From February to March the number of dead and wounded nationwide, including civilians and members of Iraqi and American security forces, rose 10 percent, according to the military report.

“What does that mean?” General Caldwell said. “It means we still have a lot of work to do.”

The military announced that one soldier died on the eastern side of Baghdad from a roadside bomb early Wednesday and that another soldier died in southern Baghdad on Tuesday.

In his statement, General Caldwell renewed American contentions that Iran was not doing enough to stop weapons from being moved into Iraq from outside.

It is unclear from the military’s comments on Wednesday whether it is possible to draw conclusions about how the weapons that the military contends are of Iranian origin might have made their way into a predominantly Sunni area or why Shiite Iran would arm Sunni militants.

There are several possibilities, military officials who were not authorized to speak publicly for attribution said privately. One is that they came through Syria, long a transit route for Iranian-made weapons being funneled to the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah. Another possibility is that arms dealers are selling to every side in the conflict.

The weapons on the table next to General Caldwell were found two days ago, the general said, after a resident of the predominantly Sunni Arab neighborhood called Jihad, in western Baghdad, informed the local Joint Security Station run by Iraqi and American soldiers that there were illegal arms in the area.

The soldiers found a black Mercedes sedan and on its back seat, in plain view, a rocket of a type commonly made in China but repainted and labeled and sold by Iran, said Maj. Marty Weber, a master ordnance technician who joined General Caldwell at the briefing. In the trunk were mortar rounds marked “made in 2006.”

In a nearby house and buried in the yard, the soldiers found more mortar rounds, 1,000 to 2,000 rounds of bullets, five hand grenades and a couple of Bulgarian-made rocket-propelled grenades, Major Weber said.

The weapons that the military officials said were of Iranian origin were labeled in English, which Major Weber said was typical of arms manufactured for international sale. He added that the military knew that they were of Iranian origin by “the structure of the rounds, the geometry of the tailfins and, again, the stenciling on the warheads.”

He also said the mortar rounds marked 81 millimeters on the table were made regionally only by Iran.

In the political arena, the members of Parliament allied with the militant Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr announced that they would leave the government unless Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki set a fixed timetable for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. Mr. Maliki rejected the idea this week.

The capital was largely quiet on Wednesday, but 16 bodies were found around the city and a director general of the city’s electricity ministry was assassinated, an Interior Ministry official said. The center of the city, where fighting raged on Tuesday, remained extremely tense.

The United States military raised the death toll from Tuesday’s estimate to 14 insurgents in Fadhil killed, 8 detained and 12 wounded.

Sheik Jasim Yehiya Jasim, the imam of Al Joba mosque, whose brother was killed by the Iraqi Army, said he was devastated and confused about why his brother had been singled out and killed. “He was born only in 1982,” Sheik Jasim said. “He did the call to prayer. I thank the Iraqi and American governments in the name of the people of Fadhil for this bloody democracy.”

Khalid al-Ansary contributed reporting.

    U.S. Suspects That Iran Aids Both Sunni and Shiite Militias, NYT, 12.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/world/middleeast/12iraq.html

Civilian Claims on U.S.

Suggest the Toll of War

April 12, 2007
The New York Times
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER

In February 2006, nervous American soldiers in Tikrit killed an Iraqi fisherman on the Tigris River after he leaned over to switch off his engine. A year earlier, a civilian filling his car and an Iraqi Army officer directing traffic were shot by American soldiers in a passing convoy in Balad, for no apparent reason.

The incidents are among many thousands of claims submitted to the Army by Iraqi and Afghan civilians seeking payment for noncombat killings, injuries or property damage American forces inflicted on them or their relatives.

The claims provide a rare window into the daily chaos and violence faced by civilians and troops in the two war zones. Recently, the Army disclosed roughly 500 claims to the American Civil Liberties Union in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. They are the first to be made public.

They represent only a small fraction of the claims filed. In all, the military has paid more than $32 million to Iraqi and Afghan civilians for noncombat-related killings, injuries and property damage, an Army spokeswoman said. That figure does not include condolence payments made at a unit commander’s discretion.

The paperwork, examined by The New York Times, provides unusually detailed accounts of how bystanders to the conflicts have become targets of American forces grappling to identify who is friend, who is foe.

In the case of the fisherman in Tikrit, he and his companion desperately tried to appear unthreatening to an American helicopter overhead.

“They held up the fish in the air and shouted ‘Fish! Fish!’ to show they meant no harm,” said the Army report attached to the claim filed by the fisherman’s family. The Army refused to compensate for the killing, ruling that it was “combat activity,” but approved $3,500 for his boat, net and cellphone, which drifted away and were stolen.

In the killings at the gas station in Balad, documents show that the Army determined that the neither of the dead Iraqis had done anything hostile or criminal, and approved $5,000 to the civilian’s brother but nothing for the Iraqi officer.

In another incident, in 2005, an American soldier in a dangerous Sunni Arab area south of Baghdad killed a boy after mistaking his book bag for a bomb satchel. The Army paid the boy’s uncle $500.

The Foreign Claims Act, which governs such compensation, does not deal with combat-related cases. For those cases, including the boy’s, the Army may offer a condolence payment as a gesture of regret with no admission of fault, of usually no higher than $2,500 per person killed.

The total number of claims filed, or paid, is unclear, although extensive data has been provided in reports to Congress. There is no way to know immediately whether disciplinary action or prosecution has resulted from the cases.

Soldiers hand out instruction cards after mistakes are made, so Iraqis know where to file claims. “The Army does not target civilians,” said Maj. Anne D. Edgecomb, an Army spokeswoman. “Sadly, however, the enemy’s tactics in Iraq and Afghanistan unnecessarily endanger innocent civilians.”

There are no specific guidelines to tell Army field officers judging the claims how to evaluate the cash value of a life taken, Major Edgecomb said. She said officers “consider the contributions the deceased made to those left behind and offer an award based on the facts, local tribal customs, and local law.”

In Haditha, one of the most notorious incidents involving American troops in Iraq, the Marines paid residents $38,000 after troops killed two dozen people in November 2005.

The relatively small number of claims divulged by the Army show patterns of misunderstanding at checkpoints and around American military convoys that often result in inadvertent killings. In one incident, in Feb. 18, 2006, a taxi approached a checkpoint east of Baquba that was not properly marked with signs to slow down, one Army claim evaluation said. Soldiers fired on the taxi, killing a woman and severely wounding her daughter and son. The Army approved an unusually large condolence payment of $7,500.

In September 2005, soldiers killed a man and his sister by firing 200 rounds into their car as it approached a checkpoint, apparently too quickly, near Mussayib. The Army lieutenant colonel who handled the claim awarded relatives a $10,000 compensation payment, finding that the soldiers had overstepped the rules of engagement.

“There are some very tragic losses of civilian life, including losses of whole families,” said Anthony D. Romero, the A.C.L.U.’s executive director, in an interview. He said the claims showed “enormous confusion on all sides, both from the civilian population on how to interact with the armed services and also among the soldiers themselves.”

Of the 500 cases released, 204, or about 40 percent, were apparently rejected because the injury, death or property damage was deemed to have been “directly or indirectly” related to combat. Of the claims approved for payment, at least 87 were not combat-related, and 77 were condolence payments for incidents the Army judged to be combat-related.

About 10 percent of the claims were rejected because the Army could not find a “significant activity” report confirming an incident.

A summary of the cases is online at www.aclu.org/civiliancasualties.

In Iraq, rules for evaluating claims have changed. Before President Bush declared major combat operations over, in May 2003, commanders considered most checkpoint shootings to be combat-related. Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the former commander of day-to-day operations in Iraq, stiffened rules at checkpoints. In late 2003, as more Iraqis were accidentally injured or killed, the Army began offering condolence payments. It has not always worked as planned, said Sarah Holewinski, the executive director of the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, a nonprofit group in Washington.

“Sometimes families would get paid and sometimes their neighbors wouldn’t,” she said. “It caused a lot of resentments among the Iraqis, which is ironic because it was a program specifically meant to foster good will.”

The Army usually assigns a captain, major or lieutenant colonel to accept claims in Iraq and Afghanistan and decide on payment.

But in and near combat zones in Iraq, a claim’s merit is quickly judged by an officer juggling dozens of new claims each week, said Jon E. Tracy, a former Army captain and lawyer who adjudicated Iraqi civilian claims in the Baghdad area from May 2003 through July 2004.

“I know plenty of lawyers who did not pay any condolences payments at all,” said Mr. Tracy, who is now a legal consultant for the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict. “There was no reason for it. It was clearly not combat, and the victim was clearly innocent, all the facts are there, witness statements, but they wouldn’t pay them.”

Half of the claims he adjudicated were property damage claims from collisions with military vehicles, he said. Most fraudulent claims were property claims; few were for wrongful killings. “You just had to read people,” he said.

About a quarter of claims were for personal injury or deaths. In his year judging claims, Mr. Tracy said he paid 52 condolence payments, most for deaths. “I had three to four times more,” Mr. Tracy said, “I just didn’t have enough money.”

Andrew W. Lehren contributed reporting from New York, and Edward Wong from Baghdad.

    Civilian Claims on U.S. Suggest the Toll of War, NYT, 12.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/world/middleeast/12abuse.html?hp

U.S. Is Extending Tours of Army

April 12, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, April 11 — The military announced Wednesday that most active duty Army units now in Iraq and Afghanistan and those sent in the future would serve 15-month tours, three months longer than the standard one-year tour.

Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, who announced the change at a news conference at the Pentagon, said that the only other way to maintain force levels would have been to allow many soldiers less than a year at home between combat tours.

Mr. Gates said the problem was evident even before President Bush ordered an increase in troops for Iraq this year. Officials said the change became inevitable as the numbers of extra troops that were needed — and, most likely, the time the extra forces would have to stay — increased.

“This policy is a difficult but necessary interim step,” he said. “Our forces are stretched, there’s no question about that.”

Democrats in Congress and outside military experts said the prolonged combat assignments risked damage to morale, possibly undermining recruiting and retention efforts. Tens of thousands of soldiers are facing their third tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and casualties have continued to mount inexorably.

“This new policy will be an additional burden to an already overstretched Army,” said Representative Ike Skelton, a Missouri Democrat and the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. “I think this will have a chilling effect on recruiting, retention, and readiness.”

Among soldiers in the field and their families, speaking in interviews and in postings on the Internet, reactions to the announcement varied — some of them stoical, some distraught, some grim and some sardonic. Mr. Gates said no decision had been made about how long beyond August to extend reinforcements in Iraq. The total force is around 145,000 and is building toward around 160,000 by early summer. Active-duty Army troops currently total around 79,000 in Iraq and around 18,000 in Afghanistan, along with an additional 7,000 soldiers in Kuwait, who would also be covered by the new policy. The tours of Marine units, which typically are shorter and more frequent, are not being extended; nor are the tours of brigades whose time has already been extended under previous changes to their orders.

Army National Guard or Army Reserves are supposed to be mobilized for no more than a year at a time, including nine months in Iraq or Afghanistan, under a policy announced by Mr. Gates in January.

By ordering longer tours for all other Army units, the Pentagon will be able to maintain the current force levels for another year and still give soldiers a full year to rest, retrain and re-equip before having to go back to Iraq or Afghanistan, Mr. Gates said.

The new policy calls for soldiers to receive a minimum of one year at home between tours, he said.

Word of the extensions reached the American military command post in Juwayba, Iraq, in a rural area east of Ramadi, overnight when a sergeant spotted it while surfing the Internet. It was greeted with a mixture of anger and resignation among the few soldiers who were still awake. “We’re just laughing,” said Capt. Brice Cooper, 26, the executive officer of Company B, First Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment of the First Infantry Division. He was chuckling nervously, his frustration palpable. “It’s so unbelievable, it’s humorous.”

The soldiers crowded around the outpost’s few computers, sending e-mail messages to their families and parsing Mr. Gates’s words in the hope of finding possible loopholes that would exclude them from the extension. The unit was scheduled to return to its base in Germany in June. The extension meant it would probably have to stay here until September.

“I’m fixing to lose my girlfriend,” one soldier grumbled.

Though the tours of some Army units have been extended beyond 12 months in recent years as troop levels have fluctuated, those extensions were always done on an ad-hoc basis. Mr. Gates said the 15-month tours for all active-duty units would be a more equitable and predictable approach.

Early in the war in Iraq, the Pentagon’s goal was for active-duty troops to spend two years at home for every year deployed. Eventually, Mr. Gates said, the Army would like to return to that pattern. That will have to await either a reduction in overall force levels or an increase in the size of the military, which has been set in motion but will take years to accomplish.

William L. Nash, a retired Army major general now at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that keeping units in Iraq longer might help counterinsurgency operations, by allowing troops more time to become familiar with areas where they were operating.

But he said that a soldier on his third tour who spent 18 months in Iraq would have spent more time in a combat zone than many did during World War II. Though recruiting and retention numbers generally have been strong, he predicted that many soldiers would decide to end their military careers, either before or after their next tours in Iraq.

“It has to have an impact on retention,” General Nash said. “I don’t know how much, whether it’s 2 percent or 20 percent, but it will have an impact.”

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., a Democrat from Delaware and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, noted that the Army was facing problems keeping junior and midcareer officers.

In a statement, he said: “Recent graduates of West Point are choosing to leave active-duty service at the highest rate in more than three decades. This administration’s policies are literally driving out some of our best young officers. Instead of escalating the war with no end in sight, we have to start bringing it to a responsible conclusion.”

The decision to prolong rotations comes at the same time as Congress and the White House are in a sustained fight over Democrats’ efforts to set a deadline for beginning troop withdrawals from Iraq, a confrontation that showed no signs of easing on Wednesday. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said Democrats would not back away from their insistence that a withdrawal date be included in the Iraq spending bill being sorted out between the House and the Senate.

Mr. Reid and the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, invited the president to the Capitol on Friday to meet with Democrats and Republicans on the Iraq spending bill. Their invitation came a day after the president asked Congressional leaders to come to the White House next week, which was greeted with a cool response by Democrats.

Mr. Reid said the president was detached from the realities on the ground in Iraq.

“The president is as isolated, I believe, on the Iraq issue as Richard Nixon was when he was hunkered down in the White House,” Mr. Reid said Wednesday.

Kirk Semple contributed reporting from Juwayba, Iraq, and Jeff Zeleny from Washington.

    U.S. Is Extending Tours of Army, NYT, 12.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/world/middleeast/12military.html?hp

3 Generals Spurn the Position of War 'Czar'

Bush Seeks Overseer For Iraq, Afghanistan

Wednesday, April 11, 2007; A01
By Peter Baker and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers

The White House wants to appoint a high-powered czar to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with authority to issue directions to the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies, but it has had trouble finding anyone able and willing to take the job, according to people close to the situation.

At least three retired four-star generals approached by the White House in recent weeks have declined to be considered for the position, the sources said, underscoring the administration's difficulty in enlisting its top recruits to join the team after five years of warfare that have taxed the United States and its military.

"The very fundamental issue is, they don't know where the hell they're going," said retired Marine Gen. John J. "Jack" Sheehan, a former top NATO commander who was among those rejecting the job. Sheehan said he believes that Vice President Cheney and his hawkish allies remain more powerful within the administration than pragmatists looking for a way out of Iraq. "So rather than go over there, develop an ulcer and eventually leave, I said, 'No, thanks,' " he said.

The White House has not publicly disclosed its interest in creating the position, hoping to find someone President Bush can anoint and announce for the post all at once. Officials said they are still considering options for how to reorganize the White House's management of the two conflicts. If they cannot find a person suited for the sort of specially empowered office they envision, they said, they may have to retain the current structure.

The administration's interest in the idea stems from long-standing concern over the coordination of civilian and military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan by different parts of the U.S. government. The Defense and State departments have long struggled over their roles and responsibilities in Iraq, with the White House often forced to referee.

The highest-ranking White House official responsible exclusively for the wars is deputy national security adviser Meghan O'Sullivan, who reports to national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley and does not have power to issue orders to agencies. O'Sullivan plans to step down soon, giving the White House the opportunity to rethink how it organizes the war effort.

Unlike O'Sullivan, the new czar would report directly to Bush and to Hadley and would have the title of assistant to the president, just as Hadley and the other highest-ranking White House officials have, the sources said. The new czar would also have "tasking authority," or the power to issue directions, over other agencies, they said.

To fill such a role, the White House is searching for someone with enough stature and confidence to deal directly with heavyweight administration figures such as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. Besides Sheehan, sources said, the White House or intermediaries have sounded out retired Army Gen. Jack Keane and retired Air Force Gen. Joseph W. Ralston, who also said they are not interested. Ralston declined to comment; Keane confirmed he declined the offer, adding: "It was discussed weeks ago."

Kurt Campbell, a Clinton administration Pentagon official who heads the Center for a New American Security, said the difficulty in finding someone to take the job shows that Bush has exhausted his ability to sign up top people to help salvage a disastrous war. "Who's sitting on the bench?" he asked. "Who is there to turn to? And who would want to take the job?"

All three generals who declined the job have been to varying degrees administration insiders. Keane, a former Army vice chief of staff, was one of the primary proponents of sending more troops to Iraq and presented Bush with his plan for a major force increase during an Oval Office meeting in December. The president adopted the concept in January, although he did not dispatch as many troops as Keane proposed.

Ralston, a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was named by Rice last August to serve as her special envoy for countering the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, a group designated a terrorist organization by the United States.

Sheehan, a 35-year Marine, served on the Defense Policy Board advising the Pentagon early in the Bush administration and at one point was reportedly considered by then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He now works as an executive at Bechtel Corp. developing oil projects in the Middle East.

In an interview yesterday, Sheehan said that Hadley contacted him and they discussed the job for two weeks but that he was dubious from the start. "I've never agreed on the basis of the war, and I'm still skeptical," Sheehan said. "Not only did we not plan properly for the war, we grossly underestimated the effect of sanctions and Saddam Hussein on the Iraqi people."

In the course of the discussions, Sheehan said, he called around to get a better feel for the administration landscape.

"There's the residue of the Cheney view -- 'We're going to win, al-Qaeda's there' -- that justifies anything we did," he said. "And then there's the pragmatist view -- how the hell do we get out of Dodge and survive? Unfortunately, the people with the former view are still in the positions of most influence." Sheehan said he wrote a note March 27 declining interest.

Gordon Johndroe, a National Security Council spokesman, would not discuss contacts with candidates but confirmed that officials are considering a newly empowered czar.

"The White House is looking at a number of options on how to structure the Iraq and Afghanistan office in light of Meghan O'Sullivan's departure and the completion of both the Iraq and Afghanistan strategic reviews," he said. He added that "No decisions have been made" and "a list of candidates has not been narrowed down."

The idea of someone overseeing the wars has been promoted to the White House by several outside advisers. "It would be definitely a good idea," said Frederick W. Kagan, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "Hope they do it, and hope they do it soon. And I hope they pick the right guy. It's a real problem that we don't have a single individual back here who is really capable of coordinating the effort."

Other variations are under consideration. House Democrats have put a provision in their version of a war spending bill that would designate a coordinator to oversee all assistance to Iraq. That person, who would report directly to the president, would require Senate confirmation; the White House said it opposes the proposal because Rice already has an aid coordinator.

Some administration critics said the ideas miss the point. "An individual can't fix a failed policy," said Carlos Pascual, former State Department coordinator of Iraq reconstruction, who is now a vice president at the Brookings Institution. "So the key thing is to figure out where the policy is wrong."

    3 Generals Spurn the Position of War 'Czar', Wp, 11.4.2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/10/AR2007041001776.html?hpid=topnews

A Mosque Raid

Sets Off Sunnis in Iraq’s Capital

April 11, 2007
The New York Times
By ALISSA J. RUBIN

BAGHDAD, April 10 — Sunni militants and residents of the Baghdad neighborhood of Fadhil fought a fierce daylong battle with the Iraqi Army and American soldiers on Tuesday in what appeared to be the most sustained confrontation since the start of the security plan to calm violence in the capital.

The battle left seven people dead, three insurgents and four Iraqi soldiers, and wounded 16 United States soldiers, according to a statement from the American military. Two Iraqi Army soldiers and one child were also wounded, the statement said.

But neighborhood residents reported far higher fatalities and said local gunmen had destroyed five Iraqi Army Humvees. The fighting damaged an Apache helicopter, the United States military said.

The fighting started after the Iraqi Army raided a mosque and killed two men, according to residents contacted by phone and a Sunni religious group. Residents said the gun battle began near the mosque in an area with many warehouses and continued in a residential neighborhood.

While violence has hit many of the capital’s neighborhoods during the first eight weeks of the Baghdad security plan, clashes have been shorter, generally lasting no more than several hours. Some suicide bombings have been deadlier. In the Dora neighborhood, prolonged fighting, which erupts almost nightly between militants and sometimes includes Iraqi Army and American forces, has also taken a large toll.

The confrontation in Fadhil pit Iraqi security forces, backed by American soldiers, against armed militants backed by local residents.

The largely Sunni Arab neighborhood of Fadhil is on the predominantly Shiite eastern side of Baghdad. Shiite militias had tried to dominate the neighborhood and surrounding area starting more than a year ago.

In response, residents of Fadhil organized a local guard patrol. But insurgents came into the area and, following a pattern seen throughout Sunni Arab areas of Baghdad, the neighborhood patrol gradually merged with the insurgency.

Now many people, including most journalists, avoid the Fadhil area because they fear the Sunni insurgents operating there. The residents contacted for this article were reached by phone, both because the neighborhood is dangerous and because areas of fighting are routinely sealed off by the military.

Fighting began Tuesday just past dawn, when the Iraqis and the Americans cordoned off part of the neighborhood and began searching for militants, according to local residents and the American military in a written statement.

The Iraqi Army raided a mosque and killed two men in front of other worshipers at the early morning prayers, according to the residents and the Muslim Scholars Association, a hard-line Sunni religious group, which quoted witnesses’ reports. The American military said it had no information about any killings in the mosque.

“One of those killed was named Sheik Saif; he was the muezzin,” said Qais Ahmed, 36, a day laborer, who lives near the mosque. The muezzin is the person who calls the faithful to prayer from a mosque’s loudspeakers and often is a well-known figure in the neighborhood.

“Then, the locals took their guns and went out to fight the Iraqi Army and the police in reaction to these executions,” he said.

American troops, who were nearby to back up the Iraqis, came in to help them and called for air support, according to a written statement from the American military in Baghdad. An Apache helicopter was hit by small-arms fire and dropped a rocket casing, the American statement said.

Mr. Ahmed said that the fighting had raged almost without stopping and that when he opened his door late in the day he found bullets, broken glass and blood on the sidewalk. But, he added, his neighborhood had done some damage to the Iraqi Army, using homemade bombs to burn five Iraqi Army Humvees.

Reports of the loss of life varied widely.

At day’s end, Mr. Ahmed said he went to one of the two mosques where bodies of the neighborhood dead were laid out and counted 36 people, including women and children.

Other residents reported that there were at least 23 dead. Several reported that they were unable to transport wounded people to the hospital because they feared that the military would take the wounded into custody on the grounds that they were insurgents, and would arrest those carrying them as well.

The Muslim Scholars Association said it condemned the killing of civilians and especially of women and children. “The civilians of this district call for the free world and human rights organizations to stop this massacre that does not differentiate between men and women and children,” the group said. “They call for relief and for help with their injuries.”

A Black Hawk helicopter was also hit by small-arms fire on Tuesday in central Baghdad, according to a statement from the United States military in Baghdad. It was unclear whether the attack on the Black Hawk was also related to the Fadhil fighting. There were no casualties from the attack, the military said in a written statement.

Nine unidentified bodies were found in Baghdad on Monday, according to an official at the Ministry of Interior.

Also in Baghdad, a suicide bomber killed five people, the Interior Ministry official said.

Four American soldiers died on Monday, the United States military announced in a statement on Tuesday. Three were hit by a roadside bomb and a second explosion in the southern part of Baghdad, and the fourth was killed in Anbar Province in western Iraq, the statement said.

In Muqtadiya, a town in Diyala Province about 50 miles from Baghdad, a woman blew herself up, killing 17 men applying to become members of the police force, news agencies reported.

Lt. Col. Michael Donnelly of the 25th Infantry Division in Diyala said that the military counted nine dead, but that fatalities were typically inaccurate in the first 24 hours after an attack. He called the attack “another weak attempt by the enemy to break the will of the people.”

Colonel Donnelly added that the woman’s explosive vest was stuffed with ball bearings and that those killed and wounded were aspiring Iraqi police officers and bystanders.

A guard at the police recruiting station and police officials said that the woman hid her suicide vest under an abbaya, a long dress frequently worn by Iraqi women. News agencies reported that the explosion wounded 33 people in the majority Sunni Arab town.

Suicide bombings by women are rare, with the last one happening in Baghdad at the Baratha mosque on April 7, 2006. In that case there were three suicide bombers, including one woman.

Ahmad Fadam and Qais Mizher contributed reporting.

    A Mosque Raid Sets Off Sunnis in Iraq’s Capital, NYT, 11.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/11/world/middleeast/11iraq.html?hp

Huge Protest in Iraq

Demands U.S. Withdraw

April 10, 2007
The New York Times
By EDWARD WONG

BAGHDAD, April 9 — Tens of thousands of protesters loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric, took to the streets of the holy city of Najaf on Monday in an extraordinarily disciplined rally to demand an end to the American military presence in Iraq, burning American flags and chanting “Death to America!”

Residents said that the angry, boisterous demonstration was the largest in Najaf, the heart of Shiite religious power, since the American-led invasion in 2003. It took place on the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad, and it was an obvious effort by Mr. Sadr to show the extent of his influence here in Iraq, even though he did not appear at the rally. Mr. Sadr went underground after the American military began a new security push in Baghdad on Feb. 14, and his whereabouts are unknown.

Mr. Sadr used the protest to try to reassert his image as a nationalist rebel who appeals to both anti-American Shiites and Sunni Arabs. He established that reputation in 2004, when he publicly supported Sunni insurgents in Falluja who were battling United States marines, and quickly gained popularity among Sunnis across Iraq and the region. But his nationalist credentials have been tarnished in the last year, as Sunni Arabs have accused Mr. Sadr’s militia, the Mahdi Army, of torturing and killing Sunnis.

Iraqi policemen and soldiers lined the path taken by the protesters, and there were no reports of violence during the day. The American military handed security oversight of the city and province of Najaf to the Iraqi government in December, and the calm atmosphere showed that the Iraqi security forces could maintain control, keeping suicide bombers away from an obvious target. In March, when millions of Shiite pilgrims flocked to the holy cities of the south, Iraqi security forces in provinces adjoining Najaf failed to stop bombers from killing scores of them.

Vehicles were not allowed near Monday’s march, and Baghdad had a daylong ban on traffic to prevent outbreaks of violence.

During the protest in Najaf, Sadr followers draped themselves in Iraqi flags and waved them to symbolize national unity, and a small number of conservative Sunni Arabs took part in the march.

“We have 30 people who came,” said Ayad Abdul Wahab, an agriculture professor in Basra and an official in the Iraqi Islamic Party, a leading fundamentalist Sunni Arab group. “We support Moktada in this demonstration, and we stress our rejection of foreign occupation.”

He and his friends together carried a 30-foot-long Iraqi flag.

In the four years of war, the only other person who has been able to call for protests of this scale has been Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s most powerful Shiite cleric, who, like Mr. Sadr, has a home in Najaf.

The protest was in some ways another challenge to the Shiite clerical hierarchy, showing that in the new Iraq, a violent young upstart like Mr. Sadr can command the masses right in the backyard of venerable clerics like Ayatollah Sistani. Mr. Sadr has increasingly tapped into a powerful desire among Shiites to stand up forcefully to both the American presence and militant Sunnis, and to ignore calls for moderation from older clerics.

Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, an American military spokesman in Baghdad, said that American officers had helped officials in Najaf plan security for the event, but that the Iraqis had taken the lead.

Colonel Garver and other American officials tried to put the best possible light on the event, despite the fiery words. “We say that we’re here to support democracy,” he said. “We say that free speech and freedom of assembly are part of that. While we don’t necessarily agree with the message, we agree with their right to say it.”

The protest unfolded as heavy fighting continued in parts of Diwaniya, a southern city where American and Iraqi forces have been battling cells of the Mahdi Army since Friday. Mr. Sadr issued a statement on Sunday calling for the Mahdi militiamen and the Iraqi forces there to stop fighting each other, but those words went unheeded. Gun battles broke out on Monday, and an American officer said at a news conference that at least one American soldier had been killed and one wounded in four days of clashes.

That fighting and the protest in Najaf, as well as Mr. Sadr’s mysterious absence, raise questions about how much control he actually maintains over his militia. Mr. Sadr is obviously still able to order huge numbers of people into the streets, but there has been talk that branches of his militia have split off and now operate independently. In Baghdad, some Mahdi Army cells have refrained in the last two months from attacking Americans and carrying out killings of Sunni Arabs, supposedly on orders from Mr. Sadr, but bodies of Sunnis have begun reappearing in some neighborhoods in recent weeks.

The protest in Najaf was made up mostly of young men, many of whom drove down from the sprawling Sadr City section of Baghdad, some 100 miles north, the previous night. They gathered Monday morning in the town of Kufa, where Mr. Sadr has his main mosque, and walked a few miles to Sadrain Square in Najaf. Protesters stomped on American flags and burned them. “No, no America; leave, leave occupier,” they chanted. At Sadrain Square, the protesters listened to a statement read over loudspeakers that was attributed to Mr. Sadr.

“Oh Iraqi people, you are aware, as 48 months have passed, that we live in a state of oppression, unjust repression and occupation,” the statement read. “Forty-eight hard months — that make four years — in which we have gotten nothing but more killing, destruction and degradation. Tens of people are being killed every day. Tens are disabled every day.”

Mr. Sadr added: “America made efforts to stoke sectarian strife, and here I would like to tell you, the sons of the two rivers, that you have proved your ability to surpass difficulties and sacrifice yourselves, despite the conspiracies of the evil powers against you.”

An Interior Ministry employee in a flowing tan robe, Haider Abdul Rahim Mustafa, 23, said that he had come from Basra “to demand the withdrawal of the occupier.”

“The occupier supported Saddam and helped him to become stronger, then removed him because his cards were burned,” he said, using an Arabic expression to note that Saddam Hussein was no longer useful to the United States. “The fall of Saddam means nothing to us as long as the alternative is the American occupation.”

Estimates of the crowd’s size varied wildly. A police commander in Najaf, Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim al-Mayahi, said there were at least half a million people. Colonel Garver said that military reports had estimates of 5,000 to 7,000. Residents and other Iraqi officials said there were tens of thousands, and television images of the rally seemed to support their estimates.

The colonel declined to give any information on the whereabouts of Mr. Sadr, though American military officials said weeks ago that they believed he is in Iran. Mr. Sadr’s aides declined to say where he is, but previously they have said he remained in Iraq.

In Diwaniya, hospital officials said their wards were overwhelmed by casualties. There was a shortage of food and oxygen, and ambulances were being blocked from the scene of combat, said Dr. Hamid Jaati, the city’s health director. The main hospital received 13 dead Iraqis and 41 injured ones over the weekend, he added.

The fighting started Friday after the provincial council and governor called for the Iraqi Army and American forces to take on the Sadr militiamen. The governor and 28 of 40 council members belong to a powerful Shiite party called the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which is the main rival to the Sadr organization. Sadr officials have accused the party of using the military to carry out a political grudge, but the governor, Khalil Jalil Hamza, denied that on Monday.

In Diyala Province, northeast of Baghdad, a suicide car bomb killed three civilians and wounded four others on Sunday night, police officials said Monday. Also in Diyala, a local politician was fatally shot on Monday in Hibhib, and three bodies were found in Khalis.

Iraqi employees of The New York Times contributed reporting from Najaf and Diwaniya.

    Huge Protest in Iraq Demands U.S. Withdraw, NYT, 10.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/world/middleeast/10iraq.html?hp

Names of the Dead

April 9, 2007
The New York Times

The Department of Defense has identified 3,258 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war. It confirmed the deaths of the following Americans over the weekend:

CAJIMAT, Jay S., 20, Pfc., Army; Lahaina, Hawaii; First Infantry Division.

CAUTHORN, Forrest D., 22, Sgt., Army; Midlothian, Va.; 25th Infantry Division.

FUENTES, Daniel A., 19, Pfc., Army; Levittown, N.Y.; First Infantry Division.

SCHWEDLER, Joseph C., 27, Petty Officer Second Class, Navy; Crystal Falls, Mich.; East Coast Navy Seal Team.

SHAFFER, Jason A., 28, Specialist, Army; Derry, Pa.; First Cavalry Division.

    Names of the Dead, NYT, 9.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/us/09list.html

Radical Shiite Cleric Calls on Iraqi Forces to Unite Against the U.S. Military

April 9, 2007
The New York Times
By EDWARD WONG

BAGHDAD, April 8 — Moktada al-Sadr, the rebellious Shiite cleric and power broker, exhorted Iraqi security forces on Sunday to unite with his militiamen against the American military in Diwaniya, an embattled southern city in Iraq where fighting has raged for three days.

Mr. Sadr’s statement did not explicitly call for armed struggle against the Americans, but it still represented his most forceful condemnation of the American-led occupation since he went underground after the start of an intensified Baghdad security crackdown nearly two months ago. It also came as his followers streamed out of Baghdad and other cities to join a mass protest in southern Iraq organized by Mr. Sadr’s aides to denounce the American occupation of Iraq on Monday, the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad. The arteries winding to Najaf, the holy city where Mr. Sadr has his headquarters, were clogged with vehicles carrying protesters.

Mr. Sadr’s call for resistance came as the American military announced the deaths of 10 soldiers in five attacks over the weekend, the highest two-day total for American fatalities since the new security plan began Feb. 14. Five soldiers were wounded. Violence against Iraqis continued unabated on Sunday, with at least 43 people killed or found dead. Seventeen were killed and 26 wounded in a car bombing near a hospital and mosque in the insurgent enclave of Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad.

Mr. Sadr’s statement on Sunday indicated he might be ready to resume steering his militia, the Mahdi Army, toward more open confrontation with the American military.

The Mahdi Army has generally been lying low during the Baghdad security plan, but intense fighting broke out in Diwaniya on Friday between militiamen and American-led forces. The battles erupted when American and Iraqi soldiers isolated neighborhoods in Diwaniya to search for militiamen. Fighter jets hit militia positions on Saturday, and one police official said at least seven Iraqis had been killed and 15 wounded in the fighting. Residents reported American soldiers scampering across rooftops on Saturday evening.

The battles in Diwaniya have been the most violent in months between the Mahdi Army and the Americans, and could portend violence in other strongholds of the Sadr militia. Mahdi Army fighters began moving to Diwaniya and other southern cities when the Baghdad crackdown began.

“The strife that is taking place in Diwaniya was planned by the occupier to drag down the brothers and make them quarrel, fight and even kill each other,” Mr. Sadr said in a written statement. “Oh my brothers in the Mahdi Army and my brothers in the security forces, stop fighting and killing because that is what our enemy and your enemy and even God’s enemy hope for.”

Mr. Sadr added: “God ordered you to be patient and to unite your efforts against the enemy and not against the sons of Iraq. They want to drag you into a war that ends Shiitism and Islam, but they cannot.”

Mr. Sadr’s influence over the security forces in Diwaniya is unclear. Many Iraqi Army commanders and police officials there take orders from the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a powerful Shiite party that is the main rival to Mr. Sadr’s organization.

The American military said Sunday that at least 39 people suspected of being militiamen had been detained during the weekend fighting, and soldiers had uncovered caches of particularly deadly explosives that American officials contended came from Iran.

Mr. Sadr led two rebellions against the Americans in 2004 and emerged more powerful from each, even though thousands of his fighters were killed. He entered mainstream politics, and his followers now hold at least 30 seats in Parliament and critical cabinet postings. He also has a powerful protector in Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a conservative Shiite who gained the top job because of Mr. Sadr’s support.

Although Mr. Sadr has a home in Najaf, his current whereabouts are a mystery. American military officials say he is in Iran, but supporters insist he is still in Iraq. There have been explosions of violence involving the Mahdi Army before the fighting at Diwaniya. On March 30, a battle erupted in a Baghdad neighborhood between Mahdi Army fighters and Kurdish soldiers brought in from the north as part of the security plan.

The Iraqi government said Sunday that it would ban all traffic in Baghdad on Monday as an extra security precaution on the anniversary of the fall of the capital to the Americans.

Security officials in Najaf said they had prepared for the Sadr rally by blocking any arriving vehicle not locally registered. Residents said they feared bombings by Sunni insurgents. “The thing that worries me about the demonstration are possible attacks by takfiris,” said Salam Hussein, a 35-year-old teacher, using a Shiite term for Sunni militants. “Some people might try to make security problems. Other than that, the protest is a good sign of freedom.”

An Iraqi employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Najaf.

    Radical Shiite Cleric Calls on Iraqi Forces to Unite Against the U.S. Military, NYT, 9.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/world/middleeast/09iraq.html


 

Patterns of War Shift Amid U.S. Force Buildup        NYT        9.4.2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/world/middleeast/09surge.html

Patterns of War Shift

Amid U.S. Force Buildup

April 9, 2007
The New York Times
By ALISSA J. RUBIN and EDWARD WONG

BAGHDAD, April 8 — Nearly two months into the new security push in Baghdad, there has been some success in reducing the number of death squad victims found crumpled in the streets each day.

And while the overall death rates for all of Iraq have not dropped significantly, largely because of devastating suicide bombings, a few parts of the capital have become calmer as some death squads have decided to lie low.

But there is little sign that the Baghdad push is accomplishing its main purpose: to create an island of stability in which Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs and Kurds can try to figure out how to run the country together. There has been no visible move toward compromise on the main dividing issues, like regional autonomy and more power sharing between Shiites and Sunnis.

For American troops, Baghdad has become a deadlier battleground as they have poured into the capital to confront Sunni and Shiite militias on their home streets. The rate of American deaths in the city over the first seven weeks of the security plan has nearly doubled from the previous period, though it has stayed roughly the same over all, decreasing in other parts of the country as troops have focused on the capital.

American commanders say it will be months before they can draw conclusions about the campaign to secure Baghdad, and just more than half of the so-called surge of nearly 30,000 additional troops into the country have arrived. But at the same time, political pressure in the United States for quick results and a firm troop pullout date has become more intense than ever.

This snapshot of the early weeks of the operation, which officially began on Feb. 14, is drawn from American and Iraqi casualty data and interviews with military commanders and government officials.

Already in that time, the military and political reality has shifted from what American planners faced when they prepared the Baghdad operation, continuing a pattern of rapid change that has become painfully familiar since the 2003 invasion.

In the northern and western provinces where they hold sway, and even in parts of Baghdad, Sunni Arab insurgents have sharpened their tactics, using more suicide car and vest bombs and carrying out successive chlorine gas attacks.

Even as officials have sought to dampen the insurgency by trying to deal with Sunni Arab factions, those groups have become increasingly fractured. There are now at least a dozen major Sunni insurgent groups — many fighting other Sunnis as well as the Americans and the Shiite-led government. A deal made with any one or two would be unlikely to be acceptable to the others.

While Shiite militias appear to have quieted in Baghdad so far, elements of them have been fighting pitched battles outside the city, sometimes against one another, sometimes against Sunni Arabs. They are pushing Sunnis out of their homes and attacking their mosques.

And in a new tactic, both Shiite and Sunni militants have been burning down homes and shops in the provinces in recent months.

One American private in the First Battalion, Fifth Cavalry, who was working the overnight shift at a new garrison in western Baghdad, described the Americans’ fight this way: “The insurgents, they see what we’re doing and we see what they’re doing. Then we get ahead, then they figure out what we’ve done and they get ahead.

“It’s like a game of cat and mouse. It’s just a really, really smart mouse.”

A Shift in Deaths

The incoming five brigades as part of the new security plan will bring the total number of American troops in Iraq to about 173,000 when it is complete, more than at any time since the war began.

Many of the new troops are joining long-term garrisons along with Iraqi forces in particularly violent neighborhoods of Baghdad, keeping up frequent patrols and trying to strengthen relations with Iraqis by meeting with local leaders and residents.

That has put the Americans in the middle of sectarian battlegrounds, and their death rate in the city has nearly doubled. The number of Americans killed in combat or other violence rose to 53 in Baghdad in the first seven weeks of the push, from Feb. 14 to April 2. That is up from 29 in the seven weeks before then.

Diyala Province, just northeast of Baghdad, has also been a trouble spot, bitterly contested by Sunni and Shiite militants. The United States military added a battalion in the province, and the fighting has been fierce, with 15 Americans killed there in the seven weeks starting on Feb. 14. The total from the seven weeks before then was 10.

At the same time, though, the rate of American deaths throughout the country has stayed about the same, with 116 killed in hostile incidents, up from 113 in the prior seven weeks.

As the focus has intensified on Baghdad, deaths have fallen in some outlying areas — even in Anbar Province, the heart of the Sunni rebellion where American marines have long faced intense violence. In the seven weeks after the start of the Baghdad operation, 31 Americans were killed in Anbar, down from 46 in the seven weeks beforehand.

While it is difficult to point to any one reason, in recent months Anbar has been at the center of a fissure in the insurgency between tribes who support the terrorist group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and tribes who reject it because it is seen as inviting foreign fighters.

Roadside bombs were by far the most common means of killing Americans. Deaths in Baghdad and Diyala from such explosions more than doubled. In Baghdad, 83 percent of troop deaths since the plan began have been caused by roadside bombs. In Diyala, all but one of the 15 soldiers who died in the seven-week period were killed by roadside bombs. Just four were killed by the bombs in the preceding seven weeks there.

Violence Against Civilians

The Iraqi government and the American military refuse to release overall civilian casualty numbers; both give numbers only for a few categories of deaths, making it difficult to get an overall picture. One of the last official reports on civilian casualties came in January from the United Nations, which, citing morgue and hospital statistics, said at least 34,452 Iraqis were killed last year, or an average of nearly 100 per day.

Over the past seven weeks, American commanders say that the security push has had some success so far in cutting down the number of sectarian execution-style killings — tracked by counting the number of bodies found with gunshot or knife wounds. Military officials say that such killings have dropped 26 percent nationwide and even more in Baghdad.

But other kinds of attacks, like car bombings, have kept the overall civilian death rate high, and in recent days there are anecdotal reports that sectarian executions may be on the rise again.

“We’ve not seen the overall same significant amount of decline in the overall number of casualties” as in execution killings, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, spokesman for the American military command, said in a news conference last week.

The American military believes that much of the drop in executions has come because of decreased activity by Shiite militias and death squads, especially the powerful Mahdi Army militia that claims allegiance to the cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

Many militia leaders have been detained in raids by the American military, according to the Iraqi government, and despite some major car bomb attacks on Shiite areas, the militias appear to have decided to refrain from carrying out revenge killings.

“The cycle of violence is not as predictable,” a senior American military official said. “Iraqi people are showing restraint, and the ability of death squads to retaliate is being circumscribed.”

However, it appears that not all Shiite cells, Mahdi Army or otherwise, are so patient. American soldiers in sections of western Baghdad, as well as Sunni Arabs living there and in Sunni enclaves south of Baghdad in Babil Province, are reporting that sectarian killings and threats against Sunni Arab families have begun to rise again, after a brief hiatus at the start of the security plan.

“There’s been spray paint on walls: ‘Get out or you’ll pay with your blood,’ ” said Capt. Benjamin Morales, 28, commander of a company of the 82nd Airborne that oversees a Shiite-dominated section of western Baghdad. There were eight Sunni households in the area at the start of March; three had left by its end.

The Iraqi government has been encouraging displaced families to return to their abandoned homes and offering $200 as an incentive. The government said that 2,000 families had returned by mid-March, but there is no way to verify the numbers.

In Fadhil, a Sunni enclave in eastern Baghdad surrounded by Shiite neighborhoods, residents say Shiite militias have been attacking with mortar shells and sniper fire. They accuse the Shiite-dominated Iraqi security forces of taking part, which Iraqi military officials deny.

“The situation was quiet when the militias left the country, but when they came back, the tension returned,” said Wamid Salah Hameed, a community leader in Fadhil. “The military is attacking us and firing at the neighborhood randomly. There is a sectarian feeling among the soldiers in the army.”

Meanwhile, Shiite militias have burned shops in a Sunni enclave of Babil Province, and Sunni militias burned Sunni and Shiite homes in Diyala last month.

Sunni militias have been active in Baghdad, too. The number of bodies of their presumed victims that turn up, tortured and shot, appears to have declined, but not halted, in recent weeks. In the past three weeks in some mostly Sunni neighborhoods of western Baghdad, Shiites bringing supplies to displaced families — even displaced Sunni families — have been kidnapped and killed, their bodies left in corner lots.

“We used to see sometimes eight bodies a day,” said Sgt. Michael Brosch, of the First Battalion, Fifth Cavalry. “Sometimes they were all beheaded. Then right at the beginning of the security plan, we didn’t see any. Now we’re seeing them again.”

At the same time, deaths and injuries nationwide from vehicle bombs, which are typically associated with Sunni insurgents, particularly Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, have continued at a rapid pace.

January and February were particularly bad months for car bombing deaths; nearly 1,100 were killed in February alone. That number dropped to 783 in March, still high compared with months earlier in the war, according to an American military official. But the overall number of bombings actually increased: there were 108 car bombs that either detonated or were disarmed in March, a record for the war.

Outside of Baghdad, several huge bombings have been responsible for many of the deaths. The worst, last month in Tal Afar, killed 152.

In Anbar, at least six bombings involved a terrifying new weapon: truck bombs that spread chlorine gas, burning victims’ lungs and skin. The deadliest of those attacks, in Ramadi on Friday, killed at least 30 people.

A Fractured Government

Most American and Iraqi officials say that the key to Iraq’s security is a political agreement that gives Sunni Arabs more power in the government. But the near-term prognosis for that looks grim, as the calm necessary to negotiate such a deal remains elusive.

Some Shiite leaders have publicly said they are prepared to reconcile with the minority Sunnis, who generally prospered under Saddam Hussein’s Baathist government. But the Shiites are still loath to give Sunnis any additional power and risk returning to the oppressed status they held for centuries.

Meanwhile, the Kurds in the north are pushing policies that will maximize the powers of their autonomous region, including trying to get control of the ethnically mixed oil-rich city of Kirkuk.

The Sunni Arabs seek several changes in the government’s structure. They want Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a conservative Shiite, to make good on his promise to replace ineffective or corrupt ministers. Mr. Maliki promised the shake-up months ago, but the proposal now appears moribund.

The Sunni Arabs also want the Constitution amended to bring power back to Baghdad and reduce the chance that areas in the oil-rich, Shiite-dominated south will follow the model of Kurdistan and create an autonomous state.

In addition, the Sunni Arabs continue to push for a rollback of purges of Sunni Arabs from government that began after the Shiites came to power in national elections.

But to stop the violence, the ruling Shiites must deal with Sunnis outside the government, in the factionalized insurgency, who can offer few guarantees on any promises to stop bombings against Shiites.

“We talk to people who say they represent the insurgents and they all say the same thing: ‘We oppose the occupation, but we don’t believe in killing civilians, in killing women and children,’ ” a senior adviser to Mr. Maliki said. “But our people are dying in bombs every day. Who is killing them?”

Reporting was contributed by Kirk Semple, Hosham Hussein and Khalid al-Ansary in Baghdad, and Andrew W. Lehren and Archie Tse in New York.

    Patterns of War Shift Amid U.S. Force Buildup, NYT, 9.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/world/middleeast/09surge.html?hp

U.S. Warplanes

Attack Shiite Gunmen

as Fighting Persists

in City South of Baghdad

April 8, 2007
The New York Times
By EDWARD WONG

BAGHDAD, April 7 — American fighter jets carried out an airstrike against Shiite militiamen in the southern city of Diwaniya on Saturday as battles continued there for the second day, American and Iraqi officials said.

The airstrike, called in after residents of an area in Diwaniya told Iraqi soldiers that they saw militiamen with rocket-propelled grenades, killed at least one militiaman, according to the American military.

American and Iraqi soldiers have been battling cells of the Mahdi Army, a formidable Shiite militia, in Diwaniya since Friday. The Iraqi government has declared a round-the-clock curfew, and armored vehicles line main arteries. Since the new Baghdad security plan began Feb. 14, some members of the Mahdi Army have drifted to Diwaniya, and violence has been on the rise there.

The Mahdi Army, which follows the edicts of the cleric Moktada al-Sadr, has a tense relationship with the ruling officials of Diwaniya Province, who are members of a rival Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. In August, Mahdi members clashed fiercely with the Iraqi Army in Diwaniya.

Mr. Sadr has been in hiding since the new security plan began, and it is unclear how much power he is exerting over the various Mahdi Army branches.

The fighting in Diwaniya began when American and Iraqi soldiers on Friday closed off neighborhoods suspected of being bases for the Mahdi Army and began house-to-house searches. At least seven Iraqis have been killed in the fighting and at least 15 wounded, a local police official said. Dozens have been arrested.

In Baghdad, officials said Saturday that there were two recent raids by American and Iraqi forces on the homes of Sunni Arab legislators. In the first, American soldiers seized heavy weapons in the home of an unidentified Sunni politician in the Mansour district of western Baghdad on Tuesday, the American military said. Two Sunni officials said the politician was Khalaf al-Elayan, a hard-line Sunni Arab legislator. Mr. Elayan has been out of the country, but his guards have been using the house, said one of the officials, Dhafir al-Ani.

“We believe that anybody who breaks the law should be held accountable according to the law, but unfortunately we see that the Iraqi government has raided the houses of some members of Parliament, including mine,” said Mr. Ani, whose home was raided by Iraqi soldiers last month. “Apparently they are targeting anybody who works against Iranian influence.”

In the raid, the American soldiers found machine guns, assault rifles, pistols, rockets, mortar rounds, body armor, binoculars, timers, two-way radios, photos of burning British soldiers and photos of flag-draped coffins of American soldiers, the American military said. The Iraqi guards were detained.

The second raid was on Friday, at the home of Muhammad al-Daini, another hard-line Sunni Arab legislator. Mr. Daini said Iraqi soldiers seized 31 guns for which he had permits, and arrested five of his guards.

Iraqi Army officials could not be reached for immediate comment.

Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said at a news conference that a meeting of ministers from Iraq and neighboring countries would take place the first week of May in Egypt — not Istanbul, as the United States had wanted, or Baghdad, as the Iraqi government urged. The talks are to be a follow-up to the regional conference in Baghdad last month.

Two American soldiers were killed and seven were wounded in two roadside bombings on Friday, the American military said.

Other deaths reported Saturday by the Iraqi authorities included at least five members of an elite Iraqi police unit in a suicide car bombing at a checkpoint in Samarra; three Iraqis in Baghdad in separate attacks; an Iraqi soldier in an ambush north of Kut; and a teacher in a mortar attack in southern Baquba.

Two bodies bearing signs of torture were found in Kut, 4 in Falluja, 16 in four locations in Diyala Province, and 12 across Baghdad.

The insurgent group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia claimed responsibility for shooting down an American helicopter south of Baghdad on Thursday. The United States military said that a helicopter carrying nine people crashed, wounding four, but gave no details about the cause.

Iranian Says C.I.A. Tortured Him

TEHRAN, April 7 — An Iranian diplomat who was released last week after two months of detention in Iraq said Saturday that he had been tortured by the C.I.A., the ISNA news agency reported.

The diplomat, Jalal Sharafi, the second secretary at the embassy in Baghdad, said he was abducted by agents who carried Iraqi Defense Ministry identification cards. The news agency said that signs of torture were still visible on his body and that he was being treated.

The National Security Agency spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe, said Saturday that the United States was not involved with Mr. Sharafi’s detention. “The Iranian propaganda machine has been in overdrive since they paraded the British sailors around on TV,” The Associated Press quoted him as saying.

Ali Adeeb, Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi, Ahmad Fadam and Khalid al-Ansary contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Hilla, Kut, Tikrit and Falluja.

    U.S. Warplanes Attack Shiite Gunmen as Fighting Persists in City South of Baghdad, NYT, 8.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/world/middleeast/08iraq.html

Iraq Confronts Hussein Legacy Cast in Bronze

April 8, 2007
The New York Times
By KIRK SEMPLE

BAGHDAD, April 7 — He was ousted, captured, tried and executed. But while the dictator may be gone, his legacy visibly lives on.

There may be no starker reminder of Saddam Hussein’s tyrannical rule than the potent symbols he left behind: scores of hubristic statues, murals, frescoes and other monuments he built all over Iraq to commemorate himself. While many were destroyed in the cathartic celebration and mob violence that followed the invasion, many others still remain, serving as a constant echo of Mr. Hussein’s all-consuming authority and setting off the same range of emotions, from swollen Baath pride to desperate fear, that he inspired while he was alive.

Now the nation is trying to figure out whether to save these objects as memorials to history or wipe them out. The debate goes to the core of a wounded nation’s effort to redefine itself and reconcile with its painful past. In recent weeks, the matter has crystallized around Iraq’s most famous landmark, the Victory Arch, two sets of gargantuan crossed swords held by giant fists modeled after Mr. Hussein’s. The government had begun to tear it down, but an influential lobby, including the American Embassy, has blocked the dismantling for the time being.

Since the monument was thrust onto the Baghdad skyline 18 years ago at the end of the Iran-Iraq war, it has been many things to many people: magnificent, vulgar, heroic, insulting, graceful, arrogant, inspiring, kitschy, bold and grotesque. It is now encompassed by the fortified Green Zone and visited mainly by American soldiers and foreign contractors, who stop for the obligatory photograph and climb up into the hollow interior of the fists.

To many Iraqis, including the Shiite-led government, the monument — popularly known as the Crossed Swords or the Hands of Victory — is a ghastly reminder of a terrible era and should be destroyed.

“Saddam built it for himself,” said a Shiite officer in the Iraqi military, who gave only his first name, Manaf, out of concern for his safety. He marched at the parade ground the giant swords frame when he was in Mr. Hussein’s army, he said, a memory he detests.

“The monument means nothing to us now,” he said bitterly.

But to some Iraqis — particularly supporters of Mr. Hussein — it remains a national symbol and a source of pride.

“It would be shameful to remove this monument,” said Abu Ali, 30, a high school teacher living in Tikrit, the overwhelmingly Sunni city north of Baghdad where Mr. Hussein had his greatest base of support. “It represents the Iraqi people, the pure Iraqi people.”

The challenge is an emotional issue common to all countries that have undergone revolutionary change, including post-Nazi Germany, post-apartheid South Africa, Cambodia after the fall of Pol Pot and the former Eastern bloc countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“When societies break down and identities clash, the symbols of those identities become especially important,” said Louis Bickford, a political scientist at the International Center for Transitional Justice in New York. “New regimes have essentially two choices: eliminate symbols or engage with them. This comes to the forefront when there is deep hatred and anger about the past.”

At the center of the debate here is a government body called the Committee to Remove the Remains of the Baath Party and to Consider Building New Monuments and Murals, which was formed in 2005 and has a hit list of more than 100 artifacts from Mr. Hussein’s era.

The committee — now a 10-member panel of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds appointed by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki — has already removed two items: a bronze mural in the Alawi neighborhood depicting the history of the Baath Party, and a monument in Mustansiriya Square honoring a group of Iraqi prisoners in the Iran-Iraq War.

“Because Iraqis still have bad memories of the former regime and what Saddam Hussein did, we want to remove all of his traces,” explained Kamel Nasser al-Zaidy, the committee’s spokesman and a Shiite, who was jailed by Mr. Hussein because of his participation in an illegal political party.

But some, among them Shiites and Kurds who suffered gravely under Mr. Hussein’s rule, view the committee’s effort as a blind, and possibly sectarian, attack on the country’s heritage.

“What do they want to do? Do they want to change history?” asked Saad al-Basri, a Shiite and a professor of sculpture in the College of Fine Arts in Baghdad. “The monuments should be considered as part of archaeology that speak to a specific era in Iraqi history. To remove them is wrong.”

Mr. Hussein built the Victory Arch to commemorate what he viewed as the definitive victory in the war against Iran in the 1980s. Construction began well before the end of the war, which had no victor.

In a claim that is now impossible to verify, he said the stainless steel swords, crossing 130 feet in the air and each weighing 24 tons, were forged from the weapons of Iraqi soldiers who died in the conflict. The bronze fists and forearms, which punch upward through the earth, were based on plaster casts of Mr. Hussein’s arms. He also incorporated into the monument hundreds of Iranian helmets recovered from the battlefield, many of them perforated with bullet holes.

The two pairs of swords bracket a long parade ground, and during Mr. Hussein’s reign, the site was a popular destination for school outings and family picnics. On ceremonial holidays, including July 17, the anniversary of the 1968 Baathist revolution, the Iraqi Army would march between the swords as Mr. Hussein observed from a reviewing stand.

Early this year, Mr. Maliki quietly approved the dismantling of the monument at the request of the monuments committee, and on Feb. 19, a work crew wheeled cranes to the base of the arches and began unbolting their large bronze slabs.

Word spread quickly, and by morning the site was swarming with people, including American contractors and workers from the American Embassy, some of whom tore Iranian helmets off the base as souvenirs.

At the same time, critics of the dismantling began to lobby the Maliki administration to suspend the project. Among them was Mustafa al-Kadhimiy, a Shiite and former exile, and the Baghdad director of the Iraq Memory Foundation, which is dedicated to archiving Baathist artifacts as a way to help Iraqis understand and come to terms with the horrors of their past.

Mr. Kadhimiy complained to Barham Salih, Iraq’s Kurdish deputy prime minister. Mr. Salih said he agreed to serve as an envoy and took Mr. Kadhimiy’s message to “various people,” among them Mr. Maliki and Zalmay Khalilzad, who was then the United States ambassador to Iraq.

American officials eventually pressed Mr. Maliki to suspend the demolition while everyone considered the matter further. Work was halted and, for now, the Victory Arch remains.

“It’s not a question of beauty or ugliness,” said Mr. Kadhimiy, while standing beneath the monument on a recent afternoon. “It’s a question of what we can learn from these things.”

In the setting sun, the swords’ elongated shadows stretched across the crowns of the palm trees toward the Tigris River. The bulbous hilts of the swords had been removed, and several bronze curved plates cut from the back of one of the fists lay on the ground like calcified orange peels.

The Iraq Memory Foundation — which was founded by Kanan Makiya, who wrote a book in 1991 about the Victory Arch — is planning to build a museum and library on the site. According to Mr. Kadhimiy, the foundation holds a 40-year lease with the city of Baghdad for property that includes the monument.

But Mohammad Tahir al-Tamimi, chairman of the monuments committee, said the foundation’s lease was suspect and now under investigation by the government’s integrity commission. He is furious, he said, at “the interference” of the American Embassy.

The monuments committee is continuing with its plans to remove the scores of other items on its list, members said. The plan, they said, was to store most of the items in a warehouse in Baghdad with the possibility that they may one day become part of a museum.

A majority of the Baathist symbols on the list are in predominantly Sunni areas of the north and west, where support for the central government is weak, potentially complicating the prospect of any removals.

In Baghdad, once the epicenter of Mr. Hussein’s monument building, most of the symbols have been defaced or destroyed, among them the enormous statue of the dictator in Firdos Square, pulled down by American soldiers on April 9, 2003. Of those that have survived, many, like the Victory Arch, are within the insulated confines of the Green Zone, including the Unknown Soldier Monument; several busts and heads of Mr. Hussein that adorned his palaces but which have been removed and stored by the Americans; and a statue of a founding member of the Baath Party, an American Embassy official said.

The monuments committee wants to save one of the Victory Arch’s four swords and melt the other three for new monuments, according to Mr. Tamimi, who envisions a Baghdad full of sculptures honoring dancers, poets, artists, the “kings of ancient civilization” and even the first American soldier killed in the Iraq war.

The committee plans a new statue to replace the Victory Arch: a copy of Mr. Hussein’s rifle, with the barrel tied in a knot.

“The removal process of this committee,” Mr. Tamimi said, “is itself a form of rebuilding.”

    Iraq Confronts Hussein Legacy Cast in Bronze, NYT, 8.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/world/middleeast/08monuments.html?hp

Injured in Iraq, a Soldier Is Shattered at Home

April 5, 2007
The New York Times
By DEBORAH SONTAG

DUNBAR, Pa. — Blinded and disabled on the 54th day of the war in Iraq, Sam Ross returned home to a rousing parade that outdid anything this small, depressed Appalachian town had ever seen. “Sam’s parade put Dunbar on the map,” his grandfather said.

That was then.

Now Mr. Ross, 24, faces charges of attempted homicide, assault and arson in the burning of a family trailer in February. Nobody in the trailer was hurt, but Mr. Ross fought the assistant fire chief who reported to the scene, and later threatened a state trooper with his prosthetic leg, which was taken away from him, according to the police.

The police locked up Mr. Ross in the Fayette County prison. In his cell, he tried to hang himself with a sheet. After he was cut down, Mr. Ross was committed to a state psychiatric hospital, where, he said in a recent interview there, he is finally getting — and accepting — the help he needs, having spiraled downward in the years since the welcoming fanfare faded.

“I came home a hero, and now I’m a bum,” Mr. Ross, whose full name is Salvatore Ross Jr., said.

The story of Sam Ross has the makings of a ballad, with its heart-rending arc from hardscrabble childhood to decorated war hero to hardscrabble adulthood. His effort to create a future for himself by enlisting in the Army exploded in the desert during a munitions disposal operation in Baghdad. He was 20.

He was also on his own. Mr. Ross, who is estranged from his mother and whose father is serving a life sentence for murdering his stepmother, does not have the family support that many other severely wounded veterans depend on. Various relatives have stepped in at various times, but Mr. Ross, embittered by a difficult childhood and by what the war cost him, has had a push-pull relationship with those who sought to assist him.

Several people have taken a keen interest in Mr. Ross, among them Representative John P. Murtha, the once-hawkish Democrat from Pennsylvania. When Mr. Murtha publicly turned against the war in Iraq in 2005, he cited the shattered life of Mr. Ross, one of his first constituents to be seriously wounded, as a pivotal influence.

Mr. Murtha’s office assisted Mr. Ross in negotiating the military health care bureaucracy. Homes for Our Troops, a nonprofit group based in Massachusetts, built him a beautiful log cabin. Military doctors carefully tended Mr. Ross’s physical wounds: the loss of his eyesight, of his left leg below the knee and of his hearing in one ear, among other problems.

But that help was not enough to save Mr. Ross from the loneliness and despair that engulfed him. Overwhelmed by severe symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, including routine nightmares of floating over Iraq that ended with a blinding boom, he “self-medicated” with alcohol and illegal drugs. He finally hit rock bottom when he landed in the state psychiatric hospital, where he is, sadly, thrilled to be.

“Seventeen times of trying to commit suicide, I think it’s time to give up,” Mr. Ross said, speaking in the forensic unit of the Mayview State Hospital in Bridgeville. “Lots of them were screaming out cries for help, and nobody paid attention. But finally somebody has.”

Finding a Way Out

Fayette County in southwestern Pennsylvania, once a prosperous coal mining center, is now one of the poorest counties in the state. The bucolic but ramshackle town of Dunbar sits off State Route 119 near the intersection marked by the Butchko Brothers junkyard.

Past the railroad tracks and not far up Hardy Hill Road, the blackened remains of Mr. Ross’s hillside trailer are testament to his disintegration. The Support our Troops ribbon is charred, the No Trespassing sign unfazed.

Mr. Ross lived in that trailer, where his father shot his stepmother, at several points in his life, including alone after he returned from Iraq. Its most recent tenant, his younger brother, Thomas, was in jail when the fire occurred.

Many in Mr. Ross’s large, quarreling family are on one side of the law or the other, prison guards or prisoners, police officers or probationers. Their internal feuds are so commonplace that family reunions have to be carefully plotted with an eye to who has a protective order out against whom, Mr. Ross’s 25-year-old cousin, Joseph Lee Ross, joked.

Sam Ross’s childhood was not easy. “Sam’s had a rough life from the time he was born,” his grandfather, Joseph Frank Ross, said. His parents fought, sometimes with guns, until they separated and his mother moved out of state. Mr. Ross bore some of the brunt of the turmoil.

“When that kid was little, the way he got beat around, it was awful,” his uncle, Joseph Frank Ross Jr., a prison guard, said.

When he was just shy of 12, Mr. Ross moved in with his father’s father, who for a time was married to his mother’s mother. The grandfather-grandson relationship was and continues to be tumultuous.

“I idolized my grandpaps, but he’s an alcoholic and he mentally abuses people,” Mr. Ross said.

His grandfather, 72, a former coal miner who sells used cars, said, “I’m not an alcoholic. I can quit. I just love the taste of it.”

The grandfather, who still keeps an A-plus English test by Mr. Ross on his refrigerator, said his grandson did well in school, even though he cared most about his wrestling team, baseball, hunting and fishing. Mr. Ross graduated in June 2001.

“Sammy wanted me to pay his way to college, but I’m not financially fixed to do that,” his grandfather said.

Feeling that Fayette County was a dead end, Mr. Ross said he had wanted to find a way out after he graduated. One night in late 2001, he said, he saw “one of those ‘Be all you can be’ ads” on television. The next day, he went to the mall and enlisted, getting a $3,000 bonus for signing up to be a combat engineer.

From his first days of basic training, Mr. Ross embraced the military as his salvation. “It was like, ‘Wow, man, I was born for the Army,’ ” he said. “I was an adrenaline junkie. I was super, super fit. I craved discipline. I wanted adventure. I was patriotic. I loved the bonding. And there was nothing that I was feared of. I mean, man, I was made for war.”

In early 2003, Private Ross, who earned his jump wings as a parachutist, shipped off to Kuwait with the 82nd Airborne Division, which pushed into Iraq with the invasion in March. The early days of the war were heady for many soldiers like Private Ross, who reveled in the appreciation of Iraqis. He was assigned to an engineer squad given the task of rounding up munitions.

On May 18, Private Ross and his squad set out to de-mine an area in south Baghdad. Moving quickly, as they did on such operations, he collected about 15 UXO’s, or unexploded ordnances, in a pit. Somehow, something — he never learned what — caused them to detonate.

“The initial blast hit me and I went numb and everything went totally silent,” he said. “Then I hear people start hollering, ‘Ross! Ross! Ross!’ It started getting louder, louder, louder. My whole body was mangled. I was spitting up blood. I faded in and out. I was bawling my eyes out, saying, ‘Please don’t let me go; don’t let me go.’ ”

A Casualty of War

When his relatives first saw Mr. Ross at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, he was in a coma. “That boy was dead,” his grandfather said. “We was looking at a corpse lying in that bed.”

As he lay unconscious, the Army discharged him — one year, four months and 18 days after he enlisted, by his calculation. After 31 days, Mr. Ross came off the respirator. Groggily but insistently, he pointed to his eyes and then to his leg. An aunt gingerly told him he was blind and an amputee. He cried for days, he said.

It was during Mr. Ross’s stay at Walter Reed that Representative Murtha, a former Marine colonel, first met his young constituent and presented him with a Purple Heart.

From the start of the war, Mr. Murtha said in an interview, he made regular, painful excursions to visit wounded soldiers. Gradually, those visits, combined with his disillusionment about the Bush administration’s management of the war, led him to call in late 2005 for the troops to be brought home in six months.

“Sam Ross had an impact on me,” Mr. Murtha said. “Eventually, I just felt that we had gotten to a point where we were talking so much about winning the war itself — and it couldn’t be won militarily — that we were forgetting about the results of the war on individuals like Sam.”

Over the next three years, Mr. Ross underwent more than 20 surgical procedures, including: “Five on my right eye, one on my left eye, two or three when they cut my left leg off, three or four on my right leg, a couple on my throat, skin grafts, chest tubes and, you know, one where they gutted me from belly button to groin” to remove metal fragments from his intestines.

But, although he was prescribed psychiatric medication, he never received in-patient treatment for the post-traumatic stress disorder that was diagnosed at Walter Reed. And, in retrospect he, like his relatives, said he believes he should have been put in an intensive program soon after his urgent physical injuries were addressed.

“They should have given him treatment before they let him come back into civilization,” his grandfather said.

A Hero’s Welcome

The parade, on a sunny day in late summer 2003, was spectacular. Hundreds of flag-waving locals lined the streets. Mr. Ross had just turned 21. Wearing his green uniform and burgundy beret, he rode in a Jeep, accompanied by other veterans and the Connellsville Area Senior High School Marching Band. The festivities included bagpipers, Civil War re-enactors and a dunking pool.

“It wasn’t the medals on former Army Pfc. Sam Ross’s uniform that reflected his courage yesterday,” The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote. “It was the Dunbar native’s poise as he greeted well-wishers and insisted on sharing attention with other soldiers that proved the grit he’ll need to recover from extensive injuries he suffered in Iraq.”

For a little while, “it was joy joy, happiness happiness,” Mr. Ross said. He felt the glimmerings of a new kind of potential within himself, and saw no reason why he could not go on to college, even law school. Then the black moods, the panic attacks, the irritability set in. He was dogged by chronic pain; fragments of metal littered his body.

Mr. Ross said he was “stuck in denial” about his disabilities. The day he tried to resume a favorite pastime, fishing, hit him hard. Off-balance on the water, it came as a revelation that, without eyesight, he did not know where to cast his rod. He threw his equipment in the water and sold his boat.

“I just gave up,” he said. “I give up on everything.”

About a year after he was injured, Mr. Ross enrolled in an in-patient program for blind veterans in Chicago. He learned the Braille alphabet, but his fingers were too numb from embedded shrapnel to read, he said. He figured that he did not have much else to learn since he had been functioning blind for a year. He left the program early.

Similarly, Mr. Ross repeatedly declined outpatient psychiatric treatment at the veterans hospital in Pittsburgh, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. He said he felt that people at the hospital had disrespected him.

After living with relatives, Mr. Ross withdrew from the world into the trailer on the hill in 2004. That year, he got into a dispute with his grandfather over old vehicles on the property, resolving it by setting them on fire. His run-ins with local law enforcement, which did not occur before he went to Iraq, the Fayette County sheriff said, had begun.

But his image locally had not yet been tarnished. In early 2005, Mr. Murtha held a second Purple Heart ceremony for Mr. Ross at a Fayette County hospital “to try to show him how much affection we had for him and his sacrifice,” Mr. Murtha said.

A local newspaper article about Mr. Ross’s desire to build himself a house came to the attention of Homes for Our Troops.

“He’s a great kid; he really is,” said Kirt Rebello, the group’s director of projects and veterans affairs. “Early on, even before he was injured, the kid had this humongous deck stacked against him in life. That’s one of the reasons we wanted to help him.”

Mr. Ross, who had received a $100,000 government payment for his catastrophic injury, bought land adjacent to his grandfather’s. Mr. Rebello asked Mr. Ross whether he might prefer to move to somewhere with more services and opportunities. But Mr. Ross said that Dunbar’s winding roads were implanted in his psyche, “that he could see the place in his mind,” Mr. Rebello said.

A Life Falls Apart

In May 2005, Mr. Ross broke up with a girlfriend and grew increasingly depressed. He felt oppressively idle, he said. One day, he tacked a suicide note to the door of his trailer and hitched a ride to a trail head, disappearing into the woods. A daylong manhunt ensued.

Mr. Ross fell asleep in the woods that night, waking up with the sun on his face, which he took to be a sign that God wanted him to live. When he was found, he was taken to a psychiatric ward and released after a few weeks.

The construction of his house proved a distraction from his misery. Mr. Ross enjoyed the camaraderie of the volunteers who fashioned him a cabin from white pine logs. But when the house, which he named Second Heaven, was finished in early 2006, “they all left, I moved in and I was all alone,” he said. “That’s when the drugs really started.”

At first, Mr. Ross said, he used drugs — pills, heroin, crack and methadone — “basically to mellow myself out and to have people around.” Local ne’er-do-wells enjoyed themselves on Mr. Ross’s tab for quite some time, his relatives said.

“These kids were loading him into a car, taking him to strip clubs, letting him foot the bills,” his uncle, Joseph Ross Jr., said. “They were dopies and druggies.”

Mr. Ross’s girlfriend, Barbara Hall, moved in with him. But relationships with many of his relatives had deteriorated.

“If that boy would have come home and accepted what happened to him, that boy never would have wanted for anything in Dunbar,” his grandfather said. “If he had accepted that he’s wounded and he’s blinded, you know? He’s not the only one that happened to. There’s hundreds of boys like him.”

Some sympathy began to erode in the town, too. “There’s pro and con on him,” a local official said. “Some people don’t even believe he’s totally blind.”

After overdosing first on heroin and then on methadone last fall, Mr. Ross said, he quit consuming illegal drugs, replacing them with drinking until he blacked out.

Mr. Ross relied on his brother, Thomas, when he suffered panic attacks. When Thomas was jailed earlier this year, Mr. Ross reached out to older members of his family. In early February, his uncle, Joseph Ross Jr., persuaded him to be driven several hours to the veterans’ hospital in Coatesville to apply for its in-patient program for post-traumatic stress disorder.

“Due to the severity of his case, they accepted him on the spot and gave him a bed date for right after Valentine’s Day,” his uncle said. “Then he wigged out five days before he was supposed to go there.”

It started when his brother’s girlfriend, Monica Kuhns, overheard a phone call in which he was arranging to buy antidepressants. She thought it was a transaction to buy cocaine, he said, and he feared that she would tell his sister and brother.

After downing several beers, Mr. Ross, in a deranged rage, went to his old trailer, where Ms. Kuhns was living with her young son, he said.

“He started pounding on the door,” said Ms. Hall, who accompanied him. “He went in and threatened to burn the place down. Me and Monica didn’t actually think he was going to do it. But then he pulled out the lighter.”

Having convinced himself that the trailer — a source of so much family misery — needed to be destroyed, Mr. Ross set a pile of clothing on fire. The women and the child fled. When a volunteer firefighter showed up, Mr. Ross attacked and choked him, according to a police complaint.

A judge set bail at $250,000. In the Fayette County prison, Mr. Ross got “totally out of hand,” the sheriff, Gary Brownfield, said. Mr. Ross’s lawyer, James Geibig, said the situation was a chaotic mess.

“It was just a nightmare,” Mr. Geibig said. “First the underlying charges — attempted homicide, come on — were blown out of proportion. Then bail is set sky high, straight cash. They put him in a little cell, in isolation, and barely let him shower. Things went from bad to worse until they found him hanging.”

Now Mr. Geibig’s goal is to get Mr. Ross sentenced into the post-traumatic stress disorder program he was supposed to attend.

“He does not need to be in jail,” Mr. Geibig said. “He has suffered enough. I’m not a bleeding heart, but his is a pretty gut-wrenching tale. And at the end, right before this incident, he sought out help. It didn’t arrive in time. But it’s not too late, I hope, for Sam Ross to have some kind of future.”

    Injured in Iraq, a Soldier Is Shattered at Home, NYT, 5.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/us/05VET.html?hp

McCain Wrong on Iraq Security, Merchants Say

April 3, 2007
The New York Times
By KIRK SEMPLE

BAGHDAD, April 2 — A day after members of an American Congressional delegation led by Senator John McCain pointed to their brief visit to Baghdad’s central market as evidence that the new security plan for the city was working, the merchants there were incredulous about the Americans’ conclusions.

“What are they talking about?” Ali Jassim Faiyad, the owner of an electrical appliances shop in the market, said Monday. “The security procedures were abnormal!”

The delegation arrived at the market, which is called Shorja, on Sunday with more than 100 soldiers in armored Humvees — the equivalent of an entire company — and attack helicopters circled overhead, a senior American military official in Baghdad said. The soldiers redirected traffic from the area and restricted access to the Americans, witnesses said, and sharpshooters were posted on the roofs. The congressmen wore bulletproof vests throughout their hourlong visit.

“They paralyzed the market when they came,” Mr. Faiyad said during an interview in his shop on Monday. “This was only for the media.”

He added, “This will not change anything.”

At a news conference shortly after their outing, Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, and his three Congressional colleagues described Shorja as a safe, bustling place full of hopeful and warmly welcoming Iraqis — “like a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime,” offered Representative Mike Pence, an Indiana Republican who was a member of the delegation.

But the market that the congressmen said they saw is fundamentally different from the market Iraqis know.

Merchants and customers say that a campaign by insurgents to attack Baghdad’s markets has put many shop owners out of business and forced radical changes in the way people shop. Shorja, the city’s oldest and largest market, set in a sprawling labyrinth of narrow streets and alleyways, has been bombed at least a half-dozen times since last summer.

At least 61 people were killed and many more wounded in a three-pronged attack there on Feb. 12 involving two vehicle bombs and a roadside bomb.

American and Iraqi security forces have tried to protect Shorja and other markets against car bombs by restricting vehicular traffic in some shopping areas and erecting blast walls around the markets’ perimeters. But those measures, while making the markets safer, have not made them safe.

In the latest large-scale attack on a Baghdad market, at least 60 people, most of them women and children, were killed last Thursday when a man wrapped in an explosives belt walked around such barriers into a crowded street market in the Shaab neighborhood and blew himself up.

In recent weeks, snipers hidden in Shorja’s bazaar have killed several people, merchants and the police say, and gunfights have erupted between militants and the Iraqi security forces in the area.

During their visit on Sunday, the Americans were buttonholed by merchants and customers who wanted to talk about how unsafe they felt and the urgent need for more security in the markets and throughout the city, witnesses said.

“They asked about our conditions, and we told them the situation was bad,” said Aboud Sharif Kadhoury, 63, who peddles prayer rugs at a sidewalk stand. He said he sold a small prayer rug worth less than $1 to Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the American forces in Iraq, who accompanied the Congressional delegation. (General Petraeus paid $20 and told Mr. Kadhoury to keep the change, the vendor said.)

Mr. Kadhoury said he lost more than $2,000 worth of merchandise in the triple bombing in February. “I was hit in the head and back with shrapnel,” he recalled.

Ali Youssef, 39, who sells glassware from a sidewalk stand down the block from Mr. Kadhoury, recalled: “Everybody complained to them. We told them we were harmed.”

He and other merchants used to keep their shops open until dusk, but with the dropoff in customers as a result of the attacks, and a nightly curfew, most shop owners close their businesses in the early afternoon.

“This area here is very dangerous,” continued Mr. Youssef, who lost his shop in the February attack. “They cannot secure it.”

But those conversations were not reflected in the congressmen’s comments at the news conference on Sunday.

Instead, the politicians spoke of strolling through the marketplace, haggling with merchants and drinking tea. “The most deeply moving thing for me was to mix and mingle unfettered,” Mr. Pence said.

Mr. McCain was asked about a comment he made on a radio program in which he said that he could walk freely through certain areas of Baghdad.

“I just came from one,” he replied sharply. “Things are better and there are encouraging signs.”

He added, “Never have I been able to go out into the city as I was today.”

Told about Mr. McCain’s assessment of the market, Abu Samer, a kitchenware and clothing wholesaler, scoffed: “He is just using this visit for publicity. He is just using it for himself. They’ll just take a photo of him at our market and they will just show it in the United States. He will win in America and we will have nothing.”

A Senate spokeswoman for Mr. McCain said he left Iraq on Monday and was unavailable for comment because he was traveling.

Several merchants said Monday that the Americans’ visit might have only made the market a more inviting target for insurgents.

“Every time the government announces anything — that the electricity is good or the water supply is good — the insurgents come to attack it immediately,” said Abu Samer, 49, who would give only his nickname out of concern for his safety.

But even though he was fearful of a revenge attack, he said, he could not afford to stay away from the market. This was his livelihood. “We can never anticipate when they will attack,” he said, his voice heavy with gloomy resignation. “This is not a new worry.”

Ahmad Fadam and Wisam A. Habeeb contributed reporting.

    McCain Wrong on Iraq Security, Merchants Say, NYT, 3.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/03/world/middleeast/03mccain.html?hp

Army Sends Units Back to Iraq Early

April 2, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:22 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- For just the second time since the war began, the Army is sending large units back to Iraq without giving them at least one year of rest at home between deployments, officials said Monday.

The move signaled just how stretched the U.S. fighting force has become.

A combat brigade from New York and a Texas headquarters unit will return to Iraq this summer in order to maintain through August the military build-up President Bush announced earlier this year. Overall the Pentagon announced that 7,000 troops will be deploying to Iraq in the coming months, as part of the effort to keep 20 brigades in the country to help bolster the ongoing Baghdad security plan. A brigade is roughly 3,000 soldiers.

''Obviously right now the Army is stretched, and we will make every effort possible not to break their dwell time,'' said a senior Army official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. ''But in this case we had to.''

The 4th Infantry Division headquarters unit from Fort Hood, Texas, will return to Iraq after a little more than seven months at home -- the largest break to date from the Army's goal of giving units a year's rest after every year deployed. The 1st Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division, based at Ft. Drum, N.Y., will go back to Iraq after just 10 1/2 months at home.

The only other major unit to spend less than one year at home was the Georgia-based 3rd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division, which returned to Iraq 48 days short of a year's rest, and is there now.

    Army Sends Units Back to Iraq Early, NYT, 2.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Iraq-Troops.html

McCain Says Baghdad Is Getting Safer

April 1, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:45 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BAGHDAD (AP) -- Sen. John McCain criticized reports out of Iraq he said focused unfairly on violence, saying Sunday that Americans were not getting a "full picture" of progress in the security crackdown in the capital.

McCain, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, was combative during a press conference in the military's media center in the heavily guarded Green Zone, and responded testily to a question about remarks he had made in the United States last week that it was safe to walk some Baghdad streets.

"The American people are not getting the full picture of what's happening here. They're not getting the full picture of the drop in murders, the establishment of security outposts throughout the city, the situation in Anbar province, the deployment of additional Iraqi brigades which are performing well, and other signs of progress having been made," said McCain, of Arizona.

He said the Republican congressional delegation he led to Iraq drove from Baghdad's airport to the center of the city, citing that as proof that security was improving in the capital. Prominent visitors normally make the trip by helicopter.

The delegation was accompanied by heavily armed U.S. troops when they were not in the Green Zone, site of the U.S. Embassy and Iraqi government. They traveled in armored military vehicles under heavy guard.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, criticized congressional Democrats who passed spending legislation that would set deadlines for pulling U.S. forces out of Iraq. He said President Bush would veto the measures and should.

"It will be a huge mistake to set a deadline. It (the U.S. troop surge) is working. We are doing now what we should have done three years ago. ... The Iraqi people want their own destiny but they don't have the capabilities yet," he said.

The delegation, which also included Rep. Mike Pence, a Republican from Indiana, and Rep. Rick Renzi, an Arizona Republican, spoke glowingly of an hour they spent in the Bab al-Sharqi market which was hit by a suicide bomber on Jan. 22. At least 88 people died in the attack.

The congressmen said they were impressed with the resilience and warmth of the Iraqi people, some of whom they said would not take their money for souvenirs the delegation bought.

    McCain Says Baghdad Is Getting Safer, NYT, 1.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq-McCain.html?hp

Iraq Says Truck Bomb in North Killed 152

April 1, 2007
The New York Times
By ALISSA J. RUBIN

BAGHDAD, March 31 — The Iraqi government on Saturday gave its first official reckoning of the truck bombing Tuesday in the northern city of Tal Afar, putting the death toll at 152 people, a number about double that in early reports.

The bombing, which left 347 other people in a poor Shiite neighborhood wounded, set off a wave of reprisals by Shiite policemen and others that left another 47 people dead and shattered the image of Tal Afar held up by American politicians last year as a model of a turbulent city turned peaceful.

When the bomb detonated, younger Shiite policemen “were motivated by emotions when they saw their parents and siblings getting killed, but this is not acceptable,” Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf said Saturday. He said that 16 policemen and 2 civilians were under arrest and would be fully prosecuted for the reprisals.

Sectarian violence continued around Iraq on Saturday, when 27 people were killed in shootings and car bombings and 10 bodies were found in Baghdad, according to the Interior Ministry. In Gabala, near Hilla, Shiite militiamen killed two people at a Sunni mosque and then burned Sunni stores in retaliation for the killing of the brother of a Mahdi Army militia leader. The Iraqi Army intervened to stop the attack on the mosque, said a member of Scorpion Brigade, a commando unit in Babil Province.

The car bombings were in the Shiite district of Sadr City in Baghdad; in Hilla; and in the northern town of Tuzkhormato, south of Kirkuk. Also, eight civilians who worked on an Iraqi Army base in the town of Hawija, in northern Iraq, were shot to death, and in Salahiddin Province, eight policemen were killed.

In the Interior Ministry’s first news conference since the bombing, officials underscored the event’s scale and horror. “It is a very painful attack,” General Khalaf said.

If the death toll of 152 in the Tal Afar attack is correct, it was the highest total from a single bomb in the four-year-old war.

A number of causes may have contributed to the large increase in the reported deaths: some of the wounded later died; some victims were taken to hospitals outside Tal Afar and were not immediately counted; and some bodies were retrieved at the scene by family members, preventing the deaths from being recorded.

The Interior Ministry, which has been accused of bias toward Shiites and of having groups within it associated with Shiite militias and death squads, is now under a new minister, Jawad al-Bolani.

General Khalaf, who runs the Interior Ministry’s National Command Center, which tracks attacks across Iraq, said: “The prime minister and the minister of interior ordered an investigative committee to go to Tal Afar and take the proper steps and bring the guilty to justice. The committee did its work and there are 18 guilty who did kill innocent citizens and they were arrested and will be brought to justice.”

The truck bombing destroyed 100 houses and many shops in the neighborhood, which is a poor district with ramshackle construction, officials said. When the huge bomb went off, little could stand up to it. “When it exploded, it left a 23-meter crater in the ground, and that tells us that it had two tons of explosives,” General Khalaf said.

The city has about 200,000 residents, mostly Turkmen, ethnically related to the people of Turkmenistan in Central Asia. In Tal Afar, the population is split between Sunnis and Shiites, with a somewhat higher proportion of Shiites.

It is a poor area, and the suicide bomber took advantage of the city’s deprivation to lure people to his truck, which carried flour as well as explosives, officials said. The bomber also benefited from mistakes by the soldiers responsible for checking all vehicles entering the city for bombs.

“It was a truck loaded with flour,” General Khalaf said. “They had not gotten flour for some time, and when the truck came in, it was searched hurriedly by the army checkpoint, and the TNT was mixed in with the flour and the electrical circuit was sophisticated. The checkpoint troops did not have enough experience to find it.”

Also Saturday, the justice minister, Hashim al-Shibli, resigned. Mr. Shibli, a member of the secular National Democratic Party, had fallen out of favor with the Iraqi List, a party that had supported his appointment and controls the position.

A government spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, said that the replacement of Mr. Shibli had already been planned as part of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s reorganization of positions in the ministry.

Khalid Hassan and Hosham Hussein contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Baghdad, Hilla and Kirkuk.

Iraq Says Truck Bomb in North Killed 152, NYT, 1.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/world/middleeast/01iraq.html