These are the archives for the week ending 6th October 2006
Official: Iran not arming insurgency
Since late August, British commandos in the deserts of far southeastern Iraq have been testing one of the most serious charges leveled by the United States against Iran: that Iran is secretly supplying weapons, parts, funding and training for attacks on U.S.-led forces in Iraq.
A few hundred British troops living out of nothing more than their cut-down Land Rovers and light armored vehicles have taken to the desert in the start of what British officers said would be months of patrols aimed at finding the illicit weapons trafficking from Iran, or any sign of it. There's just one thing. "I suspect there's nothing out there," the commander, Lt. Col. David Labouchere, said last month, speaking at an overnight camp near the border. "And I intend to prove it."
Other senior British military leaders spoke as explicitly in interviews over the previous two months. Britain, whose forces have had responsibility for security in southeastern Iraq since the war began, has found nothing to support the Americans' contention that Iran is providing weapons and training in Iraq, several senior military officials said.
"I have not myself seen any evidence -- and I don't think any evidence exists -- of government-supported or instigated" armed support on Iran's part in Iraq, British Defense Secretary Des Browne said in an interview in Baghdad in late August.
Washington Post, 4/10/06
Victory celebration postponed
Tucked away in fine print in the military spending bill for this past year was a lump sum of $20 million to pay for a celebration in the nation's capital "for commemoration of success" in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not surprisingly, the money was not spent. Now Congressional Republicans are saying, in effect, maybe next year.
A paragraph written into spending legislation and approved by the Senate and House allows the $20 million to be rolled over into 2007. The original legislation empowered the president to designate "a day of celebration" to commemorate the success of the armed forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to "issue a proclamation calling on the people of the United States to observe that day with appropriate ceremonies and activities."
New York Times, 4/10/06
800 Baghdad police suspended for death squad collusion
Iraq has suspended a brigade of 800 Baghdad policemen and arrested their commander on charges of aiding sectarian death squads, U.S. officials said. The actions came a day after armed men in uniform herded off 14 shopkeepers from central Baghdad and two days after 24 workers were abducted from a meat-processing plant in the capital. The bodies of seven of the workers were found hours later.
There was clear evidence that there was some complicity in allowing death-squad elements to move freely, when in fact they were supposed to be impeding their movement, said U.S. military spokesman Army Maj. Gen. William Caldwell.
Sunni leaders have for months accused police units of helping Shiite death squads carry out massive kidnappings, which have included the abduction of the entire U.S.-Iraqi Chamber of Commerce and the Iraqi Olympic Committee.
United Press International, 4/10/06
US deaths on rise
Two months after a security crackdown began in the capital, U.S. military deaths appear to be rising, even as fatalities among Iraqi security forces have fallen, U.S. military sources and analysts said. The U.S. military Tuesday revised to eight its count of American deaths in the capital on Monday, the highest daily toll in a month. In September, 74 U.S. troops died nationwide, about a third of them in Baghdad, according to the military.
As American fatalities increased, the number of deaths among Iraqi security forces fell in September to 150, the lowest number since June and among the lowest tallies in 18 months, according to the Brookings Institution Iraq Index. Military experts said the divergent trends in fatalities among U.S. and Iraqi security forces could mean that Sunni Arab insurgents are targeting Americans more effectively while Iraqi forces have grown in strength. Observers also noted recent statements by Al Qaeda in Iraq that reveal a strategy to redirect its attacks from Iraqi troops to U.S. forces.
Los Angeles Times, 4/10/06
Bombs at all time high
The past week has seen the highest number of car bombs and roadside bombs in Iraq than at any time this year, said a US military spokesman. "Last week we also saw the highest number of vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices this year," said Major General William Caldwell, using the military terminology for car bombs.
"The number of improvised explosive devices was also at an all time high," he added, referring to home-made bombs used by Iraqi insurgents and militias to target road traffic. A week earlier, Caldwell said the number of suicide attacks in Iraq was at its highest point since the 2003 invasion, citing the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan as a traditional peak for violence in Iraq.
AFP, 4/10/06
Iraq may never be free of violence
A top NATO commander said Tuesday that Iraq may never be free of violence. "Will we see a day in Iraq when violence is completely gone away? I don't think so. It wasn't that way under Saddam," said US Air Force Gen. Lance L. Smith.
Jerusalem Post, 3/10/06
Displaced face looming humanitarian crisis
The International Organization for Migration says nearly 190,000 people in the 15 central and southern provinces of Iraq have been displaced by violence since the bombing in late February in Samarra. IOM spokeswoman Jemini Pandya says the displacement is increasingly looking like a permanent move.
Pandya says this situation risks becoming a chronic humanitarian crisis if people are not given the means to earn their own livelihoods. She says tens of thousands of displaced people are in urgent need of food, water, shelter and other items. She says the International Organization for Migration has been carrying out emergency distribution of these supplies for the past few months.
"But, a key problem for us is that funding for these emergency operations is about to run out in a few months time," Pandya says. "What we are really worried about is that with winter approaching and with very few other organizations able to carry out work on the ground with limited amount of assistance available, the situation is going to get worse very quickly."
Voice of America, 3/10/06
US offers return of Guantanamo 9
The US has offered to return nearly all British residents held at Guantanamo Bay.
The British Government has refused to accept the men, however, with senior officials saying they have no legal right to return.
US authorities are demanding that the detainees be kept under 24 hour surveillance if set free - restrictions that are dismissed by the British as unnecessary and unworkable.
Although all are accused of terrorist involvement, Britain says there is no intelligence to warrant the measures Washington wants, and it lacks the resources to implement them. "They do not pose a sufficient threat", said the head of counter-terrorism at the Home Office.
There is a growing realisation in the Bush camp that it would be in the interests of the US to shut down the camp. In addition to growing public unease, the supreme court ruled in June that there could be no military tribunals of detainees without the protections of the Geneva conventions and American law.
As well as arguing that none of the former residents has a legal right to return to the UK, British officials are concerned that human rights legislation would forbid the deportation of any who are permitted to return.
Guardian 3/10/06
US presses Latin American countries to join war
The United States is pressing some Latin American countries to send troops to Afghanistan and Iraq for non-combat missions as the Pentagon struggles to transition those operations from war to reconstruction. U.S. Gen. John Craddock, who heads the Miami-based U.S. Southern Command, said discussions were under way at a meeting of nearly all the Western Hemisphere's defense ministers on how Latin American experiences might be applicable in both war zones.
Colombia, for example, may send military personnel to Iraq to help secure some infrastructure, such as oil pipelines, Craddock said. Nicaraguan Army Gen. Moises Omar Halleslevens said his country may send a team to Afghanistan to remove mines.
Those efforts are all part of Washington's push to maintain leadership and influence in the Western Hemisphere -- a part increasingly challenged by both U.S. foes and other global powers courting Latin American nations, officials and analysts say.
Iran, for example, has built close relationships with both Venezuela and Cuba -- the two Western Hemisphere countries most hostile to the United States. Russia has become more active in the region too, recently selling $3 billion in weapons to Venezuela, while China offers arms sales and other agreements.
Craddock indicated those types of relationships underscore the need for the United States to spend money on aid and military training. "We want to be in this hemisphere the partner of choice," he said.
Reuters, 2/10/06
Kidnaps continue and martial law extended
Gunmen dressed as Iraqi government forces staged a mass kidnapping Monday, raiding several computer stores in central Baghdad and seizing at least 14 people. The abductions were carried out by at least 25 gunmen impersonating Iraqi security forces.
On Sunday, at least 20 gunmen, several disguised as police commandos, kidnapped 26 workers from a Baghdad meat processing plant.
The U.S. military began distributing new Iraqi police uniforms last week, in an effort to prevent insurgents from pretending to be police while carrying out kidnappings and attacks.
Some insurgent attacks are believed to have been carried out by militia members who have been integrated into Iraq's security forces, but have not changed their loyalties.
In an effort to stem the lawlessness on the streets of Baghdad and across much of Iraq, the Iraqi parliament Monday voted to extend martial law until November 1.
CNN 2/10/06
Hopes for Darfur rest on African force
A beefed-up African peacekeeping force has emerged as the best hope of averting humanitarian catastrophe in Darfur after the Sudanese President defiantly brushed aside pressure to admit UN troops. In almost two hours of talks, Omar al-Bashir, the President of Sudan, told the European Commission president, Jose Manuel Barroso, that he feared his country would suffer the same fate as Iraq if UN soldiers were to intervene.
Diplomats are now concentrating on proposals to strengthen a 7,000-strong African Union (AU) force already in Darfur. They believe Mr Bashir might allow the addition of some UN components providing there is no American involvement and that control remains in African hands.
Independent, 2/10/06
Iraq government splinters
Iraq's fragile government showed further signs of strain on Sunday, as Shiite political leaders expressed growing frustration at having to share power with Sunni Arabs whom they view as having ties to insurgents.
"There is a real trust crisis," said Baha al-Aaraji, a prominent Shiite legislator at a news conference broadcast on television. "The prime minister does not trust his deputy," and the speaker of Parliament "does not trust his first deputy."
The remarks, which included a call for a cabinet shuffle, came after the disclosure on Friday that a guard working for a leading Sunni politician might have been involved in a plot to detonate multiple car bombs in the Green Zone. But they quickly led to a larger debate, with Sunni and Shiite factions accusing one another of protecting their militias and governing to suit their own sects.
The outburst underscored the weakness of Iraq's government. A patchwork of parties and groups that represents most of Iraq's ethnicities and sects, the government was assembled through weeks of bitter negotiations brokered by the Americans this spring.
New York Times, 1/10/06
US kept intelligence data from Britain
Tony Blair was angered by America's refusal to share intelligence on Iraq with Britain, according to a revealing new book by Bob Woodward, the veteran journalist who exposed the Watergate scandal. The prime minister protested to President George W Bush about the way intelligence was routinely marked NOFORN (no foreigners), denying access to the US's closest ally. Raw intelligence gathered by British operatives in Iraq and fused with the Americans' own data was stored on the classified Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNET).
"The British couldn't see it, let alone get a copy, because it was marked NOFORN," Woodward writes. British pilots flying American warplanes such as F-117 Nighthawks and F015E Strike Eagles were even denied access to classified pilot manuals for the same reason.
After complaints from Blair, Bush promised to lift the NOFORN restrictions, but the Pentagon simply began creating a new, separate SIPRNET to cut out the British, Woodward claims.
Sunday Times, 1/10/06
US may have to act on torture
The United States may cut off funding for Iraq's police because of its failure to punish people responsible for torture, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq said in an interview published on Saturday. Zalmay Khalilzad told the New York Times that Washington has yet to formally notify Baghdad that funding may be cut, but officials are reviewing programs because of a U.S. law that forbids funding armies or police that violate human rights.
The United Nations said in a report earlier this month that torture was rampant in Iraqi detention centers and in the widespread sectarian killings seen across the country, based on the signs of abuse on victims' bodies.
Yahoo News, 30/9/06
Afghanistan six times more deadly than Iraq
Soldiers fighting in Afghanistan are six times more likely to be killed in combat than their fellow soldiers in Iraq, new research shows. The startling fatality rate, in a paper by a leading statistician, will place fresh pressure on the Government over its mission in Afghanistan as well as raising fresh questions about overstretch of UK troops.
The findings come as opposition politicians accused the Ministry of Defence of covering up the full extent of casualties in Afghanistan by refusing to publish any casualty statistics for troops treated for injuries in the field.
Independent, 1/10/06
Kissinger and the ghost of Vietnam
A powerful, largely invisible influence on Bush's Iraq policy was former secretary of state Kissinger. "Of the outside people that I talk to in this job," Vice President Cheney said in the summer of 2005, "I probably talk to Henry Kissinger more than I talk to anybody else. He just comes by and, I guess at least once a month." The president also met privately with Kissinger every couple of months, making him the most regular and frequent outside adviser to Bush on foreign affairs.
Kissinger sensed wobbliness everywhere on Iraq, and he increasingly saw it through the prism of the Vietnam War. For Kissinger, the overriding lesson of Vietnam is to stick it out. In a column about Iraq on Aug. 12, 2005, titled "Lessons for an Exit Strategy," Kissinger wrote, "Victory over the insurgency is the only meaningful exit strategy."
He delivered the same message directly to Bush, Cheney and Hadley at the White House. Victory had to be the goal, he told all. Don't let it happen again. Don't give an inch, or else the media, the Congress and the American culture of avoiding hardship will walk you back.
He also said that the eventual outcome in Iraq was more important than Vietnam had been. A radical Islamic or Taliban-style government in Iraq would be a model that could challenge the internal stability of the key countries in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Washington Post, 1/10/06