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

Milt Priggee

cartoon

Seattle (WA)        Cagle        3 November 2007

President George W. Bush

6, 000 Sunnis Join Pact With US in Iraq

November 29, 2007
Filed at 4:11 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

HAWIJA, Iraq (AP) -- Nearly 6,000 Sunni Arab residents joined a security pact with American forces Wednesday in what U.S. officers described as a critical step in plugging the remaining escape routes for extremists flushed from former strongholds.

The new alliance -- called the single largest volunteer mobilization since the war began -- covers the ''last gateway'' for groups such as al-Qaida in Iraq seeking new havens in northern Iraq, U.S. military officials said.

U.S. commanders have tried to build a ring around insurgents who fled military offensives launched earlier this year in the western Anbar province and later into Baghdad and surrounding areas. In many places, the U.S.-led battles were given key help from tribal militias -- mainly Sunnis -- that had turned against al-Qaida and other groups.

Extremists have sought new footholds in northern areas once loyal to Saddam Hussein's Baath party as the U.S.-led gains have mounted across central regions. But their ability to strike near the capital remains.

A woman wearing an explosive-rigged belt blew herself up near an American patrol near Baqouba, about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, the military announced Wednesday. The blast on Tuesday -- a rare attack by a female suicide bomber -- wounded seven U.S. troops and five Iraqis, the statement said.

The ceremony to pledge the 6,000 new fighters was presided over by a dozen sheiks -- each draped in black robes trimmed with gold braiding -- who signed the contract on behalf of tribesmen at a small U.S. outpost in north-central Iraq.

For about $275 a month -- nearly the salary for the typical Iraqi policeman -- the tribesmen will man about 200 security checkpoints beginning Dec. 7, supplementing hundreds of Iraqi forces already in the area.

About 77,000 Iraqis nationwide, mostly Sunnis, have broken with the insurgents and joined U.S.-backed self-defense groups.

Those groups have played a major role in the lull in violence: 648 Iraqi civilians have been killed or found dead in November to date, according to figures compiled by The Associated Press. This compares with 2,155 in May as the so-called ''surge'' of nearly 30,000 additional American troops gained momentum.

U.S. troop deaths in Iraq also have dropped sharply. So far this month, the military has reported 35 deaths -- including an American soldier killed Wednesday in western Baghdad -- compared with 38 in October. In June, 101 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq.

Village mayors and others who signed Wednesday's agreement say about 200 militants have sought refuge in the area, about 30 miles southwest of Kirkuk on the edge of northern Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region. Hawija is a predominantly Sunni Arab cluster of villages which has long been an insurgent flashpoint.

The recently arrived militants have waged a campaign of killing and intimidation to try to establish a new base, said Sheikh Khalaf Ali Issa, mayor of Zaab village.

''They killed 476 of my citizens, and I will not let them continue their killing,'' Issa said.

With the help of the new Sunni allies, ''the Hawija area will be an obstacle to militants, rather than a pathway for them,'' said Maj. Sean Wilson, with the Army's 1st Brigade, 10th Mountain Division. ''They're another set of eyes that we needed in this critical area.''

By defeating militants in Hawija, U.S. and Iraqi leaders hope to keep them away from Kirkuk, an ethnically diverse city that is also the hub of Iraq's northern oil fields.

''They want to go north into Kirkuk and wreak havoc there, and that's exactly what we're trying to avoid,'' Army Maj. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, the top U.S. commander in northern Iraq, told The Associated Press this week.

Kurds often consider Kirkuk part of their ancestral homeland and often refer to the city as the ''Kurdish Jerusalem.'' Saddam, however, relocated tens of thousands of pro-regime Arabs to the city in the 1980s and 1990s under his ''Arabization'' policy.

The Iraqi government has begun resettling some of those Arabs to their home regions, making room for thousands of Kurds who have gradually returned to Kirkuk since Saddam's ouster.

Tension has been rising over the city's status -- whether it will join the semi-autonomous Kurdish region or continue being governed by Baghdad.

''Hawija is the gateway through which all our communities -- Kurdish, Turkomen and Arab alike -- can become unsafe,'' said Abu Saif al-Jabouri, mayor of al-Multaqa village north of Kirkuk. ''Do I love my neighbor in Hawija? That question no longer matters. I must work to help him, because his safety helps me.''

In Baghdad, a bus convoy arrived carrying hundreds of refugees home from Syria. The buses, funded by the Iraqi government, left Damascus on Tuesday as part of a plan to speed the return of the estimated 2.2 million Iraqis who have fled to neighboring Syria and Jordan.

Also Wednesday, an Iraqi journalist Dhia al-Kawaz who said 11 members of his family -- two sisters, their husbands and their seven children -- were killed in their Baghdad home challenged the government's denial of the deaths.

The Iraqi government spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, insisted that the deaths -- reportedly Sunday in a northern neighborhood of Baghdad known to be a Shiite militia stronghold -- never took place.

Al-Kawaz, who has lived outside Iraq for 20 years, told Al-Jazeera television: ''I ask the spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh to let all of my family appear on TV.''

The media advocacy group Reporters Without Borders earlier this week condemned the attack and said Iraqi police at a nearby checkpoint failed to intervene. Following al-Dabbagh's statement, the organization said it was ''astounded and angry to discover'' that the claim allegedly was false.

6, 000 Sunnis Join Pact With US in Iraq, NYT, 29.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq.html

35 Are Killed in Iraq, 5 by U.S. Troops

November 28, 2007
The New York Times
By DAMIEN CAVE

BAGHDAD, Nov. 27 — American troops in Iraq killed at least five people, including a child, when they fired on vehicles trying to drive through roadblocks in two separate episodes over the past two days, military officials and witnesses said Tuesday.

Beyond that, at least 30 other people were killed or found dead on Tuesday, including three women and three policemen in Baquba, who were killed by a suicide bomber disguised as a shepherd.

One of the shootings involving American soldiers occurred Tuesday morning on a main road in Shaab, a neighborhood of northern Baghdad dominated by the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia loyal to the cleric Moktada al-Sadr. Lt. Justin Cole, a military spokesman, said the soldiers had fired on a minibus that was traveling on a street where only cars were allowed to pass.

In an e-mail message, Lieutenant Cole said that the driver had failed to heed a warning shot, and that two passengers in the minibus were killed and four were wounded. An Interior Ministry official said that four people were killed. A witness said three of them were women.

Witnesses said the minibus had been filled with workers on their way to a local branch of a bank. One witness, who declined to give his full name out of concern for his safety, said the driver might not have realized that buses were not allowed on the street, since it was rush hour, around 8:30 a.m., and several cars could be seen on the street.

The other shooting occurred Monday, during a military operation near Baiji, north of Baghdad. In a statement, the American military said two men in a vehicle had approached a blocked road “at a high rate of speed” and did not stop when requested, or when soldiers fired warning shots. “The ground force engaged,” the statement said, “killing both men.”

The soldiers later discovered that they had wounded a passenger who was a child and who died after being transferred to an American military hospital, the statement said.

The latest shootings came amid a storm of criticism about private security contractors who recently fired on and killed Iraqi civilians in a series of high-profile cases. A common situation involves Iraqis shot in their cars after they approach armed convoys, and similar encounters involving American soldiers are not uncommon.

The shootings by soldiers appear to receive less attention from Iraqi officials because, unlike contractors, whose legal situation remains murky, American soldiers are subject to military law. The military also often issues public apologies and pays compensation.

Most of the other violence on Tuesday occurred north and west of the capital. In Baquba, the capital of Diyala Province to the north, a suicide bomber killed at least six and wounded 10 near a police command center downtown, security officials said. The bomber was disguised as a shepherd and was herding sheep toward a checkpoint when he blew himself up, Reuters reported.

“There was nothing suspicious about him because it’s an open, agricultural area and it’s normal for shepherds to be around here," Reuters quoted a Diyala police official, Lt. Ali Jassim, as saying.

A second suicide bomber, identified by the police as a woman, blew herself up near an American military patrol, wounding five Iraqis, including two children. Four other attacks — three involving gunfire, the fourth a roadside bomb — killed four people in the province.

Farther north, near Tikrit, the police found four bodies. In and around Kirkuk, a policeman was shot and killed, and the authorities found two unidentified bodies. In the same province, two American soldiers died Tuesday from an explosion near their vehicles, while two others were wounded, the American military said.

To the west, in Anbar Province, a rocket hit a crowded market in Haditha, killing at least five people and wounding 30 more.

Lt. Mohammad al-Nimrawi, of the Haditha police force, said the rocket appeared to have been aimed at a joint base of Iraqi and American forces nearby.

In Baghdad, the police found three bodies across the city. A grenade killed a woman in the southern neighborhood of Dora, while two roadside bombs and a gun battle in Saydia left at least 10 people wounded.

Also on Tuesday, Falah Shanshal, a lawmaker with the bloc loyal to Mr. Sadr, said Iraqis victimized by Saddam Hussein must be paid compensation by the government before Parliament approves a proposed law allowing some former Baath Party members to return to government jobs.

He said Iraqis whose relatives were killed by the Hussein government should receive about $40,000 and a small monthly pension. Political prisoners, he said, should receive $24,000.

It remains unclear whether the Sadrists’ demands will be enough to derail the law, which has received support from the leaders of Iraq’s main parties. A similar proposal reached Parliament earlier this year, but was never subjected to a vote because of last-minute opposition from Shiites in southern Iraq.

The Iraqi government, in a separate effort to broaden its support among Sunnis, said Monday that it would start paying the salaries of tens of thousands of unofficial security guards, who act as a neighborhood watch.

Their salaries, $300 a month, are currently paid by American forces.

Cara Buckley and Abeer Mohammed contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Baquba, Kirkuk, Ramadi and Tikrit.

    35 Are Killed in Iraq, 5 by U.S. Troops, NYT, 28.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/28/world/middleeast/28iraq.html

Grim View of Iraq Dangers in Survey of Journalists

November 28, 2007
The New York Times
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

In a newly released survey, American journalists in Iraq give harrowing accounts of their work, with the great majority saying that colleagues have been kidnapped or killed and that most parts of Baghdad are too dangerous for them to visit.

The survey was conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, an arm of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center in Washington. Of the 111 journalists who participated, half had spent at least nine months in Iraq, and three-quarters had experience reporting on other armed conflicts. Most of the journalists were surveyed in October, one of the least deadly months in Baghdad in recent years.

Almost two-thirds of the respondents said that most or all of their street reporting was done by local citizens, yet 87 percent said that it was not safe for their Iraqi reporters to openly carry notebooks, cameras or anything else that identified them as journalists. Two-thirds of respondents said they worried that their reliance on local reporters — including many with little or no background in journalism — could produce inaccurate or incomplete news reports.

The Americans also voiced serious concerns about how effectively they were able to do their own jobs. Most respondents said that the media did not do a good job covering the lives of ordinary Iraqis or reconstruction efforts, simply because those lines of reporting could be deadly.

The Project for Excellence said that the journalists in the survey worked for 29 of the 30 news organizations that report regularly from Iraq and reach large American audiences. The organizations include newspapers, news agencies, magazines, broadcast and cable television networks, and radio networks. One organization declined to take part, and all but one that did participate are based in the United States.

The Project for Excellence kept the names of the organizations secret as well as those of the journalists, citing security concerns.

“The grimness of the results surprised me,” said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the project. “It shows how difficult and extraordinarily dangerous telling this story is.”

When asked to elaborate on the risks, the Americans gave comments like, “Seven staffers killed since 2003, including three last July,” and, “The dangers can’t be overstated.” One wrote of routinely sitting away from windows to avoid shards of glass from an explosion, and “scanning every car on the street for low rides (too much weight) and weapons,” adding, “It’s amazingly scary.”

Iraqi employees take the greatest risks by far on behalf of the American media, going to the most dangerous places and dying in the greatest numbers, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, a separate organization that keeps track of violence against journalists.

That group says that 124 journalists from around the world have been killed in Iraq since the war there began in 2003, including 102 Iraqis. In addition, 49 support staff employees working for news organizations — people like drivers, bodyguards and translators — have been killed, and all but one of them were Iraqis.

Of the respondents, 69 percent said that most or all of Baghdad was too dangerous to visit; only 6 percent said that less than half of Baghdad was too dangerous.

Almost three-quarters of the journalists travel with armed guards, and nearly as many ride in armored vehicles. A majority said that traveling with the United States military imposes some limitations on their reporting, but it also allows them to go places they could not survive otherwise.

    Grim View of Iraq Dangers in Survey of Journalists, NYT, 28.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/28/business/media/28pew.html?hp

Injured in Iraq, a Soldier Hobbles Toward Recovery

November 25, 2007
The New York Times
By ANDREW JACOBS

FREDERICKSBURG, Va. — It is hard to know whether Master Sgt. Joseph Santiago was wincing from the pain creeping from the hole in his head to his atrophied legs or from the words of the politicians who were calling him a hero. After they were done commending his sacrifice on the battlefields of Iraq, he grabbed the microphone, handed his cane to his wife, and announced that he wanted to set the record straight.

“When I hear the word ‘wounded,’ I think of someone who got shot or blown up,” he said with a pasted-on smile. “I took a fall.”

An awkward hush fell over the two dozen guests who gathered recently at a suburban mall here to christen Sergeant Santiago’s new business, a Nestle Toll House Cafe. With the ribbon cut, everyone filed inside for celebratory squares of a giant chocolate-chip cookie that had been slathered with red, white and blue frosting.

The event was meant to mark the progress that Sergeant Santiago, 42, has made since he was injured in an accident in which he fell from a 25-foot-high berm separating Iraq and Kuwait four and a half years ago. But all he could talk about was the throbbing in his head, his loss of short-term memory, his inability to distinguish numbers from letters and — most of all — his unceasing frustration over being denied combat disability status by military doctors.

“I may have bumped my head, but I’m not stupid,” he said again and again, showing one symptom of his injuries: a tendency to repeat himself.

Sergeant Santiago’s odyssey through the Pentagon bureaucracy is one shared by scores of soldiers who have sustained traumatic brain injuries, whose repercussions can be hard to quantify and even harder to treat. Doctors say more than 2,000 soldiers have suffered traumatic brain injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan, though experts say as many as 150,000 troops may be grappling with the effects of head trauma.

Hurt on the first day of the American invasion of Iraq, Sergeant Santiago has been an early test case of how military officials deal with such injuries. “Going through the medical review process has been tough for Joe, but I think the Army has learned from his experience,” said his commander, Col. Mike Bechtold, who has been an advocate for the sergeant during his travails with the government-run health care system.

Sergeant Santiago’s family and friends describe his treatment as shameful. For three years, they say, doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center have accused him of exaggerating his symptoms; they also have suggested that his inability to function normally is the result of a pre-existing malformation at the base of his skull.

Last year, a doctor at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Washington disagreed with that assessment, saying Sergeant Santiago’s memory loss, slurred speech and nerve damage were caused by his fall. Still, without an official designation from a medical review board at Walter Reed, he is not entitled to collect the full retirement benefits awarded to injured soldiers. He has spent 25 years in the Army, and is scheduled to retire formally in three months.

His injuries are the result of a misstep in the dark. Sergeant Santiago, a chemical and biological weapons expert, was patrolling a berm on the Iraq-Kuwait border when a firefight between American and Iraqi troops broke out in the distance. He was watching through his binoculars when a comrade called out his name. Pivoting in the blackness, he misjudged the edge of the wall and plummeted head first into the sand below.

After regaining consciousness, he hauled himself up, ignoring calls to await a medic and shouting, he recalled, “I’m fine! I guess I have two left feet!”

Sergeant Santiago would gradually lose the attributes that made him a prized member of his team, which was searching for unconventional weapons. He could hide the pain and numbness in his limbs, but his fellow soldiers noticed that he was repeating himself and forgetting orders. It was during an ambush in Karbala, when Sergeant Santiago’s leaden legs would not let him flee his vehicle, that he had to admit there was something wrong.

He flew back to the United States, and a series of tests revealed jangled vertebrae, swelling in his brain and tears in the lining of his hip joint. He underwent emergency surgery — cutting out a section of his skull to relieve the pressure on his brain — but by then, the damage had been done.

He easily snapped into fits of rage, he urinated uncontrollably and he became obsessed with cleanliness. Sometimes he forgot he had taken his medication moments earlier and would take a second dose. He spent days in pain, curled up in a fetal position. Any noise worsened his agony, so he avoided his family.

“I became pretty intolerable,” he said. His wife, Stacy, said she flirted with divorce, but since last year, when he had a device implanted in his brain to help neutralize the pain, Sergeant Santiago has become more even keeled.

“I feel like I married two different men,” said Ms. Santiago, 37, taking a break from her baking duties at the cookie store. “Joe before the war and Joe after the war.”

Sergeant Santiago, who spent much of his enlisted life based at Fort Drum in Watertown, N.Y., and — in addition to Iraq — served in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Germany, said that he would prefer to stay in the Army, but he has been told by officials that that will not be possible.

“He can’t do anything,” Ms. Santiago said. “He can’t mow the lawn, shovel snow or lift anything over 10 pounds.”

Facing life in the civilian world, he decided that starting his own business with his wife might be the only way to support his family. But then he encountered another round of problems. He spent his family’s savings to buy the Nestle franchise and applied for a business loan to pay for construction of the store. More than a year later, with renovations on the store under way, his loan application was rejected, he said, because bank officers were worried that his disability made him a credit risk.

The Santiagos found the Veterans Corporation, a nonprofit group that helps veterans start businesses. James Mingey, an advocate and disabled Vietnam War veteran, took up his case and convinced the bank that denying the loan would be create more trouble than it was worth.

The cafe’s christening two weeks ago was a bittersweet affair. Men in military fatigues streamed in to show their support while Sergeant Santiago talked about the impending round of surgeries he faced and his hope of somehow staying in the military.

As he spoke, his leg bounced like a piston and his face was contorted, a response, his wife explained, to the mounting pain. “By 7 o’clock,” she said. “I’ll have to take him home, and he’ll be curled up in a ball.”

When he went outside to smoke a cigarette — he burns through a pack a day — Ms. Santiago sat down for a break. The business is officially his, she said, but she does the work since her husband spends most of his days going to physical therapy sessions or doctor’s appointments.

“Sometimes I want to kill him, but we’ve all learned to have patience,” she said wearily. “The only good thing is that we fight, and 10 minutes later he forgets it ever happened.”

    Injured in Iraq, a Soldier Hobbles Toward Recovery, NYT, 25.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/us/25santiago.html

Attack at Baghdad Market Kills at Least 13

November 24, 2007
The New York Times
By STEPHEN FARRELL

BAGHDAD, Nov. 23 — At least 13 people were killed and more than 50 wounded by a bomb at a crowded pet market in central Baghdad today, the deadliest attack in the capital for weeks.

The explosion left headless bodies, dead birds and shattered fish tanks around the Ghazil animal market in east Baghdad, where many families of all sects visit one of the most popular attractions in the city on the Muslim day of prayer.

Tension has eased in Baghdad in recent weeks, with American and Iraqi commanders reporting a steep decline in bombings, suicide attacks and militia killings.

However, the bomber today managed to pass police checkpoints and tight security to sneak the explosives into the market, which is in a predominantly Shiite area and is sealed off to most vehicles on Friday mornings.

Initial police reports said they believed the explosives may have been hidden inside a box containing birds. One stall holder said it was planted beneath a wooden pushcart selling hummus.

“The explosion occurred around 9:00 a.m. at a busy hour,” said Haidar Ali, 30, a store owner. “There were many casualties.” He added: “I was standing here in my shop, 30 meters away from the explosion. I saw a head resting on the sidewalk, guts, and limbs.”

Another stall holder, Wasfi Adid, 47, blamed the security forces.

“In the early morning the market was swarming with people,” he said. “I can’t blame anyone but there are no security procedures inside the market, there is no searching in the market, there are only two or three police cars.

“Police must search everyone who carries a carton or a box. There are not enough policemen, there is no government over here, they should spread policemen around here and there and everywhere in the market.”

Despite the evidence of the lingering threat from bombers, customers continued to arrive at the market after the blast, bringing their children and families. Stalls remained open, selling fish, birds, dogs and other animals. Some said that despite the optimism of recent weeks, they were not surprised by such reverses.

“We expected such a thing to happen despite the security improvement that has been achieved,” said Ali Kadhum, 34, a government employee.

“Three months ago, the situation was calm until a bomb attack occurred,” he said. “I don’t think the situation is moving toward the better. There is no security as long as there are occupation forces.”

Ghazil market is a regular target for bombers intent on disrupting normal life in Baghdad.

It had only just started recovering from a bomb last January in which 15 people were killed by a bomb hidden in a box of pigeons, set off as people gathered around to examine the birds inside.

A month earlier, militants launched a mortar into the market, killing three and wounding 28, and in June 2006 four people were killed and 50 wounded in a double bombing.

In more violence today in Iraq, further north in Mosul, a car bomber attacked an Iraqi police checkpoint in the Methaq neighborhood, killing five people, including two policemen.
 

Mudhafer al-Husaini and Khalid al-Ansary contributed reporting from Baghdad. An Iraqi reporter for the New York Times contributed reporting from Mosul.

    Attack at Baghdad Market Kills at Least 13, NYT, 24.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/24/world/middleeast/24iraq.html?hp

Twin Bombings Kill at Least 26 in Iraq

November 23, 2007
Filed at 7:38 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

BAGHDAD (AP) -- A bomb exploded in a pet market in central Baghdad on Friday, killing at least 13 people and wounding dozens, Iraqi police said, shattering the festive atmosphere as people strolled past the animal stalls.

Hours later, a suicide car bomber struck a police checkpoint in the northern city of Mosul, killing three policemen and 10 civilians, police Brig. Gen. Mohammed al-Wakaa said. The 1:30 p.m. explosion also left 10 cars charred.

The attacks were among the deadliest in recent weeks, underscoring warnings by senior American commanders that extremists still pose a threat to Iraq's fragile security despite a downturn in violence since a U.S.-Iraqi security plan began in mid-February.

The blast at the popular weekly al-Ghazl bazaar occurred just before 9 a.m.

The explosives were hidden in a box that is commonly used to carry small animals, a police officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the information.

At least 13 people were killed and nearly 60, including four policemen, were wounded, according to figures provided by police and hospital officials. Several shops also were damaged.

The al-Ghazl market, where sellers peddle birds, dogs, cats, sheep, goats and exotic animals such as snakes and monkeys, has been targeted in the past. On Jan. 26, 15 people were killed when a bomb hidden in a box of pigeons exploded as shoppers gathered around it.

Friday's blast was particularly significant because it dealt a blow to an increased feeling of confidence among Iraqis about the recent calm in the capital and surrounding areas.

The market has regained popularity after the lifting of a four-hour Friday driving ban to protect prayer services from car bombings. The Iraqi government lifted the weekly ban in September, citing the improving security situation.

A local store owner who would only give his name as Abu Zainab said he had only reopened his business two weeks ago.

''I was reluctant to open it after lifting the curfew because of security concerns,'' he said of his cleaning supply store that is about yards away from the blast site.

''Today, the view of many young men coming with pets, colorful fish in aquariums and dogs was very encouraging and cheerful,'' he said. ''There were also teenagers selling sandwiches and tea in wheeled carts giving the impression that life is back to normal again, but about 9 o'clock, we heard the sound of an explosion.''

He described a scene of chaos, with birds flying into a sky filled with smoke and the bodies of young men who had been killed and wounded on the ground.

''We helped evacuate some of them, then the Iraqi police and army came and told us to leave because they feared another explosion could take place,'' he said.

Amir Aziz, a 22-year-old pigeon vendor who was wounded by shrapnel, said he was in the middle of a transaction when the blast occurred.

''Today, the market was very crowded and we were happy about that,'' he said. ''The Iraqi security officials have deceived us by their statements that the situation is 80 percent better. People believed them and began to go out thinking that it would be safe. I think that the situation will become worse again.''

In other violence, a parked car bomb targeted a police patrol in Shurqat, 155 miles northwest of Baghdad, killing one officer and wounding 15 others, along with one civilian, authorities said.

The top U.S. commander in northern Iraq, Army Maj. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, warned earlier this month that northern Iraq has become more violent than other regions as al-Qaida and other militants move there to avoid coalition operations elsewhere.

American officials say attacks have dropped 55 percent nationwide since June. But American military commanders repeatedly have warned that Iraq is by no means stable, even though the violence is declining.

A spokesman for the Iraqi military, Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, urged Iraqis to be patient, saying U.S. and Iraqi forces were gaining the upper hand but need time ''to achieve positive results.''

He made his comments on Thursday, a day that saw a brazen attack against U.S.-backed Sunni fighters on the southern belt of Baghdad that provoked a fierce gunbattle and left 18 people dead, including three Iraqi soldiers, eight members of the so-called Awakening Council and seven suspected al-Qaida in Iraq militants.

U.S. authorities have attributed some of their success in reducing violence to the role of the groups of Sunnis who have worked with the Americans to drive al-Qaida from their neighborhoods.

Mortars or rockets also slammed into the Green Zone on Thursday in the biggest attack against the U.S.-protected area in weeks. The U.S. military said nobody was killed but there were unspecified injuries.

------

Associated Press writer Sameer N. Yacoub contributed to this report.

    Twin Bombings Kill at Least 26 in Iraq, NYT, 23.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq-Violence.html?hp

Foreign Fighters in Iraq Are Tied to Allies of U.S.

November 22, 2007
The New York Times
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.

BAGHDAD — Saudi Arabia and Libya, both considered allies by the United States in its fight against terrorism, were the source of about 60 percent of the foreign fighters who came to Iraq in the past year to serve as suicide bombers or to facilitate other attacks, according to senior American military officials.

The data come largely from a trove of documents and computers discovered in September, when American forces raided a tent camp in the desert near Sinjar, close to the Syrian border. The raid’s target was an insurgent cell believed to be responsible for smuggling the vast majority of foreign fighters into Iraq.

The most significant discovery was a collection of biographical sketches that listed hometowns and other details for more than 700 fighters brought into Iraq since August 2006.

The records also underscore how the insurgency in Iraq remains both overwhelmingly Iraqi and Sunni. American officials now estimate that the flow of foreign fighters was 80 to 110 per month during the first half of this year and about 60 per month during the summer. The numbers fell sharply in October to no more than 40, partly as a result of the Sinjar raid, the American officials say.

Saudis accounted for the largest number of fighters listed on the records by far — 305, or 41 percent — American intelligence officers found as they combed through documents and computers in the weeks after the raid. The data show that despite increased efforts by Saudi Arabia to clamp down on would-be terrorists since Sept. 11, 2001, when 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi, some Saudi fighters are still getting through.

Libyans accounted for 137 foreign fighters, or 18 percent of the total, the senior American military officials said. They discussed the raid with the stipulation that they not be named because of the delicate nature of the issue.

United States officials have previously offered only rough estimates of the breakdown of foreign fighters inside Iraq. But the trove found in Sinjar is so vast and detailed that American officials believe that the patterns and percentages revealed by it offer for the first time a far more precise account of the personal circumstances of foreign fighters throughout the country.

In contrast to the comparatively small number of foreigners, more than 25,000 inmates are in American detention centers in Iraq. Of those, only about 290, or some 1.2 percent, are foreigners, military officials say.

They contend that all of the detainees either are suspected of insurgent activity or are an “imperative threat” to security. Some American officials also believe that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a homegrown insurgent group that claims a loose allegiance to Osama bin Laden, may by itself have as many as 10,000 members in Iraq.

About four out of every five detainees in American detention centers are Sunni Arab, even though Sunni Arabs make up just one-fifth of Iraq’s population. All of the foreign fighters listed on the materials found near Sinjar, excluding two from France, also came from countries that are predominantly Sunni.

Over the years, the Syrian border has been the principal entry point into Iraq for foreign insurgents, officials say. Many had come through Anbar Province, in west-central Iraq. But with the Sunni tribal revolt against extremist militants that began last year in Anbar, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and other jihadists concentrated their smuggling efforts on the area north of the Euphrates River along the Syrian border, the officials said.

The officials added that, based on the captured documents and other intelligence, they believe that the Sinjar cell that was raided in September was responsible for the smuggling of foreign fighters along a stretch of the border from Qaim, in Anbar, almost to the border with Turkey, a length of nearly 200 miles. They said that was why they were confident that the cell was responsible for such a large portion of the incoming foreign fighters.

American military and diplomatic officials who discussed the flow of fighters from Saudi Arabia were careful to draw a distinction between the Saudi government and the charities and individuals who they said encouraged young Saudi men to fight in Iraq. After United States officials put pressure on Saudi leaders in the summer, the Saudi government took some steps that have begun to curb the flow of fighters, the officials said.

Yet the senior American military officials said they also believed that Saudi citizens provided the majority of financing for Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. “They don’t want to see the Shias come to dominate in Iraq,” one American official said.

The Sinjar materials showed that 291 fighters, or about 39 percent, came from North African nations during the period beginning in August 2006. That is far higher than previous military estimates of 10 to 13 percent from North Africa. The largest foreign fighter hometown was Darnah, Libya, which supplied 50 fighters.

For years American officials included Libya on the list of state sponsors of terrorism. But last year the United States removed it from that list and re-established full diplomatic relations, citing what Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described as Libya’s “continued commitment to its renunciation of terrorism and the excellent cooperation” it has provided in the antiterrorism fight.

Also striking among the Sinjar materials were the smaller numbers from other countries that had been thought to be major suppliers of foreign fighters. As recently as the summer, American officials estimated that 20 percent came from Syria and Lebanon. But there were no Lebanese listed among the Sinjar trove, and only 56 Syrians, or 8 percent of the total.

American officials have accused Iran, the largest Shiite nation in the Middle East, of sending powerful bombs to Iraq and of supporting and financing Shiite militias that attack American troops. They also contend that top Iranian leaders support efforts to arm Shiite fighters.

But whatever aid Iran provides to militias inside Iraq does not seem to extend to supplying actual combatants: Only 11 Iranians are in American detention, United States officials say.

After the raid on the Sinjar cell, the number of suicide bombings in Iraq fell to 16 in October — half the number seen during the summer months and down sharply from a peak of 59 in March. American military officials believe that perhaps 90 percent of such bombings are carried out by foreign fighters. They also believe that about half of the foreign fighters who come to Iraq become suicide bombers.

“We cut the head off, but the tail is still left,” warned one of the senior American military officials, discussing the aftermath of the Sinjar raid. “Regeneration is completely within the realm of possibility.”

The documents indicate that each foreigner brought about $1,000 with him, used mostly to finance operations of the smuggling cell. Saudis brought more money per person than fighters from other nations, the American officials said.

Among the Saudi fighters described in the materials, 45 had come from Riyadh, 38 from Mecca, 20 from Buraidah and the surrounding area, 15 from Jawf and Sakakah, 13 from Jidda, and 12 from Medina.

American officials publicly expressed anger over the summer at Saudi policies that were destabilizing Iraq. Sunni tribal sheiks in Iraq who risked their lives to fight extremist militants also faulted Saudi clerics.

“The bad imams tell the young people to go to Iraq and fight the American Army, because if you kill them or they kill you, you will go to paradise,” Sheik Adnan Khames Jamiel, a leader of the Albu Alwan tribe in Ramadi, said in an interview.

One senior American diplomat said the Saudi government had “taken important steps to interdict individuals, particularly military-aged males with one-way tickets.” He said those efforts had helped cause an “appreciable decrease in the flow of foreign terrorists and suicide bombers.” But he added that still more work remained “to cut off malign financing from private sources within the kingdom.”

American officials cite a government program on Saudi television in which a would-be suicide bomber who survived his attack urges others not to travel to Iraq. The officials were also encouraged in October when the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheik Abdulaziz al-Asheik, condemned “mischievous parties” who send young Saudis abroad to carry out “heinous acts which have no association with Islam whatsoever.”

Armed with information from the raid, American officials say they have used military, law enforcement and diplomatic channels to put pressure on the countries named as homes to large numbers of fighters. They have also shared information with these countries on 300 more men who the records showed were being recruited to fight in Iraq.

Surrounded by desolate prairie and desert, Sinjar has long been a way station for foreign fighters. The insurgent cell raided by American troops was believed to have been smuggling up to 90 percent of all foreign fighters into Iraq, military officials say.

The raid happened in the predawn hours of Sept. 11, when American forces acting on a tip surrounded some tents six miles from the Syrian border. A fierce firefight killed six men outside, and two more were killed when one of them detonated a suicide vest inside a tent, military officials said. All were leaders of the insurgent smuggling cell, including one prominent Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia commander known as Muthanna, they said.

In addition to $18,000 in cash and assorted weapons, troops found five terabytes of data that included detailed questionnaires filled out by incoming fighters. Background information on more than 900 fighters was found, or about 750 after eliminating duplicates and questionnaires that were mostly incomplete.

According to the rosters found in the raid, the third-largest source of foreign fighters was Yemen, with 68. There were 64 from Algeria, 50 from Morocco, 38 from Tunisia, 14 from Jordan, 6 from Turkey and 2 from Egypt.

Most of the fighters smuggled by the cell were believed to have flown into Damascus Airport, and the rest came into Syria overland through Jordan, the officials said.

In some cases, one senior American military official said, Syrian authorities captured fighters and released them after determining they were not a threat to the Syrian government. Syria has made some recent efforts to turn back or detain suspected foreign fighters bound for Iraq, he said, adding, “The key word is ‘some.’”

    Foreign Fighters in Iraq Are Tied to Allies of U.S., NYT, 22.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/22/world/middleeast/22fighters.html?hp

US Military Deaths in Iraq at 3, 874

November 21, 2007
Filed at 7:46 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

As of Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2007, at least 3,874 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 eight military civilians. At least 3,157 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

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

The British military has reported 173 deaths; Italy, 33; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 21; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Denmark, seven; El Salvador, five; Slovakia, four; Latvia, three; Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand, Romania, two each; and Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, South Korea, one death each.

------

The latest deaths reported by the military:

-- A soldier was killed Tuesday by an explosive in eastern Baghdad.

------

The latest identifications reported by the military:

-- No identifications reported.

------

On the Net:

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

    US Military Deaths in Iraq at 3, 874, NYT, 21.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Iraq-US-Deaths.html

Baghdad Starts to Exhale as Security Improves

November 20, 2007
The New York Times
By DAMIEN CAVE and ALISSA J. RUBIN

BAGHDAD, Nov. 19 — Five months ago, Suhaila al-Aasan lived in an oxygen tank factory with her husband and two sons, convinced that they would never go back to their apartment in Dora, a middle-class neighborhood in southern Baghdad.

Today she is home again, cooking by a sunlit window, sleeping beneath her favorite wedding picture. And yet, she and her family are remarkably alone. The half-dozen other apartments in her building echo with emptiness and, on most days, Iraqi soldiers are the only neighbors she sees.

“I feel happy,” she said, standing in her bedroom, between a flowered bedspread and a bullet hole in the wall. “But my happiness is not complete. We need more people to come back. We need more people to feel safe.”

Mrs. Aasan, 45, a Shiite librarian with an easy laugh, is living at the far end of Baghdad’s tentative recovery. She is one of many Iraqis who in recent weeks have begun to test where they can go and what they can do when fear no longer controls their every move.

The security improvements in most neighborhoods are real. Days now pass without a car bomb, after a high of 44 in the city in February. The number of bodies appearing on Baghdad’s streets has plummeted to about 5 a day, from as many as 35 eight months ago, and suicide bombings across Iraq fell to 16 in October, half the number of last summer and down sharply from a recent peak of 59 in March, the American military says.

As a result, for the first time in nearly two years, people are moving with freedom around much of this city. In more than 50 interviews across Baghdad, it became clear that while there were still no-go zones, more Iraqis now drive between Sunni and Shiite areas for work, shopping or school, a few even after dark. In the most stable neighborhoods of Baghdad, some secular women are also dressing as they wish. Wedding bands are playing in public again, and at a handful of once shuttered liquor stores customers now line up outside in a collective rebuke to religious vigilantes from the Shiite Mahdi Army.

Iraqis are clearly surprised and relieved to see commerce and movement finally increase, five months after an extra 30,000 American troops arrived in the country. But the depth and sustainability of the changes remain open to question.

By one revealing measure of security — whether people who fled their home have returned — the gains are still limited. About 20,000 Iraqis have gone back to their Baghdad homes, a fraction of the more than 4 million who fled nationwide, and the 1.4 million people in Baghdad who are still internally displaced, according to a recent Iraqi Red Crescent Society survey.

Iraqis sound uncertain about the future, but defiantly optimistic. Many Baghdad residents seem to be willing themselves to normalcy, ignoring risks and suppressing fears to reclaim their lives. Pushing past boundaries of sect and neighborhood, they said they were often pleasantly surprised and kept going; in other instances, traumatic memories or a dark look from a stranger were enough to tug them back behind closed doors.

Mrs. Aasan’s experience, as a member of the brave minority of Iraqis who have returned home, shows both the extent of the improvements and their limits.

She works at an oasis of calm: a small library in eastern Baghdad, where on several recent afternoons, about a dozen children bounced through the rooms, reading, laughing, learning English and playing music on a Yamaha keyboard.

Brightly colored artwork hangs on the walls: images of gardens, green and lush; Iraqi soldiers smiling; and Arabs holding hands with Kurds.

It is all deliberately idyllic. Mrs. Aasan and the other two women at the library have banned violent images, guiding the children toward portraits of hope. The children are also not allowed to discuss the violence they have witnessed.

“Our aim is to fight terrorism,” Mrs. Aasan said. “We want them to overcome their personal experiences.”

The library closed last year because parents would not let their children out of sight. Now, most of the children walk on their own from homes nearby — another sign of the city’s improved ease of movement.

But there are scars in the voice of a ponytailed little girl who said she had less time for fun since her father was incapacitated by a bomb. (“We try to make him feel better and feel less pain,” she said.) And pain still lingers in the silence of Mrs. Aasan’s 10-year-old son, Abather, who accompanies her wherever she goes.

One day five months ago, when they still lived in Dora, Mrs. Aasan sent Abather to get water from a tank below their apartment. Delaying as boys will do, he followed his soccer ball into the street, where he discovered two dead bodies with their eyeballs torn out. It was not the first corpse he had seen, but for Mrs. Aasan that was enough. “I grabbed him, we got in the car and we drove away,” she said.

After they heard on an Iraqi news program that her section of Dora had improved, she and her husband explored a potential return. They visited and found little damage, except for a bullet hole in their microwave.

Two weeks ago, they moved back to the neighborhood where they had lived since 2003.

“It’s just a rental,” Mrs. Aasan said, as if embarrassed at her connection to such a humble place. “But after all, it’s home.”

In interviews, she and her husband said they felt emboldened by the decline in violence citywide and the visible presence of Iraqi soldiers at a checkpoint a few blocks away.

Still, it was a brave decision, one her immediate neighbors have not yet felt bold enough to make. Mrs. Aasan’s portion of Dora still looks as desolate as a condemned tenement. The trunk of a palm tree covers a section of road where Sunni gunmen once dumped a severed head, and about 200 yards to the right of her building concrete Jersey barriers block a section of homes believed to be booby-trapped with explosives.

“On this street,” she said, standing on her balcony, “many of my neighbors lost relatives.” Then she rushed inside.

Her husband, Fadhel A. Yassen, 49, explained that they had seen several friends killed while they sat outside in the past. He insisted that being back in the apartment was “a victory over fear, a victory over terrorism.”

Yet the achievement remains rare. Many Iraqis say they would still rather leave the country than go home. In Baghdad there are far more families like the Nidhals. The father, who would only identify himself as Abu Nebras (father of Nebras), is Sunni; Hanan, his wife, is a Shiite from Najaf, the center of Shiite religious learning in Iraq. They lived for 17 years in Ghazaliya in western Baghdad until four gunmen from Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown Sunni extremist group that American intelligence agencies say is led by foreigners, showed up at his door last December.

“My sons were armed and they went away but after that, we knew we had only a few hours,” Abu Nebras said. “We were displaced because I was secular and Al Qaeda didn’t like that.”

They took refuge in the middle-class Palestine Street area in the northeastern part of Baghdad, a relatively stable enclave with an atmosphere of tolerance for their mixed marriage. Now with the situation improving across the city, the Nidhal family longs to return to their former home, but they have no idea when, or if, it will be possible.

Another family now lives in their house — the situation faced by about a third of all displaced Iraqis, according to the International Organization for Migration — and it is not clear whether the fragile peace will last. Abu Nebras tested the waters recently, going back to talk with neighbors on his old street for the first time.

He said the Shiites in the northern part of Ghazaliya had told him that the American military’s payments to local Sunni volunteers in the southern, Sunni part of the neighborhood amounted to arming one side.

The Americans describe the volunteers as heroes, part of a larger nationwide campaign known as the Sunni Awakening. But Abu Nebras said he did not trust them. “Some of the Awakening members are just Al Qaeda who have joined them,” he said. “I know them from before.”

With the additional American troops scheduled to depart, the Nidhal family said, Baghdad would be truly safe only when the Iraqi forces were mixed with Sunnis and Shiites operating checkpoints side by side — otherwise the city would remain a patchwork of Sunni and Shiite enclaves. “The police, the army, it has to be Sunni next to Shiite next to Sunni next to Shiite,” Abu Nebras said.

They and other Iraqis also said the government must aggressively help people return to their homes, perhaps by supervising returns block by block. The Nidhal family said they feared the displaced Sunnis in their neighborhood who were furious that Shiites chased them from their houses. “They are so angry, they will kill anyone,” Abu Nebras said.

For now, though, they are trying to enjoy what may be only a temporary respite from violence. One of their sons recently returned to his veterinary studies at a university in Baghdad, and their daughter will start college this winter.

Laughter is also more common now in the Nidhal household — even on once upsetting subjects. At midday, Hanan’s sister, who teaches in a local high school, came home and threw up her hands in exasperation. She had asked her Islamic studies class to bring in something that showed an aspect of Islamic culture. “Two boys told me, ‘I’m going to bring in a portrait of Moktada al-Sadr,’” she said.

She shook her head and chuckled. Mr. Sadr is an anti-American cleric whose militia, the Mahdi Army, has been accused of carrying out much of the displacement and killings of Sunnis in Baghdad. They can joke because they no longer fear that the violence will engulf them.

In longer interviews across Baghdad, the pattern was repeated. Iraqis acknowledged how far their country still needed to go before a return to normalcy, but they also expressed amazement at even the most embryonic signs of recovery.

Mrs. Aasan said she was thrilled and relieved just a few days ago, when her college-aged son got stuck at work after dark and his father managed to pick him up and drive home without being killed.

“Before, when we lived in Dora, after 4 p.m., I wouldn’t let anyone out of the house,” she said.

“They drove back to Dora at 8!” she added, glancing at her husband, who beamed, chest out, like a mountaineer who had scaled Mount Everest. “We really felt that it was a big difference.”

    Baghdad Starts to Exhale as Security Improves, NYT, 20.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/world/middleeast/20surge.html?hp

Northern Iraq Most Violent Region

November 19, 2007
Filed at 11:16 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Despite a decline in violence in Iraq, Northern Iraq has become more violent than other regions as al-Qaida and other militants move there to avoid coalition operations elsewhere, the region's top U.S. commander said Monday.

Army Maj. Gen. Mark P. Hertling said al-Qaida cells still operate in all the key cities in the north.

''What you're seeing is the enemy shifting,'' he told Pentagon reporters in a video conference from outside Tikrit in northern Iraq.

Hertling said militants have been pushed east to his area from Anbar by the so-called Awakening movement, in which local tribes have allied with the coalition against al-Qaida. Others have been pushed north to his area from the Baghdad region, where this year's U.S. troops escalation has made more operations possible.

''The attacks are still much higher than I would like here in the north but they are continuing to decrease in numbers and scale of attacks,'' Hertling said.

He said 1,830 roadside bombs were placed in his region in June, compared with 900 last month.

The U.S. military says overall attacks in Iraq have fallen 55 percent since nearly 30,000 additional American troops arrived in Iraq by June, and some areas are experiencing their lowest levels of violence since the summer of 2005.

Hertling declined to say how many al-Qaida members he believes are in his area, but said a recently started operation has netted some 200 detainees who are giving officials good information about the organization and how it operates.

''There are certainly cells remaining in all the key cities'' in the north, he said. ''We're doing our very best on a daily basis to break those cells down,'' Hertling said. ''We've had success but it is still going to be a very tough fight to eliminate those terrorists and insurgents and extremists completely from those areas.''

The U.S. military said Sunday that overall violence in Iraq is down 55 percent since a troop buildup began this year.

    Northern Iraq Most Violent Region, NYT, 19.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Iraq.html

U.S. Says Attacks in Iraq Fell to Feb. 2006 Level

November 19, 2007
The New York Times
By CARA BUCKLEY and MICHAEL R. GORDON

BAGHDAD, Nov. 18 — The American military said Sunday that the weekly number of attacks in Iraq had fallen to the lowest level since just before the February 2006 bombing of the Shiite shrine in Samarra, an event commonly used as a benchmark for the country’s worst spasm of bloodletting after the American invasion nearly five years ago.

Data released at a news conference in Baghdad showed that attacks had declined to the lowest level since January 2006. It is the third week in a row that attacks have been at this reduced level.

The statistics on attack trends have long been a standard measure that the American military has used to assess violence in Iraq. Because the data have been gathered for years and are deemed generally reliable they allow analysts to identify trends.

Military officials said the attacks were directed against American and Iraqi forces, as well as civilians. But since the source for the data is American military reports, and not the Iraqi government, the figures do not provide an exhaustive measure of sectarian violence.

Nonetheless, the figures added to a body of evidence, compiled by American and Iraqi officials, indicating that the violence had diminished significantly since the United States reinforced troop levels in Iraq and adopted a new counterinsurgency strategy.

The data released Sunday cover attacks using car bombs, roadside bombs, mines, mortars, rockets, surface-to-air missiles and small arms. According to the statistics, roughly 575 attacks occurred last week.

That is substantially fewer than the more than 700 attacks that were recorded the week that Sunni militants set off a wave of sectarian violence in Iraq by blowing up a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February 2006. And it represents a huge drop since June when attacks soared to nearly 1,600 one week.

American officials said other measures indicated that civilian deaths had dropped. Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a spokesman for the command, said civilian deaths had dropped by 60 percent since June.

Military analysts said a number of factors explained the drop. They say, for example, that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a predominantly Iraqi insurgent group with foreign leadership, has been greatly weakened by American military attacks.

Thousands of new Sunni volunteers have made common cause with the Americans. About 72,000 such civilians have joined the effort, American officials said, and 45,000 each receive a $300 a month stipend from the Americans to help with the effort.

Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American cleric, has ordered his militiamen to stand down. American military officials also say that Iran appears to be abiding by a commitment to reduce the flow of roadside bombs and other weapons into Iraq. Beyond that, many Iraqis appear to be exhausted by the sectarian violence and eager for a modicum of stability.

To be sure, the level of violence in Iraq is still high. Even as military officials announced the figures, Iraq had one of its deadliest days in weeks, with at least 22 people killed. Among the killed were nine civilians in Karada, a mixed neighborhood in central Baghdad, when a car bomber rammed a convoy carrying Iraq’s deputy finance minister. The official was not hurt, but a guard was among the wounded.

Also on Sunday, three children were killed and seven were wounded in Baquba, to the north, in an explosion in a small garden where American soldiers were handing out candy, ballpoint pens and soccer balls. Three American soldiers were also killed. Their names were not released.

Some experts said the data indicated a downward trend in violent attacks, albeit from relatively high levels — 2006 was one of the most violent years in the war.

The most pressing issue, they said, was how to keep them down and reduce violence further given the failure of Iraqi leaders to achieve reconciliation.

“These trends are stunning in military terms and beyond the predictions of most proponents of the surge last winter,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution, referring to President Bush’s troop reinforcement plan. “Nobody knows if the trends are durable in the absence of national reconciliation and in the face of major U.S. troop drawdowns in 2008."

Military officials stressed that attack levels might fluctuate in the future and that it was too soon to say that the United States had turned the corner in Iraq. Past periods of relative calm in Iraq have also been shattered by violence. And American officials have complained that the Iraqi government is not taking the opportunity in the current lull to attempt serious political progress.

“While violence is turning in the right direction, a tough fight remains ahead and progress will be uneven,” Admiral Smith said. “Violence is still too high in many areas of Baghdad and across Iraq.”

Still, he rattled off statistics that pointed to progress in lowering violence. Casualties suffered by Iraqi security forces, he said, were down 40 percent since the beginning of the troop reinforcement plan. Civilian fatalities in Baghdad, he said, were down 75 percent in recent months. In some areas, the attacks have not been so low since the spring and summer of 2005.

Since the violence has decreased in Baghdad people have begun trickling back into cafes and streets in the hope that the calm will last.

Two weeks ago, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said the dip in violence had allowed 7,000 families to return to Baghdad, though it was not clear how he arrived at that figure.
 

Cara Buckley reported from Baghdad, and Michael R. Gordon from Washington. Qais Mizher and an Iraqi reporter for The New York Times contributed from Diyala Province.

    U.S. Says Attacks in Iraq Fell to Feb. 2006 Level, NYT, 19.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/19/world/middleeast/19iraq.html?hp

Sergeant Fled Army, but Not the War in His Head

November 18, 2007
The New York Times
By FERNANDA SANTOS

EAST ORANGE, N.J., Nov. 15 — The psychotherapist remembers the strapping young soldier, slouched in a chair in her office one morning last month, asking if God could be punishing him because he had once thought it would be exciting to fight in a war.

By then, the soldier, Sgt. Brad Gaskins, had been absent without leave for 14 months from his post at Fort Drum in northern New York State, waging a lonely battle against an enemy inside his head — memories of death and destruction that he said had besieged him since February 2006, when he returned from a second tour of combat in Iraq.

“I asked Sergeant Gaskins whether he thought about death,” the psychotherapist, Rosemary Masters, said in an interview on Thursday. “He said that death seemed like a good alternative to the way he was existing.”

On Tuesday, Sergeant Gaskins, 25, traveled almost 300 miles from his home here to the Different Drummer Internet Cafe near Fort Drum. He planned to surrender to military authorities, and his lawyer had notified commanders at the base. But before he could turn himself in, two officials from Fort Drum, accompanied by a pair of police officers from Watertown, showed up at the cafe and placed him under arrest.

Sergeant Gaskins has been hospitalized for his psychiatric problems and could be discharged from the Army for medical reasons. He could be court-martialed, which could land him in prison and prevent him from receiving veterans’ benefits.

“I just put faith in God that everything is going to work out according to his plan,” he said during a telephone interview on Thursday from a veterans’ hospital in Syracuse, where he was taken after his arrest. (On Friday, he was transferred to Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, said Benjamin Abel, a civilian spokesman at Fort Drum.)

“I just want it all to go away, and I want to get my life back,” Sergeant Gaskins said.

He had always spoken with pride about his military service, his relatives said. He enlisted in the Army at 17, while still a senior at Orange High School, where he was starting quarterback for the Orange Tornadoes. He used to wear his olive-green dress uniform, lock arms with his paternal grandmother, Bernice Murray, and strut inside New Hope Baptist Church in Newark for Sunday services.

“He joined the military because he wanted to improve his life, to have a career,” said Mrs. Murray. “He wanted to help his family and to serve his country, and we were all supportive.”

No one knows for sure when Sergeant Gaskins’s troubles started. He is, by all accounts, tough and reserved, and he said that he was reluctant to share his emotional distress because he feared his superiors would label him as weak — or, worse, as crazy. But after he returned home on leave in August 2006 and decided he would not go back to Fort Drum, his relatives began to notice signs that something was seriously wrong.

He started biting his nails compulsively, a new habit, one of his aunts said. He slept little, and often woke up screaming and drenched in sweat. He became reclusive, locking himself in a darkened room at his grandmother’s apartment in Newark whenever her friends stopped by. His legs trembled as he watched images from Iraq on television. He yelled at his 2-year-old son for no apparent reason, his wife, Amber Gaskins, said. And once, she said, he placed a knife at her throat, as if he did not know who she was.

Even before Sergeant Gaskins came home, there were hints of distress. In a letter from Iraq in September 2005 to Sonia Murray, an aunt who helped raise him, Sergeant Gaskins asked, “Will God forgive me for the people I’ve killed?”

Sergeant Gaskins, who first went to Iraq in 2003, transferred to Fort Drum, home of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division, after his second deployment, and he said he sought help at the base for his problems. He stayed for two weeks at a psychiatric ward at Samaritan Medical Center in Watertown, and was prescribed a cocktail of drugs — Zoloft and trazodone for depression, and Ambien to help him sleep. But he said he received no psychotherapy or follow-up care.

He was discharged from Samaritan and returned to the base, but he said the nightmares and flashbacks about Iraq would not go away. At Fort Drum, the tanks, marching soldiers and gunfire became too much to bear. So when he came home on a two-week leave in August 2006, he decided not to go back.

Ms. Masters, the Manhattan psychotherapist who evaluated Sergeant Gaskins on Oct. 18, said his symptoms were consistent with a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder and severe depression. The sergeant said he did not receive a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder at the Watertown hospital, and the Army would not discuss his medical history.

An Army report released on Tuesday found that soldiers suffer more mental distress in the transition to life at home than they show upon leaving Iraq. The report also estimated that one in five active duty soldiers and as many as 40 percent of reservists are in need of treatment.

The Army has said that it employs about 200 mental health workers in the field. There are 31 mental health workers at Fort Drum, and there are plans to add 17 more, Mr. Abel said. The base is home to 17,000 troops.

For years, researchers have debated the definition and extent of post-traumatic stress. Many of the experts believe that the frequency of the disorder reported among Vietnam veterans has been inflated.

“I don’t know what Brad had when he came home,” Mrs. Gaskins said. “All I know is that he had changed. I didn’t recognize it; nobody recognized it as post-traumatic stress disorder. He just needed help.”

Sergeant Gaskins and his wife had been classmates since the seventh grade, she said, but it was not until their senior year in high school, after she asked him to be her date at a Sadie Hawkins dance, that they started dating.

After graduation, she went to college and he joined the military. They married at Fort Stewart, Ga., on May 9, 2002.

Sergeant Gaskins went to Iraq as a member of the Third Infantry Division. At the end of his first tour, he re-enlisted and transferred to Fort Irwin, Calif., where he was deployed again to Iraq, this time with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. His son, Brandon, was just a month old when Sergeant Gaskins left.

“The first time, he was excited,” said Mrs. Gaskins, 25. “He’d say, ‘I swear, baby, I’m going to fight hard and get a medal.’ But when he came back after the second time, I asked him how it was, and he told me he didn’t want to ever talk about it, so I didn’t ask anymore.”

Last year, after Sergeant Gaskins decided not to return to duty, he sought work in construction and at a warehouse, but could not hold jobs for long, Mrs. Gaskins said. One night, she said, she woke up to find her husband holding a kitchen knife against her throat. She soothed him, and eventually he let go of the knife, but she was scared. She said that she called Fort Drum, and that a victim’s advocate at the base advised her to contact the police and get a restraining order against her husband. She acted on the advice that same day.

Sergeant Gaskins was arrested and spent almost two weeks in the Essex County jail, until his grandmother cobbled together $3,000 for his bail. He went to live with a cousin and then disappeared for several months.

“He went into hiding,” said Sonia Murray, his aunt. “No one really knows where he was or what he did.”

In September, Sergeant Gaskins called his aunt and asked her for help. “He reached a breaking point,” she said.

Sergeant Gaskins started going to church again, and he also approached Tod Ensign, director of Citizen Soldier, a veterans’ advocacy group, for advice. Mr. Ensign persuaded him to see Ms. Masters for a psychological evaluation and encouraged him to turn himself in.

“I’m not a deserter. I’ve served my country, but now I need help,” Sergeant Gaskins said on Thursday. “I don’t know what the Army is going to do to me. I’m just hoping to get treated, to get better, to be back to who I was before the war.”

Benedict Carey contributed reporting.

    Sergeant Fled Army, but Not the War in His Head, NYT, 18.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/nyregion/18awol.html?hp

US Military Deaths in Iraq at 3, 864

November 14, 2007
Filed at 11:27 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

As of Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2007, at least 3,864 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 eight military civilians. At least 3,147 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

The AP count is five higher than the Defense Department's tally, last updated Wednesday at 10 a.m. EST.

The British military has reported 171 deaths; Italy, 33; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 21; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Denmark, seven; El Salvador, five; Slovakia, four; Latvia, three; Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand, Romania, two each; and Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, South Korea, one death each.

------

The latest deaths reported by the military:

-- A soldier was killed Wednesday in combat near Mosul.

-- Two soldiers were killed Tuesday in an explosion in Diyala province.

------

The latest identifications reported by the military:

-- Two Army soldiers died Tuesday in Mukhisa from wounds from an explosive. Both were assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, Fort Lewis, Wash.

Killed were Sgt. Christopher R. Kruse, 23, Emporia, Kan.; and Spc. Peter W. Schmidt, 30, Eureka, Calif.

------

On the Net:

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

    US Military Deaths in Iraq at 3, 864, NYT, 14.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Iraq-US-Deaths.html

F.B.I. Says Guards Killed 14 Iraqis Without Cause

November 14, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID JOHNSTON and JOHN M. BRODER

WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 — Federal agents investigating the Sept. 16 episode in which Blackwater security personnel shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians have found that at least 14 of the shootings were unjustified and violated deadly-force rules in effect for security contractors in Iraq, according to civilian and military officials briefed on the case.

The F.B.I. investigation into the shootings in Baghdad is still under way, but the findings, which indicate that the company’s employees recklessly used lethal force, are already under review by the Justice Department.

Prosecutors have yet to decide whether to seek indictments, and some officials have expressed pessimism that adequate criminal laws exist to enable them to charge any Blackwater employee with criminal wrongdoing. Spokesmen for the Justice Department and the F.B.I. declined to discuss the matter.

The case could be one of the first thorny issues to be decided by Michael B. Mukasey, who was sworn in as attorney general last week. He may be faced with a decision to turn down a prosecution on legal grounds at a time when a furor has erupted in Congress about the administration’s failure to hold security contractors accountable for their misdeeds.

Representative David E. Price, a North Carolina Democrat who has sponsored legislation to extend American criminal law to contractors serving overseas, said the Justice Department must hold someone accountable for the shootings.

“Just because there are deficiencies in the law, and there certainly are,” Mr. Price said, “that can’t serve as an excuse for criminal actions like this to be unpunished. I hope the new attorney general makes this case a top priority. He needs to announce to the American people and the world that we uphold the rule of law and we intend to pursue this.”

Investigators have concluded that as many as five of the company’s guards opened fire during the shootings, at least some with automatic weapons. Investigators have focused on one guard, identified as “turret gunner No. 3,” who fired a large number of rounds and was responsible for several fatalities.

Investigators found no evidence to support assertions by Blackwater employees that they were fired upon by Iraqi civilians. That finding sharply contradicts initial assertions by Blackwater officials, who said that company employees fired in self-defense and that three company vehicles were damaged by gunfire.

Government officials said the shooting occurred when security guards fired in response to gunfire by other members of their unit in the mistaken belief that they were under attack. One official said, “I wouldn’t call it a massacre, but to say it was unwarranted is an understatement.”

Among the 17 killings, three may have been justified under rules that allow lethal force to be used in response to an imminent threat, the F.B.I. agents have concluded. They concluded that Blackwater guards might have perceived a threat when they opened fire on a white Kia sedan that moved toward Nisour Square after traffic had been stopped for a Blackwater convoy of four armored vehicles.

Two people were killed in the car, Ahmed Haithem Ahmed and his mother, Mohassin, a physician. Relatives said they were on a family errand and posed no threat to the Blackwater convoy.

Investigators said Blackwater guards might have felt endangered by a third, and unidentified, Iraqi who was killed nearby. But the investigators determined that the subsequent shootings of 14 Iraqis, some of whom were shot while fleeing the scene, were unprovoked.

Under the firearms policy governing all State Department employees and contractors, lethal force may be used “only in response to an imminent threat of deadly force or serious physical injury against the individual, those under the protection of the individual or other individuals.”

A separate military review of the Sept. 16 shootings concluded that all of the killings were unjustified and potentially criminal. One of the military investigators said the F.B.I. was being generous to Blackwater in characterizing any of the killings as justifiable.

Anne E. Tyrrell, a Blackwater spokeswoman, said she would have no comment until the F.B.I. released its findings.

Although investigators are confident of their overall findings, they have been frustrated by problems with evidence that hampered their inquiry. Investigators who arrived more than two weeks after the shooting could not reconstruct the crime scene, a routine step in shooting inquiries in the United States.

Even the total number of fatalities remains uncertain because of the difficulty of piecing together what happened in a chaotic half-hour in a busy square. Moreover, investigators could not rely on videotapes or photographs of the scene, because they were unsure whether bodies or vehicles might have been moved.

Bodies of a number of victims could not be recovered. Metal shell casings recovered from the intersection could not be definitively tied to the shootings because, as one official described it, “The city is littered with brass.”

In addition, investigators did not have access to statements taken from Blackwater employees, who had given statements to State Department investigators on the condition that their statements would not be used in any criminal investigation like the one being conducted by the F.B.I.

An earlier case involving Blackwater points to the difficulty the Department of Justice may be facing in deciding whether and how to bring charges in relation to the Sept. 16 shootings. A Blackwater guard, Andrew J. Moonen, is the sole suspect in the shooting on Dec. 24 of a bodyguard to an Iraqi vice president.

Investigators have statements by witnesses, forensic evidence, the weapon involved and a detailed chronology of the events drawn up by military personnel and contractor employees.

But nearly 11 months later, no charges have been brought, and officials said a number of theories had been debated among prosecutors in Washington and Seattle without a resolution of how to proceed in the case.

Mr. Moonen’s lawyer, Stewart P. Riley of Seattle, said he had had no discussions about the case with federal prosecutors.

Some lawmakers and legal scholars said the Sept. 16 case dramatized the need to clarify the law governing private armed contractors in a war zone. Workers under contract to the Defense Department are subject to the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, or MEJA, but many, including top State Department officials, contend that the law does not apply to companies like Blackwater that work under contract to other government agencies, including the State Department.

Representative Price’s bill would extend the MEJA legislation to all contractors operating in war zones. The bill passed the house 389 to 30 last month and is now before the Senate.

He said it cannot be applied retroactively to the Sept. 16 case, but he said that the guards who killed the Iraqis must be brought to justice, under the War Crimes Act or some other law.
 

Paul von Zielbauer contributed reporting from Camp Pendleton, Calif.

    F.B.I. Says Guards Killed 14 Iraqis Without Cause, NYT, 14.11.2007 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/14/world/middleeast/14blackwater.html?hp

Reid Threatens War Money

November 13, 2007
Filed at 12:53 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday that Democrats won't approve more money for the Iraq war this year unless President Bush agrees to begin bringing troops home.

By the end of the week, the House and Senate planned to vote on a $50 billion measure for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bill would require Bush to initiate troop withdrawals immediately with the goal of ending combat by December 2008.

If Bush vetoes the bill, ''then the president won't get his $50 billion,'' Reid, D-Nev., told reporters at a Capitol Hill news conference.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., made a similar statement last week in a closed-door caucus meeting.

Their remarks reflect a new Democratic strategy on the war: Force Bush to accept a timetable for troop withdrawals, or turn Pentagon accounting processes into a bureaucratic nightmare.

If Democrats refuse to send Bush the $50 billion, the military would have to drain its annual budget to keep the wars afloat. Last week, Congress approved a $471 billion budget for the military that pays mostly for non-war related projects, such as depot maintenance and weapons development.

The tactic stops short of blocking money outright from being used on the war, an approach that has divided Democrats and fueled Republican criticism that Democrats are eager to abandon the troops. But forcing the Pentagon into a painful budget dance to pay for the wars spares Democrats from having to write a blank check on the unpopular war.

''We will and we must pay for whatever cost to protect the American people,'' said House Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md. ''But tragically, unfortunately, incredibly, the war is not making us safer.''

    Reid Threatens War Money, NYT, 13.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Iraq.html

Iraq, Afghan War Costs Are $1.6 Trillion

November 13, 2007
Filed at 12:45 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The economic costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are estimated to total $1.6 trillion -- roughly double the amount the White House has requested thus far, according to a new report by Democrats on Congress' Joint Economic Committee.

The report, released Tuesday, attempted to put a price tag on the two conflicts, including ''hidden'' costs such as interest payments on the money borrowed to pay for the wars, lost investment, the expense of long-term health care for injured veterans and the cost of oil market disruptions.

The $1.6 trillion figure, for the period from 2002 to 2008, translates into a cost of $20,900 for a family of four, the report said. The Bush administration has requested $804 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined, the report stated.

For the Iraq war only, total economic costs were estimated at $1.3 trillion for the period from 2002 to 2008. That would cost a family of four $16,500, the report said.

Future economic costs would be even greater. The report estimated that both wars would cost $3.5 trillion between 2003 and 2017. Under that scenario, it would cost a family of four $46,400, the report said.

The report, from the committee's Democratic majority, was not was vetted with Republican members. Democratic leaders in Congress, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., seized on the report to criticize Bush's war strategy. The White House countered that the report was politically motivated.

''This report was put out by Democrats on Capitol Hill. This committee is known for being partisan and political. They did not consult or cooperate with the Republicans on the committee. And so I think it is an attempt to muddy the waters on what has been some positive developments being reported out of Iraq,'' said White House press secretary Dana Perino. ''I haven't seen the report, but it's obvious the motivations behind it,'' she added.

The report comes as the House prepares to vote this week on another effort by Democrats to set a deadline for withdrawing troops from Iraq as a condition for providing another $50 billion for the war.

Reid said the report ''is another reminder of how President Bush's stubborn refusal to change course in Iraq and congressional Republicans' willingness to rubberstamp his failed strategy -- has real consequences at home for all Americans.''

Perino, while acknowledging the dangers in Iraq, defended Bush's stance.

''Obviously it remains a dangerous situation in Iraq. But the reduction in violence, the increased economic capacity of the country, as well as, hopefully, some continued political reconciliation that is moving from the bottom up, is a positive trend and one that we -- well, it's positive and we hope it is a trend that will take hold,'' Perino said.

Oil prices have surged since the start of the war, from about $37 a barrel to well over $90 a barrel in recent weeks, the report said. ''Consistent disruptions from the war have affected oil prices,'' although the Iraq war is not responsible for all of the increase in oil prices, the report said.

Still, the report estimated that high oil prices have hit U.S. consumers in the pocket, transferring ''approximately $124 billion from U.S. oil consumers to foreign (oil) producers'' from 2003 to 2008, the report said.

High oil prices can slow overall economic growth if that chills spending and investment by consumers and businesses. At the same time, high oil prices can spread inflation throughout the economy if companies decide to boost the prices of many other goods and services.

Meanwhile, ''the sum of interest paid on Iraq-related debt from 2003 to 2017 will total over $550 billion,'' the report said. The government has to make interest payments on the money it borrows to finance the national debt, which recently hit $9 trillion for the first time.

The report was obtained by The Associated Press before its release. An earlier draft of the report, which also had been obtained by The Associated Press, had put the economic cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars at a slightly lower, $1.5 trillion.

''What this report makes crystal clear is that the cost to our country in lives lost and dollars spent is tragically unacceptable,'' said Joint Economic Committee Chairman said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

    Iraq, Afghan War Costs Are $1.6 Trillion, NYT, 13.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-War-Costs.html

In Mixed Slice of Baghdad, Old Bonds Defy War

November 13, 2007
The New York Times
By SABRINA TAVERNISE and KARIM HILMI

BAGHDAD — At its oldest spot, a small dusty strip of dirt road near a mosque, the neighborhood of Bab al Sheik — a maze of snaking streets too narrow for cars — dates from a time, more than a thousand years ago, when Baghdad ruled the Islamic world.

At that time, orchards and palaces of Abbasid princes unfolded in stately splendor not far away.

Ten centuries later, Bab al Sheik is less grand, but still extraordinary: it has been spared the sectarian killing that has gutted other neighborhoods, and Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and Christians live together here with unusual ease. It has been battered by bombings around its edges, but the war has been kept from its heart, largely because of its ancient, shared past, bound by trust and generations of intermarriage.

“All of these people grew up here together,” said Monther, a suitcase seller here. “From the time of our grandfathers, same place, same food, same everything.”

Much of today’s Baghdad sprang into existence in the 1970s, when oil nationalization drew Iraqis from all over the country to work. The city’s population more than tripled over the course of 20 years, and new neighborhoods sprawled east and west. The war and civil conflict have seemed to take a heavier toll in those areas than in some of the older neighborhoods.

No one knows that better than Waleed, a rail-thin Bab al Sheik native who 10 years ago moved his family to Dora, a newly built middle-class neighborhood in southern Baghdad.

In Dora, residents were from all over. That never seemed to matter until the basic rules of society fell away after the American occupation began. The only bulwark left against chaos was trust between families, and in Dora there was not enough.

“We didn’t know each other’s backgrounds,” said Waleed, sitting recently with Monther in a barbershop in Bab al Sheik, rain spitting on the street outside. Neither man wanted to be identified by his last name out of concern for safety.

“Here, he can’t lie to me,” he said, jabbing a finger in Monther’s direction. “He can’t say, ‘I’m this, I’m that,’ because I know it’s not true.”

In Dora, he said, he did not have those powers of discernment. And he paid the price: his son was shot to death on Oct. 9, 2006, while trying to get a copy of his high school diploma. Waleed moved his family out of the area immediately.

“My first thought was this neighborhood,” he said. “My grandfather is from here. I always felt safe here.”

So did two reporters, who made six visits to the area over two months. It was safe enough, in fact, to walk through the warren of narrow streets, nod at older women sitting at street-level windows, linger in a barbershop and make long visits to Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish homes.

On a recent Friday, a large Kurdish extended family relaxed at home. The living room was dark and cool, tucked in an alley away from the afternoon sun.

Abu Nawal, the father, recounted how a group of men from the office of the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr came to a local cafe, proposing to set up shop in the area. The cafe owner pointed to a sign, which stated in dark script that all discussions of politics and religion were prohibited. The men were then asked to leave.

“The guys in the neighborhood said, ‘If you try to make an office here, we will explode it,’” said Abu Nawal, a shoemaker, whose family has lived in the neighborhood for four generations.

Some time later, Sunni Arab political party members came and were similarly rebuffed.

“They wanted to put their foot in this neighborhood, but they couldn’t,” said Abu Nawal, who asked to be identified by his nickname for the safety of his family.

He said he despised the poisonous mix of religion and politics that was strangling Iraqi society, and he enjoyed cracking wry jokes at politicians’ expense. Playing off the names for extremist militias, which in Iraq call themselves things like the Islamic Army, he refers to his group of friends as the Arak Army, righteous defenders of an anise-flavored alcoholic drink.

The neighborhood has another rare asset: moderate religious men.

Sheik Muhammad Wehiab, a 30-year-old Shiite imam whose family has lived in Bab al Sheik for seven generations, was jailed for 14 months under Saddam Hussein, a biographical fact that should have opened doors for him in the new Shiite-dominated power hierarchy. But his moderate views were unpopular in elite circles, and he has remained in the neighborhood.

He feels connected. So much so that while talking on the phone one night this fall, he walked out into the tiny alley outside his door, lay down and watched the stars in the night sky.

“I think Maliki right now is envying me,” he said to himself. “No bodyguards. Just free. This is the blessing.”

Sheik Wehiab has radical views. One of them is that Muslims have behaved terribly toward one another in the war here and that they have given Islam a bad name in using it to gain power.

“I don’t blame those guys who drew the cartoons,” he said, referring to the Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that set off riots and protests across the Islamic world last year.

“Muslims are the ones to be blamed,” he said, sitting in an armchair in his quiet living room. “They have given them this picture.” An ice cream seller walked past his window, hawking in a loud voice.

Sheik Wehiab’s friend, a Sunni cleric, holds a similar view.

“The greatest jihad is the jihad of yourself,” said the cleric, whose smooth voice echoes through the neighborhood as he calls worshipers to prayer every day at Qailani Mosque, the neighborhood’s anchor.

The cleric, who asked that his name not be published out of concern for his safety, because of the high profile of the mosque, lovingly ticks off qualities of the 12th-century Sufi sheik Abdel Qadr Qailani, who gave the mosque its name: Intellectual. Scholar. Moral teacher.

But moderate religion is not drawing an audience on a national scale, and Qailani Mosque, one of Baghdad’s most important Sunni institutions, has fallen on hard times. Donations are down. Its long-running soup kitchen serves one meal a day instead of three. Sufi clerics cannot perform their rituals. A bomb sheared off part of a minaret in February.

“Please, please, write as much as you can that we don’t want war,” the cleric said. At afternoon prayer, a trickle of worshipers walked over marble floors in stocking feet.

War has come hard to the edges of Bab al Sheik. Bombings in its outer market areas have killed dozens. But deep inside the neighborhood, residents still feel free to poke fun.

In the barbershop, Waleed and Monther listen to the barber’s stories. A favorite, about the death of a man named Abdul al-Majeed, begins one night in 1977 when he demanded that the barber, Abu Zeinab, an elfin man, put on some music for a card game outside.

Abu Zeinab grudgingly obliged. The song was famous, but Mr. Majeed found its refrain — “you, who are buried under the sand” — morose. Angrily, he told a different shop owner nearby to put on some music to drown it out. By coincidence, that man put on the same song.

Then came the funny part. Mr. Majeed, at that very moment, keeled over dead.

“The song was a message for him,” said Abu Zeinab, waving his arms for emphasis, his tiny shop throbbing with his audience’s laughter.

Even in death, Mr. Majeed was unlucky. He died on the eve of the census, when traffic all over the city was stopped. Large amounts of arak were consumed. By the time the pallbearers made it to the cemetery they were swaying in an undignified manner.

“Even the gravedigger was drunk,” Abu Zeinab said. The man dug the grave on the same spot where Mr. Majeed’s son was buried and said, “They’ll hug each other down there.”

Outside, it was almost dark. Cheeks felt tight from laughing.

A small boy entered the shop, carrying a battered aluminum tray. Lentils, rice, tomatoes and cabbage in bowls of chipped green glass.

Abu Zeinab made room on the counter, putting aside a pair of scissors and a tiny potted plastic plant that looked like a child’s toy.

He loaded a cassette tape into his battered boombox. Prayers came out in a melody.

Then he sat, and invited his guests to share his dinner.

Johan Spanner contributed reporting.

    In Mixed Slice of Baghdad, Old Bonds Defy War, NYT, 13.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/world/middleeast/13baghdad.html

In Old Quarter, Sectarian Ties Stave Off War

November 13, 2007
The New York Times
By SABRINA TAVERNISE and KARIM HILMI

BAGHDAD — At its oldest spot, a small dusty strip of dirt road near a mosque, the neighborhood of Bab al Sheik — a maze of snaking streets too narrow for cars — dates from a time, more than a thousand years ago, when Baghdad ruled the Islamic world.

At that time, orchards and palaces of Abbasid princes unfolded in stately splendor not far away.

Ten centuries later, Bab al Sheik is less grand, but still extraordinary: it has been spared the sectarian killing that has gutted other neighborhoods, and Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and Christians live together here with unusual ease. It has been battered by bombings around its edges, but the war has been kept from its heart, largely because of its ancient, shared past, bound by trust and generations of intermarriage.

“All of these people grew up here together,” said Monther, a suitcase seller here. “From the time of our grandfathers, same place, same food, same everything.”

Much of today’s Baghdad sprang into existence in the 1970s, when oil nationalization drew Iraqis from all over the country to work. The city’s population more than tripled over the course of 20 years, and new neighborhoods sprawled east and west. The war and civil conflict have seemed to take a heavier toll in those areas than in some of the older neighborhoods. No one knows this better that Waleed, a rail-thin Bab al Sheik native who 10 years ago moved his family to Dora, a newly built middle-class neighborhood in southern Baghdad.

In Dora, residents were from all over. That never seemed to matter until the basic rules of society fell away after the American occupation began. The only bulwark left against complete chaos was trust between families, and in Dora there was not enough.

“We didn’t know each other’s backgrounds,” said Waleed, sitting recently with Monther in a barbershop in Bab al Sheik, rain spitting on the street outside. Neither man wanted to be identified by their last names out of concern for their safety.

“Here, he can’t lie to me,” he said, jabbing a finger in Monther’s direction. “He can’t say, ‘I’m this, I’m that,’ because I know it’s not true.”

In Dora, he said, he did not have those powers of discernment. And he paid the price: his son was shot to death on Oct. 9, 2006, while trying to get a copy of his high school diploma. Waleed moved his family out of the area immediately.

“My first thought was this neighborhood,” he said. “My grandfather is from here. I always felt safe here.”

So did two reporters, who made six visits to the area over two months. It was safe enough, in fact, to walk through the warren of narrow streets, nod at elderly women sitting at street-level windows, linger in a barbershop and make long visits to Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish homes.

On a recent Friday, a large Kurdish extended family relaxed at home. The living room was dark and cool, tucked in an alley away from the afternoon sun. Abu Nawal, the father, recounted how a group of men from the office of the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr came to a local cafe, proposing to set up shop in the area. The cafe owner pointed to a sign, which stated in dark script that all discussions of politics and religion were prohibited. The men were then asked to leave.

“The guys in the neighborhood said, ‘If you try to make an office here, we will explode it,’” said Abu Nawal, a shoemaker, whose family has lived in the neighborhood for four generations.

Some time later, Sunni Arab political party members came and were similarly rebuffed.

“They wanted to put their foot in this neighborhood, but they couldn’t,” said Abu Nawal, who asked to be identified by his nickname for the safety of his family.

He said he despised the poisonous mix of religion and politics that was strangling Iraqi society, and he enjoyed cracking wry jokes at politicians’ expense. Playing off the names for extremist militias, which in Iraq call themselves names like the Islamic Army, he refers to his group of friends as the Arak Army, righteous defenders of an anise-flavored alcoholic drink.

The neighborhood has another rare asset: moderate religious men. Sheik Muhammad Wehiab, a 30-year-old Shiite imam whose family has lived in Bab al Sheik for seven generations, was jailed for 14 months under Saddam Hussein, a biographical fact that should have opened doors for him in the new Shiite-dominated power hierarchy. But his moderate views were unpopular in elite circles, and he has remained in the neighborhood.

He feels connected. So much so that while talking on the phone one night this fall, he walked out into the tiny alley outside his door, lay down and watched the stars in the night sky.

“I think Maliki right now is envying me,” he said to himself. “No bodyguards. Just free. This is the blessing.”

He has radical views. One of them is that Muslims have behaved terribly toward one another in the war here and have given Islam a bad name in using it to gain power.

“I don’t blame those guys who drew the cartoons,” he said, referring to the Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that sparked riots and protests across the Islamic world last year.

“Muslims are the ones to be blamed,” he said, sitting in an armchair in his quiet living room. “They have given them this picture.” An ice cream seller walked past his window, hawking in a loud voice.

Sheik Wehiab’s friend, a Sunni cleric, holds a similar view.

“The greatest jihad is the jihad of yourself,” said the cleric, whose smooth voice echoes through the neighborhood as he calls worshipers to prayer every day at Qailani Mosque, the neighborhood’s anchor.

The cleric, who asked that his name not be published out of concern for his safety, because of the high profile of the mosque, lovingly ticks off qualities of the 12th-century Sufi sheik Abdel Qadr Qailani, who gave the mosque its name: Intellectual. Scholar. Moral teacher.

But moderate religion is not drawing an audience on a national scale, and the mosque, one of Baghdad’s most important Sunni institutions, has fallen on hard times. Donations are down. Its long-running soup kitchen serves one meal a day instead of three. Sufi clerics cannot perform their rituals. A bomb sheared off part of a minaret in February.

“Please, please, write as much as you can that we don’t want war,” the cleric said. At afternoon prayer, a trickle of worshipers walked over marble floors in sock feet.

War has come hard to the edges of Bab al Sheik. Bombings in its outer market areas have killed dozens. But deep inside the neighborhood, residents still feel free to poke fun.

In the barbershop, Waleed and Monther listen to the barber’s stories. A favorite, about the death of a man named Abdul al-Majeed, begins one night in 1977 when he demanded that the barber, Abu Zeinab, an elfin man, put on some music for a card game outside.

Abu Zeinab grudgingly obliged. The song was famous, but Mr. Majeed found its refrain — “you, who are buried under the sand” — morose. Angrily, he told a different shop owner nearby to put on some music to drown it out. By coincidence, that man put on the same song.

Then came the funny part. Mr. Majeed, at that very moment, keeled over dead.

“The song was a message for him,” said Abu Zeinab, waving his arms for emphasis, his tiny shop throbbing with his audience’s laughter.

Even in death, Mr. Majeed was unlucky. He died on the eve of the census, when traffic all over the city was stopped. Large amounts of arak were consumed. By the time the pallbearers made it to the cemetery they were swaying in an undignified manner.

“Even the gravedigger was drunk,” Abu Zainab said. The man dug the grave on the same spot where Mr. Majeed’s son was buried and said, “They’ll hug each other down there.”

Outside it was almost dark. Cheeks felt tight from laughing.

A small boy entered the shop, carrying a battered aluminum tray. Lentils, rice, tomatoes and cabbage in bowls of chipped green glass. Abu Zainab made room on the counter, putting aside a pair of scissors and a tiny potted plastic plant that looked like a child’s toy.

He placed a cassette tape into his battered boombox. Prayers came out in a melody.

Then he sat, and invited his guests to share his dinner.

Johan Spanner contributed reporting.

    In Old Quarter, Sectarian Ties Stave Off War, NYT, 13.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/world/middleeast/13baghdad.html?hp

Iraq Rocket, Mortar Fire at 21 - Month Low

November 12, 2007
Filed at 10:16 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

BAGHDAD (AP) -- Rocket and mortar attacks in Iraq have decreased to their lowest levels in more than 21 months, the U.S. military said Monday. In the capital, Iraqi officials said a taxi driver was shot dead by a private security guard hired to protect U.S. convoys.

Last month saw 369 ''indirect fire'' attacks -- the lowest number since February 2006. October's total was half of what it was in the same month a year ago. And it marked the third month in a row of sharply reduced insurgent activity, the military said.

The U.S. command issued the tallies a day after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said suicide attacks and other bombings in Baghdad also have dropped dramatically, calling it an end of sectarian violence.

Despite the drop in violence, the capital remains tense and al-Maliki and other Iraqi and foreign officials are under heavy protection.

Embassy spokesman Philip T. Reeker said the company involved in Saturday's shooting was DynCorp International, one of three firms contracted to protect American officials in Iraq.

Reeker could not confirm anyone had died, and he would not say who the seven-vehicle convoy was carrying nor give its destination.

''They reported that a private vehicle approached the convoy, and continued to approach to the point where a member of the PSD used his weapon to disable the vehicle,'' Reeker told reporters on a regular conference call from Baghdad, using the acronym for private security detail.

Iraqis have grown increasingly angry at what they believe are unprovoked killings by contractors hired to protect Americans here. In September, another shooting left 17 Iraqis dead and prompted the Iraqi government to call for the expulsion of the firm involved, Blackwater Worldwide.

The taxi driver was shot in the head and chest, the police officer said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information. Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf also said the man had died.

Afterward, police searched the man's taxi and found no weapons nor any other evidence of suspicious activity, the officer said. The convoy did not stop for the investigation, he said.

Total rocket and mortar attacks rose steadily from 808 in January 2007 to a peak of 1,032 in June, before falling over the next four months, a U.S. military statement said Monday. That decline also was seen in Baghdad, where such attacks rose from 139 in January to 224 in June, and then fell to only 53 attacks in October, it said.

The Iraqi spokesman for a U.S.-Iraqi push to pacify the capital said the decline in violence would allow the government to reopen 10 roads later this month.

''This will help reduce traffic jams and citizens will feel life returning to normal,'' Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi told Iraqi state television.

Associated Press figures show a sharp drop in the number of U.S. and Iraqi deaths across the country in the past few months. The number of Iraqis who met violent deaths dropped from at least 1,023 in September to at least 905 in October, according to an AP count.

The number of American military deaths fell from 65 to at least 39 over the same period.

Before the arrival of nearly 30,000 U.S. reinforcements this past spring, explosions shook Baghdad daily -- sometimes hourly. Mortar and rocket fire were frequent as was the rhythm of gunfire.

Now the sounds of warfare are rare. American troops have set up small outposts in some of the capital's most dangerous enclaves. Locals previously lukewarm to the presence of U.S. soldiers patrol alongside them. And a historic lane on the eastern banks of the Tigris is set to reopen later this year, lined with seafood restaurants and an art gallery.

Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of U.S. forces south of the capital, said Sunday he believed the decrease would hold, because of what he called a ''groundswell'' of support from regular Iraqis.

''If we didn't have so many people coming forward to help, I'd think this is a flash in the pan. But that's just not the case,'' Lynch told a small group of reporters over lunch in the Green Zone.

He attributed the sharp drop in attacks to the American troop buildup, the setup of small outposts at the heart of Iraqi communities, and help from thousands of locals fed up with al-Qaida and other extremists.

''These people -- Sunni and Shiite -- are saying, `I've had enough,''' Lynch said.

    Iraq Rocket, Mortar Fire at 21 - Month Low, NYT, 12.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq.html

Security Guard Fires From Convoy, Killing Iraqi Driver

November 12, 2007
The New York Times
By JAMES GLANZ

BAGHDAD, Nov. 11 — An Iraqi taxi driver was shot and killed on Saturday by a guard with DynCorp International, a private security company hired to protect American diplomats here, when a DynCorp convoy rolled past a knot of traffic on an exit ramp in Baghdad, the Iraqi Interior Ministry said Sunday.

Three witnesses said the taxi had posed no threat to the convoy, and one of them, an Iraqi Army sergeant who inspected the car afterward, said it contained no weapons or explosive devices.

“They just killed a man and drove away,” Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, an Interior Ministry spokesman, said in his office on Sunday afternoon. He added later, “We have opened an investigation, and we have contacted the company and told them about our accusations, and we are still waiting for their response.”

It was the latest in what the Iraqi government has said are unprovoked shootings on the streets of Baghdad by security companies hired by the State Department or contractors affiliated with it. On Sept. 16, guards with another of those concerns, Blackwater, opened fire a few miles south of Saturday’s shooting, killing 17 Iraqi civilians and wounding at least 24, according to Iraqi investigators.

The Iraqi government has accused Blackwater of involvement in at least six questionable shootings in Baghdad since September 2006. DynCorp has not drawn the same scrutiny, though it is unclear whether it has been involved in any other episodes in which Iraqis have been killed.

The shootings have stoked outrage among Iraqis, driven efforts to hold private security companies legally accountable for their actions in both the United States and Iraq, and created new challenges for American officials who were already forced to do much of their business within Baghdad’s protected Green Zone.

The latest episode came as senior officials from the Pentagon and the State Department were due to arrive in Baghdad on Sunday to arrange new measures to tighten control over security firms and coordinate their movements more closely with the United States military.

Mirembe Nantongo, a spokeswoman for the United States Embassy in Baghdad, said the officials expected in Baghdad were Gregory Starr, acting assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, and P. Jackson Bell, deputy under secretary of defense for logistics and matériel readiness.

“They will meet with U.S. Embassy and military officials concerning private security company operations in Iraq,” Ms. Nantongo said in an e-mail message, adding that Mr. Starr also planned to meet with senior Iraqi officials, including the interior minister, Jawad al-Bolani.

As in several previous shootings involving security companies affiliated with the State Department, witnesses to Saturday’s shooting said they saw no reason for the guards to open fire on the car, a white Hyundai with a taxi sign on the roof, driven by Mohamad Khalil Khudair, 40. It was unclear where the convoy was headed, or whether it carried any American officials.

“The poor cabdriver was stopped here,” said one witness, Raafat Jassim, 36, who said he was standing outside a barbershop near the exit ramp at the time. “He had his hazard lights flashing, and the convoy was a long way away from him,” Mr. Jassim said, pointing to a spot about 50 yards down the ramp, which comes off a bridge over the Tigris River in a neighborhood called Utafiya.

An official at the local police headquarters said that the victim’s brother had insisted on pressing charges against the company and that as a result, the case had been referred to an Iraqi judge. But legal loopholes and immunities in Iraqi and American law have raised questions about whether private security companies operating in this country can be called to account in any court.

Both the State Department and DynCorp confirmed that there had been a shooting involving one of the company’s convoys on Saturday. Possibly because the convoy sped away after the shooting, neither the company nor the State Department could immediately confirm that Mr. Khudair had been killed.

But Gregory Lagana, a DynCorp spokesman, said the details of the encounter in which Mr. Khudair died appeared to match the one in which DynCorp guards reported discharging a weapon on Saturday. “We’re assuming it’s the same incident,” he said.

“We’ve stood down that particular team,” Mr. Lagana said, pending an investigation. “We take this kind of thing very seriously.”

He added: “We run a very disciplined, very restrained security operation. We’re trying to ascertain the facts. We’ll work with the Ministry of Interior and the State Department every step of the way.”

Mr. Lagana said the DynCorp guards reported that they were unaware that they had wounded or killed anyone.

“We knew that we had fired at the front of the vehicle,” he said. “We were kind of surprised that there was a death.”

One witness, Sgt. Ahmad Hussein, 32, who was stationed near the spot where the shooting took place, said the convoy consisted of six vehicles, including three white trucks or sport utility vehicles with tinted glass, and three sedans, which he believed were Peugeots.

The convoy came barreling down the exit ramp from the bridge around midday, Sergeant Hussein said. “We saw them coming, so we ordered the traffic to stop,” he said.

The crowded traffic on the ramp came to a stop, but as Mr. Khudair tried to pull closer to the side of the road, a gun in the rear truck of the convoy fired several shots into his car, Sergeant Hussein said. At least one bullet went through the windshield and struck Mr. Khudair on the right side of his chest, the sergeant said.

Another witness, who gave his name only as Ahmad, said that as the convoy sped away, he and several other people rushed to the car and found Mr. Khudair with his chest smeared in blood.

“We got him out of the car and put him in another car to take him to a hospital,” Ahmad said. He added that Mr. Khudair’s gearshift was in neutral when they pulled him out.

Sergeant Hussein said that Mr. Khudair was alive when he began the journey to the hospital but that he died along the way. “He didn’t make it to the hospital,” he said.

Two witnesses said that while Westerners appeared to be wielding the guns in the white trucks, at least some of the passengers in the sedans appeared to be Iraqis.

A United States official said that DynCorp was under contract to the State Department’s International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Bureau, to protect both embassy personnel and affiliated contractors. The official, who requested anonymity, did not specify who was in the convoy.

Ms. Nantongo, the embassy spokeswoman, said that according to DynCorp’s own report to the State Department on the episode, the DynCorp guards first used “nonlethal means to warn the driver of the vehicle to stop.”

In Iraq, the term “nonlethal means” often indicates that guards threw water bottles, waved or fired a small flare to get the attention of a driver.

But DynCorp told the State Department that the vehicle continued forward, and that a guard “discharged his weapon to disable the vehicle,” Ms. Nantongo said. “There are conflicting accounts as to whether anyone was injured or killed,” she said.
 

Mudhafer al-Husaini and Ahmad Fadam contributed reporting.

    Security Guard Fires From Convoy, Killing Iraqi Driver, NYT, 12.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/world/middleeast/12contractor.html?hp

US Military Deaths in Iraq at 3, 861

November 11, 2007
Filed at 7:42 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

As of Sunday, Nov. 11, 2007, at least 3,861 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 eight military civilians. At least 3,146 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

The AP count is four higher than the Defense Department's tally, last updated Friday, Nov. 9 at 10 a.m. EDT.

The British military has reported 171 deaths; Italy, 33; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 21; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Denmark, seven; El Salvador, five; Slovakia, four; Latvia, three; Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand, Romania, two each; and Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, South Korea, one death each.

------

The latest deaths reported by the military:

-- No deaths reported.

------

The latest identifications reported by the military:

-- No identifications reported.

------

On the Net:

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

    US Military Deaths in Iraq at 3, 861, NYT, 11.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Iraq-US-Deaths.html

Bush and Relatives of Fallen Lean on Each Other

November 10, 2007
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 — Late one night last year, while her husband was an Army scout in Iraq, Melissa Storey sat in the quiet of her bedroom to write President Bush a letter. She wanted him to know “we believed in him.” And after Staff Sgt. Clint Storey, 30, was killed by a roadside bomb, his widow put pen to paper again.

“I felt like I needed to let him know I don’t hate him because my husband is dead,” Mrs. Storey said, “that I don’t blame him for Clint dying over there.”

The correspondence did not go unnoticed. In May, Mrs. Storey received a surprise telephone call from the White House inviting her to a Memorial Day reception there. As she mingled at the elegant gathering, too nervous to eat, her 5-year-old daughter clutching her dress, her infant son cradled in her arms, a military aide appeared. The president wanted to see her in the Oval Office.

The Storeys, of Palmer, Mass., joined a growing list of bereaved families granted a private audience with the commander in chief. As Mr. Bush forges ahead with the war in Iraq, these “families of the fallen,” as the White House calls them, are one constituency he can still count on, a powerful reminder to an unpopular president that even in the face of heartbreaking loss, some still believe he is doing the right thing.

Since the war in Afghanistan began six years ago, Mr. Bush has met quietly with more than 450 such families, and is likely to meet more on Sunday, Veterans Day, in Waco, Tex., near his Crawford ranch. Mr. Bush often says he hears their voices — “don’t let my son die in vain,” he quotes them as saying — when making decisions about the war. The White House says families are not asked their political views. Yet war critics wonder just whose voices the president is hearing.

Like Melissa Storey, Bill Adams, who has been leading war protests in Lancaster, Pa., wrote Mr. Bush a letter — not to praise the president, but to question the military’s account of the death of his son, Brent. When Mr. Bush held a town-hall-style meeting in Lancaster last month, Mr. Adams asked a friend with a ticket to deliver his missive to the president. It worked, and a top aide to Mr. Bush later called Mr. Adams.

But when the president met families of the fallen that day in Lancaster, it did not escape Mr. Adams’s notice that he was not among them.

“I can’t help but be left with the suspicion that possibly his advance team screened those families for people who would be sympathetic,” Mr. Adams said. Given the chance, he said, he would have told Mr. Bush “that my son’s life was squandered.”

Polls show that two-thirds of Americans disapprove of the way the president is handling the war in Iraq; in a recent New York Times/CBS News survey, a majority said Mr. Bush’s troop buildup was having no impact, or making things worse. The White House pays close attention to military families, an important constituency, yet surveys, including a New York Times/CBS News poll in September, have also shown an erosion of support for the war among them.

Yet, White House aides and nine families who have met with Mr. Bush said dissent was rare in the sessions. The meetings are deeply private — the administration never reveals names of participants — and just one senior official attends, to take notes.

That official, who would speak only anonymously, said the “overwhelming number of families talk about the good their loved one felt they were doing.” This official said families were not screened; when Mr. Bush is traveling, the Pentagon finds local families for him to meet. And not all the meetings are cordial; two years ago, one mother, Cindy Sheehan, emerged from her audience with Mr. Bush complaining that he had been dismissive of her, and went on to start a political crusade against the war. Other family members have expressed discontent, including Elaine Johnson of Spartanburg, S.C., who said she asked Mr. Bush in her meeting why soldiers like her son, Darius Jennings, were still dying in Iraq. She subsequently began speaking out against the war.

Mr. Bush also meets families in connection with Iraq-related ceremonies and speeches, where war supporters make up the audience. John Ellsworth, vice president of Families United, a support group that backs Mr. Bush, has been invited to three White House events in the past seven months; each time, he, his wife, Debbie, and their daughter, Jessica, 12, have met Mr. Bush.

Tears are a big part of presidential family meetings; Mr. Ellsworth, whose son, Justin, died in Iraq in 2004, called Mr. Bush “a big softie.” Since the day in September 2001 that he stood on a charred fire truck with a bullhorn in the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center, much has been made of Mr. Bush’s role as comforter in chief. He has consoled victims of floods, wildfires and tornadoes. But in his family meetings, the comforting works both ways.

Kevin Graves of the Northern California town of Discovery Bay waited two hours during a South Lawn picnic to tell Mr. Bush “it was an honor for my son to serve under you as commander in chief.” Amy Galvez of Salt Lake City told Mr. Bush that “as a mom who lost a son in this war, it’s easier for me to handle because I believe you are sincere.”

God is a frequent topic. Robert Lehmiller, also of Salt Lake City, says the president brought religion into the conversation, telling him, “If you truly believe the Scriptures, you will see your son again.”

Sometimes, gifts are exchanged. Maureen and Dan Murphy of Patchogue, N.Y., gave Mr. Bush a gold dog tag engraved with the likeness of their son, Lt. Mike Murphy, moments before Mr. Bush awarded him a posthumous Medal of Honor. They were stunned to see the president loosen his tie and slip the necklace under his shirt. Mr. Bush later remarked to Mr. Murphy that it had gone well “because I had Mike next to my heart.”

The senior official said Mr. Bush often remarked that he gained “strength and comfort” from the encounters. But war critics say the sessions amount to little more than echo chambers to reinforce Mr. Bush’s views. Charley Richardson, a founder of Military Families Speak Out, which opposes the war, said about 100 families who had lost loved ones were members of his group, but just one, Ms. Johnson, had met Mr. Bush.

“He doesn’t hear the other voices,” Mr. Richardson said. “If all the voices are supporting the war, it’s a powerful emotional addition to the chorus.”

The White House knows that if support for the war erodes among military families, Mr. Bush’s ability to pursue his policies in Iraq will suffer.

In a recent interview with conservative columnists, Mr. Bush said” “I am constantly trying to get a sense of the military, the people that are out there in the fight. And the question is, Are their families in the fight?”

To see to it that they are, Mr. Bush often plays the role of social worker in his family meetings, asking participants about issues like benefits and health care. Mrs. Storey said the president “seemed to get really upset” when she told him she was not getting her survivor’s benefits. Within a week, she said, “the checks began showing up.”

It has been nearly six months since their meeting, and sometimes Mrs. Storey still finds it hard to believe that the simple act of writing a letter brought her into the presence of the president of the United States. She still has the photographs from the session, the letters she and Mr. Bush exchanged. Living in the heavily Democratic state of Massachusetts, she said, it is not easy to be a Bush supporter.

“When I tell the people I met the president, a lot of people will give that look,” she said. “I say, I don’t care what your opinion is of him. You have your opinion, I have mine, but I’ve met him and he’s a good guy. I cannot say anything negative about that man. He showed us nothing but kindness.”

    Bush and Relatives of Fallen Lean on Each Other, NYT, 10.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/10/us/10families.html?hp

Father defends Bush on Iraq war



8 November 2007
USA Today
By Susan Page

COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Former president George H.W. Bush forcefully defended his son's handling of the Iraq war Thursday, saying critics of the current president have forgotten the "extraordinary brutality" of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

"Do they want to bring back Saddam Hussein, these critics?" the elder Bush told USA TODAY in a rare interview. "Do they want to go back to the status quo ante? I don't know what they are talking about here. Do they think life would be better in the Middle East if Saddam were still there?"

Bush, 83, was interviewed in a replica of the White House Situation Room at his remodeled presidential library. The Bush Presidential Library and Museum, on the grounds of Texas A&M, is reopening Saturday after an $8.3 million renovation. The added features include the Situation Room and an interactive computer program that allows visitors to consider options Bush weighed during the Gulf War.

In one key decision, Bush rejected calls to topple Saddam, instead declaring the war over after Iraqi forces withdrew from Kuwait. The program calls the idea of going to Baghdad "very tempting" but says it "would have been a disastrous decision," splintering the international coalition and leaving U.S. and possibly British troops on their own in Iraq.

"It's not second-guessed quite so much today, but it was second-guessed" at the time, Bush said of his judgment that combat should end. "But the coalition was formed with my word to the various international leaders, 'The objective is to kick Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait,' " not some further-reaching goal.

Bush dismissed a question about whether his son should have used similar reasoning before invading Iraq in 2003. Saddam fled into hiding, was captured and executed after a trial. About 165,000 U.S. troops remain deployed there during the war's fifth year.

Other analysts have made the comparison, however. "Historians, I believe, will say he made a wise judgment on what could be expected if we went into Iraq," presidential historian Robert Dallek says. "By contrast, Bush 43 has found his presidency ruined, one might say, by this Iraq war."

The elder Bush reacted testily when asked about criticism of his son. "I don't reminisce with … my friends like you about what my son does or doesn't do," Bush said. But "I think we forget even today the extraordinary brutality of Saddam Hussein."

Including his plans to assassinate the elder Bush?

"Well, that didn't endear him to me at all," he said.

The former president rarely agrees to interviews, although he appeared on Fox News Sunday this week and taped an interview with C-SPAN Thursday to talk about his revamped library. Questions like those raised by USA TODAY are one reason he generally eschews the press, he said.

"You're here to talk about the library," he said, not about the current president. "He has my full, unequivocal support. I feel about him great respect for what he's doing and tries to do, and I think much of the criticism is grossly unfair. … That's a father caring about his son and his president."

    Father defends Bush on Iraq war, UT, 8.11.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-11-08-1a-bush_N.htm

Soldier Watches Child's Birth Via Video

November 8, 2007
Filed at 9:54 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- Far from home while stationed in Iraq, U.S. Marine Sgt. Chad Mortenson didn't have to miss the birth of his first child.

Through a live video conference link set up by a charity, Freedom Calls Foundation, the 25-year-old Mortenson watched his wife, Denae Mortenson, deliver the couple's first child at Integris Southwest Medical Center Wednesday.

''It was wonderful. The whole time he was talking to me,'' said Denae Mortenson, 20. ''He could see me and I could hear him. It was like he was there, but he was just on a screen.''

Jayden Faith Mortenson was born at 8:11 a.m., weighing 6 pounds, 13 ounces.

''She's doing great -- 100 percent healthy,'' Denae Mortenson said.

The New Jersey-based foundation was founded by attorney and venture capitalist John Harlow. He said he initially founded the charity to provide phone calls for soldiers after learning of a soldier who rang up a $7,000 cell phone bill talking to his family from Iraq.

''I just didn't think it was right to have these families commercially exploited when they're making sacrifices on behalf of this country,'' Harlow said.

The group conducts about 2,000 video conferences a month, allowing soldiers to visit with dying relatives, watch their children graduate from high school and even ''attend'' funerals and memorial services.

''I had a first birthday where the guy came up on the screen and sang happy birthday to his daughter over the computer,'' Harlow said. ''After he sang the song, she ran across the room saying, 'dada,' and kissed the screen. It was very touching.''

    Soldier Watches Child's Birth Via Video, NYT, 8.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Video-Birth.html

Military Families Reconnect at Retreats

November 8, 2007
Filed at 6:01 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WOODBINE, Kan. (AP) -- Separated by Army deployments for nearly half of their 13-year marriage, Nancy and Sherwood Smith were eager to reconnect -- especially after his tour in Iraq last year.

''I think this deployment was my worst deployment,'' Nancy Sherwood said.

Fortunately for the couple, the local chapter of the Armed Services YMCA is treating them to a weekend getaway at a rustic lodge in Kansas' Flint Hills. It's one of several retreats the group has provided to thank military families for their sacrifices, said Frank Gallo, executive director of the organization.

The retreats are aimed at younger, junior enlisted soldiers and their families, most of whom cannot afford getaways to resort locations, he said.

''It's getting away from the post. Wives don't have to cook. It's outdoors,'' said Gallo, a retired admiral who spent 35 years in the Navy.

The retreats have been held at YMCA sites and other spots across the country, including California, Colorado and Hawaii. Grants from the California Community Foundation's Iraq-Afghanistan Deployment Impact Fund have financed the trips. The foundation is a Los Angeles-based charity organization.

Gallo said the stress of multiple deployments makes it difficult for families to spend the quality time together that relationships need. Getting couples out of their normal setting of military housing helps them heal, he said.

Nancy Smith -- a military brat turned military spouse -- has grown accustomed to a lifestyle that separates her from her husband for months at a time. When Sherwood, an Army sergeant, went to Iraq last year, she assumed the responsibilities of caring for their new house and a preteen daughter.

''He knows I'm a strong individual and everything's going to be OK at home and that gives him the opportunity to do his job,'' she said.

The question is what happens now that they're together again.

''I don't know what we're going to do. Can I put up with him for a year?'' she asked.

They have to catch up, for one thing. Families don't share everything that happens during a deployment. Soldiers don't need to know about every issue around the house, and they don't tell their wives about each mission. With communication limited, there are other more pressing things to say.

''I don't think I ever told him everything that was going on at home,'' Smith said, recalling challenges that ranged from repairing a burst water pipe to corralling the family horses after they escaped.

''My job is to take care of the house and kids. His job is to go fight the battles,'' she said. ''That's the way it is.''

--------

On the Net:

Fort Riley: http://www.riley.army.mil

Armed Services YMCA: http://www.asymca.org

    Military Families Reconnect at Retreats, NYT, 8.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Army-Families.html

5 U.S. Soldiers Killed by Bombs in Iraq

November 6, 2007
Filed at 11:27 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

BAGHDAD (AP) -- The U.S. military on Tuesday announced the deaths of five more soldiers and one sailor, making 2007 the deadliest year for U.S. troops despite a recent downturn, according to an Associated Press count.

At least 853 American military personnel have died in Iraq so far this year -- the highest annual toll since the war began in March 2003, according to AP figures.

The grim milestone passed despite a sharp drop in U.S. and Iraqi deaths here in recent months, after a 30,000-strong U.S. force buildup. There were 39 deaths in October, compared to 65 in September and 84 in August.

Five U.S. soldiers were killed Monday in two separate roadside bomb attacks, said Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, director of the Multi-National Force-Iraq's communications division.

''We lost five soldiers yesterday in two unfortunate incidents, both involving IEDs,'' Smith told reporters in Baghdad's heavily-guarded Green Zone. Later, the military said four of the soldiers died after an explosion near their vehicle in Kirkuk province, and one was killed in Anbar.

In a third statement, American forces said a sailor died of injuries from an explosion Monday in Salahuddin province, north of Baghdad.

With nearly two months left in the year, the U.S. toll has already surpassed that of 2004, when 850 troops died -- mostly in larger, more conventional battles like the campaign to cleanse Fallujah of Sunni militants in November, and U.S. clashes with Shiite militiamen in the sect's holy city of Najaf in August.

But the American military in Iraq reached its highest troop levels in Iraq this year -- 165,000. Moreover, the military's decision to send soldiers out of large bases and into Iraqi communities means more troops have seen more ''contact with enemy forces'' than ever before, said Maj. Winfield Danielson, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.

''It's due to the troop surge, which allowed us to go into areas that were previously safe havens for insurgents,'' Danielson told the AP on Sunday. ''Having more soldiers, and having them out in the communities, certainly contributes to our casualties.''

Meanwhile, the U.S. said it planned to release nine Iranian prisoners in the coming days, including two captured when U.S. troops stormed an Iranian government office in Irbil last January. The office was shut after the raid, but it reopened as an Iranian consulate on Tuesday, Iraqi and Iranian officials said.

A military spokesman said Iran appears to have kept its promise to stop the flow into Iraq of bomb-making materials and other weaponry that Washington says has inflamed insurgent violence and caused many American troop casualties.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last week that Iran had made such assurances to the Iraqi government.

''It's our best judgment that these particular EFPs ... in recent large cache finds do not appear to have arrived here in Iraq after those pledges were made,'' Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, director of the Multi-National Force-Iraq's communications division, told reporters Tuesday.

Kurdish rebels released another Iranian soldier captured two months ago in northern Iraq. AP Television News showed the soldier being handed over to representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the Qandeel mountains near the town of Ilan Shahir.

Among the weapons Washington has accused Iran of supplying to Iraqi insurgents are EFPs, or explosively formed projectiles. They fire a slug of molten metal capable of penetrating even the most heavily armored military vehicles, and thus are more deadly than other roadside bombs.

The No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, said last week that there had been a sharp decline in the number of EFPs found in Iraq in the last three months. At the time, he and Gates both said it was too early to tell whether the trend would hold, and whether it could be attributed to action by Iranian authorities. Iran publicly denies that it has sent weapons to Shiite militias in Iraq.

Also Tuesday, the U.S. military said Iraqi troops had discovered 22 bodies in a mass grave northwest of Baghdad over the weekend. The bodies were found during a joint operation Saturday. It was the second mass grave found in the area in less than a month.

After the discovery, U.S. and Iraqi forces launched an operation Sunday, including ground raids and air assaults targeting al-Qaida in the area, the U.S. statement said.

About 30 suspects were detained, it said. Two car bomb facilities and a number of weapons caches also were found, it added.

Iraqi officials were trying to identify the bodies and notify families.

    5 U.S. Soldiers Killed by Bombs in Iraq, NYT, 6.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq.html

2007 Deadliest Year for U.S. Troops in Iraq

November 7, 2007
The New York Times
By DAMIEN CAVE

BAGHDAD, Nov. 6 — Six American soldiers were killed in three separate attacks Monday, the military said today, taking the number of deaths this year to 851 and making 2007 the deadliest year of the war for American troops.

Military officials announced the discovery of a mass grave holding 22 bodies in a rural area north of Falluja. It also said that nine Iranians being held in Iraq would soon be released, including two detained during a January raid of a consulate office in Erbil.

Five of the American soldiers died in two roadside bomb attacks on Monday near Kirkuk, said Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, director of the communications division of the Multinational Force-Iraq, the formal name for the United States-led forces.

A sixth soldier died Monday during combat operations in Anbar Province, according to a military statement.

The deaths come only a few days after the military announced a steep drop in the rate of American deaths this year. In October, 38 American service members died in Iraq, the third lowest monthly tally since 2003, according to Iraq Casualty Count, a web site that tracks military deaths. November’s total, if the current pace continues, would be higher but still far below the war’s average of 69 American military deaths per month.

Despite the decline, American commanders acknowledged that 2007 will be far deadlier than the second worst year, 2004, when 849 Americans died, many of them in major battles for control of insurgent strongholds like Falluja.

Military officials attribute the rise this year to an expanded troop presence during the so-called surge, which brought more than 165,000 troops to Iraq, and sent units out of large bases and into more dangerous communities.

Commanders maintain that despite the high cost in terms of lives lost, the strategy has brought improved security to the country and “tactical momentum” that could stabilize Iraq permanently.

The potential release of the Iranians may reflect American approval of some signs that Iran is cooperating with their demand that it staunch the flow of materials into Iraq used to make deadly roadside bombs known as explosively formed projectiles, or EFPs.

Rear Admiral Smith said that the EFP components found recently during raids “do not appear to have arrived here in Iraq after those pledges were made,” suggesting that Iran has limited EFP trafficking across the border after promising to do so.

American commanders have stopped short of declaring that Iran has in fact complied with the United States’ demands, and today Rear Admiral Smith described the plan to release nine Iranian prisoners not as a diplomatic reward but rather as the perfunctory end to a criminal investigation.

“These individuals have no continuing value, nor do they pose a further threat to Iraqi security,” he said.

Rear Admiral Smith did not say why the two Iranians captured in January at an Iranian consulate office in Erbil were held for nine months, after Iran insisted that they were harmless government workers.

Meanwhile, violence against Iraqis continued. The mass grave was found Saturday during a joint American-Iraqi operation in the Lake Tharthar area, a desolate rural area near the site of another grave, holding 25 bodies, that was found less than a month ago.

Local police officials said the bodies were dumped in and around an abandoned building.

“Some were buried in wells and some were left in rooms used as prisons,” said a police officer who helped clear the grave. “These corpses are part of what we expect to find more of in the future.”

    2007 Deadliest Year for U.S. Troops in Iraq, NYT, 7.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/world/middleeast/07iraq.html?hp

U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq at 3, 850

November 4, 2007
Filed at 7:19 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

As of Sunday, Nov. 4, 2007, at least 3,850 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 eight military civilians. At least 3,131 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

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

The British military has reported 171 deaths; Italy, 33; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 21; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Denmark, seven; El Salvador, five; Slovakia, four; Latvia, three; Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand, Romania, two each; and Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, South Korea, one death each.

------

The latest deaths reported by the military:

-- No deaths reported.

------

The latest identifications reported by the military:

-- No identifications reported.

------

On the Net:

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

    U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq at 3, 850, NYT, 4.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Iraq-US-Deaths.html

2,000-Year-Old Christian Community in Iraq

Gains a Spiritual First in Baghdad

November 5, 2007
The New York Times
By ALISSA J. RUBIN

BAGHDAD, Nov. 4 — There is neither a cross nor a sign on the heavy metal gate to indicate that this is the official residence of one of the country’s most prominent Christians, the first in Iraq in modern times to be elevated to cardinal by the Roman Catholic Church.

The simple structure, in a dilapidated neighborhood of this capital, opposite empty former ministry buildings, is the home of Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly, whom the pope named on Oct. 17 to the College of Cardinals along with 22 others from around the world.

The only outward sign that this compound is Christian is in the garden, where a lawn surrounded by roses and zinnias is watched over by a graceful white statue of the Virgin Mary.

Many of his fellow cardinals come from Latin America, Africa and the Far East, places where Catholic practice is only a few hundred years old. But Cardinal Delly, 81, the patriarch of the Baghdad-based Chaldean Church, comes from Mosul, in northern Iraq, a place where Christian rites have been practiced for nearly 2,000 years.

There, as in Baghdad and other places where members of Iraq’s shrinking Christian population still live, it is possible to attend a Sunday Mass sung in Aramaic, one of the Semitic languages spoken at the time of Jesus.

“Christians and Muslims have lived together here for 1,400 years,” Cardinal Delly said in an interview. “We have much in common; in Iraq, the Christian house is next to the Muslim house.”

Cardinal Delly has a message honed from his many decades living in two worlds: that of Western Europe, where he studied, and that of the largely Muslim Middle East, which is his home.

“I am not happy when people ask, ‘How is the situation for Christians?’” he said. “Those who kill don’t kill only Christians. They kill Muslims as well — the situation is the same for both.”

The Chaldean Church is an Eastern Rite church affiliated with the Roman Catholics but allowed to retain its customs and rites, even when they differ from the traditions of the Roman church. Most Chaldeans live in Iraq, Iran and Lebanon, with scattered communities elsewhere in the Middle East. There are two Chaldean communities in the United States, one near Detroit and one near San Diego.

The Chaldeans are the most numerous of Iraq’s Christians, although their numbers have plunged since the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Although there is no census, Christian priests estimate that fewer than 500,000 Chaldeans are left in the country, about one million fewer than when Mr. Hussein was in power, when the country had about 24 million people. Other Christian sects with small populations in Iraq include Assyrian Christians, Armenian Christians and Sabeans, an ancient sect.

A fluent speaker of Italian, French and his native Arabic as well as some English — he spoke in Italian in this interview — Cardinal Delly has spent his life thinking about the common ground between Muslims and Christians.

He indicates that he views his role in a broad sense as an Iraqi spiritual leader. But he also has spoken up on behalf of Iraq’s Christians. During the summer, he and the Assyrian patriarch issued a call for help for Iraq’s Christians after a Chaldean priest and three assistants were killed in Mosul.

Iraq’s Christians have fared poorly since the toppling of Saddam Hussein, whose government treated them well, needing their support. They have been persecuted primarily by Sunni Arab extremists, who brand them apostates and in some areas have bombed their churches and burned their homes.

And because the Christian population is relatively well off, Christians also have been the targets of kidnappings. Many of those who lived in Baghdad and surrounding areas have moved back to northern Iraq, which was traditionally where most Christians lived. Many more have fled to Syria, Jordan, Lebanon or — when they can manage it — Western Europe.

Cardinal Delly met recently with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to plead for protection for Christians. During the writing of the Iraqi Constitution, he met with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Shiite religious leader in Najaf, who shares his ecumenical views on faith.

The new cardinal was born in Mosul to a Christian family in which several close relatives also became priests. His maternal grandfather became a priest, as did several cousins. He went to school there until he was 19, when he left for Rome to study. He stayed 14 years, traveling through Europe to holy places and completing his studies. He obtained three degrees — a master’s in philosophy, a doctorate in theology and a doctorate in canon law — and his studies included the Koran.

In philosophy he chose to study Abu Nasr al-Farabi, an eminent early Islamic philosopher. For his doctorate in theology, he wrote on a debate about religion and virtue between a 10th-century Christian bishop and the Muslim minister of Morocco.

“The Christian house is next to the Muslim house,” he said. “Each has his own religion, each defends his own home, each defends his religion.

“But your faith is for God, the country is for everyone.”

    2,000-Year-Old Christian Community in Iraq Gains a Spiritual First in Baghdad, NYT, 5.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/05/world/middleeast/05cardinal.html?ref=world

Trial Nearer for Shiite Ex-Officials

in Sunni Killings

November 5, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and ALISSA J. RUBIN

BAGHDAD, Nov. 3 — An Iraqi judge has ruled that there is enough evidence to try two former Health Ministry officials, both Shiites, in the killing and kidnapping of hundreds of Sunnis, many of them snatched from hospitals by militias, according to American officials who are advising the Iraqi judicial system.

The case, which was referred last week to a three-man tribunal in Baghdad, is the first in which an Iraqi magistrate has recommended that such high-ranking Shiites be tried for sectarian violence. But any trial could still be derailed by the Health Ministry, making the case an important test of the government’s will to administer justice on a nonsectarian basis.

The Iraqi investigation has confirmed long-standing Sunni fears that hospitals had been opened up as a hunting ground for Shiite militias intent on spreading fear among Sunnis and driving them out of the capital. Even before the case, Baghdad residents told of death threats against doctors who would treat Sunnis, of intravenous lines ripped from patients’ arms as they were carried away, and of relatives of hospitalized Sunnis who were killed when they came to visit.

The case centers on Hakim al-Zamili, a former deputy health minister, and Brig. Gen. Hamid al-Shammari, who led the agency’s security force, which is charged with protecting the ministry and its hospitals. The former officials were taken into custody in February and March amid reports that they had been implicated in sectarian violence and corruption. But the status of the judicial inquiry into their activities and its findings have not previously been reported.

The inquiry included testimony from nine witnesses, some of whom have been granted visas to live in the United States for their protection.

If the trial goes ahead, it would be held in a new Rule of Law complex in the Rusafa section of the capital. The installation was built by the American military this year and the government has allocated $49 million to operate it. Judges live at the heavily fortified compound to protect them from assassins and renegade militias. The proceedings, which could happen in the next few weeks, would be videotaped and, according to Iraqi law, open to the public.

But one looming question is whether the Iraqi government will move forward with the trial, which would shine a light on some of the most serious sectarian abuses committed under government cover. The Health Ministry could try to block the case by invoking a section of the Iraqi criminal law that precludes prosecution of officials who are carrying out their official duties. The Interior Ministry has used this tactic to preclude investigation of a senior National Police officer accused of sectarian crimes.

The Iraqi judges slated to try the case have informed the Health Ministry that they want to proceed and have asked for the agency’s approval. The Health Ministry has yet to respond.

The case, which involves officials allied with the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia, would have been difficult for the Iraqi government to take on in the past because Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki received crucial support from Sadr supporters in Parliament.

Since the spring, however, when Sadr ministers withdrew from the government, Mr. Maliki has distanced himself from Mr. Sadr’s supporters, and he has allied himself with a rival Shiite group, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council.

“This investigation and trial can be a real statement that protected Iraqi witnesses and judges will follow the evidence where it leads, even when it leads to corrupt senior government officials,” Col. Mark S. Martins, the staff judge advocate for the command led by General David H. Petraeus, said in a telephone interview.

Hospitals were one of the first places where Mr. Sadr’s supporters asserted themselves after the ouster of Saddam Hussein. The focus on hospitals was in keeping with Mr. Sadr’s efforts to model his movement on Hezbollah, which prides itself on providing medical and aid services. As early as mid-2004, the halls of the ministry were plastered with posters of Mr. Sadr and his father, Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr.

At about the same time, large numbers of unemployed Iraqis joined the Facilities Protection Service, which was essentially a low-paying jobs program whose employees were given guns and told to guard government agencies, offices and schools. Many who took the jobs were Shiite supporters of Mr. Sadr.

With those two organizations in their camp, Sadr supporters were well positioned to wield power when the country factionalized along Sunni-Shiite lines.

Mr. Zamili and General Shammari were appointed to their positions at the Health Ministry with Mr. Sadr’s backing. According to accounts by witnesses interviewed for the Iraqi inquiry, they turned the ministry into a personal fief and gained control of the fuel and vehicles, and its Facilities Protection Service.

Accounts from witnesses and evidence gathered for the case point to an array of potential charges.

Under Mr. Zamili and General Shammari’s direction, about 150 members of the agency’s protection service were organized into a company that acted like a private militia. Using Health Ministry identification to move freely around Baghdad and ambulances to ferry weapons, they carried out hundreds of sectarian killings and kidnappings from 2005 to early 2007, the investigation reports.

It found that Sunni patients at three major Baghdad hospitals — Al Yarmouk, Ibn al-Nafees and Al Nur — were abducted and many were killed, as were their relatives who came to visit them. Sunnis who went to hospital morgues to recover the bodies of their relatives were also killed, the investigation found.

At the Health Ministry, the investigation found, Sunni doctors who refused Mahdi Army demands that they quit working for the agency were also killed. The head of the Diyala Province hospital, Dr. Ali al-Madawi, a Sunni, was summoned to the Health Ministry in Baghdad, disappeared and is presumed dead.

At times, the Health Ministry headquarters itself was used to hold kidnap victims. To cover up many of the killings, morgue officials were ordered to draft phony death certifications, the Iraqi inquiry noted.

Mr. Zamili’s activities, including alleged efforts to divert ministry funds to himself and the Mahdi Army, did not go without challenge. But several ministry officials who stood up to him were kidnapped and killed, the investigation found. Those who were murdered include Mr. Zamili’s own personal assistant. A deputy health minister, Ammar al-Saffar, vanished after telling close associates that he had been threatened by Mr. Zamili. The inspector general of the Health Ministry was also threatened in order to discourage an internal investigation, the inquiry found.

Members of the security force, in a reflection of their religious beliefs, were adamant that autopsies should not be conducted on Mahdi Army fighters and threatened to kill morgue personnel who carried them out, the investigation reported.

Michael Walther, an American Justice Department official who is leading a task force that is advising the Iraqis on how to investigate crimes and conduct trails, said the trial could help ease sectarian differences. “There is a perception among the Sunni population that the court is nothing more than an instrument for the tyranny of the majority,” he said in a telephone interview. “This would demonstrate that the court can be a balancing factor.”

Sunnis have long complained that Baghdad’s hospitals were under control of Shiite militias and have sought to avoid them when possible. According to accounts from patients’ families and doctors, when Sunnis went to hospitals their identification cards were checked to determine if they had Sunni names.

In some cases, Sunnis would be treated on admittance, but at night would be dragged from their beds and their intravenous lines ripped out. Often, their bodies would be found days later.

To avoid going to hospitals, some Sunni groups have established their own clinics. “We have begun establishing small health centers inside some of the houses in Sunni areas,” said Omar al-Jubori, who heads the Human Rights Committee for the Iraqi Islamic Party.

A surgeon at Khadimiya General hospital, which is in a Shiite area, but on the west side of the Tigris River, where many Sunnis live, said in an interview that the doctors there had been given strict instructions from the Mahdi militia not to treat any Sunnis who came to the hospital.

“If they were going to die, we were told to let them die,” he said. “If they were going to live, they took care of it. They executed them. The nurses, the cleaners, the workers, were all Mahdi Army or sympathetic to the Mahdi, and they would report you if you tried to do something to help the Sunni patients.” He refused to be quoted by name for fear that he would be killed.

One case at the hospital involved a Sunni shopkeeper who was shot in the thigh by several gunmen on motorcycles. He was taken to the hospital by a Shiite neighbor, who was initially told that the victim’s injuries were not serious, according to Hassan, an Iraqi who was involved in the episode. But in the morning the neighbor was informed that the Sunni man had died overnight. The neighbors later heard that the Mahdi Army had gone to the hospital and hanged the shopkeeper by the cord that was used to give him intravenous fluids.

Michael R. Gordon reported from Washington, and Alissa J. Rubin from Baghdad. Mudhafer al-Husaini and Ahmad Fadam contributed reporting from Baghdad.

    Trial Nearer for Shiite Ex-Officials in Sunni Killings, NYT, 5.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/05/world/middleeast/05baghdad.html?hp

For Soldiers’ Families,

Battles Are Not Far Off

November 3, 2007
The New York Times
By LISA W. FODERARO

FORT DRUM, N.Y., Nov. 2 — The last time Bobbi Plautz welcomed home her husband, Travis, from Iraq, he was a changed person. He listened to different kinds of music and craved different kinds of food. He stayed up all night and wrestled with nightmares.

“He came home and had a 5-month-old baby and was overwhelmed,” Mrs. Plautz said of her husband, a staff sergeant with the 10th Mountain Division. “But he slowly got back to being the guy I married: funny, playing practical jokes.”

As she waited in a gymnasium close to midnight with her son, Zander, now 3, and scores of other families bearing balloons and signs, Mrs. Plautz was preparing herself for another period of readjustment.

Hours earlier, the soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division’s Second Brigade had spilled off a jet at a nearby airfield, some bending down to kiss the ground, others whooping into the cold night air. But despite the joyous homecoming, the 120 soldiers who landed Thursday evening — a fraction of the 3,500 Second Brigade soldiers returning to this sprawling military base this fall — were about to take on a new and uncertain challenge: the return to normalcy.

Coming home from war is always fraught. But for these soldiers, it is all the more so because of the length of their deployment, which was extended midtour from one year to 15 months. For almost half the soldiers, it was at least their second tour, which meant some had missed the birth of a child or been apart from spouses for most of their young marriages.

As the soldiers stepped off the plane, they carried, along with their oversized packs and M-4 rifles, a good deal of emotional baggage: the division reported that 52 members of their brigade were killed on this tour; two are still missing. The extension of their tours was especially hard.

“That was pretty catastrophic for them,” said Maj. Gen. Michael Oates, the commander of the 10th Mountain Division, after greeting the men and women on the airfield.

Given the length of this tour — the Army deploys its members longer than any other military branch in Iraq — as well as the round-the-clock stress the troops endured, many family members were clearly on edge as they anticipated the soldiers’ return to domestic life.

Samantha Wilmet, 23, held her 9-month-old baby, Jasmine, clad in a pink shirt that read, “I’m here to pick up my Daddy,” and wondered how her husband’s first tour had affected him.

“I’m not sure what he went through,” Mrs. Wilmet said of her husband, Specialist David Wilmet. “My husband is a closed-mouth kind of guy. I know he’s had a hard time. I had plenty of friends say it’s going to change him, it’s going to change him. I wonder: Will it or won’t it?”

Experts on military culture say that despite the workshops and briefings the Army offers to ease the transition, longer tours pose special challenges for families, both in terms of the reintegration home and the potential for psychological trauma on the soldiers’ part.

“There’s a lot of research that shows that the longer the tours, the more difficult it is for both service members and their families,” said Dr. Mady W. Segal, a professor of sociology and associate director of the Center for Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland. “Fifteen months is a really long deployment, especially when they’re having repeated deployments.”

Major General Oates agreed. “The spouse has been running the show for more than a year,” he said. “There’s always the potential for friction. The soldiers will also have some adjustments in terms of going from a 24-hour day with life-threatening situations and being here and not having to worry about I.E.D.’s and loud noises.”

Still, for both the soldiers and the families, it was a moment of celebration.

Before the soldiers could reunite with their families, they first had to go through customs and turn in their weapons. As they did, they talked of seizing long-delayed pleasures.

Among those who kissed the ground was Specialist A. J. Mettao. “It still feels surreal,” he said. “I can’t even explain it. The air is so different. You’re not breathing sand. I’m looking forward to living life and just partying.”

Chief Warrant Officer Harold Brickel couldn’t wait to see his wife, Lisa, with whom he spoke at least once a day from Iraq. He also wanted to “go hunting in the woods” and to celebrate the New Year in Las Vegas.

What Pfc. Maria Basulto, 23, from Whittier, Calif., most looked forward to was “getting out of the Army.”

“The hardest part was finding out at 10 months that we had to stay,” she said. “That was messed up.”

The spouses had their own visions of reunion — some prosaic, others profound — as a marching band warmed up in the gym. Top on Mrs. Wilmet’s list for her husband was “letting him get to know his daughter.” When Specialist Wilmet finally held Jasmine, who had listened to a recording of his voice dozens of times a day during his absence, he gave her a long kiss. “She’s so big,” he said.

Mrs. Plautz, whose son, Zander, asked where Daddy was every few minutes, said: “I just know that I’m not taking out the trash ever again. I have a full trash can right now because I knew he was coming home. I didn’t empty the bathroom trash, the bedroom trash — nothing. It’s all waiting for him.”

But even amid the humor and energy, there were somber reflections about how war changes people and relationships.

Specialist Matthew Gleason, returning from his second tour, said that as a gunner in the brigade commander’s personal security detachment, he was almost always “outside the wire,” meaning in unprotected areas. “The first time I went over, I was excited and wanted to do my job and make a difference,” he said between drags on a cigarette. “But that was before I saw how war really works. The only way to stay sane was to shut down emotionally.”

Specialist Gleason said he had lost good friends on both tours. He finds himself increasingly “desensitized” and worries about the effect on his wife of three years, Jamie.

“She complains about my being distant, even when I’m in the same room with her,” he said. “It’s a lot of work, especially for the married guys. I’m out in ’09. I can’t do this anymore. I don’t like the person I’ve become.”

Melissa Casebolt, who has been married to Staff Sgt. Andrew Casebolt for 11 years, watched their daughter, 6-year-old Nya, dart around the gymnasium floor with the other children before the midnight ceremony. After Sergeant Casebolt’s first tour in Iraq, “it was like he was a visitor in our domain,” she said, explaining that she had “taken care of everything” for so long.

This time, she said, she wants to cede control more quickly, but she also plans to tread lightly, unsure as she is of her husband’s mental state after such a long tour.

“In my head, I’m thinking that regardless of the things he says, he has a free pass for two months,” she said. “I want it to be as stress-free as possible. I don’t want to pressure him to do anything. I’m hoping that just by giving him space, I’ll be able to gauge what he needs.”

    For Soldiers’ Families, Battles Are Not Far Off, NYT, 3.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/03/nyregion/03return.html?hp

Abizaid:

Mideast Wars May Last 50 Years

November 1, 2007
Filed at 3:41 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

PITTSBURGH (AP) -- It might take as long as half a century before U.S. troops can leave the volatile Middle East, according to retired Army Gen. John Abizaid.

''Over time, we will have to shift the burden of the military fight from our forces directly to regional forces, and we will have to play an indirect role, but we shouldn't assume for even a minute that in the next 25 to 50 years the American military might be able to come home, relax and take it easy, because the strategic situation in the region doesn't seem to show that as being possible,'' Abizaid said Wednesday at Carnegie Mellon University.

Abizaid, the former commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, stepped down in March as the longest-serving commander of U.S. Central Command. He retired from the Army in May and now is at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

The rise of Sunni extremism, burgeoning Shiite extremism, the Arab-Israeli conflict and the world economy's dependency on Mideast oil will keep Americans in the Middle East for a long time, he said.

''I'm not saying this is a war for oil, but I am saying that oil fuels an awful lot of geopolitical moves that political powers may have there,'' Abizaid said. ''And it is absolutely essential that we in the United States of America figure out how, in the long run, to lessen our dependency on foreign energy.''

He reiterated comments made in September that the U.S. needs to do a better job of coordinating economic, political and diplomatic means so the conflict can move from a military to a political issue.

''I would characterize what we're doing now as 80 percent military, 20 percent diplomatic, economic, political, educational, informational, intelligence, etc.,'' Abizaid said. ''You've got to take that equation and change it. Make it 80 percent those other things.''

Abizaid, who has dubbed the current conflict ''The Long War,'' told The Associated Press in September it will take three to five years before Iraq's government is stable enough to operate on its own.

Despite the strain on the armed forces, Abizaid said Wednesday it is important to maintain a professional military without re-establishing a draft.

    Abizaid: Mideast Wars May Last 50 Years, NYT, 1.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Abizaid-Middle-East.html

Blackwater Mounts a Defense

With Top Talent From Capital

November 1, 2007
The New York Times
By JOHN M. BRODER and JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 — Blackwater Worldwide, its reputation in tatters and its lucrative government contracts in jeopardy, is mounting an aggressive legal, political and public relations counterstrike.

It has hired a bipartisan stable of big-name Washington lawyers, lobbyists and press advisers, including the public relations powerhouse Burson-Marsteller, which was brought in briefly, but at a critical moment, to help Blackwater’s chairman, Erik D. Prince, prepare for his first Congressional hearing.

Blackwater for a time retained Kenneth D. Starr, the former Whitewater independent counsel, and Fred F. Fielding, who is now the White House counsel, to help handle suits filed by the families of slain Blackwater employees.

Another outside public relations specialist, Mark Corallo, former chief spokesman for Attorney General John Ashcroft, quit working for Blackwater late last year because he said he was uncomfortable with what he termed some executives’ cowboy mentality.

Blackwater is pursuing a bold legal strategy, going so far in a North Carolina case as to seek a gag order on the lawyers for the families of four Blackwater employees killed in an ambush in Falluja in 2004. The company argues that the dead men had signed contracts that prohibited them from talking to the press about Blackwater and that this restriction extended to their lawyers and their estates even after death.

One of Blackwater’s Washington lawyers is Beth Nolan, who served as White House counsel for the last two years of the Clinton administration. (Ms. Nolan is leaving private practice at the end of November to become general counsel at George Washington University.) Another is Stephen M. Ryan, a top white-collar defense lawyer and former general counsel of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.

The company’s chief Washington lobbyist is Paul Behrends, who worked at the now-defunct Alexander Strategy Group, a Republican firm with close ties to the jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Mr. Behrends, who now works at C & M Capitolink, a Washington lobbying firm, declined to discuss his work for Blackwater, which has paid his company $300,000 since last year.

Anne E. Tyrrell, the company’s chief spokeswoman (and the daughter of R. Emmett Tyrrell, the longtime editor of the conservative magazine American Spectator), said that Blackwater was more comfortable operating in the shadows, but that it decided that it had to strike back publicly. She said, however, that she was not sure that the blitz was succeeding.

“It’s not as if we woke up one day and said it’s time to get out there,” she said. “We were put there. But there’s only so much you can do in one month, as opposed to 10 years of largely remaining silent.”

“There’s still a lot of misinformation out there,” she added, “but I think we have taken positive steps toward correcting the record.”

In the aftermath of the Sept. 16 shootings in Baghdad that Iraqi authorities said left 17 Iraqis dead, the formerly reclusive Mr. Prince has conducted a series of media interviews intended to polish Blackwater’s tarnished brand. The company has changed the name of its major operating division from Blackwater USA to Blackwater Worldwide and toned down its warlike logo. It has sent out a mass e-mail message to workers, suppliers and clients hoping to inspire them to send letters to members of Congress and make other public statements of support.

As reports poured out of Baghdad about the September shootings by several Blackwater guards, the company felt it could not adequately defend itself. The company operates under confidentiality agreements with the State Department, which employs 845 Blackwater guards to protect its diplomats in Iraq. But after Mr. Prince testified for more than three hours before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Oct. 2, the company said it felt free to speak out.

“It was no picnic to keep our contractual obligations not to talk,” said one person close to Blackwater, who insisted on not being named. “We wrote the book on how not to get good P.R.”

In the days leading up to the hearing before the oversight panel, which is led by Representative Henry A. Waxman, a liberal California Democrat who has no love for Blackwater, the company hired Burson-Marsteller, a global public relations firm. Blackwater said it hired the company on a temporary basis to help prepare Mr. Prince for his testimony.

Mark J. Penn, Burson-Marsteller’s chairman and a senior adviser to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign, said in an e-mail message that he had no direct contact with Blackwater and that the work was landed by BKSH, a subsidiary. BKSH is a political consulting firm led by Charles R. Black Jr., an adviser to President Bush and his father, and R. Scott Pastrick, a top Democratic fund-raiser. Mr. Penn said that a BKSH associate had worked briefly in Iraq and met several Blackwater personnel, who steered the work to his firm.

In the days following the hearing, Blackwater began its media offensive. Because Mr. Prince had been required to speak publicly about his firm before Congress, Blackwater officials reasoned that they could now go to the news media.

They mounted an impressive publicity campaign, granting a series of interviews with Mr. Prince in quick succession to, among others, the CBS program “60 Minutes”; CNN; NBC; PBS; The Washington Post; and The Detroit Free Press. The central message in all of the interviews was that Blackwater was doing only what the State Department asked it to do, that it had not lost a single official under its protection while 30 Blackwater guards had been killed, and that if the company lost its $1.2 billion contract with the State Department it would find other ways to make money.

Blackwater officials clearly believe that Mr. Prince, a young, clean-cut former member of the Navy Seals, is their best asset as they try to dig out from their public relations hole. “It just got to the point where we all decided it was time to defend the company and there is no one better to do that than Mr. Prince,” Ms. Tyrrell said.

Mr. Prince’s appearances helped dispel the notion, as one Blackwater insider put it, “that he would be some guy with a peg leg and a parrot on his shoulder and an eye patch.”

The company also released two detailed reports about two of its most controversial operations, the Falluja ambush in 2004 and the crash of a Blackwater-operated military flight in Afghanistan that same year that killed six people. The papers were intended to rebut staff reports from Mr. Waxman’s committee. The company, citing current investigations, has not produced a similar report about the September shootings in Baghdad.

But the company still suffers from the image that its workers are reckless gunslingers charging around Iraq with impunity.

Mr. Corallo, the former Blackwater public relations adviser, said this image was due in part to the company’s culture and attitude.

He said he quit working for the company last year because of personality conflicts with some top executives, although he praised Mr. Prince as a “visionary.”

“They do have a few people at the upper levels of Blackwater who are a little bit unsophisticated and rather disdainful of anything that goes to oversight and due process,” he said. “The reason they get the caricature that’s been created is that they do have a few cowboys in their midst.”

Blackwater Mounts a Defense With Top Talent From Capital, NYT, 1.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/washington/01blackwater-sub.html