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

A man cries

while searching for his son as smoke billows from a building

after a double car bomb attack Monday in central Baghdad

Photograph: By Khalid Mohammed, AP

Bombs kill at least 80

as Shiites mark anniversary of mosque attack

UT        12.2.2007

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-02-12-violence_x.htm

U.S. death toll in March

nearly double that of Iraqi forces

31.3.2007
AP
USA Today

BAGHDAD (AP) — The U.S. military death toll in March, the first full month of the security crackdown, was nearly twice that of the Iraqi army, which American and Iraqi officials say is taking the leading role in the latest attempt to curb violence in the capital, surrounding cities and Anbar province, according to figures compiled on Saturday.

The Associated Press count of U.S. military deaths for the month was 81, including a soldier who died from non-combat causes Saturday. Figures compiled from officials in the Iraqi ministries of Defense, Health and Interior showed the Iraqi military toll was 44. The Iraqi figures showed that 165 Iraqi police were killed in March. Many of the police serve in paramilitary units.

According to the AP count 3,246 U.S. service members have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.

At least 83 American forces died in January and 80 in February, according to the AP tabulation.

The Iraqi figures were gathered from officials who released them on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to give out the numbers.

Additionally, the Iraqi ministry figures listed 1,872 Iraqi civilian deaths for the month, about 300 more than the AP tabulation, which is mainly gathered from daily police reports nationwide.

The civilian death toll for the month was down significantly from 2,172 in December, the highest month casualty figure since the AP began keeping records of civilian deaths in April 2005.

However, the number of civilians killed in March was in the same range as for the first two months of this year; 1,604 in January and 1,552 in February, according to the AP count.

Nearly a third of the Iraqi civilian deaths, more than 500 people, where killed in three big bomb attacks in the last week of the month and revenge killings of Sunni men in Tal Afar the night after a Shiite market was bomb in the northwest Iraqi city.

U.S. death toll in March nearly double that of Iraqi forces, UT, 31.3.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-03-31-military-deaths_N.htm

70 Killed

in Wave of Revenge

in Northern Iraq

March 29, 2007
The New York Times
By ALISSA J. RUBIN

BAGHDAD, March 28 — One of the bloodiest chapters in Iraq’s sectarian strife unfolded over the past two days in the northern city of Tal Afar where gunmen, some of them apparently police officers, participated in the revenge killings of scores of Sunnis in the aftermath of a huge double suicide bombing in a Shiite area.

Two hours after the explosion of truck bombs, which killed 83 people and wounded more than 185, the gunmen — some of whom witnesses recognized as police officers — went house to house in a Sunni neighborhood, dragged people into the street and shot them in the head, witnesses and local leaders said. The killing went on for several hours before the Iraqi Army intervened. The police are mostly Shiites, although the city is mixed.

In Tal Afar, the Turkmen Front, a political movement that is strong in northern Iraq where there are many ethnic Turks, condemned the killings in a statement Wednesday morning.

“The militia after the explosions, backed by the police, raided the Sunni houses in the area and pulled people outdoors and killed them,” it said. “There are tens of bodies still scattered on the road. In the meantime, the state security forces are incapable of doing anything.”

An Iraqi Army spokesman said the final toll from the retaliatory violence was 70 people killed, 40 kidnapped and 30 wounded. “They were all Sunnis,” said Maj. Gen. Khorsheed Doski, the spokesman for the Third Brigade of the Iraqi Army.

However, there was conflicting information about the dead. Military sources described those killed as men, between ages 20 and 60. But Dr. Salih Qadou, the chief doctor at the Tal Afar hospital, which received the bodies, said there were women and children as well. He said the number killed was 60.

“So many bloodied corpses were brought in on Tuesday night that the entry hall could not be kept clean,” he said. “If you would have seen the inside of the hospital yesterday, it would have looked as if it were painted red despite all our efforts to clean the entry. But the influx of casualties kept growing bigger. I haven’t heard or seen such a massacre in my life.”

A man who said he had witnessed some of the killings, Muhie Muhammad Ebrahim, groped for words to describe the scene. “After the events of yesterday, which claimed the lives of a lot of people of Tal Afar, mostly Shiites, a horrible thing happened,” he said. “Some of the families of the victims were enraged, and with cooperation of some policemen they attacked the Sunni areas. I can say that a public slaughter took place.”

The Iraqi Army intervened to stop the killing, and 12 policemen have been detained, said Iraqi Army sources in Tal Afar who would only speak on the condition of anonymity. A police official for Nineveh, a nearby town, said that 20 policemen had been detained.

At one point the police and the army exchanged shots, said a high-ranking official working with the Ministry of the Interior but who was not authorized to speak on its behalf. The army imposed a curfew.

Tal Afar is near the Syrian border. The city, though, is majority ethnic Turkmen, divided between Shiites and Sunnis. Sectarian tensions have been a constant in Tal Afar’s violence over the past three years along with activities by groups linked to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the militant Sunni group.

The city of about 200,000 was crippled in 2005 when attacks by groups linked to Al Qaeda prompted large numbers of people to flee. American troops, who had left the city a year earlier, returned in force in September 2005, to oust the insurgents. In March 2006, President Bush declared Tal Afar one of Iraq’s success stories in a speech in Cleveland.

But as had happened before, when the American troops withdrew, the Qaeda-linked forces returned and began to provoke sectarian killings.

Sensitive to the potential for this week’s incidents to unleash a cycle of reprisals, the Iraqi government appeared to take care to understand the events before any formal statement. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki asked the Interior, National Security and Defense Ministries to open an investigation. High-level officials, including Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani, will travel Thursday to Tal Afar to start the inquiry.

“We have received many accounts of violations by individual policemen,” said Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf, commander of the National Command Center at the Interior Ministry. “The investigative committee will arrive in Tal Afar tomorrow to find out the truth.”

“We want to find out who was behind these acts, he added.”

General Khalaf said that in his view the renewed violence in Tal Afar was in part a result of the increased American and Iraqi military presence in Baghdad. “When the place became too narrow for the terrorists to operate, they headed to the provinces — for example to Amariya al Falluja, now to Mosul,” he said. “It’s a clear message that they are targeting the civilians.”

However, General Khalaf and other officials said the sequence of events remained unclear. The larger of the two bombs that exploded Tuesday detonated near a police station, and the police had been involved in helping people in the neighborhood to line up near the truck, whose driver was supposedly intending to distribute free flour.

Soon after the bomb exploded, the police rushed to the scene but the Iraqi Army had also arrived. As some police officers tried to reach fellow officers who were injured or killed in the bombing, they were stopped by the Iraqi Army, Iraqi security officials said. It appears that some of the shots were fired at that time, they said.

Elsewhere on Wednesday, lethal car bombs and improvised explosive devices killed at least 12 people including eight Iraqi Army soldiers. Five bodies were found in Diwaniya and 13 in Baghdad.

Ahmad Khadam and Khalid al-Ansary contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Mosul, Hilla and Ramadi.

    70 Killed in Wave of Revenge in Northern Iraq, NYT, 29.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/world/middleeast/29iraq.html

U.S. Long Worried That Iran Supplied Arms in Iraq

March 27, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON, March 26 — More than 20 months ago, the United States secretly sent Iran a diplomatic protest charging that Tehran was supplying lethal roadside explosive devices to Shiite extremists in Iraq, according to American officials familiar with the message.

The July 19, 2005, protest — blandly titled “Message from the United States to the Government of Iran” — informed the Iranians that a British soldier had been killed by one of the devices in Maysan Province in eastern Iraq.

The complaint said that the Shiite militants who planted the device had longstanding ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran, and that the Revolutionary Guards and Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia had been training Iraqi Shiite insurgents in Iran and supplying them with bomb-making equipment.

“We will continue to judge Iran by its actions in Iraq,” the protest added.

Iran flatly denied the charges in a diplomatic reply it sent the following month, and it continues to deny any role in the supply of the lethal weapons. But the confidential exchange foreshadowed the more public confrontation between the Bush administration and Iran that has been unfolding since December.

In the past four months, the administration has sought to put new pressure on Tehran, through military raids against Iranian operatives in Iraq, the dispatch of an American aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf, as well as the increasingly public complaints about Iran’s role in arming Shiite militias. The American actions prompted criticism that the White House is trying to find a scapegoat for military setbacks in Iraq, or even to prepare for a new war with Iran.

A review of the administration’s accusations of an Iranian weapons supply role, including interviews with officials in Washington and Baghdad, critics of the administration and independent experts, shows that intelligence that Iran was providing lethal assistance to Shiite militias has been a major worry for more than two years.

The concern intensified toward the end of 2006 as American casualties from the explosive devices, known as explosively formed penetrators, or E.F.P.’s, began to climb. According to classified data gathered by the American military, E.F.P. attacks accounted for 18 percent of combat deaths of Americans and allied troops in Iraq in the last quarter of 2006.

Excluding casualty data for the Sunni-dominated Anbar Province, where the explosives have not been found, the devices accounted for about 30 percent of American and allied deaths for the last quarter of the year.

Some Democrats in Congress, while critical of many aspects of Bush administration policy toward Iraq and Iran, say they are persuaded by the intelligence pointing to an Iranian role in supplying E.F.P.’s. Debate remains about whether Iran’s top leaders ordered the supply of the weapons, about whether the Iranian-supplied devices can be copied in Iraq and about American policy toward Tehran.

In January, the number of American and allied troops killed by E.F.P. attacks was less than half of December’s total. That trend continued in February.

Some American officials suggest that this may be a response to their efforts to highlight the role Iran is accused of playing, but another factor may be that many Shiite militants have opted not to confront American troops. The weapon, however, is still a major danger. On March 15, an E.F.P. attack in eastern Baghdad killed four American service members and wounded two others.

A Devastating Weapon

E.F.P.’s are one of the most devastating weapons on the battlefield. The weapons fire a semi-molten copper slug that cuts through the armor on a Humvee, then shatters inside the vehicle, creating a deadly hail of hot metal that causes especially gruesome wounds even when it does not kill.

Many of the E.F.P.’s encountered by American forces in Iraq are both difficult to detect and extremely destructive. Because they fire from the side of the road, there is no need to dig a hole to plant them, so they are well suited for urban settings. Because they are set off by a passive infrared sensor, the kind of motion detector that turns on security lights, they cannot be countered by electronic jamming.

Adversaries have used the weapon in new ways. On Feb. 12, a British Air Force C-130 was damaged by two E.F.P arrays as it landed on an airstrip in Maysan Province, the first time the device was used to attack an aircraft, according to allied officials. Allied forces later destroyed the aircraft with a 1,000-pound bomb to keep militants from pilfering equipment.

Over the course of the war, the devices have accounted for only a small fraction of the roadside bomb attacks in Iraq; most bombing attacks and most American deaths have been caused by less sophisticated devices favored by Sunni insurgents, not Shiite militias linked to Iran. But E.F.P.’s produce significantly more casualties per attack than other types of roadside bombs.

“They were a new type of threat with a great potential for damage,” said Lt. Col. Kevin W. Farrell, who commanded the First Battalion, 64th Armor of the Third Infantry Division, in 2005, when a penetrator punched through the skirt armor of one of the battalion’s M-1 tanks and cracked its hull. “They accounted for a sizable percentage of our casualties. Based on searches of the Baghdad environment we occupied and multiple local Iraqi sources, we believed that they came from Iran.”

A Gradual Realization

American intelligence analysts say the first detonation of an E.F.P. in Iraq may have come in August 2003. But their view that Iran was playing a role in the attacks emerged slowly. American officials said their assessment of Iranian involvement was based on a cumulative picture that included forensic examination of exploded and captured devices, and parallels between the use of the weapons in Iraq and devices used in southern Lebanon by Hezbollah.

“There was no eureka moment,” said one senior American official, who like several others would discuss intelligence and administration decision-making only on condition of anonymity.

The entire E.F.P. assembly seen repeatedly in Iraq, including the radio link used to activate it and the infrared sensor used to fire it, had been found only one other place in the world, American officials say: Lebanon, since 1998, where it is believed to have been supplied by Iran to Hezbollah.

According to one military expert, some of the radio transmitters used to activate some of the E.F.P.’s in Iraq operate on the same frequency and use the same codes as devices used against Israeli forces in Lebanon.

More evidence came from the interception of trucks in Iraq, within a few miles of the Iranian border, carrying copper discs machined to the precise curvature required to form the penetrating projectile. Wrappers for C4 explosive, among other items, were traceable to Iran, officials say.

An important part of the American claim comes from intelligence, including interrogation of captured militia members, about Shiite militants who use E.F.P.’s and maintain close ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah.

The militant groups led by Abu Mustafa al-Sheibani have operated one of the most important E.F.P. networks. According to American intelligence reports, his network has been receiving E.F.P. components and training from the Quds Force, and elite unit of the Revolutionary Guard, and Hezbollah operatives in Iran. He is on the Iraqi most-wanted list and the Iraqi criminal court issued a warrant for his arrest in 2005.

Ahmad Abu Sajad al-Gharawi, a former Mahdi Army commander, has been active in Maysan Province. American intelligence officials say his group was probably linked to the attack on British forces that was cited in the American diplomatic protest. He is also on the Iraqi government’s most-wanted list, and an Iraqi warrant has been issued for his arrest.

In September 2005, British forces arrested Ahmad Jawwad al-Fartusi, the leader of a splinter group of the Mahdi Army that carried out E.F.P. attacks against British forces in southern Iraq. American intelligence concluded that his fighters might have received training and E.F.P. components from Hezbollah.

Mr. Fartusi lived in Lebanon for several years, and a photograph of him with Hezbollah members was discovered when British forces searched his home. In the view of American officials that may be circumstantial evidence of an Iranian connection, because American intelligence experts say Hezbollah generally conducts operations in Iraq with the consent of Iran.

Last week, American-led forces captured Qais Khazali and Laith Khazali, two Shiite militants who were linked to the kidnapping and killing of five American soldiers in Karbala in January, the United States military said. American officials say they have also trafficked in E.F.P.’s.

Some people who are experts on military matters but who acknowledge they do not have access to the classified intelligence have said the weapons could be made in Iraq. But American officials say they have not found any facilities inside Iraq where the high-quality E.F.P. components are being manufactured.

Nonetheless, the E.F.P. experience in Iraq appears to have, in turn, influenced developments in Lebanon. The installation of E.F.P.’s in foam blocks painted to resemble rocks, a technique first used in 2005 by Shiite militias in Iraq, appeared last summer in Lebanon when Hezbollah was battling Israeli forces. Previously, Hezbollah had generally placed the devices on tripods at the side of the road, covering them with brush to avoid detection.

“There’s almost been a cross-pollenization,” one official said.

American and British forces have been the primary targets in the E.F.P. attacks, but the devices have also been used against Iraqi security forces. In June 2005, a Japanese convoy near Samawa was struck by a roadside bomb that used a remote control firing device typically provided by Iran or Hezbollah. Concerned by the attacks, the British government protested through diplomatic channels in Tehran that year. Taking note of the British complaint, the Americans made their protest through Swiss intermediaries in Iran. As evidence of an Iranian role, the American complaint cited a May 29, 2005, E.F.P attack near Amara that killed a 21-year-old British lance corporal, Alan Brackenbury. Iran denied any involvement.

Discussing Concerns Publicly

After that diplomatic rebuff, American officials began to broach the topic publicly. In August 2005, Stephen J. Hadley, President Bush’s national security adviser, said allied forces were being made targets of bombs “that seem to have a footprint similar to that of devices used by groups that have historically had Iranian support.”

In October 2005, the British ambassador to Iraq, William Patey, told reporters in London that Iran was supplying lethal technology that had been used against British troops. Prime Minister Tony Blair added, “The particular nature of those devices lead us to either to Iranian elements or to Hezbollah.” At the time Mr. Blair expressed caution about the certainty of the link to Iran, but in February of this year he said it was clear that Iran “is the origin of that weaponry.”

Beginning in April 2006, E.F.P. attacks began to rise. With both the diplomatic protests and the public statements having failed to stop the attacks, American officials again began to discuss what to do. The changing nature of the American strategy, with its increased emphasis on challenging Shiite militias in and around Baghdad, made the issue all the more pressing.

According to officials involved in the discussion, who asked not be identified, one concern was that raiding Iranian operatives in Iraq might provoke Iran to increase lethal assistance to Shiite militants. Another worry was that it might require the American command to divert military and intelligence assets from missions against Sunni insurgents, like Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

“For many months American officials were torn between a desire to do something and a wish to avoid confrontation,” Philip D. Zelikow, a former senior State Department official, said in a recent speech. “When a government is conflicted about what to do, the usual result is inaction.”

As the Bush administration debated what to do, one issue involved the rules of engagement if American forces were to conduct raids against Iranian operatives in Iraq. After the United States Central Command submitted a plan for such raids, one option that was weighed was to declare the Quds Force that is operating in Iraq, to be a “hostile force.”

Such an order would give the military a clear legal justification for taking action against Iranian officials and operatives in Iraq, and flexibility in planning the raids.

Other officials said the Iranians were also involved in economic and social programs in Iraq. They argued for a more limited approach, saying that the United States should single out only Iranian operatives found to have “hostile intent” against coalition forces. The Bush administration decided that the raids would be carried out under the more limited rules of engagement for now.

Meanwhile, in Baghdad, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., then the top American commander, approved plans to brief the news media on the E.F.P. issue — a reversal for military officials, who had been reluctant to highlight the effectiveness of the weapons for fear of encouraging their use.

“Our intelligence analysts advised our leaders that the historical Quds Force pattern is to pull back when their operations are exposed, so MNF-I leadership decided to expose their operations to save American lives,” said Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the chief spokesman for Multinational Forces-Iraq, as the American-led command is known.

The Iran Connection

Some Democratic lawmakers who are critical of the administration’s Iraq policies say they now accept that there is a connection between Iran and the E.F.P. attacks in Iraq, though they emphasize that Iran is not the primary reason for instability in Iraq.

Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat who opposed Mr. Bush’s troop reinforcement plan, said he believed that the Bush administration was using the E.F.P. issue to distract attention from the difficulties in Iraq. But he said he was persuaded that the weapons were coming from Iran, in part from extensive talks with American and British commanders during trips to Iraq.

“They want to keep us under pressure in Iraq without causing a major power reaction by us or a major meltdown within Iraq, which puts a failing state on their borders,” Mr. Reed said of the Iranians.

At a February hearing, Senator Carl Levin, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a critic of the plan to send more troops to Baghdad, pressed Mike McConnell, the new director of national intelligence, to acknowledge that other countries in the region, too, were supplying insurgents in Iraq.

Mr. Levin, however, said he was “not surprised” by Mr. McConnell’s view that some of Iran’s leaders probably knew of E.F.P. deliveries arranged by the Quds Force, and aides say Mr. Levin believes that the administration has been too cautious about pinning the blame on Iran’s leaders.

Flynt Leverett, a senior fellow at the New American Foundation and a Middle East specialist who worked for the Central Intelligence Agency and on the staff of the National Security Council, also said he believed that Iran was supplying munitions to Shiite militias.

But Mr. Leverett said the threat to American troops from Sunni insurgents, who draw on Syria and Saudi Arabia for money and other logistical support, was “orders of magnitude” greater than that from Shiites, and he contended that the Bush administration’s public emphasis on the E.F.P.’s was part of a larger administration strategy to blame Iran “for the failure of the American project in Iraq.”

In the report it completed in December, the Iraq Study Group called for opening talks with Iran and suggested Iran could take steps to improve security in Iraq by stemming “the flow of equipment, technology, and training to any group resorting to violence in Iraq.”

“The fact that Iran may be supplying lethal equipment is all the more reason to deal with them,” Lee H. Hamilton, a co-chairman of the panel, said in an interview. “We do think it fortifies the case for engaging Iran.”

    U.S. Long Worried That Iran Supplied Arms in Iraq, NYT, 27.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/27/world/middleeast/27weapons.html

5 U.S. Soldiers in Iraq Are Killed by Bombs

March 26, 2007
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BAGHDAD, March 25 (AP) — Roadside bombs killed five American soldiers in Iraq on Sunday, including four in a single strike in the volatile province of Diyala, northeast of the capital, the military said.

In Baghdad, gunmen on rooftops opened fire on Iraqi soldiers, prompting fierce fighting in the narrow streets and alleys of the Fadhil neighborhood, one of the capital’s oldest districts and a haven for insurgents and criminals on the east side of the Tigris River. At least two civilians were killed and four others were wounded in the clashes, the police said, as American attack helicopters buzzed overhead.

Four Americans soldiers were killed and two others were wounded when an explosion struck their patrol in Diyala Province, a military statement said.

A separate roadside bombing killed a soldier and wounded two others as they were checking for bombs on a road in northwestern Baghdad, the military said.

At least 31 people were killed or found dead elsewhere in Iraq, including 2 Iraqi soldiers who died after a suicide car bomber struck their army checkpoint in Baquba.

    5 U.S. Soldiers in Iraq Are Killed by Bombs, NYT, 26.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/26/world/middleeast/26iraq.html

U.S. Envoy Says He Met With Iraq Rebels

March 26, 2007
The New York Times
By EDWARD WONG

BAGHDAD, March 25 — The senior American envoy in Iraq, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, held talks last year with men he believed represented major insurgent groups in a drive to bring militant Sunni Arabs into politics.

“There were discussions with the representatives of various groups in the aftermath of the elections, and during the formation of the government before the Samarra incident, and some discussions afterwards as well,” Mr. Khalilzad said in a farewell interview on Friday at his home inside the fortified Green Zone. He is the first American official to publicly acknowledge holding such talks.

The meetings began in early 2006 and were quite possibly the first attempts at sustained contact between senior American officials here and the Sunni Arab insurgency. Mr. Khalilzad flew to Jordan for some of the talks, which included self-identified representatives of the Islamic Army of Iraq and the 1920 Revolution Brigades, two leading nationalist factions, American and Iraqi officials said. Mr. Khalilzad declined to give details on the meetings, but other officials said the efforts had foundered by the summer, after the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra set off waves of sectarian violence.

Mr. Khalilzad’s willingness even to approach rebel groups seemed at odds with the public position of some Bush administration officials that the United States does not negotiate with insurgents. It was not clear whether he had to seek permission from Washington before engaging in these talks. In general, Mr. Khalilzad was given great flexibility in making diplomatic decisions to try to rein in the spiraling violence, and his talks with insurgents reflected the practical view of Iraqi politics that the ambassador adopted throughout his nearly two-year tenure here.

American commanders here have also said it is necessary to woo the less radical insurgent groups away from the true militants. American officials have privately acknowledged there have been some talks with insurgent representatives as early as autumn 2005.

In another sign of pragmatism, the ambassador reiterated in the interview his position that the American and Iraqi governments had to consider granting amnesty to insurgents. “This is something that we and Iraqis, the government, will do together, and there are various types of amnesties,” he said. “But the fundamental point, the goal of bringing the war to an end, the most important tribute we could pay to our soldiers who have lost their lives here would be that the cause they fought for would be embraced and accepted by their former enemies, by those who fought them.”

As Mr. Khalilzad, President Bush’s nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, leaves Iraq this week, it is clear that his time here will be remembered most for one thing — his attempts to bring disenfranchised Sunni Arabs into the political process, both through empowering Sunni Arab political parties and trying to reach out to insurgents.

The efforts came at the cost of increasing tensions between the Americans and Iraq’s Shiite leaders, some of whom accuse Mr. Khalilzad of a sectarian bias because he is an Afghan Sunni. Moreover, the efforts also have failed to defuse the insurgency. Violence has skyrocketed, prompting President Bush this winter to announce the deployment of 30,000 more troops to Iraq.

“I think that it has not gone as well as one would have clearly liked,” Mr. Khalilzad said. “And I think the complicating factor was the intensification of sectarian violence, particularly in the aftermath of Samarra.”

An American official said it was difficult to determine whether the people Mr. Khalilzad met with really were influential representatives of insurgent groups, as they claimed. In addition, the Sunni insurgency has no umbrella leadership, and the groups have competing ideologies. While the Islamic Army of Iraq and 1920 Revolution Brigades are believed to be led by Iraqis bitter at being ousted from the government and the military, some of the most militant groups are radical Islamists, particularly Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, who have no interest in being brought into politics. “We were never able to find people who could reduce the violence,” the American official said. “The insurgency itself does not have anything resembling a unified command. Even within different cities and different provinces, the insurgency is very fractured.”

Ahmad Chalabi, an Iraqi politician who is a friend of Mr. Khalilzad, said the talks fizzled partly because insurgent representatives made untenable demands. They sought a suspension of the Constitution, breakup of Parliament, reinstatement of the old Iraqi Army and establishment of a new government, he said.

Mr. Khalilzad said Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top American commander in Iraq at the time, was also engaged in talks at some point, but the ambassador gave no details. Other officials said they knew of no such engagement by General Casey.

When it came to politics, Mr. Khalilzad heartily engaged in backroom deal making, a sharp departure from the aloof manner of his predecessor, John D. Negroponte. Most notably, he persuaded Sunni Arab leaders to take part in elections for a full-term government even after he pushed through a Constitution that the Sunni Arabs abhor and that has reinforced sectarian tensions.

“I think he did fine, actually, considering the circumstances,” said Ayad al-Samarraie, a prominent Sunni Arab legislator. “He tried his best to be a moderator between different political leaders.”

Mr. Samarraie is from the Iraqi Consensus Front, the main Sunni Arab bloc that holds 44 of 275 parliamentary seats and 7 of 38 cabinet positions. Mr. Khalilzad had hoped the bloc’s entry into politics would damp the violence. Yet, a Pentagon assessment released to Congress March 14 said October-December 2006 was the most violent three months since the American invasion.

Mr. Khalilzad’s efforts to woo the Sunni Arabs have infuriated many politicians in the ruling Shiite bloc, including Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. Shiite leaders increasingly see the Americans as trying to check the power of the majority Shiites. That could push them closer to Iran, which is ruled by Shiite Persians.

After the Samarra bombing of February 2006, Mr. Khalilzad began saying that killings largely attributed to Shiite militias were more destabilizing than violence by Sunni insurgents. Displeased with the hard-line Shiite attitude of Ibrahim al-Jaafari, then the prime minister, Mr. Khalilzad helped engineer Mr. Jaafari’s ouster, only to see Mr. Jaafari replaced by a party deputy, Mr. Maliki, who is beholden to the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

Some Shiite leaders began calling Mr. Khalilzad by the Sunni nickname of “Abu Omar.”


“He didn’t transfer real power to the Iraqis,” said Hassan al-Sineid, a Shiite legislator and adviser to Mr. Maliki. “He wasn’t cooperative enough with the Iraqi government in any field.”

Iraqi politicians are divided more than ever along ethnic and sectarian lines, with no viable moderate center. To draw in recalcitrant Sunni Arabs, Mr. Khalilzad said in the interview, the Shiites and Kurds will have to revise the Constitution and roll back the purging of Sunni Arabs from the government. A parliamentary committee is only now starting to review the Constitution, and there has been no decision on four competing proposals to overhaul de-Baathification. An oil law that could help ease sectarian tensions was approved by the cabinet last month but has yet to pass Parliament.

All that leads critics of Mr. Khalilzad to say that he never brokered any lasting solutions to this country’s sectarian squabbles.

“Khalilzad’s policy is based on compromise,” Mr. Sineid said. “He’s like an Arab sheik — he wants to make different groups sit down and compromise. That usually means putting off the hard decisions until the future.”

Mr. Khalilzad, 56, a neoconservative who served as ambassador to Afghanistan until his arrival here in June 2005, is to be succeeded by Ambassador Ryan Crocker, an Arabist now posted in Islamabad.

The most complex legacy of Mr. Khalilzad — and arguably the most divisive — is the Constitution, passed in a national referendum in October 2005. Sunni Arab voters overwhelmingly rejected it, but most Shiites and Kurds, who make up 80 percent of the population, supported it. That paved the way for full-term elections in December 2005.

“He was instrumental in the passage of the Constitution,” said Mr. Chalabi. “He helped the parties negotiate the final compromises for the Constitution. That’s his single biggest contribution.”

Mr. Khalilzad said that of his achievements here, he was most proud of a deal he worked out during the drafting of the Constitution that allowed for any part of it to be revised, appeasing some Sunni Arab leaders. Without that, he and other American officials said, the Constitution might have been defeated by a narrow margin in the popular vote, or Sunni Arabs might not have taken part in the elections. But critics of Mr. Khalilzad say that the painstaking and potentially rancorous review of the Constitution under way would not be needed if the Americans had shepherded a more balanced Constitution, instead of one that gave short shrift to the needs of the Sunni Arabs as it tried to appeal to the Kurds and Shiites.

Mr. Khalilzad and his colleagues, the critics say, were so fixated on meeting the political timetable laid out by the White House that they pushed through a document that may have inflamed the Sunni-led insurgency by enshrining strong regional control. The Constitution reaffirms Sunni Arab beliefs that Shiites and Kurds want oil and territory.

“The Constitution is the source of the problem,” said Fakhri al-Qaisi, a hard-line Sunni Arab politician who was among 15 Sunni advisers on the Constitution. “It’s a sectarian document.”

Western officials who have examined the Constitution say the Sunni Arabs have a right to be concerned: the document’s language skews authority vastly in favor of the regions.

If the Iraqi review committee and the Parliament are able to make hard compromises on amendments, then a nationwide referendum on the new Constitution might be held before the end of 2007. What is happening now essentially is a repeat of what took place in 2005.

Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi contributed reporting.

    U.S. Envoy Says He Met With Iraq Rebels, NYT, 26.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/26/world/middleeast/26zal.html?hp

Sunni Baghdad Becomes Land of Silent Ruins

March 26, 2007
The New York Times
By ALISSA J. RUBIN

BAGHDAD, March 25 — The cityscape of Iraq’s capital tells a stark story of the toll the past four years have taken on Iraq’s once powerful Sunni Arabs.

Theirs is a world of ruined buildings, damaged mosques, streets pitted by mortar shells, uncollected trash and so little electricity that many people have abandoned using refrigerators altogether.

The contrast with Shiite neighborhoods is sharp. Markets there are in full swing, community projects are under way, and while electricity is scarce throughout the city, there is less trouble finding fuel for generators in those areas. When the government cannot provide services, civilian arms of the Shiite militias step in to try to fill the gap.

But in Adhamiya, a community with a Sunni majority, any semblance of normal life vanished more than a year ago. Its only hospital, Al Numan, is so short of basic items like gauze and cotton pads that when mortar attacks hit the community last fall, the doctors broadcast appeals for supplies over local mosque loudspeakers.

Here, as in so much of Baghdad, the sectarian divide makes itself felt in its own deadly and destructive ways. Far more than in Shiite areas, sectarian hatred has shredded whatever remained of community life and created a cycle of violence that pits Sunni against Sunni as well as Sunni against Shiite.

Anyone who works with the government, whether Shiite or Sunni, is an enemy in the eyes of the Sunni insurgents, who carry out attack after attack against people they view as collaborators. While that chiefly makes targets of the Shiite-dominated Iraqi Army and the police, the militants also kill fellow Sunnis from government ministries who come to repair water and electrical lines in Sunni neighborhoods.

One result of such attacks is that government workers of either sect refuse to deliver services to most Sunni areas. For ordinary Sunnis, all this deepens the sense of political impotence and estrangement. American military leaders and Western diplomats are unsure about whether the cycle can be stopped.

“The Sunnis outside the political process say, ‘What’s the point of coming in when those involved in the government can do nothing for their own community?’ ” said a Western diplomat who is not authorized to speak publicly.

Militant religious groups, known as takfiris, “have taken these Sunni neighborhoods as bases, which made these areas of military operation,” which stops the delivery of services, said Nasir al-Ani, a Sunni member of Parliament who works on a committee trying to win popular acceptance of the Baghdad security plan. “Now the ministries are trying to make services available, but the security situation prevents it. Part of the aim of the takfiris is to keep people disliking the government.”

It adds up to a bleak prognosis for Sunnis in Baghdad. Until the violence is under control, there is unlikely to be any progress. But it is hard to persuade Sunnis to take a stand against the violence when they seem to receive so little in return.

“We want to highlight that when the government is denying services to Sunnis, they are pushing them toward the Sunni extremists who attack the Shiite-dominated security forces,” said Maj. Guy Parmeter, an operations officer for the First Battalion, Fifth Cavalry, which operates in the Sunni areas on the west side of Baghdad. “And when that happens, it makes it harder to deliver services to those areas.”

Government leaders admit that there has been outright obstruction on the part of some Shiite ministries. Ali al-Dabbagh, the government’s spokesman, said that the Health Ministry, dominated by Shiites loyal to the militant cleric Moktada al-Sadr, has failed to deliver needed services to Sunni areas, which had thrived under Saddam Hussein.

“This is part of the lack of efficiency in the ministry which didn’t improve this year,” Mr. Dabbagh said. He added, however, that he did not see any remedy in the near term.

But officials also emphasize that many of the skilled Sunnis who used to keep the ministries going have fled, so the ministries are not delivering services to anyone. Again, security has to come first, they said.

Ahmad Chalabi, a secular Shiite whose most recent role is to lead the committee working to win popular acceptance of the security plan, said he saw four problems particularly plaguing Sunni areas: food distribution, electricity, fuel and health services.

Mr. Chalabi says he may have found a solution for the first by assuring that food agents, especially in Sunni areas, have an Iraqi Army escort to the food warehouses. The other problems are deeper, and solutions will take far longer to find, he said.

Since there has been no census taken in years, it is difficult to say the relative proportion of Shiites and Sunnis in Baghdad. Rough estimates suggest that Sunnis now make up no more than 40 percent of Baghdad’s population and possibly much less.

Day-to-day life for most Sunnis has become a nightmare of frustration, punctuated by terror that they will be caught in the cross-fire. Sunni Baghdad is now made up of block after block of shuttered storefronts, broken glass and piles of rubble. By midafternoon in those neighborhoods, hardly a person is on the street. Many residents will not leave their neighborhoods to go to jobs or see a doctor for fear they will be kidnapped at a checkpoint.

Baghdad’s Sunni areas, mostly on the west side, were once roughly 70 percent Sunni and 30 percent Shiite, but those ratios have become more lopsided as Shiites have fled. Each neighborhood has its own sad tale.

In Amiriya, one of the western neighborhoods that was taken over early on by hard-line Sunni insurgents, the Americans and the militants have fought a running battle for more than three years. More recently Shiite militiamen joined the fray, kidnapping and killing those they believed were collaborating with the insurgents.

Now they have fled and been replaced by cells of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, who threaten Sunnis who refuse to cooperate with them. They take over houses that families have fled and use them as bases to attack Iraqi Army and police checkpoints in the neighborhood.

Small wonder that streets are empty, shops are shuttered and neighbors view every foray for life’s essentials as a dangerous journey.

For Um Hint, who did not give her full name for fear of retaliation, the past four years have been a downhill slide. She learned to recognize the different insurgents by what they wear. “The ones we see now are different from the ones before because those wore masks,” she said. “The merchants no longer sell their goods from their stores. We must go to their houses when we want something like shampoo or clothes. Anyone trying to open his shop, the insurgents will threaten him. Sometimes they leave a note, but sometimes they put a bomb in front of the shop.”

The hazards on the streets have forced women to take over many of the activities often taken care of by men: food shopping, making inquiries at government agencies and taking household belongings for repairs. The militants “only kill men,” said Ms. Hint, 40. “So we go out alone.”

In Mansour, an odd silence pervades even before the shadows begin to lengthen. Along the once busy 14th of Ramadan Street, most shops are closed, and almost every side street is blocked off by coils of barbed wire and concrete blocks.

Residents describe an infrastructure so completely broken that they barely limp from one day to the next.

“I simply want to say that there are no services now,” said Abu Ali, 52, an engineer who works for a local cellphone company. “I get electricity for only two hours a day.”

He added: “The phones have been dead for two months; the sewers are bad; I have a broken water pipe in front of my house that has been flooding the street for nearly eight weeks. The garbage truck stopped coming two months ago.”

Even well into 2004, Mansour was one of the most luxurious shopping areas of Baghdad, the home of embassies and government officials. People lucky enough to live there could not imagine moving. Now, the Shiite areas they once scorned evoke envy because Shiite militias provide security and services.

“There are neighborhoods where people are receiving their food basket in full quantities and on time,” Mr. Ali said.

“The reason is that those areas are pure Shiite — they are controlled by Mahdi Army,” he said, referring to the militia that claims loyalty to Mr. Sadr. “There you have someone to complain to, even if it’s not the government.”

In Adhamiya, the most heavily Sunni majority neighborhood on the east bank of the Tigris, there has also been a succession of armed groups. Most recently, gangs of young men prowled the neighborhood and attacked anyone trying to help local residents. The head of the district council was gunned down 10 days ago; three months earlier his predecessor was killed the same way.

The council had been a beacon for beleaguered Adhamiya residents, its offices busy from early morning. But its members are under attack, and it is unclear how long they will be willing to continue to take the risks that come with helping their neighbors.

Haji Daoud, 46, a council member and engineer with a degree in psychology, is the man with many of the answers for those who come. He has a caseload of about 2,500 families. For the poorest, he has tried to organize shares in small generators so that they at least have enough electricity to turn on lights at night. No one has enough to run a refrigerator.

Mostly, people want jobs. Shaima, a 22-year-old divorced mother, asked Mr. Daoud if he could find her a job as a cleaner. Mr. Daoud shook his head. “There are no shops open here to clean,” he said.

Across from her sits Ahmed Ali, a grizzled 72-year old carpenter who came for help getting his food ration basket. Mr. Ali closed his carpentry shop because there was no electricity. Known throughout Adhamiya for his craftsmanship, he was famous for making an Arab version of the lute for local musicians.

His eldest son was killed a year ago. When he collected the body at the morgue, he found that holes had been drilled through his son’s joints, a form of torture that is a mark of Shiite militias. Last summer, his younger son was kidnapped near the neighborhood.

He leaned forward slightly on his cane and looked hard at Mr. Daoud as he tried to explain the depth of his losses: the carpentry shop, his food rations, his family. “I made lutes and sometimes I played, but my fingers are numb now,” he said. “I cannot play. I want only to find my kidnapped son.”

Ahmad Fadam and Mohammed Obaidi contributed reporting.

    Sunni Baghdad Becomes Land of Silent Ruins, NYT, 26.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/26/world/middleeast/26sunni.html?hp

47 Are Killed in Iraq Bombings, 20 in Baghdad

March 25, 2007
The New York Times
By KIRK SEMPLE

BAGHDAD, March 24 — A suicide bomber driving a truck carrying explosives hidden under construction materials on Saturday was waved through a checkpoint at a heavily fortified police compound in southern Baghdad, where he detonated his payload, killing at least 20 people, an Interior Ministry official said.

The attack was the deadliest of a wave of suicide bombings around Iraq on Saturday that killed at least 47 people, many of them policemen, the authorities said.

Despite the infusion of American and Iraqi troops to Baghdad this year, suicide bombings, a hallmark of the Sunni Arab-led insurgency, have been rising. Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the top spokesman for the United States military here, said last week that the number of car bombs in Baghdad reached a record high of 44 in February, out of 77 nationwide.

With Shiite militias largely lying low since the start of the security crackdown, American generals say their primary focus now is to curtail the Sunni insurgency’s high-profile attacks by raiding car bomb factories and erecting blast walls in areas where large groups of people congregate, like public markets.

The suicide bombing against the police station, in the violent Dora neighborhood of far-southern Baghdad, was particularly brazen. The two-story building serves as the district headquarters for a large swath of southern Baghdad. It is set within a perimeter of tall walls, sandbag fortifications, police checkpoints and a chicane of traffic barriers designed to impede a fast approach by a vehicle bomber.

But according to a police official at the Interior Ministry, police officers apparently thought the driver on Saturday was hauling bricks to a site next door, where a new police headquarters is under construction. The driver was waved through, and moments later set off his explosives in a devastating blast that was audible on the other side of the sprawling capital. Those killed were mostly policemen, but several were prisoners being held at the compound, the official said. At least 26 people were wounded. Dora has been one of the most deadly areas in the city. American and Iraqi patrols came under attack on a daily basis there during a security push last summer.

But in recent weeks, American military commanders have said that the latest security plan has tamed parts of Dora.

Under the plan, thousands of fresh American troops are also being sent to the western province of Anbar, a wellspring and refuge of the Sunni Arab insurgency.

The American military said Saturday that two soldiers were killed in combat on Friday, one in Anbar and the other in Baghdad.

In Suhada, a village in western Anbar near the Syrian border, three suicide car bombers attacked police posts in a seemingly coordinated triple attack. One detonated himself outside a police station, and the other two struck police checkpoints, according to Col. Ahmad Jeedan, an Iraqi Army commander in Qaim. At least eight people were killed and 20 wounded, he said.

Another suicide bomber driving a truck with boxes of new shoes struck near a Shiite mosque in the town of Haswa, about 40 miles south of Baghdad, killing 11 people and wounding 45, according to an Iraqi Army officer and a police official in Haswa.

At least eight people were killed and another eight wounded in the northwestern town of Tal Afar when a suicide bomber wearing an explosives belt blew himself up inside a food store, the chief of the city’s main hospital said.

In Baghdad, according to an Interior Ministry official, two civilians died in crossfire between militants and the Iraqi Army in the Sunni neighborhood of Fadhel; a mortar shell exploded in the Kamalia district, killing a woman; gunmen shot and wounded the head of the Al Karam Hospital in the Amil neighborhood; a major in the Baghdad police force was assassinated; and 10 unidentified bodies were recovered from the street.

In Baquba, north of Baghdad, two insurgents were killed during clashes with the police, according to a security official in Diyala Province.

Insurgents fired more than 10 mortar shells at a police station in the town of Khan Bani Saad, south of Baquba, killing two civilians, the police said. The authorities recovered four bodies in Swaira, a town north of Kut, in southern Iraq, the police there said. In Wahda, insurgents attacked a hydroelectricity station but were repelled by government security forces stationed there, the police said. Five gunmen were killed.

Qais Mizher contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Hilla, Ramada and Tal Afar.

    47 Are Killed in Iraq Bombings, 20 in Baghdad, NYT, 25.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/world/middleeast/25iraq.html?hp

The Saturday Profile

Critic of Hussein Grapples With Horrors of Post-Invasion Iraq

March 24, 2007
By EDWARD WONG
The New York Times

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.

KANAN MAKIYA’s latest creative block seems as imposing as the concrete blast walls that have sprung up across Baghdad in the four years of war.

He is having trouble putting words to paper, grappling with a new book that he says is likely to be his final political work on Iraq.

“The thing that’s difficult is the form of the book,” Mr. Makiya said as he sat down one winter evening in his living room here. “I never had this problem before the fall of the regime. Things were simpler. The dictator was there, and you knew where you stood.”

The dictator was, of course, Saddam Hussein, the target of Mr. Makiya’s vitriol in a series of acclaimed books that he wrote on Iraq, beginning with “Republic of Fear,” published in 1989.

Until the American invasion in March 2003, Mr. Makiya, an Iraqi-American born in Baghdad in 1949, was the leading intellectual voice crying out for Western and Arab nations to topple Mr. Hussein. He was a close friend of the Pentagon darling Ahmad Chalabi, and had the attention of neoconservatives. Vice President Dick Cheney praised him on “Meet the Press,” and Mr. Makiya was one of three Iraqi-Americans who met with President Bush in the winter of 2003.

Those were simpler days indeed, before the endless waves of car bombings, before the thousands of Iraqi and American deaths, before the descent into chaos and sectarian violence that has driven liberal idealists like Mr. Makiya into bouts of hand-wringing over a single inescapable question: what went wrong?

Which brings us to Mr. Makiya’s next book.

“I want to look into myself, look at myself, delve into the assumptions I had going into the war,” he said. “Now it seems necessary to reflect on the society that has gotten itself into this mess. A question that looms more and more for me is: just what did 30 years of dictatorship do to 25 million people?”

“It’s not like I didn’t think about this,” he continued. “But nonetheless I allowed myself as an activist to put it aside in the hope that it could be worked through, or managed, or exorcised in a way that’s not as violent as is the case now. That did not work out.”

HERE in this two-story Victorian house on a quiet lane south of Porter Square, the thing that “did not work out” seemed very far away. Mr. Makiya was awaiting the arrival for dinner of a former student of his at Brandeis University, where Mr. Makiya is a professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies. While musing about Iraq, he admitted his inability to foresee the manifold shortcomings in the American project.

“There were failures at the level of leadership, and they’re overwhelmingly Iraqi failures,” he said. Chief among the culprits, he added, were the Iraqis picked by the Americans in 2003 to sit on the Iraqi Governing Council, many of them exiles who tried to create popular bases for themselves by emphasizing sectarian and ethnic differences.

“Sectarianism began there,” he said.

Mr. Makiya said he preferred not to name names. But it is well known that he had a falling out with Mr. Chalabi after Mr. Chalabi began courting Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric, in order to win support in Iraq’s first national elections. For years before the war, Mr. Makiya had toiled with Mr. Chalabi to organize the Iraqi exiles who, despite disparate ideologies, stood united in their hatred of Mr. Hussein.

Then there is the small issue of American policy. “Everything they could do wrong, they did wrong,” Mr. Makiya said. “The first and the biggest American error was the idea of going for an occupation.”

At Brandeis, Mr. Makiya is exploring all these themes in a class this semester on — what else — post-invasion Iraq.

Because of the course, Mr. Makiya said he did not intend to work full time on the book until summer. For now, his days are consumed by his teaching duties and his obligations to the Iraq Memory Foundation, a nonprofit group he founded to record the brutalities of Mr. Hussein’s rule.

In the living room, eight hard drives contain scans of some of the 11 million pages of government documents collected by the foundation. Mr. Makiya stumbled across some of the documents himself, in abandoned offices in Baghdad after the invasion. They range from birth certificates of Baath Party members to school records to military paperwork.

The foundation has shared some documents with the Iraqi court set up by the Americans to try Mr. Hussein and his aides. Yet, Mr. Makiya refers to Dec. 30, 2006, the day Mr. Hussein was hanged, as “one of the worst days of my life.”

“It was a disaster, an unmitigated disaster,” Mr. Makiya said, his voice rising. “I was just so upset, even on the verge of tears. It was the antithesis of everything I had been working for and hoping for.”

The tribunal did little to expose the all-encompassing cruelty of the Baath Party, Mr. Makiya said. And in failing to control an execution chamber filled with seething Shiite officials and policemen, the Iraqi government “actually succeeded in making Saddam look good in the eyes of the Arab world.”

He added, “Just like everything about the war, it was an opportunity wasted.”

Mustafa Kadhimi, the Baghdad director of the Iraq Memory Foundation, said Mr. Makiya’s faith in his homeland was wavering.

“When Saddam fell, Kanan started to discover many things he didn’t have before in his mind,” Mr. Kadhimi said one afternoon in his office inside the Green Zone. “Kanan is really shocked about what’s going on the ground. He’s starting to lose his hope that we can build a new Iraq, a real Iraq.”

Last summer, Mr. Makiya, who studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, proposed a sweeping urban renewal project to Iraqi officials on a trip to Baghdad. The idea was to create, in the heart of the city, a pedestrians-only green space of several miles.

“You’re talking about a massive rethinking of the city,” Mr. Makiya said, waving his hand across a satellite map of Baghdad hanging on one wall. “Someone has to keep dreaming.”

LIKE so many things in Iraq now, it would remain exactly that — a dream. Mr. Makiya had traveled to Baghdad intending to make his pitch to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. But he met with lower-level officials instead. “There was terrible stuff going on in Baghdad,” he said, “and one did not feel right making a full presentation.”

The doorbell rang. Yoni Morse, Mr. Makiya’s former Brandeis student, had arrived, stomping through the snow with a bottle of wine from Israel. The two sat down at the dinner table with Mr. Makiya’s 12-year-old daughter, Sara, and his third wife, Wallada al-Sarraf. Spread before them were aromatic Iraqi dishes that Ms. Sarraf had cooked — chicken, rice, eggplant with yogurt.

Talk turned to the presidential race. Mr. Morse mentioned the pressure that Hillary Rodham Clinton was facing to apologize for her Senate vote authorizing President Bush to go to war.

Mr. Makiya stared into his glass of red wine. “That’s so Maoist,” he said. “People shouldn’t feel the need to apologize. What is there to apologize for?”

Critic of Hussein Grapples With Horrors of Post-Invasion Iraq, NYT, 24.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/24/world/middleeast/24makiya.html



 

NYT        March 18, 2007

Don’t ‘Pack Up,’ Bush Says After 4 Years of War        NYT        20.3.2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/washington/20prexy.html

Don’t ‘Pack Up,’ Bush Says After 4 Years of War

March 20, 2007
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG and DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, March 19 — President Bush marked the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq on Monday with a plea for patience and a stark warning against the temptation "to pack up and go home."

Mr. Bush's brief speech came in the midst of an increasingly tense showdown with the Democratic-controlled Congress over the constitutional balance of power during war. The House is scheduled to vote Thursday on a Democratic proposal to attach conditions to the president's $100 billion war financing package that would require American combat troops to be withdrawn from Iraq next year, a timetable Mr. Bush has said would undercut the troops and aid the insurgents.

Mr. Bush's commemoration of the anniversary, delivered beneath a portrait of Theodore Roosevelt as a Rough Rider, was notable for the sharp change in tone from his speeches in the heady, early days of the war — when it still appeared possible that a quick victory in Baghdad could be followed by a relatively swift withdrawal. In those first few months, Mr. Bush argued that he was on the way to spreading democracy throughout the Middle East through the euphoria that would surely follow the unseating of Saddam Hussein.

But on Monday Mr. Bush made no reference to democracy. In his only reference to the regional effects of the war, he cautioned, "If American forces were to step back from Baghdad before it is more secure, a contagion of violence could engulf the entire country; in time, this violence could engulf the region."

In an echo of the initial case for war, Mr. Bush warned that Iraq could become a staging ground for terrorists to plan devastating attacks on the order of 9/11.

Anniversaries of the invasion have become more politically fraught in the years since the invasion. Mr. Bush used his statement on Monday to argue that it was the responsibility of Congress to support the troops already there, and that he alone had the authority to decide the strategy and the timetable for adding or withdrawing troops.

"They have a responsibility to get this bill to my desk without strings and without delay," Mr. Bush said of the war financing package.

Also on Monday, the administration released a statement calling the House bill "unconscionable" and saying that the president would veto it if it was passed.

But where Democrats once feared they were vulnerable to charges that they were undercutting the troops by defying the commander in chief, they expressed no such concern on Monday. Reflecting Mr. Bush's low approval ratings and the widespread discontent with continuing American casualties, they used the anniversary on Monday to go on the attack.

"After four years of failure in Iraq, the president's only answer is to do more of the same," Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said in a statement. Referring to Republican efforts to defeat a resolution in the Senate calling for a 2008 troop withdrawal, Mr. Reid added, "With the blessing of Senate Republicans, he's committing more U.S. troops to an open-ended civil war."

Democrats are hardly unified on the war: some are concerned that Democrats could be blamed for whatever happens in Iraq if Congress specified dates for withdrawal.

In the mid-1990s, President Clinton regularly clashed with Republicans in Congress as they sought to limit United States involvement in United Nations peacekeeping missions, leading to charges from Mr. Clinton that Congress was infringing on presidential war powers.

The Iran-contra affair during President Reagan's term was itself a reaction to Congressional restrictions on the United States involvement in Nicaragua's civil war.

But the most direct parallel might be Vietnam, when Congress tried to limit presidential maneuvering room as protests over the war increased in volume — including the 1970 repeal of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that was an important part of Congressional assent for the United States involvement in the war.

It remains unclear whether the House Democrats will have the votes to approve the bill tying funding of the war to benchmarks and the goal of a 2008 withdrawal. "We're in the hunt," said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the Democratic conference chairman.

Mr. Bush's explicit reference to the temptation to leave Iraq was in sharp contrast to other moments when he has commemorated milestones in the war. His well-known statement aboard the aircraft carrier Lincoln in the late spring of 2003 — declaring an end to active combat — was a celebration of what initially looked like a quick military victory. But that was before the rise of the insurgency and counterattacks by Shiite militias.

In 2003, both White House and Pentagon officials said that any American presence in Iraq four years later would most likely be relatively small. On Monday, the White House was instead pressing anew its claims that withdrawal would result in defeat.

"It is a withdraw-the-troops bill, not a fund-the-troops bill," Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, said of the Congressional legislation during a news briefing that followed Mr. Bush's remarks. "It would also force failure of the mission in Iraq and forfeit the sacrifices made by our troops."

In keeping with the political jockeying of the day, Mr. Snow attacked the bill for also including several items of political pork, presumably inserted to secure votes of the faint of heart.

But Mr. Snow faced skepticism from reporters on Monday, fencing with them over a new poll of Iraqis showing that they hold a gloomy view of the future. At one point Mr. Snow snapped, "Zip it" during an argument with a CNN reporter over whether the administration could provide a "recipe for success" at a time when it was portraying the Democrats as putting forward a recipe for failure.

White House officials on Monday said the political pressure to leave Iraq would abate when conditions on the ground appeared more positive.

But officials acknowledge that they are in a race between better results in Iraq and a Democratic Congress beginning to insert itself in decisions about war and peace.

    Don’t ‘Pack Up,’ Bush Says After 4 Years of War, NYT, 20.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/washington/20prexy.html

Hussein’s Former Vice President Is Hanged

March 20, 2007
The New York Times
By ALISSA J. RUBIN

BAGHDAD, March 20 — The former vice president of Iraq, Taha Yassin Ramadan, was hanged shortly before dawn today, the prime minister’s office said.

He was the highest-ranking person from Saddam Hussein’s government to be executed, after the former president himself.

Mr. Ramadan was executed at 3:05 a.m. Baghdad time (10:05 p.m. Monday Eastern time) for his role in the killing of 148 Iraqi Shiites in 1982.

Witnesses to the execution included representatives of the Justice Ministry, the Interior Ministry and the prime minister’s office. Also in attendance was a judge from the Iraqi High Tribunal, the prosecutor in his case and Mr. Ramadan’s lawyer.

Mr. Ramadan was upset and fearful as he was led to the gallows, said Bassam Ridha, an adviser to the current Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

“No, he was not quiet,” said Mr. Ridha. “He was scared, terrified, very terrified. You know how a man feels when he is about to be executed. He was not quiet, and he collapsed.”

However, in contrast to other recent executions of members of Mr. Hussein’s government, the final moments in this case were orderly and followed the Iraqi High Tribunal’s procedures, the prime minister’s office said. Mr. Ramadan’s lawyer took Mr. Ramadan’s final instructions for a will, the office said.

“The execution went smoothly without any trouble,” Mr. Ridha said. “His lawyer was with him from the beginning and watched the entire execution.”

Mr. Ramadan’s body was flown by American helicopter to Camp Speicher, an American military base outside Tikrit, and then transported by police car in a 15-vehicle caravan to the village of Awja. He was buried there, according to Islamic law and wrapped in an Iraqi flag, near Saddam Hussein, as he had requested. Awja is near Tikrit, the city where Mr. Hussein was born, which remains a family stronghold. Recently the bodies of Mr. Hussein’s sons, Uday and Qusay, were unearthed and reburied there as well.

Hundreds of people attended Mr. Ramadan’s funeral in Awja. “We are honored to bury Ramadan among his comrades in the Baath party,” said Haj Zaki Ahmad. “We look at him as one of our sons and leaders.”

American forces stood about 500 yards from the burial site, and military helicopters flew overhead.

Mr. Ramadan was convicted in November and sentenced to life in prison for his role in killing 148 residents of Dujail, a predominantly Shiite village, in 1982. On Feb. 12, an appeals panel ruled that he should instead be hanged.

Mr. Ramadan is the fourth member of the former government to be executed for his role in the Dujail murders. Mr. Hussein was hanged on Dec. 30, and two close associates were hanged on Jan. 15: Mr. Hussein’s half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and the former Iraqi chief judge, Awad Hamad al-Bandar.

The execution of Mr. Hussein was a debacle for the Iraqi government. Video images, captured on a cellphone camera, were posted on the Internet showing people jeering and taunting the former president in the moments before the hanging. Sunni Arabs throughout the Middle East were furious at his treatment.

A second furor erupted when technical errors in the hanging of Mr. Tikriti resulted in his being decapitated by the noose.

Mr. Ramadan, who was Kurdish, was born in Mosul in 1938. He rose through the ranks of the Baath Party, coming to prominence in 1968 when the party ousted the Iraqi president of the time. Mr. Ramadan became a member of Mr. Hussein’s inner circle and held numerous positions in the former government, including deputy prime minister and vice president. He assumed the vice presidency in 1991 and held the post until the government was overthrown by the American-led coalition on April 9, 2003.

He was captured by Kurdish forces in Mosul on Aug. 19, 2003.

There were five explosions around Baghdad today, the most deadly being a car bomb near a police station that killed 5 people and injured 21. A car bomb near a mosque killed one and injured two, and was followed by another car bomb that apparently killed no one.

On Monday, as the fourth anniversary of the American-led invasion weighed on the minds of Iraqis, there was one bomb explosion in Baghdad, but violence persisted in the northern city of Kirkuk and in Tikrit, Kut and turbulent Diyala Province, north of Baghdad.

The war began in the early morning of March 20, 2003 in Baghdad, though because Iraq was six hours ahead of Eastern time then, it was still March 19 in Washington.

In Monday’s violence, a bomb exploded at a Shiite mosque near the Shorja market, one of Baghdad’s busiest. In a measure of how inured residents here have become to mayhem, within two hours the market area was again so crowded that it was difficult to walk around.

The explosion, which killed four and wounded 25, occurred during midday prayers and happened despite efforts to search everyone who entered the mosque. Yacoub Abu Alay, 26, one of the mosque guards who was searching people and confiscating any packages they carried, said the bomber must have had a collaborator inside who helped get the bomb in through the back door.

Others who were there blamed the American troops in the country, whom they view as occupiers.

“What is our connection to the occupation?” asked Ahmed Shamkhi, 24. “We are against the occupier. There is nothing we can do but pray and ask God to rescue us from the occupiers and devils.”

In Kirkuk, an oil center near the semiautonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan in the north, two car bombs exploded and a mortar round hit a residential area.

The Kirkuk police commander, Burhan Habib Tayeb, said the first bomb, which exploded near several government buildings and two mosques, took 13 lives, wounded 15 people and burned several cars.

The second bomb, which exploded near the home of the chief of a large Sunni tribe, did not harm anyone, and may have been detonated as a warning. Kurds and Arabs are in a pitched battle for control of Kirkuk.

Iraqi employees of The New York Times in Kirkuk, Tikrit, Diyala, Kut and Baghdad contributed reporting.

    Hussein’s Former Vice President Is Hanged, NYT, 20.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/world/middleeast/20iraq.html?hp

7 U.S. Troops Die in Iraq Violence

March 18, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:43 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BAGHDAD (AP) -- The U.S. military on Sunday announced the deaths of seven more troops in Iraq, including four killed by a roadside bomb while patrolling western Baghdad -- the latest American casualties in a monthlong security crackdown in the capital.

A U.S. official, meanwhile, blamed al-Qaida in Iraq for chlorine bomb attacks that struck villagers in Anbar province earlier this week but said tight Iraqi security measures prevented a higher number of casualties.

Three suicide bombers driving trucks rigged with tanks of toxic chlorine gas struck targets in the insurgent stronghold including the office of a Sunni tribal leader opposed to al-Qaida. The attacks killed at least two people and sickened 350 Iraqi civilians and six U.S. troops, the U.S. military said Saturday.

U.S. military spokesman Adm. Mark Fox said at least one of the attackers detonated his explosives after he was unable to get past an Iraqi police checkpoint in Amiriyah, just south of Fallujah, killing only himself. Fox conceded that many Iraqis were exposed to the chemical fumes but insisted that steps Iraqi security forces were increasingly effective

''Insurgent attempts to create high-profile carnage are being stopped at checkpoints across the country,'' he said at a news conference in Baghdad.

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh appealed to Iraqis to help stop the violence.

''Opportunity is still available to all honest Iraqis to rescue this country from the criminals,'' he said at a joint news conference with Fox. ''The chlorine attack was a kind of punishment against the people who stood against terrorist organizations.''

There is a growing power struggle between insurgents and the growing number of Sunnis who oppose them in Anbar, the center of the Sunni insurgency, which stretches from Baghdad to the borders with Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. The Anbar assaults came three days after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, traveled there, hoping to reach out to Sunni clan chiefs and to undermine tribal support for the insurgency.

After the explosion that killed four U.S. soldiers on Saturday, the unit came under fire and another soldier was wounded. During this month's crackdown in the capital, the battalion had found eight weapons caches and two roadside bombs and helped rescue a kidnap victim, the military said.

An explosion in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad killed another soldier Saturday and injured five. A sixth soldier died Saturday in a non-combat related incident, the military said. A U.S. Marine also was killed Saturday in fighting in Anbar, according to a separate statement.

Saturday's deaths brought to at least 3,217 members of the U.S. military who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

A Web video surfaced Sunday showing an alleged insurgent crawling under a U.S. military vehicle in Iraq and purportedly planting explosives in full daylight. Seconds later, the video cuts to an explosion ripping the vehicle apart.

The footage was stamped with the emblem of the Islamic State of Iraq, an al-Qaida-linked militant group that disavows Iraq's elected government and seeks to establish Muslim law.

The video was posted on an Islamic Web site that frequently airs insurgent messages, but its contents and authenticity could not be independently verified.

The footage shows a man in beige pants and a dark sweatshirt, crawling through mud puddles underneath a Bradley fighting vehicle and hauling an object about two feet long. Then the video switches to a wider view of the vehicle exploding in a ball of flames and smoke.

A caption says the incident happened in western Anbar province, an insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad.

In violence Sunday, gunmen opened fire on a minibus carrying civilians northeast of Baghdad, killing seven men and wounding four others, police said. The attack occurred in Hibhib, just east of Baqouba, in the area where al-Qaida in Iraqi leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. airstrike on June 7.

A roadside bomb also hit an Iraqi police convoy in eastern Baghdad, killing two policemen and wounding five, authorities said. Later, police said a mortar round landed near a house in central Baghdad, killing a civilian and wounding another.

In Shorja market, Baghdad's most popular central shopping district, a man tossed a grenade into a group of workers, police said. One worker was killed and another was wounded. The suspect escaped through an alley, they said.

The Shorja market, which has been attacked several times, was turned into a pedestrian zone after a U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown began in Baghdad on Feb. 14.

An abandoned hotel exploded Sunday in an industrial area of Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad. Police said insurgents had planted bombs in the three-story building and then detonated it at dawn. Half of the building was destroyed.

Iraqi troops had taken over part of the building's roof as a base, police said. There were no reports of casualties.

In Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad, fierce fighting erupted between U.S. troops and elements of the Shiite Mahdi Army, police said. There were no reports of casualties, and the U.S. military had no immediate comment.

Eleven bodies were found -- six in Baqouba, in Diwaniyah and four in Mosul -- many with signs of torture and all apparently victims of sectarian killings.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military said American troops captured 12 suspected militants Sunday in raids across Iraq, all accused of plotting attacks on U.S. troops.

Fox, the U.S. military spokesman, also said Iraqi forces acting on a tip found a huge weapons cache Friday on the outskirts of the northern city of Mosul, including 1,800 pounds of bulk explosives.

He said the military was seeing ''glimmers of good signs'' in the security sweep that began in mid-February to quell sectarian violence in Baghdad.

    7 U.S. Troops Die in Iraq Violence, NYT, 18.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Thousands of Christians protest Iraq war

17.3.2007
AP
USA Today

WASHINGTON (AP) — Thousands of Christians prayed for peace at an anti-war service Friday night at the Washington National Cathedral, kicking off a weekend of protests around the country to mark the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq.

Afterward, participants marched with battery-operated faux candles through snow and wind toward the White House, where police began arresting protesters shortly before midnight. Protest guidelines require demonstrators to continue moving while on the White House sidewalk.

"We gave them three warnings, and they broke the guidelines," said Lt. Scott Fear. "There's an area on the White House sidewalk where you have to keep moving."

About 100 people crossed the street from Lafayette Park — where thousands of protesters were gathered — to demonstrate on the White House sidewalk late Friday. Police began cuffing them and putting them on busses to be taken for processing.

Police said they would not know the total number of protesters arrested until later Saturday.

The windows of the executive mansion were dark, as the president was away for the weekend at Camp David in Maryland.

John Pattison, 29, said he and his wife flew in from Portland, Ore., to attend his first anti-war rally. He said his opposition to the war had developed over time.

"Quite literally on the night that shock and awe commenced, my friend and I toasted the military might of the United States," Pattison said. "We were quite proud and thought we were doing the right thing."

He said the way the war had progressed and U.S. foreign policy since then had forced him to question his beliefs.

"A lot of the rhetoric that we hear coming from Christians has been dominated by the religious right and has been strong advocacy for the war," Pattison said. "That's just not the way I read my Gospel."

The ecumenical coalition that organized the event, Christian Peace Witness for Iraq, distributed 3,200 tickets for the service in the cathedral, with two smaller churches hosting overflow crowds. The cathedral appeared to be packed, although sleet and snow prevented some from attending.

"This war, from a Christian point of view, is morally wrong — and was from the beginning," the Rev. Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners/Call to Renewal, one of the event's sponsors, said toward the end of the service to cheers and applause. "This war is ... an offense against God."

In his speech, the Rev. Raphael G. Warnock, senior pastor at Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church, lashed out at Congress for being "too morally inept to intervene" to stop the war, but even more harshly against President Bush.

"Mr. Bush, my Christian brother, we do need a surge in troops. We need a surge in the non-violent army of the Lord," he said. "We need a surge in conscience and a surge in activism and a surge in truth-telling."

Celeste Zappala of Philadelphia recounted how she learned of the death of her son, Sgt. Sherwood Baker, who served in the National Guard. When a uniformed man came to her door asking if she was Baker's mother, she said yes.

"'Yes,' and then I fell to the ground and somewhere outside of myself I heard someone screaming and screaming," she said.

The Friday night events mark the beginning of what is planned as a weekend of protests ahead of Tuesday's anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion, which began on March 20, 2003.

On Saturday morning, a coalition of protest groups has a permit for up to 30,000 people to march from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial across the Potomac River to the Pentagon. Smaller demonstrations are planned in cities across the country.

    Thousands of Christians protest Iraq war, UT, 17.3.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-03-17-war-protest_N.htm

War and Liquor a Perilous Mix for U.S. Troops

March 13, 2007
The New York Times
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER

In May 2004, Specialist Justin J. Lillis got drunk on what he called “hajji juice,” a clear Iraqi moonshine smuggled onto an Army base in Balad, Iraq, by civilian contractors, and began taking potshots with his M-16 service rifle.

“He shot up some contractor’s rental car,” said Phil Cave, a lawyer for Specialist Lillis, 24. “He hopped in a Humvee, drove around and shot up some more things. He shot into a housing area” and at soldiers guarding the base entrance.

Six months later, at an Army base near Baghdad, after a night of drinking an illegal stash of whiskey and gin, Specialist Chris Rolan of the Third Brigade, Third Infantry Division, pulled his 9mm service pistol on another soldier and shot him dead.

And in March 2006, in perhaps the most gruesome crime committed by American troops in Iraq, a group of 101st Airborne Division soldiers stationed in Mahmudiya raped a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and killed her and her family after drinking several cans of locally made whiskey supplied by Iraqi Army soldiers, military prosecutors said.

Alcohol, strictly forbidden by the American military in Iraq and Afghanistan, is involved in a growing number of crimes committed by troops deployed to those countries. Alcohol- and drug-related charges were involved in more than a third of all Army criminal prosecutions of soldiers in the two war zones — 240 of the 665 cases resulting in convictions, according to records obtained by The New York Times through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Seventy-three of those 240 cases involve some of the most serious crimes committed, including murder, rape, armed robbery and assault. Sex crimes accounted for 12 of the convictions.

The 240 cases involved a roughly equal number of drug and alcohol offenses, although alcohol-related crimes have increased each year since 2004.

Despite the military’s ban on all alcoholic beverages — and strict Islamic prohibitions against drinking and drug use — liquor is cheap and ever easier to find for soldiers looking to self-medicate the effects of combat stress, depression or the frustrations of extended deployments, said military defense lawyers, commanders and doctors who treat soldiers’ emotional problems.

“It’s clear that we’ve got a lot of significant alcohol problems that are pervasive across the military,” said Dr. Thomas R. Kosten, a psychiatrist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Houston. He traces their drinking and drug use to the stress of working in a war zone. “The treatment that they take for it is the same treatment that they took after Vietnam,” Dr. Kosten said. “They turn to alcohol and drugs.”

The use of alcohol and drugs in war zones appears to reflect a broader trend toward heavier and more frequent drinking among all military personnel, but especially in the Army and Marine Corps, the two services doing most of the fighting, Pentagon officials and military health experts said.

A Pentagon health study released in January, for instance, found that the rate of binge drinking in the Army shot up by 30 percent from 2002 to 2005, and “may signal an increasing pattern of heavy alcohol use in the Army.”

While average rates of alcohol consumption in the Navy and Air Force have steadily declined since 1980, the year the military’s health survey began, they have significantly increased in the Army and Marine Corps and exceed civilian rates, the Pentagon study showed. For the first time since 1985, more than a quarter of all Army members surveyed said they regularly drink heavily, defined as having five or more drinks at one sitting.

The rate of illicit drug use also increased among military members in 2005, to an estimated 5 percent, nearly double the rate measured in 1998, a trend that the study called “cause for concern.”

The study also found other health problems in the military, from the growing popularity of chewing tobacco to a 20 percent increase during the past decade in service members who are considered overweight.

Lynn Pahland, a director in the Pentagon’s Health Affairs office, said the rising rates of heavy drinking and illegal drug use among active-duty military personnel are particularly troubling inside the Defense Department. “It is very serious,” Ms. Pahland said in an interview. “It is a huge concern.”

In the military, seeking help for psychological problems, including alcohol and drug abuse, is considered a taboo, especially among officers competing for promotions. Several officers interviewed for this article said the Pentagon was not doing enough to reduce that stigma.

Though the Pentagon has spent millions of dollars on several initiatives to reverse the trend, including a new Web site that deglamorizes drinking, financing to combat alcohol abuse has fallen over time, a Pentagon spokesman said. Spending on programs to reduce alcohol abuse, smoking and obesity dropped to $7.74 million in the current fiscal year from $12.6 million in fiscal year 2005 — a 39 percent decline.

Some military doctors and other mental health experts said the Army’s greater use of so-called moral waivers, which allow recruits with criminal records to enlist, may also be a factor in the increased drug and alcohol use.

Getting liquor or drugs in Iraq is not difficult. One of the most common ways to smuggle in brand name gin or clear rum is in bottles of mouthwash sent from friends back home, soldiers said. Blue or yellow food coloring makes the liquid look medicinal. Some Army medics have been known to fill intravenous fluid bags with vodka, Army officers said.

In Iraq, liquor of a distinctly more dubious quality can be purchased from Iraqi Army soldiers or civilian contractors working on American bases, and Iraqi soldiers have sold locally produced prescription drugs to American troops for a tidy profit.

Commanders have not always regarded drinking as a problem. The Army “was a culture in the 1970s that encouraged drinking,” said a retired Army colonel. “You’d go out drinking together and you’d find your buddy hugging the toilet at the officer’s club and think nothing of it.”

Command tolerance for such behavior began changing in the 1980s, and by the 1990s, “if you had more than a couple drinks at the club, people started looking at you strange,” the retired colonel said.

But at a time when the military is fighting two major ground wars, the often serious consequences of heavy drinking has emerged with increasing clarity as more troops return from Iraq and Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and other mental health problems, military officials and mental health experts said.

“I think the real story here is in the suicide and stress, and the drinking is just a symptom of it,” said Charles P. O’Brien, a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine who served as a Navy doctor during the Vietnam War. There is a high incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder among Iraq veterans, he said, adding that “there’s been a lot of suicide in the active-duty servicemen.”

More than 90 percent of sex crimes prosecuted by the military involve alcohol abuse, defense lawyers and military doctors said. Roughly half of the marines charged with crimes in Iraq exhibit clear signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, a Marine defense lawyer said.

“They turn to alcohol and drugs for an escape,” he said.

The health study released in January was produced for the Pentagon by RTI International, a nonprofit research organization. Robert M. Bray, the group’s project director, first agreed to be interviewed for this article but later declined after a Defense Department spokesman said he was not available to comment.

In the past two years, though, top military officials have begun talking publicly about the danger that excessive drinking among the troops.

In 2005, the Army’s deputy chief of staff at the time, Lt. Gen. Franklin L. Hagenbeck, wrote in an editorial in a magazine for Army leaders that the rising rate of heavy drinking and drug use “seriously impacts mission readiness.”

General Hagenbeck, now the superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point, said more than half of soldiers discharged for misconduct had also been disciplined for drug or alcohol use within the previous year.

“When one soldier has an alcohol or other drug incident, it impacts the whole unit,” General Hagenbeck wrote.

That kind of ripple effect has played out repeatedly in Iraq, military defense lawyers said, as soldiers who drink or use drugs commit crimes and hinder their unit’s combat and support missions.

Specialist Lillis, for example, was given a bad conduct discharge and sentenced to 10 years in prison as punishment for his drunken shooting spree; he is in a military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kan. A military judge sentenced Specialist Rolan, who testified that he drank to relieve depression in Iraq, to 33 years in prison for killing a fellow soldier.

Two of the soldiers charged in the Mahmudiya case pleaded guilty to murder, and a former Army private described as the ringleader, Steven D. Green, is awaiting trial for rape and murder in a federal district court.

Last year, the Pentagon spent $2 million to initiate its “That Guy” campaign, (www.thatguy.com), which recommends that service members “reject binge drinking because it detracts from the things they care about: family, friends, dating, sex, money and reputation.”

The Pentagon is poised to launch another Web-based antidrinking campaign this summer.

Capt. Robert DeMartino, a doctor with the United States Health Service who is coordinating the project, said the hope is that service members returning from Afghanistan and Iraq will use the site to find help coping with post-deployment problems, including alcohol dependency.

Andrew Lehren contributed reporting.

    War and Liquor a Perilous Mix for U.S. Troops, UT, 13.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/13/world/middleeast/13alcohol.html?hp

Bush approves 4,400 more troops for Iraq

Sun Mar 11, 2007 6:21AM EDT
Reuters
By Steve Holland

MONTEVIDEO (Reuters) - President George W. Bush has approved adding 4,400 more U.S. troops to a force buildup already ordered to try to bring security to Iraq, the White House said on Saturday.

Bush formally requested about $3.2 billion to pay for the additional deployment, even as he and Democratic lawmakers battle over his Iraq strategy.

In January, Bush said he would deploy 21,500 more U.S. troops to Iraq to try to stabilize Baghdad and restive Anbar province.

The new U.S. military commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, has since said more troops will be needed in support of that troop buildup.

Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said the extra troops would include up to 2,400 military police to handle an anticipated increase in Iraqi detainees.

In addition, about 2,000 more combat support troops will be needed to bolster the 21,500. Also, 129 temporary Defense Department positions are needed to help in provincial Iraqi reconstruction.

Bush sent House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, a letter revising a $100 billion request for funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to take account of the $3 billion needed for the extra troops.

"This revised request would better align resources based on the assessment of military commanders to achieve the goal of establishing Iraq and Afghanistan as democratic and secure nations that are free of terrorism," Bush said in his letter.

He signed it on Friday night and released it on Saturday while on a Latin America tour.

Pelosi and other Democratic leaders of Congress have already raised questions about the $100 billion request and the 21,500-troop buildup.

Pelosi, in a statement, complained about Bush's vow to veto a proposal by some Democrats to withdraw all American combat troops from Iraq by mid-2008.

"With his veto threat, the president offers only an open-ended commitment to a war without end that dangerously ignores the repeated warnings of military leaders ... that the conflict cannot be resolved militarily," she said.

Johndroe said the overall $100 billion budget request has not changed.

He said about $3 billion in lower-priority items will be subtracted from the original proposal made in February to offset the new request.

U.S. military commanders in Iraq have said in recent days that the number of additional U.S. troops needed to carry out Bush's security plan for Iraq could approach 30,000, taking into account units needed to support the 21,500 extra combat troops. The United States now has some 140,000 troops in the country.

"This formalizes the request that people have been talking about over the last few days," Johndroe said.

    Bush approves 4,400 more troops for Iraq, R, 11.3.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN1028359320070311

Editorial

Another Grim Week in Iraq

March 10, 2007
The New York Times

On Sunday in Basra, British troops stormed an Iraqi intelligence office and found about 30 prisoners, some of them tortured. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki was outraged — not at the torture, but at the raid that halted it. Soon British troops will be leaving Basra, leaving Mr. Maliki and his security forces free to do as they please.

On Monday in Baghdad, a suicide bomber attacked a row of bookstores, killing 20 people. The White House insists that Baghdad is growing more secure, as the extra infusion of American troops ordered by President Bush begins to take up positions in threatened neighborhoods. And on it went. On Tuesday, sectarian attacks killed at least 118 Shiite pilgrims. Then on Thursday, The Times reported that the day-to-day commander of American forces in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, was recommending that those extra 21,500 combat troops — plus the 7,000 support troops Mr. Bush somehow forgot to mention — stay on into next year. On the same day, General Odierno’s boss, Gen. David Petraeus, said that even more American troops could be needed in the near future.

Anyone who wanted to believe that all Mr. Bush was seeking was a short-term security push — as part of a larger strategy to extricate American troops from this unwinnable war — now needs to face up to a far less palatable reality. What is under way is a significant and long-term escalation. The Army cannot sustain these levels for more than another few months. And as long as Iraq’s leaders refuse to make significant political changes, the civil war will continue to spin out of control.

With this backdrop, it is somewhat reassuring to see Congressional Democrats getting a little smarter in their gathering efforts to force a policy change. They are still talking about a phased withdrawal and an arbitrary exit date. That’s an approach we’ve never favored without a parallel political strategy to try to contain the chaos and regional strife that are likely to follow. What they can usefully do, and are attempting, is to use the power of the purse constructively to force the White House to give American troops the kind of support they need and to demand some sanity from Iraq’s leaders.

Rather than trying to challenge the administration’s request for $100 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan, House Democrats now want to add funds to speed the production and delivery of badly needed protective armor, provide better medical care for wounded troops and veterans, and shore up the Army’s eroding combat readiness.

A supplemental financing bill amended this way would be hard for senators to vote against or for Mr. Bush to veto. House Democrats also want to make it a vehicle for prodding the White House into imposing benchmarks and timetables on an Iraqi government that still refuses to purge its security forces of sectarian thugs and reach out to the country’s Sunni Arab minority. We hope they succeed.

In what may have been this week’s only good news out of Iraq, a growing number of parliamentarians have begun challenging Prime Minister Maliki’s destructive policies. There is talk about forming a political bloc that would cross rather than reinforce the sectarian divide. If the White House won’t demand more from Mr. Maliki, Congressionally enacted benchmarks could help empower Iraq’s more moderate politicians. Without a more enlightened Iraqi government — and a tougher policy from Washington — next week, and the weeks and months to come, will be no better than the last.

    Another Grim Week in Iraq, NYT, 10.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/10/opinion/10sat1.html

U.S. Soldiers Accused of Shooting Civilians in Sadr City

March 10, 2007
The New York Times
By KIRK SEMPLE

BAGHDAD, March 9 — American soldiers were accused Friday of opening fire on a car carrying a family in the Baghdad district of Sadr City, killing a man and his two young daughters and wounding his son.

The allegations were made by the man’s wife, who was in the car, and members of the Iraqi police, who were at the scene. The American military command said in a statement on Friday that it was investigating an episode in Sadr City involving “an escalation of force,” but it could not confirm any details of the account given by the man’s wife.

The woman, Ikhlas Thulsiqar, said her family had turned from an alleyway onto a main street guarded by American soldiers. Seconds later, she said, a fusillade of bullets ripped into the car.

“They killed the father of my children! The Americans killed my daughters!” she sobbed, sitting crumpled on the floor of Imam Ali Hospital in Sadr City where rescuers had taken the victims, including her daughters, 9 and 11, and her son, 7.

“That is a serious allegation, and we’ll take a look and figure out what happened,” Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a military spokesman in Baghdad, said late Friday.

The deadly shooting appeared to be the first in the working-class district involving either the Iraqi or American military since a joint force of more than 1,100 American and Iraqi troops began a house-to-house search for weapons and militants there last Sunday.

The episode had the potential to inflame anti-American sentiment in the neighborhood and reawaken the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia that has largely controlled the district but has agreed to stand down to allow the sweep to take place.

The military operation in Sadr City, part of an effort to pacify the capital by flooding the streets with security forces, has served as a test of a new, fragile relationship between the authorities and Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric who controls the Mahdi Army and commands a vast following among poor Shiites.

The military incursion followed protracted negotiations between representatives of Mr. Sadr, neighborhood leaders and government officials. Mr. Sadr vowed not to impede the crackdown in Sadr City or elsewhere, and privately ordered his fighters not to resist the military sweeps regardless of the level of provocation.

But Mr. Sadr, a fierce nationalist who has long demanded a rapid American withdrawal from Iraq, has also complained publicly about the American involvement in the Sadr City operation.

Local leaders, in turn, have also warned that a heavy-handed or prolonged American engagement in Sadr City might incite the residents and their militia to retaliate. But in the past few days, residents say, American forces have moved with great care through the neighborhood and have mostly remained on the street while their Iraqi counterparts have conducted the house-to-house searches.

Also Friday, the purported leader of an insurgent umbrella group, the Islamic State of Iraq, was captured in a raid on the western outskirts of Baghdad, according to Iraqi state television and The Associated Press, which quoted a top Iraqi military spokesman.

The spokesman, Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, told The A.P. that the man, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, was caught in a raid in the Abu Ghraib district and was identified by another detainee. American officials had no confirmation of the capture.

Last Sunday, Iraqi officials announced that they may have captured Mr. Baghdadi in Diyala Province, north of Baghdad, but the suspect turned out to be someone else. The Islamic State of Iraq has claimed responsibility for numerous major attacks in Iraq, including the kidnapping last week of 18 people, most of them police officers, who were subsequently killed.

In Diyala, American forces on Friday shot and killed three Iraqi Army soldiers in a military pickup truck after they failed to obey an American order to stop, Iraqi military officials said.

The spokesman for the Defense Ministry, Muhammad al-Askary, said the military was investigating the episode, which took place north of Baquba, though it appeared to be “a mistake.” He said the soldiers were wearing uniforms and were in a vehicle with military markings.

According to Colonel Garver, the American military was also investigating the matter. “We understand there were three Iraqi Army soldiers killed in this engagement, and it is too early to tell the details surrounding the event,” he said.

American and Iraqi forces are fighting a growing Sunni insurgent threat in Diyala, which has become one of the bloodiest sectarian battlegrounds in Iraq. On Friday, the American commander for northern Iraq, Maj. Gen. Benjamin R. Mixon, said he had asked for more troops in the province.

General Mixon told reporters at the Pentagon in a videolink from Iraq that he had already shifted troops to Diyala from elsewhere in northern Iraq and requested reinforcements from the central command in Baghdad.

He did not reveal how many additional troops he had requested, but he told reporters to “keep an eye on what goes on in Diyala over the next couple of weeks.” On Thursday, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, said Diyala would “very likely” get more troops.

In Hibhib, a town in Diyala with an entrenched insurgency, gunmen from the Islamic State of Iraq laid siege to a police station on Friday, killing one policeman and forcing others to flee. They then looted it of weapons and equipment, burned several police cars and blew up the building before escaping, police officials said.

Four people in Baghdad, each in a different neighborhood, were killed by sniper fire on Friday, according to an official at the Interior Ministry. The official also said at least 10 bodies were found dumped around the capital.

The American military reported that a marine was killed Friday during a combat operation in Anbar Province.

On Friday, the satellite channel Al Jazeera reported that Raouf Abdel-Rahman, the Iraqi judge who sentenced Saddam Hussein to death, had asked for asylum in Britain. The British Home Office would not confirm the report, saying it does not discuss individual cases.

Ahmad Fadam contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Baghdad and Baquba.

    U.S. Soldiers Accused of Shooting Civilians in Sadr City, NYT, 10.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/10/world/middleeast/10iraq.html

U.S. Commander Calls for Talks With Militants

March 8, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:47 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Military force alone is not sufficient to end the violence in Iraq and political talks must eventually include some militant groups now opposing the U.S.-backed government, the new commander of U.S. forces in Iraq said Thursday. ''This is critical,'' Gen. David Petraeus said in his first news conference since taking over command last month. He noted that such political negotiations ''will determine in the long run the success of this effort.''

American troops have stepped up efforts to clear and secure major highways around the capital as part of the Baghdad security crackdown, which began last month. The Pentagon has pledged 17,500 combat troops for the capital.

Petraeus said ''it was very likely'' that additional U.S. forces will be sent to areas outside the capital where militant groups are regrouping, including the Diyala province northeast of Baghdad.

The region has become an increasingly important staging ground for groups including al-Qaida in Iraq. Meanwhile, many Sunni extremists apparently have shifted to Diyala to escape the Baghdad clampdown.

Petraeus declined to predict the size of the expected Diyala reinforcements.

He said that ''any student of history recognizes there is no military solution to a problem like that in Iraq, to the insurgency in Iraq.''

''Military action is necessary to help improve security ... but it is not sufficient,'' Petraeus said. ''A political resolution of various differences ... of various senses that people do not have a stake in the successes of Iraq and so forth -- that is crucial. That is what will determine, in the long run, the success of this effort.

U.S. officials, including Petraeus' predecessor Gen. George W. Casey Jr., have long expressed the opinion that no military solution to the Iraq crisis was possible without a political agreement among all the ethnic and religious factions -- including some Sunni insurgents.

However, previous overtures to the insurgents all faltered, apparently because of political opposition within Baghdad or Washington to some of the conditions.

Last year, 11 Sunni insurgent groups working through mediators offered to immediately stop attacks on American-led forces in Iraq if the Shiite-led government and Washington set a two-year timetable for withdrawing all coalition forces from the country, according to insurgent and government officials.

The groups did not include several major groups, including the Islamic Army in Iraq, Muhammad's Army and the Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella for eight militant groups including al-Qaida in Iraq.

The Arabic newspaper Asharq al-Awsat reported last year that U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad met seven times with insurgent representatives in late 2005 and early 2006. But the extremists broke off the contacts in April 2006 after the U.S. side failed to respond to a series of demands.

The U.S. never confirmed details of the account but Khalilzad later said he believed his contacts with Sunni groups had contributed to a temporary decline in U.S. battle deaths, which fell in March 2006 to 31 -- their lowest level in two years.

One of Iraq's most expansive militias -- the Mahdi Army of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr -- appears to have set aside its weapons under intense government pressure to lend support to the Baghdad security plan.

Mahdi militiamen also have allowed Iraqi authorities to try to protect at least 1 million pilgrims heading to Karbala, about 50 miles south of Baghdad.

Many are making the traditional trek on foot for rituals beginning Friday to mark the end of a 40-day mourning period for Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. Hussein's death in a 7th century battle near Karbala cemented the schism between Sunnis and Shiites.

The processions have proved to be vulnerable targets, with attacks killing more than 170 people this week.

Al-Sadr issued a statement urging pilgrims to join in chants denouncing the attackers. ''I ask almighty God to protect you from the sectarian sedition,'' said the message.

Petraeus denounced the ''thugs with no soul'' who have targeted Shiite pilgrims. ''We share the horror'' of witnessing the suicide bombings and shootings, he said.

He said U.S. forces are ready to help provide additional security for the pilgrims if asked by Iraqi authorities.

''It is an enormous task to protect all of them and there is a point at which if someone is willing to blow up himself ... the problem becomes very, very difficult indeed,'' he said.

Security forces in Karbala have taken unprecedented measures, including checkpoints for top-to-bottom searches and a six-ring cordon around the two main Shiite shrines. At least 10,000 policemen have been placed on round-the-clock patrols.

''All the city's entrances have been secured, and I call upon the pilgrims to follow the instructions of the security forces and let them do the necessary searches,'' Iraq's minister of state for national security, Sherwan al-Waili, said in Karbala.

In Baghdad, a mortar attack shattered some windows at the Iraqi Airways office on the airport compound, but the shells landed hundreds of yards from the passenger terminal and caused no serious flight disruptions.

Such attacks, however, send chills through Iraqi officials preparing to host an international conference Saturday on ways to help rebuild and stabilize the country.

The session will be a rare instance of Iranian and the U.S. officials at the same table. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met her Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki, in September. Washington cut diplomatic ties with Tehran after the takeover of the U.S. Embassy by radicals in the wake the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The United States has accused Iran of backing anti-American Shiite militants in Iraq, has detained Iranian officials there and has angered Tehran by bolstering its military presence in the Persian Gulf. Washington is also pushing for new sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Wednesday his country hoped ''the conference will bring forward the end of the presence of foreign forces'' in Iraq -- reiterating Tehran's stance that U.S. troops should withdraw.

    U.S. Commander Calls for Talks With Militants, NYT, 8.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Buildup in Iraq Needed Into ’08, U.S. General Says

March 8, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID S. CLOUD and MICHAEL R. GORDON

WASHINGTON, March 7 — The day-to-day commander of American forces in Iraq has recommended that the heightened American troop levels there be maintained through February 2008, military officials said Wednesday.

The White House has never said exactly how long it intends the troop buildup to last, but military officials say the increased American force level will begin declining in August unless additional units are sent or more units are held over.

The confidential assessment by the commander, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, reflects the military’s new counterinsurgency doctrine, which puts a premium on sustained efforts to try to win over a wary population. It also stems from the complex logistics of deploying the five additional combat brigades that are being sent to Iraq as part of what the White House calls a “surge” of forces.

In fact, for now, it is really more of a trickle, since only two of the five brigades are in Iraq. The American military is stretched so thin that the last of the brigades is not expected to begin operations until June.

In both the House and the Senate, most Democrats and many Republicans have made clear their opposition even to the current troop increase, and a decision by the White House to extend its duration would probably intensify the political debate over the war.

Democratic lawmakers most strenuously opposed to the war are likely to point to the increased stress on the armed forces in trying to persuade party leaders to back a plan that would cut off financing for any troop increase, a course that the Democratic leadership has so far declined to embrace. In its effort to blunt the Congressional opposition to the new strategy, the Bush administration has cited what it calls early signs of progress, including a reduction in sectarian killings in Baghdad. But military officials say it is far too soon to draw any firm conclusions.

President Bush has often said that he will listen closely to advice from commanders in the field in making decisions about strategy and manpower in Iraq, but Pentagon officials emphasized Wednesday that no decision to extend the “surge” had been made. Military officials said General Odierno had provided his assessment to his superior, Gen. David H. Petraeus, who took over as the top American commander in Iraq this year. General Petraeus has yet to make a formal recommendation to the Pentagon.

But the question of how long the buildup should last has already become the focus of major concern for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

“We’re looking, as we should, at each of the three possibilities: hold what you have, come down, or plus up if you need to,” Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon. General Pace said that “early data points” showed that sectarian attacks were slightly down since the Baghdad operation began. But he said that the increase in car bombs suggested that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia was trying to incite further hostilities with this method.

When the Bush administration announced its troop buildup in January, it said it was sending 21,500 troops to Baghdad and Anbar Province. Since then, the Pentagon has said that as many as 7,000 additional support troops would also be deployed, including some 2,200 additional military police that General Petraeus had asked for to handle an anticipated increase in detainees. These increases would bring the total number of American troops in Iraq to around 160,000.

Any extension of the troop buildup would add to the strain on Army and Marine forces that have already endured years of continuous deployments. According to the current schedule, a Minnesota National Guard brigade whose Iraq deployment was extended as part of the troop reinforcement is to leave in August. A senior Pentagon official said that the number of forces would be down to “presurge” levels in December unless additional units were sent or kept longer.

Decisions need to be made soon, Army officials say, to identify potential replacement units or extensions. To meet troop requirements, the Army would need to look seriously at mobilizing additional National Guard units later this year.

Another point of stress is the amount of time active duty units have spent in the United States between deployments. It takes around a year at home to prepare a combat brigade for Iraq. The Army generally has been able to avoid sending units back to Iraq or Afghanistan without at least a year at home.

But if Mr. Bush decides to extend the buildup, the first of the Army brigades to return to Iraq with less than a year at home are likely to do so later this year.

“As you move to less than a year, you’re beginning to erode the ability of the service chiefs to produce a ready force,” said a senior Pentagon official, who emphasized that the United States needed to be prepared to deal with a range of threats.

Despite the strains, some military officials in Iraq say it is unrealistic to expect a troop buildup of several months to create enough of a breathing space for Iraqis to achieve political reconciliation. “There is Washington time and Baghdad time,” said a senior Defense official in Iraq. “Some in Washington want it now, and there is reality on the ground in Baghdad. They don’t always match.”

One concern is that Shiite militants and some insurgents will try to outlast the American troops if the buildup is too short. A longer buildup would give the American and Iraqi forces more time to disperse economic assistance, provide better protection to Iraqi neighborhoods and try to win over the Iraqi public.

“You have to protect the people long enough to get economic assistance to them and change their attitude and change their behavior,” said Jack Keane, the retired vice chief of staff of the Army, who has argued that the troop buildup should last 12 to 18 months. “You cannot do that in weeks. It takes months to do that. The problem with the short-term surge is that the enemy can wait you out.”

The recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq also suggested that the Iraqi Security Forces would not be able to assume the major responsibility for securing Baghdad in the near future. An unclassified version of the report noted that “the Iraqi Security Forces, particularly the Iraqi police, will be hard pressed in the next 12 to 18 months to execute significantly increased security responsibilities, and particularly to operate independently against Shia militias with success.”

Given the time needed to adjust training schedules and prepare units, decisions may need to be made before there is clear evidence about whether the new strategy is working. “If he defers some decisions he potentially will foreclose deployment options downstream because people won’t begin to move,” said a Pentagon official, referring to Secretary Gates. “By deferring a decision he will in effect be making a decision.”

The additional American troops in the troop reinforcement plan are intended to support a new strategy in which American forces are taking up positions in Baghdad neighborhoods and not limiting themselves to conducting patrols from large bases. Iraqi security forces in Baghdad are also being expanded, including by the addition of Iraqi Army units largely made up of Kurds.

The strategy calls for the establishment of 10 districts in Baghdad. At least one American battalion is to be paired with Iraqi units in each district. The hope is that this plan will afford more protection to the Iraqi public and, along with political and economic moves by the government, head off further bloodletting.

    Buildup in Iraq Needed Into ’08, U.S. General Says, NYT, 8.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/08/washington/08military.html

Gates: 2,200 more troops going to Iraq

7.3.2007
AP
USA Today

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon has approved a request by the new U.S. commander in Iraq for an extra 2,200 military police to help deal with an anticipated increase in detainees during the Baghdad security crackdown, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday.

Gates also cited early indications that the Iraqi government is meeting the commitments it made to bolster security, although he cautioned that it was too early to reach any firm conclusions about the outcome.

"We're right at the very beginning," he told a Pentagon news conference. "But I would say that based in terms of whether the Iraqis are meeting the commitments that they've made to us in the security arena, I think that our view would be so far, so good." He was referring to the movement of additional Iraqi troops into the capital.

Gates said that the request for extra MPs is in addition to the 21,500 combat troops that President Bush is sending for the Baghdad security plan, along with 2,400 support troops.

Gordon England, the deputy defense secretary, told Congress this week that the number of required support troops could reach 7,000.

"That's a new requirement by a new commander," Gates said of the request for more MPs by Gen. David Petraeus, who assumed command in Baghdad last month. He added that there were other troop requests still being considered in the Pentagon; he gave no specifics.

The day-to-day commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, has recommended that the higher troop level be maintained until February 2008, The New York Times reported on its website Wednesday night. Odierno said the extra troops are needed to support a sustained effort to win over the Iraqi populace.

Odierno made the recommendation to his superior, Gen. David Petraeus, but Petraeus has not yet acted on it, the report said, citing unidentified military officials.

Gates said it was not a surprise that Sunni insurgents have launched increased attacks in recent days.

"I think that we expected that there would be in the short term an increase in violence as the surge began to make itself felt," Gates said, adding that there were other "very preliminary positive signs" that the Baghdad security plan is working.

Joining Gates at the news conference, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that in recent days the number of sectarian murders was down slightly and the number of car bombings was up.

"So I think you see potentially the Iraqi people wanting to take advantage of this opportunity and the enemy wanting to keep it going," Pace said.

    Gates: 2,200 more troops going to Iraq, UT, 7.3.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-03-07-iraq-troops_N.htm

Iraq Attacks Kill at Least 100 Shiite Pilgrims

March 6, 2007
The New York Times
By RICHARD A. OPPEL, Jr.

BAGHDAD, March 6 — Insurgents in Iraq killed at least 100 Shiite pilgrims in a series of attacks today, mostly near the southern city of Hilla, as the pilgrims trekked to the holy city of Karbala on the eve of one of the most important Shiite holidays, according to Iraqi security authorities.

In the first attacks, close to a dozen bombings and drive-by shootings struck Baghdad, killing about 30 pilgrims on the way to Karbala.

The most devastating explosions came around 5 p.m. local time: Two bombers waded into a thick crowd of pilgrims in Hilla and detonated explosive vests, killing at least 77 people and wounding 127 others, according to the Karbala police.

Iraqi state-run television put the early death toll at 90 with more than 150 wounded, as emergency authorities struggled to grasp the scope of the devastation.

The attacks drew immediate demands for reprisals from furious Shiites and came just as American soldiers swept through the most militant Shiite districts of Baghdad in an effort to quell the Shiite vigilantes and death squads who have preyed on Sunni Arabs and taken over wide swaths of Sunni west Baghdad.

By early evening no groups had taken responsibility for the bombings and shootings, but the attacks seemed intended to rekindle sectarian hatred and demonstrate that Sunni militants can still conduct catastrophic assaults, whether inside or outside the capital, as the American-backed Baghdad security plan enters its third week.

The savage attacks came as more than a million devout Shiites were expected to converge on Karbala on Saturday for the celebration of Arbaeen, which commemorates the end of 40 days of mourning for the death of the revered Shiite martyr Imam Hussein.

Shiites waving flags and yelling chants have flooded the highways heading south through Baghdad and north through Hilla to Karbala, where Imam Hussein was killed in 680 A.D.

Many pilgrims make the journey in as little as a day or two, stopping for sleep in Shiite mosques and in homes of Shiites along the way.

The United States military command also reported today that nine American servicemen were killed in two blasts north of Baghdad on Monday, making it the deadliest day in weeks for American troops.

Six soldiers were killed and three others wounded by a blast that struck near their vehicles during combat in Salahaddin Province, the vast Sunni area that stretches north from the capital through Samarra and Saddam Hussein’s hometown Tikrit to northern Iraq.

Another bomb attack killed three soldiers conducting combat operations in Diyala Province, the restive area northeast of Baghdad where Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias fight daily for control of the large city of Baquba and the fertile region around it.

The latest violence follows the devastating attack by a suicide car bomber on Monday in Baghdad. The powerful bomb on Monday hit a book market, slicing through the heart of the capital’s intellectual scene and killing at least 20 people and wounding more than 65.

The bombing in the book market on Monday was the latest of a half-dozen major blasts aimed at civilians in the capital in the three weeks since the Iraqi government and American military announced the start of a new Baghdad security drive.

The number of gunshot killings attributed to sectarian death squads appears to have dropped as militia leaders have ordered their followers to lie low. But deadly bombings have continued with ferocity.

American officials have said they are still struggling to tamp down the bombings and intend to bring thousands of additional troops into Baghdad in the next two months.

Hosham Hussein contributed reporting from Baghdad.

    Iraq Attacks Kill at Least 100 Shiite Pilgrims, NYT, 6.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/world/middleeast/06cnd-troops.html?hp

2 Suicide Bombers Kill 93 in Iraq

March 6, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:09 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Two suicide bombers blew themselves up Tuesday in a crowd of Shiite pilgrims streaming toward the holy city of Karbala, killing 93 people in one of several attacks targeting the faithful ahead of a weekend holiday.

The attack came a day after U.S. forces suffered their deadliest day in nearly a month -- nine American soldiers were killed in explosions north of Baghdad, the military said Tuesday.

The coordinated attack Tuesday happened on a main street in Hillah, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of Baghdad, said Capt. Muthana Khalid. He said 93 people were killed and 164 wounded.

An Associated Press cameraman at the scene said the bombers struck a crowd of pilgrims filing into a pedestrian area. Ambulances and Iraqi police were swarming the area and there was no immediate sign of U.S. forces.

U.S. forces continued their push Tuesday into Sadr City, home to 2.5 million of the city's poorest residents as well as fighters loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Some 600 American soldiers searched the neighborhood's northwest quadrant, knocking on doors and searching homes, according to an Associated Press reporter traveling with them.

The U.S. forces are seeking a ''reconciliatory approach'' to avoid a backlash on the streets, said Col. Richard Kim. One group of soldiers were met Tuesday by Iraqi children, offering them ice cream bars.

Six American soldiers died when a bomb exploded Monday near their vehicles during a combat operation in Salahuddin province, the military said. Three others were wounded in the blast. Another three soldiers died the same day in a roadside bomb attack in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad.

Both provinces are Sunni-dominated and have seen a rise in violence since additional U.S. forces surged into Baghdad as part of a security crackdown three weeks ago.

Monday was ''a very traumatic day'' for U.S. troops in Iraq, said Lt. Col. Michael Donnelly, a spokesman for U.S. forces in northern Iraq.

''Our hearts and prayers are with the families right now in their time of loss, and our resolve is stronger to accomplish our mission here,'' Donnelly said.

It was the deadliest day for Americans in Iraq since Feb. 7, when 11 troops were killed -- seven when their helicopter was shot down north of Fallujah and four others in combat operations.

The highest daily U.S. death toll since the Iraq war began was Jan. 26, 2005 when 37 Americans died in attacks.

U.S. officials say as violence has fallen in Baghdad, where the joint U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown was in its third week, insurgents have fled the capital for outlying areas, such as those where the soldiers were killed Monday.

Saddam Hussein's clan hails from Salahuddin, and the late al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was hiding out in Diyala when he was killed by a U.S. airstrike there last summer. Direct attacks on U.S. forces in Diyala are up 70 percent since last July, according to figures provided by the U.S. military.

A suicide car bomber shattered the capital's relative calm Monday, striking a famous book market in the city's oldest quarter and killing at least 38 shoppers.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called the bombing ''a new message to the world that the terrorists oppose humanity and knowledge.''

The bombing was seen as an effort by Sunni insurgents to bring major bloodshed back into the capital and into the lap of its Shiite-dominated government. The provocation could also erase Washington's plans for stability during a surge of more than 20,000 additional troops into Baghdad.

At least 24 Iraqis were killed in other violence Tuesday, including eight Shiite pilgrims killed in the south Baghdad neighborhood of Dora when gunmen pumped bullets into a minibus they were riding in.

In past years, Shiite militiamen ''played a role in protecting the pilgrims and the attacks were fewer and less effective, but this year things are different,'' said Bahaa al-Araji, a Shiite parliament member.

''The government bears some responsibility for this because it has not provided enough security forces to protect the pilgrims,'' al-Araji said. ''This indicates some shortcomings in the Baghdad security plan.''

Meanwhile, Iraqi army units were preparing to deploy along major routes to ensure pilgrims' safety, according to a Defense Ministry statement issued Tuesday.

''The Defense Ministry hopes that the citizens will continue the rituals of the pilgrimage safely under efficient security protection,'' the statement said.

The nine U.S. deaths Monday brought to 20 the number of Americans killed in Iraq this month. At least 3,184 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 2,561 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

Associated Press Writer Ryan Lenz with U.S. troops in Baghdad contributed to this report.

    2 Suicide Bombers Kill 93 in Iraq, NYT, 6.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq.html?hp

'Surge' needs up to 7,000 more troops

Updated 3/2/2007 10:40 AM ET
USA Today
By Tom Vanden Brook

WASHINGTON — President Bush's planned escalation of U.S. forces in Iraq will require as many as 28,500 troops, Pentagon officials told a Senate committee Thursday.

Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England also told the Senate Budget Committee that it will be clear within months whether the so-called surge in forces has succeeded in helping secure Iraq.

"By this summer we would have a much better indication in terms of the success of the program," England said. "And so at that time we would adjust however is appropriate to do so."

In January, Bush said he would send 21,500 more combat troops to Iraq. England said 6,000 to 7,000 support troops will be needed to back up the larger combat force.

England's estimate differed from the Congressional Budget Office's estimate last month that as many as 28,000 extra troops would be needed to support the escalation.

Requests already have been granted for 2,400 support troops, said Adm. Edmund Giambastiani, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He said there are additional requests for 4,000 more.

Existing logistics bases, many of them in and around Baghdad, will limit the number of new support troops needed, Giambastiani said.

There are about 10,000 soldiers in Iraq now associated with the escalation, according to Lt. Col. Carl Ey, an Army spokesman. In all, there are about 140,000 U.S. troops now in Iraq.

The increase in troops is expected to peak in May, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Pentagon officials stressed that the additional troops will be properly equipped. Army Brig. Gen. Charles Anderson, director of force modernization, said in a briefing this week that they will have the body and vehicle armor they need.

Giambastiani also said the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had affected the military's ability to deal with threats from other countries but not its ability to win a conflict.

"What will happen is there will be some added risk with regard to the time it takes us to be victorious or to win," he said. "And, potentially, you'll have some additional casualties. But let there be no mistake: We can get our job done if another crisis comes about."

Meanwhile, top members of the Senate Budget Committee scoffed at Pentagon estimates that the escalation would cost $5.6 billion. By contrast, the CBO estimated the cost of sustaining 35,000 troops there, and determined it could be as much as $20 billion.

"Put me down as a skeptic on the $5.6 billion," said Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D.

"It's obvious the $5.6 billion is a number that's not accurate," added Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., the panel's top Republican.

    'Surge' needs up to 7,000 more troops, UT, 2.3.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-03-01-surge_x.htm

Americans Underestimate Iraqi Death Toll

February 24, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:25 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Americans are keenly aware of how many U.S. forces have lost their lives in Iraq, according to a new AP-Ipsos poll. But they woefully underestimate the number of Iraqi civilians who have been killed.

When the poll was conducted earlier this month, a little more than 3,100 U.S. troops had been killed. The midpoint estimate among those polled was right on target, at about 3,000.

Far from a vague statistic, the death toll is painfully real for many Americans. Seventeen percent in the poll know someone who has been killed or wounded in Iraq. And among adults under 35, those closest to the ages of those deployed, 27 percent know someone who has been killed or wounded.

For Daniel Herman, a lawyer in New Castle, Pa., a co-worker's nephew is the human face of the dead.

''This is a fairly rural area,'' he said. ''When somebody dies, ... you hear about it. It makes it very concrete to you.''

The number of Iraqis killed, however, is much harder to pin down, and that uncertainty is perhaps reflected in Americans' tendency to lowball the Iraqi death toll by tens of thousands.

Iraqi civilian deaths are estimated at more than 54,000 and could be much higher; some unofficial estimates range into the hundreds of thousands. The U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq reports more than 34,000 deaths in 2006 alone.

Among those polled for the AP survey, however, the median estimate of Iraqi deaths was 9,890. The median is the point at which half the estimates were higher and half lower.

Christopher Gelpi, a Duke University political scientist who tracks public opinion on war casualties, said a better understanding of the Iraqi death toll probably wouldn't change already negative public attitudes toward the war much. People in democracies generally don't shy away from inflicting civilian casualties, he said, and they may be even more tolerant of them in situations such as Iraq, where many of the civilian deaths are caused by other Iraqis.

''You have to look at who's doing the killing,'' said Neal Crawford, a restaurant manager in Suttons Bay, Mich., who guessed that about 10,000 Iraqis had been killed. ''If these people are dying because a roadside bomb goes off or if there's an insurgent attack in a marketplace, it's an unfortunate circumstance of war -- people die.''

Gelpi said that while Americans may not view Iraqi deaths through the same prism as American losses, they may use the Iraqi death toll to gauge progress, or lack thereof, on the U.S. effort to promote a stable, secure democracy in Iraq.

To many, he said, ''the fact that so many are being killed is an indication that we're not succeeding.''

Whatever their understanding of the respective death tolls, three-quarters of those polled said the numbers of both Americans and Iraqis who have been killed are ''unacceptable.'' Two-thirds said they tend to feel upset when a soldier dies, while the rest say such deaths are unfortunate but part of what war is about.

Sometimes it's hard for people to sort out their conflicting emotions.

''I don't know if I'm numb to it or not,'' said 86-year-old Robert Lipold of Las Vegas. ''It's something you see in the paper every day there. And how do you feel when in the back of your mind it's unnecessary?''

Given a range of possible words to describe their feelings about the overall situation in Iraq, people were most likely to identify with ''worried,'' selected by 81 percent of those surveyed.

Other descriptive words selected by respondents:

--Compassionate: 74 percent.

--Angry: 62 percent.

--Tired: 61 percent.

--Hopeful: 51 percent.

--Proud: 38 percent.

--Numb: 27 percent.

Women were more likely than men to feel worried, compassionate, angry and tired; men were more likely than women to feel proud, a finding consistent with traditional differences in attitudes toward war between the sexes.

For women, said Gelpi, ''there is an emotional response to casualties that men don't show. ... It could be some sort of socialization that men get about the military or combat as being honorable that women don't get.''

Charlotte Pirch, a lawyer from Fountain Valley, Calif., said she's ''always appalled and just very upset at hearing about more casualties, whether it's U.S. troops or troops from another country.''

Pirch said two of her nieces are married to men who served in Iraq and she doesn't live far from Camp Pendleton, which has sent many U.S. troops to Iraq. But she added, ''Whether I knew someone personally or not, I would still feel it as a citizen of our country.''

Perhaps surprisingly, the poll found little difference in attitudes toward the war between those who did and did not know someone who had been killed or wounded. There was a difference, however, in their opinions on whether opponents are right to criticize the war.

About half of those who know someone who has been killed or wounded felt it is right to criticize the war, compared with two-thirds of those who don't have a personal connection.

The AP-Ipsos poll of 1,002 adults, conducted Feb. 12-15, had a 3 percentage point margin of error.

AP writers Natasha Metzler and Ann Sanner and AP News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this story.

    Americans Underestimate Iraqi Death Toll, NYT, 24.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Death-in-Iraq-AP-Poll.html

U.S. Seizes Son of a Top Shiite, Stirring Uproar

February 24, 2007
The New York Times
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.

BAGHDAD, Feb. 23 — American troops seized and then released the eldest son of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, perhaps the most powerful Shiite political leader in Iraq, after he crossed the border from Iran into Iraq on Friday morning.

The detention heightened tensions with one of Iraq’s most formidable political movements just as the planned American troop buildup was beginning in Baghdad to try to rescue the capital from the grip of Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents.

Allies of the Hakim family denounced the detention as a serious insult, and a senior adviser to the family asserted that American forces also had assaulted several guards. The Hakims control the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the backbone of the Shiite political alliance that has dominated politics during the occupation.

State-run television said Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite who depends on Mr. Hakim’s support, intervened to help release the son, Amar Abdul Aziz al-Hakim.

In an interview after he was released from an American military base in Kut, Amar al-Hakim said that American forces had treated him roughly and that their justification for seizing him — that he crossed the border with an invalid passport — was untrue.

An official with the Iraqi force that guards the border said American troops had been lying in wait to apprehend the Hakim convoy as it drove into Iraq. But a spokesman for the American Embassy in Baghdad, Lou Fintor, said that the Americans followed standard procedures and that there had been no effort to “single out” Mr. Hakim.

The American ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said he was “sorry” for the detention. The son is himself a senior official in Mr. Hakim’s political movement and has often taken a leading role in building support for his father’s political efforts throughout Shiite-dominated southern Iraq. A Hakim aide suggested that the son was being groomed to take control of the family’s political dynasty.

The detention worsened relations with the Hakims — who spent years in exile in Iran and remain close to Tehran — two months after American forces raided the Hakims’ elaborate Baghdad compound near the Green Zone and detained two Iranians whom they accused of running guns and planning sectarian attacks.

That raid came just a few weeks after the elder Mr. Hakim met with President Bush in Washington. Mr. Hakim has generally been an ally of the United States presence, but he has criticized the Americans for what he said was favoring the interests of Sunnis over Shiites.

The incident comes at a delicate moment in the relationship between the United States and Iran, which American officials have accused of fomenting violence in Iraq and supplying Shiite militias with the deadliest munitions employed against the American military’s armored vehicles, armor-piercing explosives known as explosively formed penetrators, or E.F.P.’s.

One of Amar al-Hakim’s most prominent public roles of late has been canvassing the Shiite provinces of southern Iraq to build support for his father’s controversial plan to cleave nine Shiite provinces into an autonomous region that would have wide authority over its security and natural resources.

Sunni political groups as well as some Shiite parties have objected to the plan, saying it would drive Iraq toward a three-way partition, with a Kurdish state in the northeast, a Sunni state in the west and northwest, and a Shiite state in the south.

One Shiite coalition that objects to the plan is the bloc allied with Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American Shiite cleric who controls the Mahdi Army militia and whose political movement is the only one within the Shiite alliance whose power rivals that of Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or Sciri.

A senior adviser to the Hakim family, Haitham al-Husseini, described the son as being in his mid-30s and said he was considered an heir to his father’s political movement. Mr. Hakim also has a younger son, Moshin, who serves as a political adviser, and two daughters.

Amar al-Hakim was in Iran no longer than five days, said Mr. Husseini, who added that he was probably visiting relatives or other people the family knew from their years in exile during the rule of Saddam Hussein. He said the Americans had held Amar al-Hakim a good part of the day. The convoy was stopped “without any justification,” Mr. Husseini said. “Some of the guards were beaten by the U.S. forces.”

He also said that United States military officers whom he would not identify had contacted aides to Mr. Hakim and apologized for the detention. Mr. Khalilzad, the American ambassador, was quoted by news agencies as saying that he regretted the episode and that “we do not mean any disrespect” to the Hakim family.

Mr. Fintor, the spokesman for the American Embassy in Baghdad, declined comment about whether an apology had been issued. But he said that American forces were investigating the episode.

“We’re trying to determine the facts,” Mr. Fintor said. “What I can tell you is that at this point we understand that Mr. Hakim was arrested by soldiers who were doing their duty. He was not singled out, and we understand the soldiers were following standard procedure.”

The detention led to a large demonstration in front of the offices of Mr. Hakim’s party in Basra by a crowd protesting the son’s treatment. A senior Sciri party official in Najaf, Sadr al-Din al-Qubanchi, called for a demonstration there.

“This will shake the stability, and it’s an insult to the Iraqi Shiite alliance and its leadership,” he said.

An American military official declined to comment on the allegation that Mr. Hakim’s guards had been beaten but said he had been detained because he possessed an expired passport and was traveling with men who had a large number of guns.

But after his release at the provincial governor’s office in Kut, Mr. Hakim said his passport was valid and the Americans detained him a few miles from the Iranian border on Friday morning.

“They arrested me and my guards in an unsuitable way, and they bound my hands and blindfolded me,” he said. “They took our phones, bags, money, documents and the guards’ weapons, and sent us to an American base.”

An Iraqi correspondent for The New York Times said Mr. Hakim showed a passport that had an expiration date of Sept. 17, 2007, and quoted him saying, “They claim the reason for the arrest was because my passport had expired, but as you can see my passport expires on the 17th of September.”

Two news agencies also quoted Mr. Hakim as saying that the Americans had dealt with him harshly, but neither news agency reported that Mr. Hakim had shown them an unexpired passport. Whether Mr. Hakim had a valid passport could not be confirmed by late Friday.

Mr. Husseini, the Hakim aide, said some of Amar al-Hakim’s guards were Iraqi Army soldiers and Iraqi policemen. The arrest was “very insulting to the Iraqi government and the sovereignty of the Iraqi government,” he said.

He said American military officers had apologized. “Until now, we have only heard the usual answer, that it was a mistake and that they didn’t know who he was,” he said.

Amar al-Hakim was educated mostly in Iran, according to Mr. Husseini, and is now secretary general of a major Shiite Islamic foundation, in addition to his position within Sciri.

Qais Mizher contributed reporting from Baghdad, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Kut.

    U.S. Seizes Son of a Top Shiite, Stirring Uproar, NYT, 24.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/24/world/middleeast/24iraq.html?hp

Long Iraq Tours Can Make Home a Trying Front

February 23, 2007
The New York Times
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ

In the nearly two years Cpl. John Callahan of the Army was away from home, his wife, he said, had two extramarital affairs. She failed to pay his credit card bills. And their two children were sent to live with her parents as their home life deteriorated.

Then, in November, his machine gun malfunctioned during a firefight, wounding him in the groin and ravaging his left leg. When his wife reached him by phone after an operation in Germany, Corporal Callahan could barely hear her. Her boyfriend was shouting too loudly in the background.

“Haven’t you told him it’s over?” Corporal Callahan, 42, recalled the man saying. “That you aren’t wearing his wedding ring anymore?”

For Corporal Callahan, who is recuperating at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and so many other soldiers and family members, the repercussions, chaos and loneliness of wartime deployments are one of the toughest, least discussed byproducts of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and loved ones have endured long, sometimes repeated separations that test the fragility of their relationships in unforeseen ways.

The situation is likely to grow worse as the military increases the number of troops in Iraq in coming months. The Pentagon announced Wednesday that it was planning to send more than 14,000 National Guard troops back to Iraq next year, causing widespread concern among reservists. Nearly a third of the troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan have done more than one tour of duty.

Most families and soldiers cope, sometimes heroically. But these separations have also left a trail of badly strained or broken unions, many severed by adultery or sexual addictions; burdened spouses, some of whom are reaching for antidepressants; financial turmoil brought on by rising debts, lost wages and overspending; emotionally bruised children whose grades sometimes plummet; and anxious parents who at times turn on each other.

Hardest hit are the reservists and their families, who never bargained on long absences, sometimes as long as 18 months, and who lack the support network of full-fledged members of the military.

“Since my husband has been gone, I have potty-trained two kids, my oldest started preschool, a kid learned to walk and talk, plus the baby is not sleeping that well,” said Lori Jorgenson, 30, whose husband, a captain in the Minnesota National Guard, has been deployed since November 2005 and recently had his tour extended another four months. “I am very burnt out.”

In the next couple of months, Ms. Jorgenson, who has three young children, has to get a loan, buy a house and move out of their apartment.

Even many active-duty military families, used to the difficulties of deployments, are reeling as soldiers are being sent again and again to war zones, with only the smallest pause in between. The unrelenting fear of death or injury, mental health problems, the lack of recuperative downtime between deployments and the changes that await when a soldier comes home hover over every household.

And unlike the Vietnam era, when the draft meant that many people were directly touched by the conflict, this period finds military families feeling a keen sense of isolation from the rest of society. Not many Americans have a direct connection to the war or the military. Only 1.4 million people, or less than 1 percent of the American population, serve in the active-duty military.

“Prior to 9/11, the deployments were not wartime related,” said Kristin Henderson, a military spouse whose husband served as a Navy chaplain in Iraq and Afghanistan and whose recent book “While They’re at War” explores the impact of today’s deployments. “There were separation issues, but there was no anticipatory grief and no fear and no medical overload.”

It is common for spouses to wind up on antidepressants, Ms. Henderson said, a situation made worse by the repeat deployments. The more deployments, the less time that families have to mend before the stress sets in again, she added.

Ms. Henderson recalled having a panic attack in church while her husband was away and crying in the shower most mornings so no one would see her. “The common misconception,” she said, “is that the more you do this, the better you get. That is not true.”

Some relationships grow stronger as distance and sacrifice help bring into sharp focus what is important. Before Robert Johnson’s deployments to Iraq with the North Carolina Army National Guard, he and his wife, Dawn, faced difficult decisions about how to care for their seven children, including four living at home. They decided their two severely disabled teenage twin sons would be best cared for elsewhere, one in a group home, the other with grandparents.

But Ms. Johnson, 41, who works full time at a pharmacy, said she felt there had been an upside to the ordeal. “Now I know,” she said, “that I can pretty much survive anything.”

Other marriages, especially young marriages rushed by deployment, may have been destined to fail from the start.

Seeking Help

As the war stretches into its fourth year, more troops and their families are reaching out for help, turning to family therapists and counselors. The Army and the Marines, partly in response to a jump in the number of divorces and a rise in domestic violence reports, have created programs to help couples cope, including seminars and family weekend retreats. The Army has also improved the family readiness groups that often serve as a lifeline for spouses.

Divorces, which had hovered in the 2 percent to 3 percent range for the Army since 2000, spiked in 2004 to 6 percent among officers and 3.6 percent among enlisted personnel. The rate for officers dropped to 2.1 percent in 2006, but the rate for enlisted personnel has stayed level, at 3.6 percent.

Married women are having the hardest time. The divorce rate for women in the Army in 2006 was 7.9 percent, the highest since 2000, compared with 2.6 percent for men.

Demand for counseling has grown so quickly among military families and returning soldiers that the military has begun contracting out more services to private therapists. Reservists must rely largely on networks of volunteers.

“For a while a lot of soldiers coming back were not being seen because there was such an overload of patients and so few mental health providers on base,” said Carl Settles, a psychologist and retired Army colonel who runs a practice near Fort Hood, Tex.

The military recently called him to ask how many of several hundred patients he could take on, Dr. Settles said.

Corporal Callahan, who is on the brink of divorce, said his marriage, his second, had been troubled before his deployment but became unsalvageable once he shipped out. His deployment also forced him to transfer guardianship of his children temporarily to their grandparents because of problems at home, he said.

His injury, which has left him unable to walk, has now complicated his chances of remaining in the Army. “I felt like I had hit bottom,” he said. “I had so much bitterness in me. I have been so angry. So many nights I have cried and tried to figure out what I can do and what I can’t do.”

Capt. Lance Oliver, Corporal Callahan’s commander in Iraq, said he kept close track of Corporal Callahan’s personal situation, and while disintegrating marriages are not uncommon, Captain Oliver said, Corporal Callahan’s was the most dramatic.

“I can’t think of one that is more heartwrenching,” he said.

Spouses’ Secrets

Extramarital affairs, hardly rare in other wars, are also a fixture now.

David Hernandez, who is in the Army and is based in Fort Hood, said his relationship with his wife of 10 years crumbled between his second and third deployments. She was frazzled and lonely, he said, with two children to care for; he came back moodier, quieter and more distant. Now his wife is living with another man, Mr. Hernandez said in e-mail messages from Iraq. He, in turn, has started a relationship with a female soldier, despite his hope for reconciliation.

“It was very stressful for her doing everything and worrying about me,” he said, adding, “I spent so much time away; it drove us apart to seek other relationships.”

“Now I’m back out here,” he said. “I feel helpless. What can I do? It makes it a little easier being with someone out here. Temptation was the hardest, and I gave in.”

Dr. Settles sees about 40 soldiers a week in private practice and says a majority of soldiers cope well. But those with problems feel them deeply.

“Infidelity and financial issues are major issues,” Dr. Settles said, adding that there are abundant cases of wives who clear out their husband’s bank accounts or soldiers who come home and go binge shopping. “Even a good mule needs a few oats once in a while,” he said. “ Some of these guys, they are kind of at their limit.”

Some therapists say they are bracing for this year’s divorces. Mary Coe, a marriage and family therapist working near Fort Campbell, an Army base on the border of Kentucky and Tennessee, said she was seeing “many, many divorces” right now. The 101st Airborne Division recently returned from its second deployment with an astonishing level of rage, she said. “Now we are seeing 15- to 20-year marriages not making it, and these are families that survived 20 years of deployments,” Dr. Coe said.

Lei Steivers, whose husband is a senior noncommissioned officer at Fort Campbell, has been a military wife for 25 years. But it took her husband’s second yearlong deployment to Iraq to cripple their marriage. They are now in counseling. A family leader on the base, Ms. Steivers, 46, also has two sons in the military. She said a number of men she knows came home last year for rest and relaxation and demanded a divorce.

Many spouses, she said, blame the presence of women alongside combat units. The blame may be misplaced, but the anxiety is not.

“They are side-by-side fixing an engine, the girls live upstairs, the guys live downstairs,” Ms. Steivers said. “We are just more and more in awe, saying, What is going on?”

Some wives have uncovered their husband’s pornographic pictures on Web sites like MySpace, she said, adding, “I’ve seen them because the wives show them to me.”

Dr. Coe said she had been surprised by the number of soldiers who had come home and sought counseling for sexual addictions fueled by DVD’s and Internet pornography.

While pornography is blocked by the United States military in Iraq, service members gain access to it with laptops through their own Internet service providers, Corporal Callahan said.

At the same time, spouses back home sometimes hook up with men on the Internet. When the relationship surfaces, it sometimes leads to violence, said Robert Weiss, who co-wrote “Untangling the Web,” a book about Internet pornography, and who has been hired as a consultant by military family groups looking for guidance.

Family Trumps All Else

For some spouses, concerns about infidelity take a back seat to the demands of a household. Lillian Connolly’s husband of 21 years, a staff sergeant in the Army Reserve in Massachusetts who now works at a Lowe’s Home Improvement, was sent to Iraq twice. The first deployment, in 2003, lasted 11 months. The second one, for which he volunteered, was much harder on the family. Even before his father’s second deployment, the couple’s 12-year-old started having tantrums. When his father left their home in 2005, the boy started to misbehave at school, Ms. Connolly said. He and his sister were the only children with a deployed parent, and the school, she said, was mostly unsympathetic. If anything, Ms. Connolly said, she got the blame.

“He really worried about his dad every day,” Ms. Connolly said of her son. “They couldn’t understand he had an anger problem because his dad was gone.

“That was more stressful and harder to deal with than my husband being gone.”

Mary Keller, the executive director of the Military Child Education Coalition, a private nonprofit group that helps children and schools cope, said two million children had experienced deployments. Worst hit are those in schools that are isolated from military culture.

“It is highly likely that the teacher doesn’t have a personal experience with the military,” Dr. Keller said.

At home, spouses say, they try to keep their young children connected to their deployed parents. Ms. Jorgenson lets her three children pull Skittles out of a bowl to mark the passage of time. She buys them surprise gifts from their father, like boxes of Fruity Pebbles or camouflage sheets. Meanwhile, she thinks, “Will I ever get through bath time and get them to bed without screaming and losing my patience?”

Parents of young soldiers often appear the most tormented, counselors say, especially if opposed to the enlistment. There are also few resources for them.

“Mothers are in worse shape than wives,” said Jaine Darwin, a psychoanalyst and co-director of Strategic Outreach to Families of All Reservists, a volunteer group that offers counseling to military families in many states. “Mom is not allowed to cry. And that is certainly a problem.”

Esther Gallagher, 50, who works in a counseling office at a high school in Goodrich, Minn., has two sons in Iraq. She worries about both but frets most about her youngest, Justin, 22, a gunner who has seen a lot of violence in Falluja. He joined the Minnesota Army National Guard and has spent most of the past three years on deployment; the last tour was recently extended, which angered his mother and disheartened the soldiers in his unit.

When Sergeant Gallagher came home for two weeks last year, he walked out of the room any time anyone talked about Iraq.

“Every day, they are in harm’s way,” Ms. Gallagher said, her voice quavering. “I mean, that’s your baby — to have him out there in harm’s way, and not knowing. Your life has been to protect these kids.”

    Long Iraq Tours Can Make Home a Trying Front, NYT, 23.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/23/us/23military.html?hp

A Prewar Slide Show Cast Iraq in Rosy Hues

February 15, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON

WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 — When Gen. Tommy R. Franks and his top officers gathered in August 2002 to review an invasion plan for Iraq, it reflected a decidedly upbeat vision of what the country would look like four years after Saddam Hussein was ousted from power.

A broadly representative Iraqi government would be in place. The Iraqi Army would be working to keep the peace. And the United States would have as few as 5,000 troops in the country.

Military slides obtained by the National Security Archive under the Freedom of Information Act outline the command’s PowerPoint projection of the stable, pro-American and democratic Iraq that was to be.

The general optimism and some details of General Franks’s planning session have been disclosed in the copious postwar literature. But the slides from the once classified briefing provide a firsthand look at how far the violent reality of Iraq today has deviated from assumptions that once laid the basis for an exercise in pre-emptive war.

The archive, an independent research institute at George Washington University, has posted the slides on its Web site, www.nsarchive.org.

August 2002 was an important time for developing the strategy. President Bush had yet to go to the United Nations to declare Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons programs a menace to international security, but the war planning was well under way. The tumultuous upheaval that would follow the toppling of the Hussein government was known antiseptically in planning sessions as “Phase IV.” As is clear from the slides, it was the least defined part of the strategy.

General Franks had told his officers that it was his supposition that the State Department would have the primary responsibility for rebuilding Iraq’s political institutions.

“D.O.S. will promote creation of a broad-based, credible provisional government — prior to D-Day,” noted a slide on “key planning assumptions.” That was military jargon for the notion that the Department of State would assemble a viable Iraqi governing coalition before the invasion even began.

“It was a way of forcing the discussion, to get clarity of how we and State were going to deal with the governance issue,” Col. John Agoglia, a Central Command planner at the time, said in an interview.

As it turned out, it was months before the command’s planners began to receive some of the clarification they were hoping for. The Bush administration put aside the idea of establishing a prewar provisional government for fear it would marginalize Iraqi leaders who had not gone into exile. Colonel Agoglia said he did not begin to get a sense of what the postwar arrangements would be until Jay Garner, a retired three-star general, was tapped by the Bush administration in January 2003 to serve as the first civilian administrator in postwar Iraq.

Another assumption spelled out in the PowerPoint presentation was that “co-opted” Iraqi Army units would heed the American appeals to stay in their garrisons and later help United States to secure the country.

Based on this and other hopeful suppositions, the command’s planners projected what the American occupation of Iraq might look like. After the main fighting was over, there was to be a two- to three-month “stabilization” phase, then an 18- to 24-month “recovery” phase.

That was to be followed by a 12- to 18-month “transition” phase. At the end of this stage — 32 to 45 months after the invasion began — it was projected that the United States would have only 5,000 troops in Iraq.

Now, those projections seem startlingly unrealistic given the current troop buildup, in which the United States currently has about 132,000 troops in Iraq and is adding about 20,000 more. But the projections, former military planners say, were intended to send the message to civilian policy makers that the invasion of Iraq would be a multiyear proposition, not an easy in-and-out war.

As it turned out, the assumptions on Iraqi and American forces were quickly overturned, partly as a result of new American policy decisions. Instead of staying in garrisons, many of the Iraqi soldiers fled after the war began. Senior American commanders hoped to quickly recall the Iraqi troops to duty anyway, but that option vanished in May 2003 when L. Paul Bremer III, Mr. Garner’s successor, issued an edict formally disbanding the Iraqi Army.

The message that the United States should gird itself for a substantial multiyear occupation seemed to be superseded when General Franks issued new guidance to his commanders a week after the fall of Baghdad on April 9 that they should be prepared to reduce the American troops in Iraq to a little more than a division by September 2003 — some 30,000 troops.

A series of ad hoc decisions and strategy changes followed as the insurgency grew and security deteriorated. A new military plan is now being put into effect, which the White House asserts may yet salvage a positive outcome. Almost four years after the invasion, however, the “stable democratic Iraqi government” the United States once hoped for seems to exist only in the command’s old planning slides.

    A Prewar Slide Show Cast Iraq in Rosy Hues, NYT, 15.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/15/washington/15military.html?hp&ex=1171602000&en=ad512b1b8c4bfb32&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bush Declares Iran’s Arms Role in Iraq Is Certain

February 15, 2007
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and MARC SANTORA

WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 — President Bush said Wednesday that he was certain that factions within the Iranian government had supplied Shiite militants in Iraq with deadly roadside bombs that had killed American troops. But he said he did not know whether Iran’s highest officials had directed the attacks.

Mr. Bush’s remarks amounted to his most specific accusation to date that Iran was undermining security in Iraq. They appeared to be part of a concerted effort by the White House to present a clearer, more direct case that Iran was supplying the potent weapons — and to push back against criticism that the intelligence used in reaching the conclusions was not credible.

Speaking at a news conference in the East Room of the White House, Mr. Bush dismissed as “preposterous” the contention by some skeptics that the United States was drawing unwarranted conclusions about Iran’s role. He publicly endorsed assertions that had until now been presented only by anonymous military and intelligence officials, who have said that an elite branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps known as the Quds Force has provided Shiite militias in Iraq with the sophisticated weapons that have been responsible for killing at least 170 American soldiers and wounding more than 600.

“I can say with certainty that the Quds Force, a part of the Iranian government, has provided these sophisticated I.E.D.’s that have harmed our troops,” Mr. Bush said, using the abbreviation for improvised explosive device. “And I’d like to repeat, I do not know whether or not the Quds Force was ordered from the top echelons of the government. But my point is, what’s worse, them ordering it and it happening, or them not ordering it and its happening?”

The House of Representatives is debating a resolution disapproving of Mr. Bush’s plan to send more than 20,000 additional troops to Iraq. [Page A16.] And so Mr. Bush used his appearance to defend that decision as necessary in the face of deteriorating security in Baghdad. Asked about a possible American response to Iranian interference, he said, “We will continue to protect our troops.” With skeptics asking why the intelligence about Iran’s meddling is coming to light now, a number of possibilities have been raised, including the increase in attacks and American casualties in recent months.

American intelligence officials have said they think that top leaders in Iran must have approved of the attacks on the American forces, in part because the Quds Force has historically reported to the country’s top religious leaders. But aides to Mr. Bush, mindful of the criticism about its use of intelligence before the Iraq war, said the White House wanted to be careful not to make that kind of accusation without hard proof.

As Mr. Bush discussed Iran in Washington, the chief American military spokesman in Baghdad provided a more detailed, on-the-record account of how the administration believed the weapons, particularly lethal explosive devices known as explosively formed penetrators, or E.F.P.’s, got to Iraq. The spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, was also careful not to link the actions of the Quds Force directly to Iran’s top leaders. He said American assertions about a link between the weapons and the force were based on information obtained from people, including Iranians, detained in Iraq in the past 60 days.

“They in fact have told us that the Quds Force provides support to extremist groups here in Iraq in the forms of both money and weaponry,” General Caldwell said. He added: “They have talked about how there are extremist elements that are given this material in Iran and then it is smuggled into Iraq. We have in fact stopped some at the border and discovered it there, coming from Iran into Iraq.”

The coordinated messages out of Baghdad and Washington were an effort by the White House to tamp down reports of divisions within the American government about who in Iran should be held responsible for the weapons shipments. A senior Defense analyst said at a briefing in Baghdad over the weekend that the effort was being directed “from the highest levels of the Iranian government.” But Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offered a contradictory account this week, telling The Associated Press that while some bomb materials were made in Iran, “that does not translate that the Iranian government, per se, for sure, is directly involved in doing this.”

At Wednesday’s news conference, Mr. Bush suggested that it did not matter whether senior leaders were involved. “What matters is, is that we’re responding,” Mr. Bush said. He said that if the United States found either networks or individuals “who are moving these devices into Iraq, we will deal with them.”

Some experts said the question of Iran’s responsibility remained important. “There’s a big difference between saying that there is a rogue element doing things and then asking the Iranian government to rein it in, as opposed to saying this is a calculated deliberate strategy of the Iranian government,” said Vali Nasr, a Middle East scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations. “That has very different implications in terms of how do you hold Iran culpable.”

The administration’s claims about Iran have been met with intense skepticism, from Democrats in Congress and from experts like David Kay, who led the search for illicit weapons in Iraq. Some critics have said the White House is using Iran as a scapegoat for its problems in Iraq, and some have suggested that the administration, which has been trying to pressure Iran into abandoning its nuclear program, is laying the foundation for another war.

On Wednesday, a leading contender for the Democratic nomination for president, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, took to the Senate floor to call on Mr. Bush to seek authorization for any military action against Iran. “We cannot and we must not allow recent history to repeat itself,” she said.

Mr. Bush has said that he has no intention of invading Iran and that any suggestion that he was trying to provoke Iran “is just a wrong way to characterize the commander in chief’s decision to do what is necessary to protect our soldiers in harm’s way.” But experts say that the ratcheting up of accusations could provoke a confrontation. Gary Sick, an expert on Iran at Columbia University, said there was a “danger of accidental war.” He said, “If anything goes wrong, if something happens, there’s an unexplained explosion and we kidnap an Iranian, and the Iranians respond to that somehow, this could get out of control.”

Mr. Bush has also refused to meet with Iran’s leaders, and he said Wednesday that he did not believe that it would be an effective way of persuading the Iranians to give up their nuclear goals. “This is a world in which people say, ‘Meet! Sit down and meet!’ ” he said. “And my answer is, if it yields results, that’s what I’m interested in.”

Sheryl Gay Stolberg reported from Washington, and Marc Santora from Baghdad.

    Bush Declares Iran’s Arms Role in Iraq Is Certain, NYT, 15.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/15/world/middleeast/15prexy.html

Al - Qaida's No. 2 Calls for Muslim Unity

February 13, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:22 a.m. ET
The New York Times

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Al-Qaida's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, called for Muslim unity and said American elections that gave Democrats control of Congress would not change U.S. policy in Iraq, in a new audiotape released Tuesday by a U.S. group that tracks extremist messages.

The Washington-based SITE Institute released a transcript of the audio, which it said it had intercepted from Islamic militant Web sites where his messages are usually posted.

The Associated Press could not immediately find the audiotape independently, but found messages on a number of them that said an al-Zawahri tape was expected to be aired shortly.

IntelCenter, a U.S. group that monitors terrorism communications, said it also obtained the audio and that it was accompanied by a video that showed a still picture of al-Zawahri.

SITE said the multimedia arm of al-Qaida, as-Sahab, claimed to have produced the 41-minute audiotape.

On the tape, al-Zawahri said recent congressional elections in the United States that elected a majority of Democrats would change nothing.

''The people chose you due to your opposition to Bush's policy in Iraq, but it appears that you are marching with him to the same abyss,'' al-Zawahri told the Democrats according to the transcript.

He repeated an earlier condemnation of the Palestinian Fatah movement led by Mahmoud Abbas for seeking to establish a secular state.

''I'm not asking them to join Hamas, the Islamic Jihad or al-Qaida, but rather, I'm asking them to return to Islam, in order to fight for the establishment of an Islamic state over all of Palestine and not for the establishment of a secularist state which will please America,'' al-Zawahri said.

It was the fourth message by Osama bin Laden's deputy since the beginning of the year. The last was on Jan. 22, when he mocked President Bush's plan to send an additional 21,000 troops to Iraq.

Al-Zawahri called what he described as Bush' failure in Iraq and the growing Taliban resistance in Afghanistan the ''most important events'' of the past year. He also said that ''the people cooperating with the United States in Afghanistan and in Iraq would be abandoned by the Americans once they fail, the same way they did in Vietnam.''

The al-Qaida leader also threatened that countries allied to the United states in the region ''must reap their bitter harvest,'' and specifically named Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

He called on all Muslims to strive for unity, ''even if they are Afghans, Persians, Turks or Kurds.''

    Al - Qaida's No. 2 Calls for Muslim Unity, NYT, 13.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Zawahri-Tape.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

One Year Later,

Golden Mosque Is Still in Ruins

February 13, 2007
The New York Times
By MARC SANTORA

SAMARRA, Iraq, Feb. 11 — It has been a year since Sunni insurgents ripped a hole in the glorious dome here of one of Iraq’s most sacred Shiite shrines, shattering its 72,000 golden tiles and unleashing a tide of national sectarian bloodletting. Not a single brick of the mosque has been moved since.

There has been no rebuilding and no healing; the million annual pilgrims, and the prosperity they spread, are gone. The roads south to Baghdad and north to Tikrit are pocked with roadside bombs and fake checkpoints where travelers are abducted. The citizens of this Sunni city, who protected and took pride in the Shiite mosque for more than 1,000 years, say they want to lead the reconstruction, but Shiites will not hear of it.

And a proposal from the Shiite-led government to send thousands of Shiite troops to provide protection for a reconstruction project has been met with threats of bloodshed.

Symbols of political paralysis are everywhere in this country. But few have the potency of the blown-up Mosque of the Golden Dome, site of the graves of two of the figures most revered by Shiites, the 10th and 11th imams in a line of direct descendants of the Prophet Muhammad.

From the moment the shrine was destroyed, Iraqis — already accustomed to extraordinary violence — knew that life had taken an even darker turn. Within hours Shiite death squads sought bloody revenge, dozens of Sunni mosques were burned and Sunni imams were dragged out into the street and killed.

[That terrible day, one year ago according to the Islamic lunar calendar, was commemorated by Shiites from Najaf to Basra on Monday. But even as they were observing the occasion with a moment of silence, bombs in busy Baghdad markets left at least 67 more people dead. There were no commemorations in Samarra, just the ever-present reminder of the mosque itself.]

Pieces of the blue and gold tiles that adorned the facade of the great mosque, formally known as the Askariya Shrine, where graceful Arabic script from the Koran praised God and peace, sit shattered in the empty courtyard.

There are continuing discussions about rebuilding the shrine, and the United Nations has been approached. The local Sunni tribal elders have put forth a plan to rebuild, but it is unlikely that Shiite religious and political leaders will trust them.

Both groups say reconstruction of the dome would be a powerful unifying force, a symbol of hope where hope is scarce. But any large-scale project remains complicated not only by the distrust between Sunnis and Shiites, but by the precarious security situation in Samarra itself, where a force of only about 300 national and local police officers is trying to control a city of about 100,000.

Some of men currently responsible for guarding the shrine, drawn from the nation’s Facilities Protection Services, are considered suspect, possibly infiltrated by Sunni militants, according to Americans and Iraqis.

The walls still stand, but the doors are locked, and no prayers are conducted there. Nearby shops are open but desolate.

Residents, for whom the mosque was a source of livelihood as well as pride, say they would like nothing more than to have it rebuilt. But they have no faith in the central government, fearing that Shiite politicians would use the reconstruction as an excuse to take control of the mosque.

Before the attack, more than a million Shiites streamed into the mosque each year, visiting the graves of the 10th and 11th Imams. They also came to honor Muhammad al-Mahdi, who became the 12th Imam when he was only 5 years old, in A.D. 872.

Shiites believe that it was here that the Mahdi was put into a state of divine hiddenness by God to protect his life. Shiites believe that the Mahdi will return at the end of days, at a time of chaos and destruction, to deliver perfect justice.

The graves, at the foot of a spiral staircase some 50 feet below ground, were not damaged in the explosion, a caretaker said. But the dome, the defining feature of the mosque, renovated in 1905, was ravaged.

Shiites rarely dare travel to the city now.

The Iraqi police have started constructing a sniper’s post on a roof across the street. When the Americans arrived Saturday to check up on the effort, it took less than 20 minutes for militants to begin attacking them. Bullets whizzed over the mosque and the American position.

A stray round hit a civilian standing at the shrine’s southern gate. An American medic pulled him to safety and treated his wound. The fight was brief, less than half an hour, with the militants finally scurrying away with the Americans in pursuit. But it was a reminder of how difficult it would be to secure the site for any major reconstruction project.

Samarra was untouched in the American-led invasion of 2003, but since then it has fallen to militants twice, only to be retaken in major American military operations.

The Americans, who try not to patrol too near the mosque, keep one base in the city. They acknowledge that if they leave any time soon, the militants will seize the city again.

The roads running south to Baghdad and north to Tikrit remain plagued by attacks, mostly with roadside bombs.

The government in Baghdad is discussing a plan to create a special brigade of 3,500 soldiers to secure the roadways and protect a team of workers who would rebuild the mosque. But if those soldiers are primarily Shiites they will not be welcome, Iraqi officials say.

“If they send Shiites from the south, they will be killed,” said Lt. Col. Abdul Jalil Hanni, the commander of the Iraqi police here. “They should make the brigade with people from Tikrit and Samarra,” he said. “Al Qaeda will still make trouble, but it can be done.”

Residents of Samarra, who are very careful with their words because militants still hold much of the power here, remain as devastated by the destruction as the Shiites.

“It was a catastrophe for Samarra and the Islamic world,” said Zuhair Majeed, 26, whose shop is at the foot of the shrine. “The shrine has been in Samarra for 1,200 years. It was the people of Samarra who protected it, reconstructed it and served it.”

But the people of Samarra also have chosen not to even clean the rubble from the site, because they believe that the real culprit in the bombing has yet to be found.

“You must know that the tribal leaders have not removed a single brick until now, in order not to change the crime scene,” said Sheik Qahtan Yahya al-Salim, the general secretary of the tribal sheiks’ council in Samarra.

Haitham al-Sabaa, of the Badri tribe, a former chicken farmer from Samarra, was the architect of the plan, American and Iraqi officials say. He has not been caught.

Before the war Mr. Sabaa was not particularly religious, old friends say, but joined Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia after the American invasion. They say he worked with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born Qaeda leader who was killed by American forces in Iraq last June.

Mr. Zarqawi explicitly wrote that attacking the apostate Shiites was integral to undermining the American occupation. Mr. Sabaa, the officials said, was hungry to prove himself in the Qaeda hierarchy and orchestrated the attack. “For him it was not about religion but about being a big man,” said one person, who recalled many a wild and drunken evening with Mr. Haitham before the invasion. He is now considered a “prince” in the Qaeda structure in Iraq, American and Iraqi officials said.

Many residents here have come to believe an alternative version of how the attack occurred, blaming Iranian agents and pointing to the fact that the attackers were wearing commando uniforms. But there is no evidence to support that theory.

What is clear is that the attack was carefully planned and calculated.

A caretaker at the shrine described what happened on the day of the attack, insisting on anonymity because he was afraid that talking to an American could get him killed. The general outline of his account was confirmed by American and Iraqi officials.

The night before the explosion, he said, just before the 8 p.m. curfew on Feb. 21, 2006, on the Western calendar, men dressed in commando uniforms like those issued by the Interior Ministry entered the shrine.

The caretaker said he had been beaten, tied up and locked in a room.

Throughout the night, he said, he could hear the sound of drilling as the attackers positioned the explosives, apparently in such a way as to inflict maximum damage on the dome. Many Sunnis in Samarra say they remain as pained by the shrine’s destruction as the world’s Shiites. “I still feel sad despite the passing of a year,” said Abu Hameed al-Samaraee, 43, a teacher.

“I can describe what was done as exactly like what happened to the World Trade Center,” he said. “Bad people used this incident to divide Iraq on a detestable sectarian basis.”

    One Year Later, Golden Mosque Is Still in Ruins, NYT, 13.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/13/world/middleeast/13samarra.html?hp&ex=1171429200&en=ecd834ecd67139cc&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Bombs kill at least 80

as Shiites mark

anniversary of mosque attack

Updated 2/12/2007 12:38 PM ET
AP
USA Today

BAGHDAD (AP) — Thunderous explosions and dense black smoke swirled through the center of Baghdad on Monday when three car bombs ripped apart a crowded marketplace, setting off secondary explosions and killing at least 71 people, police said. A suicide bombing nearby killed at least nine.

The blasts shattered the city center on the first anniversary, according to the Muslim lunar calendar, of the bombing last year of the important Shiite Golden Dome shrine in Samarra, north of the capital. That attack by al-Qaeda in Iraq militants set off the torrent of sectarian bloodletting that has turned Baghdad and much of central Iraq into a battleground.

A column of smoke hundreds of feet wide billowed a thousand feet into the air above the market near the east bank of the Tigris River and near the Central Bank building.

Ambulances and pickups rushed many of the nearly 165 wounded to nearby al-Kindi hospital in the largely Shiite region that has been hit be a series of deadly bombings since the first of the year.

The worst carnage occurred about 12:25 p.m. when three parked car bombs exploded shortly after the Iraqi government called for a 15-minute period of commemoration for the bombing of the golden domed shrine in Samarra a year ago.

The bombs struck within a minute of each other, targeting two buildings about 200 yards apart. One of the cars was parked near the entrance to a parking garage under one of the buildings.

Shops and stalls were obliterated and billowing smoke blackened the entire area on a beautiful sunny day in Baghdad.

Debris and clothing mannequins were scattered in thick pools of blood on the floor of the warehouse-type building while men tossed plastic chairs onto piles. Two men carried the limp body of one of the victims, while small fires burned in the rubble on the street outside the building.

A shop owner whose business was set on fire said one of the cars was parked in a garage under a two-story market called Al-Arabi, next to the Iraqi central bank. Mohammed Najaim said flames were coming out of the garage, which holds hundreds of cars.

About half an hour earlier, a suicide bomber wearing an explosives vest walked into a crowded area near a popular take-away falafel restaurant in the Bab al-Sharqi area, not far from Shorja, police said, adding that 19 people also were wounded in that blast.

Brig. Abdul Karim Khalaf, a spokesman for the interior ministry, told Iraqiya television that police arrested three suspects — an Iraqi and two foreigners. He said there were three car bombs planted on opposite sides of the marketplace.

The attacks were planned by a new militant cell in the area, Khalaf said, and suggested the cars had been booby-trapped, rather than suicide attacks.

Some 75 cars were destroyed in the blasts, he said.

The attacks, which occurred in busy market districts on the mostly Shiite east side of the Tigris River, came despite stepped up security in the capital as U.S. and Iraqi forces have launched a new operation aimed at stopping the sectarian violence that has been on the rise since the Feb. 22 bombing of the mosque in Samarra.

The anniversary fell on Monday according to the Islamic lunar calendar. The lunar month is never longer than 30 days or shorter than 29. The beginning of each lunar month is set by religious authorities.

One 38-year-old Shiite man said the blasts were clearly timed to coincide with the commemoration of the bombing in Samarra. Other people in the area screamed, "Where is the government?" "Where is the security plan?" "We have had enough?" "We have lost our money and goods and our source of living."

Some storekeepers were trying to salvage merchandise while others were taking their money in small bags. Police and soldiers were deployed in force, and armed men in civilian clothes were searching and questioning people coming to the scene.

Elsewhere in Baghdad, some roads and bridges in Baghdad were cordoned off after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called for a 15-minute sit-in to commemorate the bombing of the al-Askariya or Golden Dome shrine in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad.

Al-Maliki issued a statement calling on government offices and all citizens to "chant 'God is great' in all the mosques, and to ring bells in all the churches" for the Samarra anniversary.

"The explosion of the holy shrine pushed the country into blind violence, in which tens of thousands of innocents were killed. No one knows but Allah when this tragedy will be over," Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shiite cleric, said in a statement issued Monday before the bombings.

Al-Sistani urged the Iraqi government to rebuild the shrine, whose golden dome was partially torn off by last year's blast. The compound has since been locked and guarded by Iraqi police.

But he also called for restraint among those observing Monday's anniversary.

"We call on the believers to express their emotions but to be cautious and act disciplined, and not to do anything to hurt our brothers the Sunnis, as they are not responsible for this awful crime," he said.

About 16,000 demonstrators flooded the main street of the southern city of Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad, marching toward two Shiite shrines there. Participants rallied with placards reading, "No to terrorism" and "Iraqis are one people, whether Shiite or Sunni."

Hundreds of policemen guarded the area, and no violence was reported.

Muqtada al-Sadr, the anti-American cleric who commands one of Iraq's most notorious Shiite militias, the Mahdi Army, was scheduled to speak to supporters in the holy city of Najaf later Monday.

In 2006 alone, the United Nations reported that 34,452 civilians were killed in violence that has left Iraq battered and divided along sectarian lines.

On Monday, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani called the shrine bombing that sparked a year of killings "a crime against humanity and Islam together."

"This horrible crime drives us to toward more solidarity and brotherhood," Talabani said in a speech in Baghdad.

"We will stay with you until we accomplish a secured, democratic, federal and stable Iraq away from the darkness of terrorism, dictatorship."

Iraqi Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi accused al-Qaeda of using the Samarra bombing to "stir sectarianism" and urged Iraqis to rebuild their country.

"We should not stand thwarted. All Iraqis — Arabs, Kurds, Turkomen and others — have to move forward to rebuild the new Iraq after it was ruined for decades," he said.

"There is nothing in front of us except to share society together."

Bombs kill at least 80 as Shiites mark anniversary of mosque attack, UT, 12.2.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-02-12-violence_x.htm

Shops and stalls were obliterated

and billowing smoke blackened the entire area on a sunny day in Baghdad.

Ceerwan Aziz/Reuters

At Least 67 Killed at Baghdad’s Largest Market        NYT        12.2.2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/12/world/middleeast/12cnd-iraq.html

In the past year,

more than 500 people have been killed

by explosions while shopping or selling goods

in the capital’s markets.

Khalid Mohammed/Associated Press

At Least 67 Killed at Baghdad’s Largest Market        NYT        12.2.2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/12/world/middleeast/12cnd-iraq.html

At Least 67 Killed

at Baghdad’s Largest Market

February 12, 2007
The New York Times
By DAMIEN CAVE

BAGHDAD, Feb. 12 — Four bomb explosions at Baghdad’s oldest market killed at least 67 people and wounded 155 today, charring families in their cars, shredding stores and setting ablaze a seven-story clothing warehouse, where black smoke billowed for hours, witnesses and officials said.

The blasts at Central Baghdad’s Shorja Market — the capital’s largest bazaar — struck shortly after Iraq’s Shiite-led government marked the first anniversary, by the Islamic calendar, of an attack that destroyed a revered Shiite mosque in Samarra. That bombing, which shattered the shrine’s golden dome, ignited a wave of sectarian violence in Iraq that has yet to be extinguished.

With its timing and severity, today’s attack seemed designed to fuel the country’s sectarian hatreds, and to identify weaknesses in the new American-Iraqi security plan for Baghdad that has just begun.

It was at least the fifth bombing at the Shorja market since August, and one of roughly a dozen attacks at markets over the past year, killing more than 500 people as they bought or sold what they needed to survive.

Though the culprits and motivation were unclear, the attack — using a mixture of a car bomb, a truck bomb and two bombs disguised in other ways — bore the hallmarks of an attack by Sunni insurgents.

Ali Hassan Flayha, a merchant in the market who witnessed the explosions, said the attackers sought to stop daily life, to kill as many people as possible and to keep the public angry at the Iraqi and American governments.

“The insurgents won’t let us do our work,” he said. “They are shooting at us, kidnapping our workers, starting fires, just to keep us away from the market — and they’re using car bombs all the time.

“The goal of the insurgents is to show us that the government is weak,” he said. “We understand — they’re right.”

Mr. Flayha and other witnesses said that one of the bombs was concealed in a pick-up truck that was parked outside the Abu Hanifa building, a seven-story concrete structure with shops and restaurants on the first floor, and clothing wholesale businesses above.

The explosion, witnesses said, set the building on fire, trapping workings among the mannequins and piles of clothing that burned like kindling. Fire trucks arrived but were unable to put out the blaze, leading some to question whether they were able to get enough water.

At one point, about four hours after the explosions, Methal Al-Alussi, a Sunni member of Parliament, visited the scene. The merchants told him he had to do something to help them.

“We will try to figure it out,” he said.

But only three or four merchants were able to reach him to talk, since Mr. Alussi had arrived at the scene encircled by more than 20 armed guards.

The attacks today come a week after American and Iraqi forces announced the formal start of a crackdown aimed at stopping sectarian violence in Baghdad. The American military is sending some 21,000 additional troops to Iraq to aid with the crackdown.

Sporadic violence was also reported in other parts of Iraq today. Gunmen attacked the mayor’s house in Miqdadiya, 50 miles northeast of Baghdad, killing two guards.

    At Least 67 Killed at Baghdad’s Largest Market, NYT, 12.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/12/world/middleeast/12cnd-iraq.html

Iraqi court raises sentence

against former Saddam deputy

to death by hanging

Updated 2/12/2007 11:43 AM ET
AP
USA Today

BAGHDAD (AP) — An Iraqi court on Monday sentenced Saddam Hussein's former deputy to be hanged after an appeals court panel said the original life-in-prison sentence was too lenient, ignoring an international outcry from the United Nations and human rights organizations.

Taha Yassin Ramadan, who wore a traditional red-and-white checked headdress, angrily declared his innocence after the verdict was read.

"I swear to God that I'm innocent, Allah is my supporter and will take revenge on all who treated me unjustly!" he yelled before he was led out of the courtroom.

The government welcomed the ruling against Ramadan, who was Saddam's vice president when the regime was ousted by the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Bassam al-Husseini, an adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, dismissed the criticism by human rights groups and declared the death penalty was justified.

"He (Ramadan) is responsible for the murder of people. Where were those human rights groups during the days of the former regime when it killed and executed without trial?" al-Husseini said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

The decision had been expected after an appeals court ruled late last year that Ramadan's previous sentence of life in prison was too lenient.

On Thursday, U.N. human rights chief Louise Arbour filed an unprecedented legal challenge with the Iraqi High Tribunal against imposing the death sentence on Ramadan.

Ramadan is the fourth member of the ousted regime to face capital punishment for the killings of 148 Shiites after a 1982 attempt on Saddam's life in the mainly Shiite town of Dujail, north of Baghdad.

Saddam, his half brother and former intelligence chief Barzan Ibrahim, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, also were sent to the gallows.

Ramadan said his duties were limited to economic affairs, not security issues.

"I have nothing to do with this case, I have nothing to do with the Dujail case from the beginning to the end. I came to know about this case just in detention, and I swear to God that this is the truth," Ramadan said before the verdict was delivered.

The chief judge, Ali al-Kahachi, said the case would be automatically appealed.

Ramadan was convicted on Nov. 5 of murder, forced deportation and torture and sentenced to life in prison. A month later, the appeals court said the sentence was too lenient, and returned his case to the High Tribunal, demanding he be sentenced to death. The tribunal agreed.

Three other defendants were sentenced to 15 years in jail in the case, while one was acquitted.

Saddam was hanged on Dec. 30, while Ibrahim and al-Bandar were executed Jan. 15, provoking anger among their fellow Sunnis after the former leader's half brother was decapitated on the gallows.

The decision to impose the maximum sentence against Ramadan came ignored appeals from human rights groups.

Human Rights Watch and the International Center for Transitional Justice issued a joint statement on the eve of the hearing saying the evidence was insufficient for such a punishment.

"The tribunal found Ramadan guilty without evidence linking him to the horrific crimes committed in Dujail," said Richard Dicker, director of the International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch. "Ramadan was convicted in an unfair trial, and increasing his punishment from life imprisonment to death reeks of vengeance."

Arbour, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said she recognized "the desire for justice of victims in societies emerging from regimes that have engaged in or procured the most grave and systematic crimes."

But while the death penalty was permitted under strict conditions, she said the trial of Ramadan "failed to meet the standards of due process" and capital punishment would amount to "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment," which is prohibited under international law.

Arbour previously asked the Iraqi tribunal not to carry out the death sentences imposed on Saddam, Ibrahim, and al-Bandar.

Al-Husseini said a total of 78 convicted terrorists have been executed since 2003, a number he described as low given the number of attacks carried out over this period. He, however, disclosed that five new sites for executions have been set up in Baghdad and that they all complied with international conventions. He said the locations will remain secret to head off attacks by insurgents.

Iraq announced Sunday the execution of 14 terrorists convicted for kidnappings, murder and rape in five of Iraq's 18 provinces. A government announcement did not say when and where the 14 were convicted.

    Iraqi court raises sentence against former Saddam deputy to death by hanging, UT, 12.2.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-02-12-saddam-deputy_x.htm

U.S. Says Arms Link Iranians to Iraqi Shiites

February 12, 2007
The New York Times
By JAMES GLANZ

BAGHDAD, Feb. 12 — After weeks of internal debate, senior United States military officials on Sunday literally put on the table their first public evidence of the contentious assertion that Iran supplies Shiite extremist groups in Iraq with some of the most lethal weapons in the war. They said those weapons had been used to kill more than 170 Americans in the past three years.

Never before displayed in public, the weapons included squat canisters designed to explode and spit out molten balls of copper that cut through armor. The canisters, called explosively formed penetrators or E.F.P.’s, are perhaps the most feared weapon faced by American and Iraqi troops here.

In a news briefing held under strict security, the officials spread out on two small tables an E.F.P. and an array of mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades with visible serial numbers that the officials said link the weapons directly to Iranian arms factories. The officials also asserted, without providing direct evidence, that Iranian leaders had authorized smuggling those weapons into Iraq for use against the Americans. The officials said such an assertion was an inference based on general intelligence assessments.

That inference, and the anonymity of the officials who made it, seemed likely to generate skepticism among those suspicious that the Bush administration is trying to find a scapegoat for its problems in Iraq, and perhaps even trying to lay the groundwork for war with Iran.

Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said in a televised interview that his country was opposed to conflict and bloodshed in Iraq, and that problems in Iraq should be solved with dialogue, not by force.

“There should be a court to prove the case and to verify the case” about claims that Iran is aiding extremists, Mr. Ahmadinejad told the ABC program “Good Morning America,” adding:

“We are opposed to any kind of conflict in Iraq.” A spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry, Mohammad Ali Hosseini, said that Iran’s top leaders were not intervening in Iraq. He said they saw “any intervention in Iraq’s internal affairs as a weakening of the popular Iraqi government, and we are opposed to that.”

“Such accusations cannot be relied upon or be presented as evidence,” Mr. Hosseini told reporters in Tehran.

“The United States has a long history in fabricating evidence. Such charges are unacceptable.” While the Americans displayed what they said was the physical evidence of their claims about Iran’s role in Iraq, they also left many questions unanswered, including proof that the Iranian government was directing the delivery of weapons.

The officials were repeatedly pressed on why they insisted on anonymity in such an important matter affecting the security of American and Iraqi troops. A senior United States military official gave a partial answer, saying that without anonymity, a senior Defense Department analyst who participated in the briefing could not have contributed.

The officials also were defensive about the timing of disclosing such incriminating evidence, since they had known about it as early as 2004. They said E.F.P. attacks had nearly doubled in 2006 compared with the previous year and a half.

“The reason we’re talking about this right now is the vast increase in the number of E.F.P.s being found,” one official said. American-led forces in Iraq, the official said, “are not trying to hype this up to be more than it is.”

Whatever doubts were created about the timing and circumstances of the weapons disclosures, the direct physical evidence presented on Sunday was extraordinary.

The officials said the E.F.P. weapons arrived in Iraq in the form of what they described as a “kit” containing high-grade metals and highly machined parts — like a shaped, concave lid that folds into a molten ball while hurtling toward its target.

For the first time, American officials provided a specific casualty total from these weapons, saying they had killed more than 170 Americans and wounded 620 since June 2004, when one of the devices first killed a service member.

But then the officials went much further, asserting without specific evidence that the Iranian security apparatus, called the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps - Quds Force controlled delivery of the materials to Iraq. And in a further inference, the officials asserted that the Quds Force, sometimes called the I.R.G.C. - Quds, could be involved only with Iranian government complicity.

“We have been able to determine that this material, especially on the E.F.P. level, is coming from the I.R.G.C. - Quds Force,” said the senior defense analyst. That, the analyst said, meant direction for the operation was “coming from the highest levels of the Iranian government.”

At least one shipment of E.F.P.s was captured as it was smuggled from Iran into southern Iraq in 2005, the officials said. Caches and arrays of E.F.P.s, as well as mortars and other weapons traceable to Iran, have been repeatedly found inside Iraq in areas dominated by militias known to have ties to Iran, the officials said. One cache of antitank rocket-propelled grenades and other items was seized as recently as Jan. 23, the officials said.

The precise machining of E.F.P. components, the officials said, also links the weapons to Iran. “We have no evidence that this has ever been done in Iraq,” the senior military official said.

The officials also gave fresh details on recent American raids in Baghdad and the northern city of Erbil in which Quds Force members were picked up and accused of working with extremist groups to plan attacks on American and Iraqi forces.

Some of the five Iranians still being detained after they were picked up in Erbil on Jan. 11 had been flushing documents down a toilet when they were found, the defense analyst said, and they had recently been engaged in “changing their appearance” — apparently shaving their heads, though for what reason the analyst did not know.

An earlier raid in Baghdad was carried out, the officials said, after American forces received word that the No. 2 Quds Force official, whom they identified as Mohsin Chizari, was unexpectedly in Iraq. When Mr. Chizari was picked up in a raid in December, he was carrying false identification, the officials said.

He was later released to the Iraqi government with another Iranian official who was picked up at the same time. The Iraqis asked both Iranians to leave the country.

The senior defense analyst said there was no direct link between the detained Iranians and the physical evidence presented on Sunday. But the analyst said, “the overall tenor” of the evidence was that Mr. Chizari was implicated in bringing E.F.P.s into Iraq.

The briefing also presented new information on what the Americans call the smuggling routes. There are three main routes, officials said: the Mandelli border crossing, east of Baghdad; the Mehran crossing, in the marshes to the south; and in the southern city of Basra.

Paid Iraqis, rather than Iranians themselves, carry the materials across the border, the officials said.

The senior military official blamed recent press reports for, he said, overstating the importance of the weapons presentation, which had been delayed. Part of the delay reflected a view among officials in Washington that the original presentation was insufficiently strong. Officials here did not address that element of the internal debate.

The senior American military official did make it clear that declassifying the material took place only after weeks of analysis on what information could be useful to hostile forces — information that has mostly been kept out of the public eye since the E.F.P.s began turning up in Iraq. “We publicly have not acknowledged E.F.P.s for the past two years,” the senior military official said.

Laid out on the tables themselves were the tailfins of dozens of apparently used mortar shells, as well as intact mortar shells, rocket-propelled grenades, cases for some of the weaponry, the E.F.P., and two identification cards the officials said were taken in the Erbil raid.

The shells had serial numbers in English in order to comply with international standards for arms, the officials said. One grenade, for instance, was marked with the serial number P.G.7-AT-1 followed by LOT:5-31-2006. The officials said that the serial numbers clearly identified the grenade as being of Iranian manufacture and the date showed that it had been made in 2006.

Commanders in Baghdad are acutely aware of the deadly E.F.P.s. Col. Steve Townsend, commander of the Third Stryker Brigade Combat Team in Baghdad, said his unit has encountered about a dozen E.F.P.s in the past two months.

Iran’s role in Iraq has been discussed in recent months in public and private testimony by senior intelligence officials. In testimony last month, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said “there’s a clear line of evidence that points out the Iranians want to punish the United States, hurt the United States in Iraq, tie down the United States in Iraq, so that our other options in the region, against other activities the Iranians might have, would be limited.”

Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said last month that he believed that Iranian operatives inside Iraq were supporting Shiite militias and working against American troops.

But he also asserted that the White House had a poor understanding of Iranian calculations and added that he was concerned that the Bush administration was building a case for a more confrontational policy toward Tehran.

Richard A. Oppel Jr. contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Michael R. Gordon and Felicity Barringer from Washington.

    U.S. Says Arms Link Iranians to Iraqi Shiites, NYT, 12.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/12/world/middleeast/12cnd-iran.html

Editorial

The Build-a-War Workshop

February 10, 2007
The New York Times

It took far too long, but a report by the Pentagon inspector general has finally confirmed that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s do-it-yourself intelligence office cooked up a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda to help justify an unjustifiable war.

The report said the team headed by Douglas Feith, under secretary of defense for policy, developed “alternative” assessments of intelligence on Iraq that contradicted the intelligence community and drew conclusions “that were not supported by the available intelligence.” Mr. Feith certainly knew the Central Intelligence Agency would cry foul, so he hid his findings from the C.I.A. Then Vice President Dick Cheney used them as proof of cloak-and-dagger meetings that never happened, long-term conspiracies between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden that didn’t exist, and — most unforgivable — “possible Iraqi coordination” on the 9/11 attacks, which no serious intelligence analyst believed.

The inspector general did not recommend criminal charges against Mr. Feith because Mr. Rumsfeld or his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, approved their subordinate’s “inappropriate” operations. The renegade intelligence buff said he was relieved.

We’re sure he was. But there is no comfort in knowing that his dirty work was approved by his bosses. All that does is add to evidence that the Bush administration knowingly and repeatedly misled Americans about the intelligence on Iraq.

To understand this twisted tale, it is important to recall how Mr. Feith got into the creative writing business. Top administration officials, especially Mr. Cheney, had long been furious at the C.I.A. for refusing to confirm the delusion about a grand Iraqi terrorist conspiracy, something the Republican right had nursed for years. Their frustration only grew after 9/11 and the C.I.A. still refused to buy these theories.

Mr. Wolfowitz would feverishly sketch out charts showing how this Iraqi knew that Iraqi, who was connected through six more degrees of separation to terrorist attacks, all the way back to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

But the C.I.A. kept saying there was no reliable intelligence about an Iraq-Qaeda link. So Mr. Feith was sent to review the reports and come back with the answers Mr. Cheney wanted. The inspector general’s report said Mr. Feith’ s team gave a September 2002 briefing at the White House on the alleged Iraq-Qaeda connection that had not been vetted by the intelligence community (the director of central intelligence was pointedly not told it was happening) and “was not fully supported by the available intelligence.”

The false information included a meeting in Prague in April 2001 between an Iraqi official and Mohamed Atta, one of the 9/11 pilots. It never happened. But Mr. Feith’s report said it did, and Mr. Cheney will still not admit that the story is false.

In a statement released yesterday, Senator Carl Levin, the new chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who has been dogged in pursuit of the truth about the Iraqi intelligence, noted that the cooked-up Feith briefing had been leaked to the conservative Weekly Standard magazine so Mr. Cheney could quote it as the “best source” of information about the supposed Iraq-Qaeda link.

The Pentagon report is one step in a long-delayed effort to figure out how the intelligence on Iraq was so badly twisted — and by whom. That work should have been finished before the 2004 elections, and it would have been if Pat Roberts, the obedient Republican who ran the Senate Intelligence Committee, had not helped the White House drag it out and load it in ways that would obscure the truth.

It is now up to Mr. Levin and Senator Jay Rockefeller, the current head of the intelligence panel, to give Americans the answers. Mr. Levin’s desire to have the entire inspector general’s report on the Feith scheme declassified is a good place to start. But it will be up to Mr. Rockefeller to finally determine how old, inconclusive, unsubstantiated and false intelligence was transformed into fresh, reliable and definitive reports — and then used by Mr. Bush and other top officials to drag the country into a disastrous and unnecessary war.

    The Build-a-War Workshop, 10.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/10/opinion/10sat1.html

Deadliest Bomb in Iraq Is Made by Iran,

U.S. Says

February 10, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — The most lethal weapon directed against American troops in Iraq is an explosive-packed cylinder that United States intelligence asserts is being supplied by Iran.

The assertion of an Iranian role in supplying the device to Shiite militias reflects broad agreement among American intelligence agencies, although officials acknowledge that the picture is not entirely complete.

In interviews, civilian and military officials from a broad range of government agencies provided specific details to support what until now has been a more generally worded claim, in a new National Intelligence Estimate, that Iran is providing “lethal support” to Shiite militants in Iraq.

The focus of American concern is known as an “explosively formed penetrator,” a particularly deadly type of roadside bomb being used by Shiite groups in attacks on American troops in Iraq. Attacks using the device have doubled in the past year, and have prompted increasing concern among military officers. In the last three months of 2006, attacks using the weapons accounted for a significant portion of Americans killed and wounded in Iraq, though less than a quarter of the total, military officials say.

Because the weapon can be fired from roadsides and is favored by Shiite militias, it has become a serious threat in Baghdad. Only a small fraction of the roadside bombs used in Iraq are explosively formed penetrators. But the device produces more casualties per attack than other types of roadside bombs.

Any assertion of an Iranian contribution to attacks on Americans in Iraq is both politically and diplomatically volatile. The officials said they were willing to discuss the issue to respond to what they described as an increasingly worrisome threat to American forces in Iraq, and were not trying to lay the basis for an American attack on Iran.

The assessment was described in interviews over the past several weeks with American officials, including some whose agencies have previously been skeptical about the significance of Iran’s role in Iraq. Administration officials said they recognized that intelligence failures related to prewar American claims about Iraq’s weapons arsenal could make critics skeptical about the American claims.

The link that American intelligence has drawn to Iran is based on a number of factors, including an analysis of captured devices, examination of debris after attacks, and intelligence on training of Shiite militants in Iran and in Iraq by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and by Hezbollah militants believed to be working at the behest of Tehran.

The Bush administration is expected to make public this weekend some of what intelligence agencies regard as an increasing body of evidence pointing to an Iranian link, including information gleaned from Iranians and Iraqis captured in recent American raids on an Iranian office in Erbil and another site in Baghdad.

The information includes interrogation reports from the raids indicating that money and weapons components are being brought into Iraq from across the Iranian border in vehicles that travel at night. One of the detainees has identified an Iranian operative as having supplied two of the bombs. The border crossing at Mehran is identified as a major crossing point for the smuggling of money and weapons for Shiite militants, according to the intelligence.

According to American intelligence, Iran has excelled in developing this type of bomb, and has provided similar technology to Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon. The manufacture of the key metal components required sophisticated machinery, raw material and expertise that American intelligence agencies do not believe can be found in Iraq. In addition, some components of the bombs have been found with Iranian factory markings from 2006.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates appeared to allude to this intelligence on Friday when he told reporters in Seville, Spain, that serial numbers and other markings on weapon fragments found in Iraq point to Iran as a source.

Some American intelligence experts believe that Hezbollah has provided some of the logistical support and training to Shiite militias in Iraq, but they assert that such steps would not be taken without Iran’s blessing.

“All source reporting since 2004 indicates that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Corps-Quds Force is providing professionally-built EFPs and components to Iraqi Shia militants,” notes a still-classified American intelligence report that was prepared in 2006.

“Based on forensic analysis of materials recovered in Iraq,” the report continues, “Iran is assessed as the producer of these items.”

The United States, using the Swiss Embassy in Tehran as an intermediary, has privately warned the Iranian government to stop providing the military technology to Iraqi militants, a senior administration official said. The British government has issued similar warnings to Iran, according to Western officials. Officials said that the Iranians had not responded.

An American intelligence assessment described to The New York Times said that “as part of its strategy in Iraq, Iran is implementing a deliberate, calibrated policy — approved by Supreme Leader Khamenei and carried out by the Quds Force — to provide explosives support and training to select Iraqi Shia militant groups to conduct attacks against coalition targets.” The reference was to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Iranian leader, and to an elite branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Command that is assigned the task of carrying out paramilitary operations abroad.

“The likely aim is to make a military presence in Iraq more costly for the U.S.,” the assessment said.

Other officials believe Iran is using the attacks to send a warning to the United States that it can inflict casualties on American troops if the United States takes a more forceful posture toward it.

Iran has publicly denied the allegations that it is providing military support to Shiite militants in Iraq. Javad Zarif, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, wrote in an Op-Ed article published on Thursday in The Times that the Bush administration was “trying to make Iran its scapegoat and fabricating evidence of Iranian activities in Iraq.”

The explosively formed penetrator, detonated on the roadside as American vehicles pass by, is capable of blasting a metal projectile through the side of an armored Humvee with devastating consequences.

American military officers say that attacks using the weapon reached a high point in December, when it accounted for a significant portion of Americans killed and wounded in Iraq. For reasons that remain unclear, attacks using the device declined substantially in January, but the weapons remain one of the principal threats to American troops in and around Baghdad, where five additional brigades of American combat troops are to be deployed under the Bush administration’s new plan.

“It is the most effective I.E.D out there,” said Lt. Col. James Danna, who led the Second Battalion, Sixth Infantry Regiment in Baghdad last year, referring to improvised explosive devices, as the roadside bombs are known by the American military. “To me it is a political weapon. There are not a lot of them out there, but every time we crack down on the Shia militias that weapon comes out. They want to keep us on our bases, keep us out of their neighborhoods and prevent us from doing our main mission, which is protecting vulnerable portions of the population.”

Adm. William Fallon, President Bush’s choice to head the Central Command, alluded to the weapon’s ability to punch through the side of armored Humvees in his testimony to Congress last month.

“Equipment that was, we thought, pretty effective in protecting our troops just a matter of months ago is now being challenged by some of the techniques and devices over there,” Admiral Fallon said. “So I’m learning as we go in that this is a fast-moving ballgame.”

Mr. Gates told reporters last week that he had heard there had been cases in which the weapon “can take out an Abrams tank.”

The increasing use of the weapon is the latest twist in a lethal game of measure and countermeasure that has been carried out throughout the nearly four-year-old Iraq war. Using munitions from Iraq’s vast and poorly guarded arsenal, insurgents developed an array of bombs to strike the more heavily armed and technologically superior American military.

In response, the United States military deployed armored Humvees, which in turn spawned the development of even more potent roadside bombs. American officials say that the first suspected use of the penetrator occurred in late 2003 and that attacks have risen steadily since then.

To make the weapon, a metal cylinder is filled with powerful explosives. A metal concave disk manufactured on a special press is fixed to the firing end.

Several of the cylinders are often grouped together in an array. The weapon is generally triggered when American vehicles drive by an infrared sensor, which operates on the same principle as a garage door opener. The sensor is impervious to the electronic jamming the American military uses to try to block other remote-control attacks.

When an American vehicle crosses the beam, the explosives in the cylinders are detonated, hurling their metal lids at targets at a tremendous speed. The metal changes shape in flight, forming into a slug that penetrate many types of armor.

In planning their attacks, Shiite militias have taken advantage of the tactics employed by American forces in Baghdad. To reduce the threat from suicide car bombs and minimize the risk of inadvertently killing Iraqi civilians, American patrols and convoys have been instructed to keep their distance from civilian traffic. But that has made it easier for the Shiite militias to attack American vehicles. When they see American vehicles approaching, they activate the infrared sensors.

According to American intelligence agencies, the Iranians are also believed to have provided Shiite militants with rocket-propelled grenades, shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles, mortars, 122-millimeter rockets and TNT.

Among the intelligence that the United States is expected to make public this weekend is information indicating that some of these weapons said to have been made in Iran were carried into Iraq in recent years. Examples include a shoulder-fired antiaircraft missile that was fired at a plane flying near the Baghdad airport in 2004 but which failed to launch properly; an Iranian rocket-propelled grenade made in 2006; and an Iranian 81-millimeter mortar made in 2006.

Assessments by American intelligence agencies say there is no indication that there is any kind of black-market trade in the Iranian-linked roadside bombs, and that shipments of the components are being directed to Shiite militants who have close links to Iran. The American military has developed classified techniques to try to counter the sophisticated weapon.

Marine officials say that weapons have not been found in the Sunni-dominated Anbar Province, adding to the view that the device is an Iranian-supplied and Shiite-employed weapon.

To try to cut off the supply, the American military has sought to focus on the cells of Iranian Revolutionary Guard operatives it asserts are in Iraq. American intelligence agencies are concerned that the Iranians may respond by increasing the supply of the weapons.

“We are working day and night to disassemble these networks that do everything from bring the explosives to the point of construction, to how they’re put together, to who delivers them, to the mechanisms that are used to have them go off,” Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week. “It is instructive that at least twice in the last month, that in going after the networks, we have picked up Iranians.”

    Deadliest Bomb in Iraq Is Made by Iran, U.S. Says, NYT, 10.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/10/world/middleeast/10weapons.html?hp&ex=1171170000&en=e9a9ae56cb1df98a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

U.S. Accidentally Attacks Kurdish Outpost, Killing Several

February 10, 2007
The New York Times
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and DAVID S. CLOUD

BAGHDAD, Feb. 9 — An American military helicopter killed as many as nine Kurdish militia fighters early Friday in the northern city of Mosul when the aircraft mistakenly attacked a guard post.

The guard post protected the local offices of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the political party of the Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani. The attack stunned Patriotic Union officials, whose leadership and militia are close allies of United States forces. They said their base and the surrounding guard posts were well known to the American military in Mosul.

“Everybody knows that it is a P.U.K. base and is used for protecting the main road between Mosul and Erbil,” said Kabir Goran, a senior Patriotic Union official, who added that the guard post was less than a mile from the party offices. “We have daily contacts with the Americans and they have been to the base.”

An aide to Mr. Talabani said he had asked the American military for information about the mistake.

The United States command in Baghdad said American troops erroneously believed that they had identified insurgents near the hide-out of a bomb-making cell linked to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. The command said the strike killed five Kurds, described as policemen; Kurdish officials said as many as nine were killed.

Also on Friday, an insurgent group that has taken credit for several recent downings of United States helicopters released a video that it said showed a missile shooting down the Marine CH-46 Sea Knight transport that crashed Wednesday, killing all seven on board.

But Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, a senior officer on the joint staff at the Pentagon, told reporters in Washington on Friday that early indications suggested that mechanical failure had caused the CH-46 crash; he warned against “drawing conclusions from things that are posted on the Internet.”

The American helicopter attack in Mosul struck members of a militia force that is a crucial ally of the United States. The Kurds and their fighters, known as pesh merga, live in mountainous northeastern Iraq, but their control extends west to the Tigris River and Mosul, a city of close to two million. Sunni Arabs make up most of western Mosul, but Kurds dominate the eastern half.

In a statement, the American military said that after observing armed men near the guard post, American troops fired warning shots and called out in Arabic and Kurdish for the men to put down their arms.

An American helicopter then “observed hostile intention” and fired on the guard post. The military statement did not describe specifically what the soldiers saw the Kurdish troops do. But it said that as the helicopter attacked, American ground troops took fire from the bunker. Kurdish officials said six other pesh merga were wounded, some cared for later by American troops.

In the video posted on the Internet by a group calling itself the Islamic State of Iraq, the Sea Knight helicopter, distinctive for its two large rotors atop either end of its long, tube-shaped fuselage, is flying toward the camera. Then it banks hard right as if taking evasive action. After turning a half-circle, an object darts into the screen from the right, trailed by a curl of black smoke. The object comes close to the helicopter, though no impact is visible. But moments after the object enters the frame an explosion rips through the helicopter, which drifts to the ground in flames.

A senior defense official called into question the authenticity of the video, saying that a Cobra attack helicopter was close behind the Sea Knight in the moments before the crash, and that the Cobra pilot saw no sign of ground fire. The official also said the video appeared suspicious because there was no sign of the Cobra in any frame. “It does not show the wingman flying anywhere near the CH-46,” the official said.

The helicopter crash, into an open field near the insurgent-heavy town of Karma, between Falluja and Baghdad in Anbar Province, was the latest of a half-dozen crashes or downings of aircraft over the past three weeks. Military officials are concerned that insurgents have devised new tactics or obtained new equipment that makes American aircraft more vulnerable.

Military investigators suspect that a shoulder-fired missile may have played a role in bringing down an American AH-64 helicopter on Feb. 2, according to a Pentagon document describing possible causes of the recent crashes.

Officials said there had not been a final determination of the cause of the AH-64 crash; no further details could be learned about the evidence suggesting a missile attack. The document noted that the helicopter also might have been struck by fire from a heavy-caliber machine gun.

General Lute said that four of the six helicopters that crashed recently were brought down by enemy fire, but that there was no “definitive evidence that there were missile attacks involved” in any of them. He added that it was too soon to say that attacks on helicopters had increased or that insurgents had adopted more effective tactics.

In addition to the Feb. 2 crash, those brought down by insurgents include a UH-60 that was hit by ground fire on Jan. 20 in Diyala Province; another AH-64 that was shot down near Najaf, on Jan. 28; and a Bell 412 helicopter belonging to an American contractor that was brought down south of Baghdad on Jan. 31, the document said.

Richard A. Oppel Jr. reported from Baghdad, and David S. Cloud from Washington. Reporting was contributed by Yerevan Adham from Iraqi Kurdistan, and Ali Adeeb, Qais Mizher and Ahmad Fadam from Baghdad.

    U.S. Accidentally Attacks Kurdish Outpost, Killing Several, NYT, 10.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/10/world/middleeast/10iraq.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Report: U.S. Airstrike Kills 5 Kurds

February 9, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:02 p.m. ET
The New York Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- U.S. helicopters on Friday mistakenly killed at least five Kurdish troops, a group that Washington hopes to enlist as a partner to help secure Iraq, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.

The Kurdish deaths occurred about midnight in eastern Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad. The U.S. military said the airstrike was targeting al-Qaida fighters, but later issued an apology, saying the five men killed had been identified as Kurdish police.

Kurdish officials put the casualty toll at eight killed and six wounded, and said the men were guarding a branch of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan -- led by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a key supporter of U.S. efforts in Iraq.

The U.S. military said the attack was launched after ground forces identified armed men in a bunker near a building they thought was being used to make bombs. The troops called for the men to put down their weapons in Arabic and Kurdish and fired warning shots before helicopters fired at the bunker, the military said.

Mahmoud Othman, a prominent Kurdish lawmaker who is not a PUK member but has strong ties to the community, said that for U.S. troops, the incident amounted to ''attacking the people who support them.''

''This is not a good sign for the new security plan that they (U.S. forces) have started,'' Othman said.

Separately, the U.S. military said three American soldiers died Thursday in fighting in western Anbar province, bringing the total number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq this month to 33. The statement announcing the deaths provided no details about the outcome of the fighting.

A roadside bomb killed one British soldier and wounded three others Friday in southern Iraq, raising the number of British combat deaths since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 to 101.

The Iraqi government also gave its first public response to the arrest on Thursday of Deputy Health Minister Hakim al-Zamili, accused of diverting millions of dollars to the biggest Shiite militia and allowing death squads to use ambulances and government hospitals for kidnappings and killings.

Sadiq al-Rikabi, an adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said no one would be immune from a security crackdown in Baghdad.

''If it is proved he (al-Zamili) is innocent, then he will be set free, otherwise he should receive his punishment,'' al-Rikabi said. ''This is our clear message and (the security plan) will be carried out far away from any political or sectarian calculations.''

Politicians allied with the anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, commander of the militia allegedly courted by al-Zamili, denounced the minister's arrest as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty and demanded that al-Maliki intervene to win his release.

Shiite cleric Mohammed al-Haidari said al-Zamili was detained ''without a warrant and without the knowledge of the prime minister.''

He also denounced the abduction of an Iranian diplomat in Baghdad that Tehran has blamed on the U.S., despite denials by Washington. And he warned the tensions between the U.S. and Iran were harming Iraq.

''We are a weak country and we do not need problems,'' he said during Friday prayers in Baghdad. ''If America has problems with Iran, then it should settle them outside Iraq, the United States should not make Iraq the field for this dispute.''

Another U.S. airstrike Thursday night killed eight suspected insurgents and destroyed a building in Arab Jabour, a mostly Sunni Muslim suburb south of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

American troops came under ''heavy enemy fire during a raid targeting al-Qaida in Iraq terrorists and foreign fighter facilitators,'' the military said, adding that no U.S. forces or Iraqi civilians were injured.

In Mosul, Sheik Kabir Goran, deputy in charge of the PUK's branch, identified those killed as peshmerga -- members of the Kurdish militia that fought Saddam Hussein's regime for decades. Many peshmerga were incorporated into the Iraqi military since the U.S.-led invasion. Some Kurdish forces are slated to take over a key role in pacifying Baghdad during the U.S.-Iraqi security plan.

Goran said U.S. forces went to the Kurdish post after the airstrike and provided care to the wounded before returning them to the PUK branch. The U.S. military said nine people also were detained and turned over to Iraqi police.

Serko Othman, a foreign affairs officer for the PUK in Sulaimaniyah, said a joint committee comprising Kurdish and U.S. forces would investigate the attack.

''They told us that this was friendly fire and we think that they thought it was training camp for militants,'' Othman said.

Also Friday, police said gunmen dressed in Iraqi army uniforms swept into a village about 47 miles south of Baghdad before dawn, kidnapping 13 civilians and killing at least 11 of them.

The attack occurred in Imam, a predominantly Shiite village. Police later found 11 bodies with gunshot wounds to the head and chest, and they were believed to be those who had been kidnapped, police and the Iraqi army said.

Iraqi army spokesman, 1st Lt. Murad al-Maamouri, said the gunmen wore Iraqi army uniforms and drove military vehicles, but added they were not government soldiers.

Associated Press writer Sinan Salaheddin contributed to this report from Baghdad.

    Report: U.S. Airstrike Kills 5 Kurds, NYT, 9.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Copter Crashes

as Baghdad Push Begins

February 7, 2007
The New York Times
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and MARC SANTORA

BAGHDAD, Feb. 7 — An American CH-46 Sea Knight military helicopter crashed about 20 miles northwest of Baghdad on Tuesday, the American military said today. It is the fifth American helicopter to crash or be shot down in less than three weeks, and military officials have grown increasingly concerned that Iraqi insurgents have adapted their tactics to be much more effective against American aircraft.

By late afternoon in Baghdad, the military had not released any information about casualties or the cause of the crash. The helicopter — a large transport model easily distinguished by its twin rotors, one mounted near the cockpit and the other on a tall structure at the tail — can carry as many as 25 combat troops, according to GlobalSecurity.org.

Meanwhile today, the United States military announced that the new Baghdad security operation had officially begun, but that it will take hold gradually and will not be completely in place for some time yet.

Initial reports from witnesses in the area of the helicopter crash suggested that the aircraft was hit by ground fire.

One Iraqi said he saw the incident as he tended his herd of grazing sheep near Karma, between Baghdad and Falluja, an area where insurgent activity has been heavy.

“I looked at the sky and saw this big helicopter with double rotors, and it was hit in its tail and burning,” the witness said, declining to give his name. “Another helicopter, with one rotor, was flying just behind it.”

He said the stricken helicopter flew for another half-mile or so before crashing.

“I saw a lot of airplanes after the crash, and I took my herd and left,” he said. “I was afraid there would be shooting after that.”

An Internet message from an insurgent group called the Islamic State of Iraq claimed credit for downing the helicopter. The message said that the group’s anti-aircraft battalion shot it down and that hundreds of witnesses saw the incident, according to the SITE Institute, which tracks internet postings by insurgent groups.

The Iraqi general who is leading the new security drive took over command at the operation’s headquarters on Monday, and American and Iraqi forces have been conducting raids for weeks. But there had been no official announcement until today that the security crackdown in the capital, the third major attempt to crush violence in nine months, was under way.

“It is ongoing as we speak,” said Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, a spokesman for the American military. “The implementation of the prime minister’s plan has already begun, and will be fully implemented at a later date, having all the parts and pieces that he wants.

“It is not going to be a sudden effort, it will be a gradual effort,” the general added. “People have to be patient. “Portions are already being put in place, and we’ll continue to put more into place as the forces arrive and the assets become available.”

The American military said today that Iraqi security forces and American troops cleared neighborhoods in northeast Baghdad of insurgent activity on Tuesday, detaining 20 suspected terrorists. It also announced the death on Tuesday of a marine in combat in Al Anbar Province.

At least 15 Iraqis were killed in attacks around the country today, including two employees of the government-financed Iraqi Media Network in Baghdad and a government official who was shot to death while she was riding to work with her husband in the northern city of Mosul, according to The Associated Press.

The American military said that in Diyala Province, an armed group in the al-Moaalimin neighborhood in the Miqdadiya district north of Baquba forced people to gather in the center of town and watch as they beheaded a police officer.

Another police officer was killed by a bomb in the center of Baquba, and a bomb wounded four people in Baghdad, including a police officer; another bomb in the capital, aimed at a police convoy, wounded one person.

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki acknowledged on Tuesday, for the first time, that his government had stumbled in its efforts to carry out the new security plan in Baghdad, and that the delays and mounting violence were hurting its credibility with the Iraqi people.

“I feel that we are late,” he said in an address to his senior military commanders that was broadcast live on Iraqi national television. “This delay is giving a negative impression and has led some people to say that we have already failed.”

Pressure is increasing on the Maliki government to show signs of progress on the security plan that was announced more than a month ago, especially after three weeks of bloody violence that has killed 3,000 civilians.

Mr. Maliki made it clear to the commanders that they needed to show results soon. “I call on you to quickly finish the preparations so that we don’t disappoint people,” he said.

Mr. Maliki offered no reasons for the delay, but Iraqi military officials had expressed frustration over the slow pace and have cited several problems, including the failure of Iraqi troops from other parts of the country to arrive on schedule in Baghdad, the capital.

The choice of top commanders, drawn from the army and the police, has largely been settled, the officials said, but was slowed by sectarian disagreements, with Shiites objecting to Sunnis and Sunnis objecting to Shiites.

Integrating the Iraqi police force with the army, essential to the plan, remains a problem, officers say. Some Sunni neighborhoods remain off limits to the police, because they are thought to be deeply infiltrated by Shiite militias and are widely distrusted by Sunni residents.

The stepped up pace of the violence against Shiites since the plan was announced, which American and Iraqi officials say is part of a strategy by Sunni insurgents to undermine the government, has further convinced many Shiites that the Iraqi security forces are hapless.

Mr. Maliki told his commanders that they needed to be aggressive and to deploy their troops in force soon to combat that impression, and he promised that unspecified elements of the crackdown would start within days.

“We should not be late, because any more delay would raise suspicions about the military and police forces,” he said.

Mr. Maliki has sought to put an Iraqi face on the new plan, but people whose lives have been torn apart by the bloodshed here have also blamed the Americans for failing to provide security. American officials have defended the pace of the operation, emphasizing that it involves a rolling buildup of forces that will take time.

The violence continued Tuesday, though perhaps more slowly than in the past few days. An employee in the prime minister’s office who was working on antiterrorism issues was killed, a police official said.

Three car bombs killed at least six people and wounded 17 more, gunmen killed two police officers, and 11 people were kidnapped from a house in the Sadr City section of Baghdad overnight.

Mr. Maliki’s aides said that while they were frustrated by the delay, trying to rush the security plan into action before the forces were ready would only compound the problems.

“It could be like an abortion for this operation,” said Sadiq al-Rikabi, a political adviser to the prime minister. “Finishing it before it starts.”

American officers have said the new plan, under which an additional 17,000 American forces are to be deployed in Baghdad, would not necessarily have an official start. They have said it would be more accurate to describe the effort as a broader strategy shift that would put American troops in Baghdad neighborhoods in more aggressive ways, living and working with Iraqi troops.

The Americans are arriving in staggered intervals over months, and troops on the ground are beginning to carry out the new strategy, the officers said. In western Baghdad, American forces are living with Iraqi soldiers at new Joint Security Stations in two neighborhoods. More stations are under construction.

From the beginning, American officers have cautioned that the new plan would take time, because any chance of success rests on building trust with a population whose faith has been severely tested by nearly a year of vicious sectarian violence. But they know that time is not on their side.

“There have to be some early successes to establish momentum,” said one battlefield commander, who like the others spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not designated to talk with reporters.

Despite the setbacks, the shape of the Iraqi side of the plan is coming into focus.

Last month, Mr. Maliki appointed Lt. Gen. Aboud Qanbar as the overall Iraqi commander for forces in Baghdad. General Qanbar, who had worked in the prime minister’s office for six months on security issues, was not Mr. Maliki’s first choice; that one was rejected by the Americans as too sectarian. But Mr. Maliki, in turn, rejected the candidate proposed by the Americans, leading to a bitter row that ultimately ended with the Americans accepting General Qanbar, who was largely unknown to them.

But one of General Qanbar’s chief selling points to Iraqi officials was precisely his relative obscurity since the American invasion in 2003. “There are many officers who could do the job better, but appointing them would have caused an uproar among the Sunnis,” an Iraqi officer said.

Under the new plan, two other commanders will report directly to General Qanbar, one responsible for eastern Baghdad and the other responsible for western Baghdad. The Iraqis and the Americans have agreed on those appointments.

The plan also calls for Baghdad to be divided into nine security districts, each with a commander. Those choices were completed recently, Iraqi officials said.

Qais Mizher and Jon Elsen contributed reporting.

    Copter Crashes as Baghdad Push Begins, NYT, 7.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/07/world/middleeast/07cnd-iraq.html

Military Wants More Civilians

to Help in Iraq

February 7, 2007
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER and DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 — Senior military officers, including members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have told President Bush and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates that the new Iraq strategy could fail unless more civilian agencies step forward quickly to carry out plans for reconstruction and political development.

The complaints reflect fresh tensions between the Pentagon and the State Department over personnel demands that have fallen most heavily on the military. But they also draw on a deeper reservoir of concerns among officers who have warned that a military buildup alone cannot solve Iraq’s problems, and who now fear that the military will bear a disproportionate burden if Mr. Bush’s strategy falls short.

Among particular complaints, the officers cited a request from the office of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that military personnel temporarily fill more than one-third of 350 new State Department jobs in Iraq that are to be created under the new strategy.

At a Senate hearing on Tuesday, Mr. Gates made clear that he shared the officers’ concerns, telling senators, “If you were troubled by the memo, that was mild compared to my reaction when I saw it.”

To back up his point, Mr. Gates also told senators that Mr. Bush himself had addressed his cabinet at the White House on Monday about the need for civilian agencies to “step up to the task.”

At one level, the conflict is a cultural clash between a military that has ordered hundreds of thousands of troops to Iraq in the last four years, and a Foreign Service that offers incentives for civilians to work in war zones but cannot compel diplomats to accept hardship assignments to places like Iraq.

Under Mr. Bush’s strategy, the military is pushing more than 20,000 fresh troops to Baghdad to augment the American military force of about 132,000 already in Iraq.

The State Department, leading an interagency effort, has been ordered to expand the provincial reconstruction teams in Baghdad and western Anbar Province to accelerate political and economic development at the local level.

Small teams of American personnel are to be placed inside Iraqi ministries to make sure that $10 billion in Iraqi funds committed to the effort are spent, and spent correctly.

The entire United States Foreign Service numbers only 6,000 people, about the size of a military brigade.

In defense of the diplomats’ role, David M. Satterfield, the State Department’s Iraq coordinator, told Congress in January that the department’s task in Iraq amounted to “the largest presence of the foreign service in any country in the world,” including more than 140 Foreign Service officers in Baghdad and over 50 more in the existing provincial reconstruction teams.

Last month, after Mr. Bush announced his new strategy, Ms. Rice told Congress that the department was “ready to strengthen, indeed to ‘surge,’ our civilian efforts.”

But Mr. Gates said Tuesday that Ms. Rice had told him that her department needed six months to locate and prepare civil servants and contractors to send abroad. “It is illustrative of the difficulty of getting other agencies to provide people on a timely basis,” Mr. Gates said.

Members of the Joint Chiefs and commanders in Iraq have been delivering the same message recently to the president and defense secretary about the necessity for other parts of government to join the effort, according to administration and military officials.

“The chiefs have made that point, and repeatedly,” said one senior Bush administration official who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions among the president, defense secretary, commanders in Iraq and members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The officials said the commanders had also been expressing broader frustrations, including that the additional $1 billion in new money for reconstruction requested by the president may not be sufficient.

They also fear that additional contractors may not be readily available to assist, and that a large number of jobs that could be performed by civilians — like engineers, lawyers, veterinarians and accountants — are still conducted by military personnel at a time when the armed services are stretched thin.

The mounting tensions between the Pentagon and other departments are in some ways the mirror image of those that roiled the government before the 2003 invasion. Then, State Department officials grumbled that the Pentagon was usurping its role in planning the postwar civilian occupation; today, the military is eager to see others step in.

State Department officials say they are using both incentives and subtler pressures to induce employees to go to Iraq.

But from the standpoint of personal security, taking those jobs — many of them, by definition, outside the relative safety of the Green Zone — is widely seen as an unattractive career option.

Some Foreign Service officers and other civilians in the national security field spoke privately of their frustration at coming under pressure to serve in Iraq, a mission they view as bungled as the Pentagon rebuffed the involvement of experts in other government agencies.

“This is not at all a finger-pointing exercise,” said Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during his Senate testimony on Tuesday. “This is about the current status of our government to be able to respond, and it goes to the expeditionary nature or a lack thereof of most other departments in the government, understandably, based on the kind of wars we’ve faced in the past.”

General Pace argued that the United States government needed “to be able to get folks over to be able to help with judiciary systems, be able to help with engineering, be able to help with electricity and the like before a country devolves into a state where the terrorists can find a home.”

Tasia Scolinos, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said in a statement that the agency “has devoted substantial resources” to training the Iraqi police and creating a justice system. She provided a fact sheet that showed that the Justice Department had 200 employees and contractors in Iraq as of last August.

“We are committed to working closely with the Defense Department and our law enforcement counterparts in Iraq to assess how we can best continue to support the reconstruction efforts in Iraq,” she said.

As evidence of the importance of civilian reconstruction, military officers involved in the internal debate are citing a recent classified study, conducted by the Joint Warfare Analysis Center of the Defense Department, based in Dahlgren, Va., that suggests violence in Baghdad drops significantly when the quality of life improves for Iraqi citizens.

Relying on surveys and other data on those wounded and killed in the violence as compiled by the military, the study found that a 2 percent increase in job satisfaction among Iraqis in Baghdad correlated to a 30 percent decline in attacks on allied forces and a 17 percent decrease in civilian deaths from sectarian violence.

The study did not examine the security benefits of adding troops to Iraq or compare it to the nonmilitary portions of the new strategy, according to those who have been briefed on the classified document.

But its emphasis on the importance of reconstruction is being cited by senior military officers and Pentagon officials as more evidence that Congress and the government’s other civilian departments must devote more money and personnel to nonmilitary efforts at improving the economy, industry, agriculture, financial oversight of government spending and the rule of law.

    Military Wants More Civilians to Help in Iraq, NYT, 7.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/07/washington/07military.html

More U.S. troops died in Iraq

over past four months

than in any similar period of war

Updated 2/7/2007 9:45 AM ET
AP
USA Today

WASHINGTON (AP) — More American troops were killed in combat in Iraq over the past four months — at least 334 through Jan. 31 — than in any comparable stretch since the war began, according to an Associated Press analysis of casualty records.

Not since the bloody battle for Fallujah in 2004 has the death toll spiked so high.

The reason is that U.S. soldiers and Marines are fighting more battles in the streets of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, and other cities. And while hostile forces are using a variety of weaponry, the top killer is the roadside bomb.

In some respects it is the urban warfare that U.S. commanders thought they had managed to largely avoid after U.S. troops entered Baghdad in early April 2003 and quickly toppled the Saddam Hussein regime.

And with President Bush now sending thousands more U.S. troops to Baghdad and western Anbar province, despite opposition in Congress and the American public's increasing war weariness, the prospect looms of even higher casualties.

The shadowy insurgency has managed to counter or compensate for every new U.S. military technique for defeating roadside bombs, which over time have proliferated and grown increasingly powerful. The U.S. has spent billions trying to counter that threat, and the Bush administration in its budget 2008 request to Congress this week asked for another $6.4 billion to find more effective defenses against it.

The Pentagon's terse death announcements only begin to tell the story:

_ Sgt. Corey J. Aultz, 31, of Port Orchard, Wash., and Sgt. Milton A. Gist, 27, of St. Louis, died Jan. 30 in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, of wounds from an improvised bomb that detonated near their vehicle.

_ Three days earlier, three soldiers — one just 19 years old — were killed by a roadside bomb in Taji, just north of Baghdad. And a week before that, four soldiers, from towns in the four corners of this country — Florida, New Hampshire, Oregon and California — were killed by a roadside bomb not far from Fallujah.

The increasingly urban nature of the war is reflected in the fact that a higher percentage of U.S. deaths have been in Baghdad lately. Over the course of the war, at least 1,142 U.S. troops have died in Anbar province, the heart of the Sunni Arab insurgency, through Feb. 6, according to an AP count. That compares with 713 in Baghdad. But since Dec. 28, 2006, there were more in Baghdad than in Anbar — 33 to 31.

The surge in combat deaths comes as the Pentagon begins adding 21,500 troops in Iraq as part of Bush's new strategy for stabilizing the country. Most are going to Baghdad, but some are being sent Anbar.

With the buildup, U.S. forces will be operating more aggressively in Baghdad as they try to tamp down sectarian bloodshed, a tactical shift that senior military officials say raises the prospect of even higher U.S. casualties.

"There's clearly going to be an increased risk in this area," Adm. William Fallon, Bush's choice to be the next commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, told his Senate confirmation hearing last week.

Risk is already extraordinarily high from known threats, including roadside bombs.

The frustrating fact about the hunt for a solution to the roadside bomb is that the Americans have improved their ability to find and disarm them before they detonate, and they have outfitted troops in better body armor. But the insurgents still manage to adjust: new tactics in planting the bombs, new, more powerful explosives, different means of detonating them and, amazingly, a seemingly endless supply of materials.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday that 70% of U.S. casualties are caused by such bombs. He said that lately Iran, allegedly in league with renegade Shiite groups in southern Iraq, has had a hand in supplying a more lethal version so powerful it can destroy a U.S. Abrams battle tank, which is shielded with heavy armor.

On Jan. 22, Army National Guard Spc. Brandon L. Stout, 23, of Grand Rapids, Mich., was killed by one of those more powerful bombs, known as an explosively formed projectile, that went off near his vehicle in Baghdad. A week earlier, four soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in the northern city of Mosul.

It is not possible to fully track the trend in bomb-caused deaths by month. The U.S. military considers such information secret because it is considered potentially useful to the insurgents and their backers. Also, the Marines do not announce the specific cause of any of their combat deaths, whereas the Army does.

Hostile forces also have had more success lately shooting down U.S. helicopters, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged Tuesday. He said four U.S. helicopters in recent weeks have been shot down by small arms fire, including a Black Hawk in which all 12 National Guard soldiers aboard were killed.

What's more, there have been troubling new twists to some other attacks, including the sneak attack in Karbala that killed five U.S. soldiers; four of them were abducted and executed by unknown gunmen. U.S. officials say they are studying the possibility that Iranian agents either planned or executed that Jan. 20 attack.

A leading war critic, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said he was aware that U.S. casualties were rising, particularly in Anbar province.

"It doesn't surprise me at all because they are targeting American troops," he said.

Less than a year ago, U.S. commanders were anticipating a different scenario, starting a U.S. withdrawal and a more central role for Iraqi troops in battling the insurgents in major cities. Instead, U.S. troops had to step in more directly as the Iraqis came up short, particularly in Baghdad.

Now, under a new approach announced by Bush on Jan. 10, U.S. troops will be paired up with Iraqi brigades in each of nine districts across Baghdad, rather than operating mainly from large U.S. bases.

"Our troops are going to be inserted into the most difficult areas imaginable — right into neighborhoods, right in the face of the Iraqis," Sen. Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said. "How are we going to avoid the inherent risks that are created?"

The recent rise in U.S. combat deaths has developed with relatively little notice in Congress, which has focused on the broader issue of whether to begin withdrawing forces and, now, whether to opposed Bush's troop buildup.

The American public clearly has soured on the war. In an AP-Ipsos poll taken Jan. 8-10, 62% said they thought, looking back, that it had been a mistake to go to war, while 35% said invading was the right decision.

Gates, while not ruling out a rise in casualties during the buildup, told reporters Jan. 26 that he sees a possibility that some insurgents and renegade militias will back off temporarily "in the hope that they can wait us out and filter back once we're gone."

That could mean a decline in the U.S. casualty rate, at least temporarily. And if Bush's plan — which couples a troop buildup with stronger economic development efforts and a renewed push to get the Iraqis to reconcile their political differences — works as intended, then a drop-off in deaths might be longlasting.

The 334 U.S. troops killed in action in Iraq over the past four months does not include 36 who died of non-hostile causes like vehicle accidents. The previous highest total for those killed in action during any four-month period was 308 between September and December 2004, which included the November battle to retake the city of Fallujah.

The recent increase is not linked to variations in U.S. troop levels. That number shifted from about 137,000 troops at the end of January 2006 to a range of 130,000-150,000 during summer and fall before ending the year at 128,000. It has risen now to about 138,000, with the buildup in Baghdad just getting started.

Since the start of the war in Iraq, nearly 3,100 U.S. troops have died, of which nearly 2,500 were killed in action.

In the first half of 2006 there was a downward trend.

From February, when the bombing of a key Shiite mosque in Samarra, north of Baghdad, triggered a surge in sectarian killings, through May, 194 U.S. troops were killed in action, according to Pentagon figures. That was down from 247 in the previous four months. Shortly afterward, Iraqi civilian deaths surged.

From June through September, the total for U.S. troops killed in action was 214, down from 231 in the same period in 2005.

The upward trend began in August, the same month that U.S. and Iraqi forces launched the second phase of a Baghdad security crackdown, dubbed Operation Together Forward, that ultimately failed. From a total of 38 killed in July, the number rose to 58 in August, 61 in September and 99 in October, according to an Associated Press count.

It slipped to 59 in November but jumped to 96 in December and totaled 80 in January.

    More U.S. troops died in Iraq over past four months than in any similar period of war, UT, 7.2.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-02-07-troops-toll_x.htm

Gates Says Some Troops Could Leave Baghdad by 2008

February 6, 2007
By JOHN HOLUSHA
The New York Times

American troops could start leaving Iraq by the end of this year if the plan to suppress sectarian violence with reinforcements in Baghdad is successful, Robert Gates, the secretary of defense, said today.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Forces Committee, Mr. Gates came under intense questioning by Senator Robert Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia.

“How much longer do you think we are going to be in Iraq before we start to bring our people home?” Senator Byrd asked over and over again.

Mr. Gates was reluctant at first to make a prediction, but under pressure said that if the Baghdad operation is successful and the Iraqis “establish leadership” the United States could “begin to draw down troops later this year.”

However, even if the bulk of American forces begin to head home, Mr. Gates said the United States would have to maintain a military presence in Iraq “for years.” He declined to specify how large a force would be required, but said it would be “a fraction of what we have there now.”

The committee interrupted its annual Pentagon budget hearing to approve the nominations of two top military commanders and send them to the Senate floor. Admiral William J. Fallon was endorsed to be chief of military’s Central Command, overseeing Iraq, by a unanimous vote. But General William J. Casey, the former commander in Iraq, who has been nominated to be the Army chief of staff, drew some opposition, winning approval on a 14-3 vote.

    Gates Says Some Troops Could Leave Baghdad by 2008, NYT, 6.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/06/washington/06cnd-military.html

Dozens Killed in Baghdad Bombing

February 3, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:13 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A suicide truck bomber struck a market in a predominantly Shiite area of Baghdad on Saturday, killing at least 102 people among the crowd buying food for evening meals, the most devastating strike in the capital in more than two months.

The attacker was driving a truck carrying food when he detonated his explosives, destroying stores and stalls that had been set up in the busy outdoor Sadriyah market, police said.

The late-afternoon explosion was the latest in a series of attacks against commercial targets in the capital as insurgents seek to maximize the number of people killed ahead of a planned U.S.-Iraqi security sweep.

Many of the injured were driven to the hospitals in pickup trucks and lifted onto stretchers.

''It was a strong blow. A car exploded. I fell on the ground,'' said one young man with a bandaged head, his face still streaked with blood.

Officials said at least 102 people were killed and more than 200 wounded.

It was the deadliest attack in the capital since Nov. 23, when suspected al-Qaida in Iraq fighters attacked the capital's Sadr City Shiite slum with a series of car bombs and mortars that struck in quick succession, killing at least 215 people.

A suicide bomber also crashed his car into the Bab al-Sharqi market, near Sadriyah, on Jan. 22, killing 88 people. The surge in violence comes as Sunni insurgents have stepped up attacks against Shiite targets in an apparent bid to maximize the number of people killed ahead of a planned U.S.-Iraqi security sweep.

In the northern city of Kirkuk, eight bombs exploded within two hours, beginning with a suicide car bomber who targeted the offices of the Kurdish Democratic Party of Massoud Barzani, leader of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, police said. Two people were killed in the first explosion, which devastated four nearby houses.

Nobody claimed responsibility for the attacks in the oil-rich region, but concerns have been raised that insurgents have fled north to avoid the impending crackdown in Baghdad.

At the Kurdish party offices, guards opened fire as the attacker drove up, and the explosives detonated about 15 yards from the building, killing at least two people and wounding 30, including five KDP guards, police Col. Dishtoun Mohammed said.

Concrete blast walls protected the offices from serious damage, but the explosion devastated four nearby houses. Five charred cars were near the entrance of the Kurdish building, in a mainly Turkomen district.

''We are upset and angry about the existence of a party office in our area,'' Um Khalid, a 52-year-old Turkomen housewife, said as she examined her damaged home. ''Had the office not been here, the suicide bomber would not have chosen to explode his car near our houses.''

Another car bomb exploded about 20 minutes later near a girls' school in the south of the city, but the school was closed for the weekend and no casualties were reported, police Col. Anwar Hassan said.

A third car bomb hit a gas station in southern Kirkuk, followed by two other parked car bombs 20 minutes later near a popular pastry shop. Eight people were wounded in those explosions.

''I heard the sound of the explosion as I was adding water to the flour inside the shop. I rushed outside to see smoke and fire rising from the car bombs while some moving cars were colliding with each other,'' said Mohammed Faleh, who works in the Shaima pastry shop.

A sixth car bomb wounded five other people in the mainly Arab al-Wasiti area in southern Kirkuk, while two roadside bombs targeted police patrols at about the same time in a predominantly Christian area in the north of the city.

Razqar Ali, a Kurdish leader and head of Kirkuk provincial council, accused the militants of trying to destabilize the city, which Kurds hope to incorporate into their autonomous region to the north -- over the objections of the Arab and Turkomen populations.

''They want to depict the city as unsafe to provide a pretext to other groups to interfere,'' he said, an implicit reference to Turkey's objections to the Kurdish efforts.

Turkey, Iraq's northern neighbor, is pressuring the Iraqi government to protect the interests of the Turkomen, ethnic Turks who once were a majority in the city. Ankara also fears Iraqi Kurdish ambitions could fuel hostilities with Kurdish separatists at home.

In Mosul, northwest of Kirkuk, armed insurgents and Iraqi forces fought for several hours and authorities imposed a temporary curfew on the city. There was no immediate word on casualties. Police spokesman Brig. Abdul Karim al-Jubouri said Iraqi security forces backed by U.S. air power were moving in.

Gunmen also attacked a police checkpoint at the northern entrance to Samarra 60 miles north of Baghdad, killing four policemen and wounding another, police said, adding that three militants were killed and one was wounded in the fighting that lasted for about 30 minutes.

In Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad, a convoy of 15 cars carrying gunmen brandishing weapons and banners declaring the establishment of an ''Islamic State'' drove through the Sunni town while businessmen quickly closed their stores for fear of trouble.

The show of force followed the Iraqi government's announcement on Tuesday that it had arrested a provincial leader of al-Qaida in Iraq and broken a major cell in the area.

On Friday, a U.S. Army helicopter was shot down near Taji, a major U.S. base about 12 miles north of Baghdad, police and witnesses said -- the fourth helicopter lost in Iraq in the last two weeks. The U.S. command said two crew members were killed, and the al-Qaida-linked Islamic State of Iraq claimed responsibility.

Iraq's senior Shiite cleric, meanwhile, called for Muslim unity and called for an end to sectarian conflict -- his first public statement in months on the worsening security crisis.

He called on all Muslims to work to overcome sectarian differences and calm the passions, which serve only ''those who want to dominate the Islamic country and control its resources to achieve their aims.''

Associated Press writers Sameer N. Yacoub in Baghdad and Yahya Barzanji in Kirkuk contributed to this story.

    Dozens Killed in Baghdad Bombing, NYT, 3.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq.html?hp&ex=1170565200&en=5ea5384640caba0b&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Intelligence Estimate

Paints Grim View of Iraq

February 2, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A new National Intelligence Estimate paints a grim view of the violence and political situation facing the United States in Iraq, according to officials familiar with a much-anticipated, collaborative analysis from all 16 U.S. spy agencies.

The Office of the National Intelligence Director was releasing an unclassified summary of the document -- entitled "Prospects for Iraq's Stability: A Challenging Road Ahead" -- on Friday. President Bush was briefed on its conclusions on Thursday.

The newest intelligence assessment concludes that success there depends on improving poor security, which is fueling sectarian violence, hurting the government and slowing reconstruction. Officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the document had not yet been released said that the document is a rigorous, grave assessment of the situation facing Iraq, but it does reveal areas where change could lead to positive developments.

The report addressed security threats in Iraq posed by both Iran and Syria.

The general conclusion was that the biggest security problem is of a sectarian nature but that outside Iranian involvement makes the situation worse. Similarly, it said that Syria's failure to control its borders has allowed foreign jihadists to enter Iraq.

The administration said the document provided clear and compelling evidence of why the U.S. strategy in Iraq had to be changed. Bush, in a policy reversal, announced on Jan. 10 that he was sending an additional 21,500 U.S. troops to Iraq.

The report warned of ominous consequences if the violence was left unchecked. "Unless efforts to reverse these conditions show measurable progress during the term of this estimate in the coming 12 to 18 months, we assess that the overall security situation will continue to deteriorate," the report said.

The Bush White House saw the document as support for the president's new strategy and troop buildup. "Coalition capabilities including force levels, resources and operations remain an essential stabilizing element in Iraq," the report said.

It argues against a rapid withdrawal of U.S. troops, according to an administration official familiar with the conclusions. Such a move would fracture the Iraqi army, lead to the creation of an al-Qaida state in Anbar Province and result in significantly increased violence, the report said.

It drew no conclusions about whether Iraq has fallen into a civil war, said an official, insisting on anonymity because the document has not been released.

The Washington Post reported Friday that the estimate describes an increasingly perilous situation in which the U.S. has little control and further deterioration is possible. According to the paper, the report says that al-Qaida activities remain a problem, but Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence is the primary source of conflict and the most immediate threat to U.S. goals.

National Intelligence Director John Negroponte, who briefed Bush Thursday morning, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee earlier this week that Iraq was "at a precarious juncture."

"That means the situation could deteriorate, but there are prospects for increasing stability," said Negroponte, who is stepping down as the nation's top intelligence official to join the State Department as its No. 2 official. However, he cautioned that stability depended on bringing an end to sectarian violence and fighting all extremist elements.

Congressional officials have been pressing Negroponte for a completed estimate since before the November elections. It comes as Congress is considering resolutions about Bush's decision to send thousands of additional troops into Iraq as part of an overhaul to his war policy. He has also said the United States will put more pressure on the Iraqis to repair the security situation.

The administration's decision to release the National Intelligence Estimate marks a new way of doing business at the National Intelligence Council.

The 12 to 15 high-level estimates that it produces annually contain the best thinking from the nation's 16 spy agencies. But these typically classified reports have been leaked recently, to the frustration of administration officials.

In a brief overview of the assessment last month, Thomas Fingar, who heads the National Intelligence Council, has said recently that it will be difficult -- but not impossible -- for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to succeed.

"The logic that we have applied looks at the importance of security -- security as an impediment to reconciliation, as an impediment to good governance, as an impediment to reconstruction," Fingar testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Fingar said that improved stability "could open a window for gains in reconciliation" among Iraq's sectarian groups, including the Sunnis and the Shiites. And that "could open possibilities for a moderate coalition in the legislature that could commit better governance," he added, acknowledging the assessment was full of conditional statements.

Fingar said the government's analysts believe that al-Maliki "does not wish to preside over the disintegration of Iraq."

Intelligence Estimate Paints Grim View of Iraq, NYT, 2.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Iraq-Intelligence-Estimate.html