Security Incidents for 05/09/07

Photo: Protesters burn effigies of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney during a rally in Kerbala, 110 km (70 miles) south of Baghdad, May 9, 2007. Hundreds of supporters of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr attended the demonstration denouncing Cheney's visit to Iraq. The Arabic inscriptions on the banner reads: "We demand the Iraqi government not to welcome the messenger of terror Dick Cheney". [Hundreds, if not thousands, of people showed up for this protest today. – dancewater] REUTERS/MUSHTAQ MUHAMMAD

Baghdad:

A car bomb also exploded near an Iraqi military checkpoint in Baghdad, killing one civilian and wounding two soldiers, police said.

Hashim Mahdi al-Rubaie, director general in the Ministry of Housing and Reconstruction, was shot dead by gunmen while travelling in his car in Baghdad's northern neighborhood of Qahira, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

In separate incident, gunmen attacked workers who were setting up concrete barriers in the Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiyah in the north of the capital, killing one and wounding two others, the source said.

Three more police commando members were also wounded when a roadside bomb hit their vehicle in Palestine Street in eastern Baghdad, the source added.

Iraqi security forces killed three gunmen and arrested 73 suspected militants in several areas in Baghdad, during the past 24 hours, under the Baghdad law-imposing plan, the Baghdad operations command said on Wednesday.

A thunderous explosion struck Baghdad Wednesday, coinciding with a visit by Vice President Dick Cheney to discuss efforts to reduce the violence in Iraq. The blast, which occurred about 6:25 p.m., appeared to strike in the vicinity of the heavily fortified Green Zone in central Baghdad, but that could not immediately be confirmed. Witnesses said it appeared to have been fired from the mostly Shiite areas on the east side of the Tigris River. Cheney's spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride said, "His business was not disrupted. He was not moved." The U.S. military and the U.S. Embassy said they had no information but were looking into what happened.

Iraqi police patrols on Wednesday found 21 unknown bodies dumped in different parts of Baghdad, an interior ministry source said. "The bodies had shot wounds in various parts of the body and bore marks of torture," the source told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq

Diyala Prv:

The U.S. military announced Wednesday that an American soldier was killed and four others were wounded the day before in a shooting attack in the volatile province of Diyala, northeast of Baghdad.

Police found four decapitated heads in the Sabtiyah area north of Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, health officials said.

The U.S. military, meanwhile, said two children were among five people killed when a helicopter fired at militants operating an illegal checkpoint and planting a roadside bomb near Mandali, a town on the Iranian border 60 miles east of Baghdad.

Diwaniyah:

The body of a security officer was also found shot in the head and chest in Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad, police said

Amara:

Unknown gunmen killed on Wednesday two people, including a policeman, in separate attacks in Amara, 380 km southeast of Baghdad, eyewitnesses said.

Iskandariya:

Gunmen ambushed a minibus in the town of Iskandariya, south of Baghdad, killing nine people and wounding seven, police said.

Hilla:

Six mortar rounds were fired Wednesday morning onto a U.S. intelligence centre in Hilla, 100 km south of Baghdad, with no reports of casualties, a police source from Babel police command said.

Basra:

British forces wounded one gunman as they clashed with gunmen in northern Basra

while two British bases in the southern Iraqi city came under indirect fire with no damage reported, the spokeswoman for the Multi-National forces in southern Iraq said on Wednesday.

Shirqat:

A roadside bomb killed two people in the town of Shirqat, 80 km (50 miles) south of Mosul, police said.

Mosul:

Elsewhere in northern Iraq, gunmen killed two members of the minority Yazidi religious sect and wounded another in a drive-by shooting in Mosul

Irbil:

A suicide truck bomb ripped through the Interior Ministry headquarters in the relatively peaceful Kurdish city of Irbil on Wednesday morning, killing at least 14 people and wounding dozens, officials said. Zariyan Othman, the Kurdish health minister, initially said 19 people were killed. But the regional minister for the interior, Karim Sinjari, later said 14 were killed and 87 wounded. Officials blamed the discrepancy on the doublecounting of some bodies.

The death toll rose to 20, with 70 others wounded, when a suicide truck bomb struck the building of a Kurdish regional ministry in Iraq's northern city of Arbil on Wednesday, local police said.

A Turkish worker was killed in a truck bomb attack in Iraq's northern city of Arbil on Wednesday, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported. Bulent Ozdemir, a worker for the Tasyapi Construction Industry and Trade Corp, was killed and another worker was slightly injured in the bombing attack, the company's deputy DG Alpaslan Kiziloglu was quoted as confirming.

Rashad:

FOUR Iraqi journalists were killed when gunmen opened fire on their car near the northern city of Kirkuk today, police said. They said one of the journalists was the well-known director of a local media organisation which publishes several newspapers. The attack took place southwest of Kirkuk near the small town of Rashad. It was unclear if the shooting was random or because the four were journalists.

Al Anbar Prv:

A hospital received the bodies of five people shot and tortured in the city of Falluja, 50 km (35 miles) west of Baghdad, doctor Bilal Mahmoud said.

In Country:

(A newly discovered death from 2003) The Czech soldier injured recently in a car accident in Iraq died in the Central Military Hospital in Prague on Thursday. He sustained serious injuries in a road accident on May 9, about 150 kilometres southeast of Baghdad and was transported by a special military plane back to the Czech Republic. The deceased is the Czech Republic's first fatality linked to the war in Iraq. The Czech Army has several hundred soldiers serving with two contingents in the region - a chemical and biological weapons-detection unit in Kuwait and a field hospital in Basra, Iraq.

Thanks to whisker for the links above.

REPORTS – LIFE IN IRAQ

Drug Abuse Among Children On the Rise

The increase in drug abuse among children and youths in Iraq is worrying specialists who say continued violence is responsible for the rising number of users - something that is compounded by the easy availability of different narcotics. "Investigations by local NGOs showed an increase, compared to the beginning of this year, of at least 20 percent in drug abuse among children and youth," said Ali Mussawi, president of the local NGO Keeping Children Alive (KCA). "In our preliminary reports, released in February 2007, there were more cases of addiction among street children but today the numbers have changed and there are more addicted children from the middle class," Mussawi added. Mussawi said a survey was undertaken by five local NGOs working on children's issues. They interviewed 1,535 people – children and their families – in central and southern areas of the country. The interviewees were from the areas most affected by drugs. According to Mussawi the main reason for the rise in the number of children and young people using illicit drugs has been the psychological effects of violence. It is violence, specialists say, which has led to children finding easy ways to forget about the loss of their loved ones. "Nowadays, you can find drugs being sold near school entrances in many districts of the capital and some children even smuggle drugs into school," Mussawi added. "We have informed the police about the situation but they say that are too busy with the daily violence to deal with such matters."

Christians fleeing Iraq after death threats

Iraq's Christian community is close to extinction as thousands are forced to flee their traditional strongholds in Baghdad. An exodus of Christians is under way in the southern district of Dora after groups affiliated to al-Qa'eda issued a threat of "convert or be killed". Most have fled to Kurdish northern Iraq, where the village of Ankawa has grown into an overcrowded "city of Christ", while others leave for Syria or Jordan. Priests claim that half Baghdad's pre-2003 Christian population - estimated in the hundreds of thousands - has fled or been killed. They also claim that the Iraqi government is failing to protect them.

Three Iraqi Journalists Killed

Three Iraqi journalists and their driver were killed Wednesday in a drive-by shooting near the northern city of Kirkuk, the second attack against the country's media in less than a week. The attackers armed with machine guns opened fire about 2 p.m. as they drove past a vehicle carrying the journalists in the Rashad area, 20 miles southwest of Kirkuk, police Brig. Gen. Sarhat Qadir said. The four worked for the independent Raad media company, which publishes several weekly newspapers and monthly magazines that are generally pro-government and deal with politics, education and arts. The attack came six days after gunmen stormed the offices of the independent Dijlah radio station in a predominantly Sunni area in western Baghdad, killing two employees and wounding five before bombing the building and knocking the station off the air. Those killed Wednesday were identified as the company's director Raad Mutashar, two journalists, Imad Abdul-Razzaq and Aqil Abdul-Qadir, and their driver, Nibras Razzaq. [Another report said four journalists were killed. – dancewater]

The Talibanization of Iraq – Women Under Attack

Yanar Mohammed returned to Iraq from Canada in 2003 because she thought the veil of tyranny had finally been lifted from her native country. She and two other women started the Organization for Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), with the goal of fighting for women's rights. But since those days, her OWFI cofounders have fled the country, and Mohammed herself has received numerous death threats for her work. OWFI, one of the few remaining nongovernmental organizations left in Iraq, has been forced to operate in complete secrecy. "We live in a state of continuous fear -- if our hair shows on the street, if we're not veiled enough at work," says Mohammed, 47. "It's a new experience for women in Iraq. After four years, it's turned into Afghanistan under the Taliban."

Throughout much of recent history, Iraq was one of the most progressive countries in the Middle East for women. These rights diminished somewhat after the 1991 Gulf War, partly because of Saddam Hussein's new embrace of Islamic tribal law as a way of consolidating power, and partly due to the United Nations' sanctions against the regime. Still, as bad as it was during Saddam's time, women's well-being and security have sharply deteriorated since the fall of his regime. Furthermore, extremists in both Sunni and Shiite areas have taken over pockets of the country and imposed their own Taliban-like laws on the population. Women college students are stopped and harassed on campuses, so going to school is a risk. Islamist "misery gangs" regularly patrol the streets in many areas, beating and harassing women who are not "properly" dressed or behaved.

Iraqi Oil Workers To Strike Over Privatisation Law

Iraq's largest oil workers' trade union will strike this Thursday, in protest at the controversial oil law currently being considered by the Iraqi parliament. The move threatens to stop all exports from the oil-rich country. The oil law proposes giving multinational companies the primary role in developing Iraq's huge untapped oilfields, under contracts lasting up to 30 years. Oil production in Iraq, like in most of the Middle East, has been in the public sector since the 1970s. The Union, representing 26,000 oil workers, has held three previous strikes since 2003, each time stopping exports, for up to two days at a time. The announcement of the strike has spurred negotiations with the Ministry of Oil, which are ongoing. Imad Abdul-Hussain, Federation Deputy Chair of the IFOU said: "The central government must be in total ownership and complete control of production and the export of oil". He warned against the controversial Production Sharing Agreements favoured by foreign companies, saying other forms of co-operation with foreign companies would be acceptable but not at the level of control and profiteering indicated in the current Oil Law.

Federation President Hassan Jumaa Awad al Assadi said: 'The oil law does not represent the aspirations of the Iraqi people. It will let the foreign oil companies into the oil sector and enact privatisation under so called production sharing agreements. The federation calls for not passing the oil law, because it does not serve the interests of the Iraqi people." The Union is not alone in its' condemnation of the current oil law. Opponents of the law also include all of Iraq's other trade unions, a number of political parties, and a group of over 60 senior Iraqi oil experts.

Inside Sadr City

This is the 24-square-kilometer theater where a great part of Iraq's future is already being played out; a vital element in US President George W Bush's surge; the place Pentagon generals dream of smashing into submission; one of the largest and arguably most notorious slums in the world: Sadr (formerly Saddam) City. Sadr City is also, along with Gaza and the West Bank, the theater of the already evolving 21st-century war, pitting the high-tech Western haves against the slum-dwelling Third World have-nots. If the Bush administration had any intention of conquering any hearts and minds in Iraq, this is where it would be trying the hardest. Reality spells otherwise. Sadr City is an immense grid in eastern Baghdad of ramshackle one-story buildings covered with dust - not unlike slums in North Africa or Pakistan. Main streets such as Boulevard Gouarder are lined with Iraqi, not partisan, flags. A few black flags denote houses of descendents of the Prophet Mohammed's family. There are photos of the late ayatollah Muhammad Baqr al-Sadr - killed by Saddam Hussein's goons - even in billboards advertising mobile phones. Muqtada al-Sadr's office is a modest building near the main crossroads - not far from the street market that was hit by a horrific bombing in January that killed 250 people and wounded more than 400. There are plenty of sidewalk funeral tents - as is the custom in Iraq. Residents who fall victim to the carnage in Baghdad can be counted by the dozens on certain days.

REPORTS – IRAQI MILITIAS, POLITICIANS, POWER BROKERS

Majority of Iraqi Lawmakers Reject Occupation

On Tuesday, without note in the U.S. media, more than half of the members of Iraq's parliament rejected the continuing occupation of their country. 144 lawmakers signed onto a legislative petition calling on the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal, according to Nassar Al-Rubaie, a spokesman for the Al Sadr movement, the nationalist Shia group that sponsored the petition. It's a hugely significant development. Lawmakers demanding an end to the occupation now have the upper hand in the Iraqi legislature for the first time; previous attempts at a similar resolution fell just short of the 138 votes needed to pass (there are 275 members of the Iraqi parliament, but many have fled the country's civil conflict, and at times it's been difficult to arrive at a quorum).

Reached by phone in Baghdad on Tuesday, Al-Rubaie said that he would present the petition, which is nonbinding, to the speaker of the Iraqi parliament and demand that a binding measure be put to a vote. Under Iraqi law, the speaker must present a resolution that's called for by a majority of lawmakers, but there are significant loopholes and what will happen next is unclear. What is clear is that while the U.S. Congress dickers over timelines and benchmarks, Baghdad faces a major political showdown of its own. The major schism in Iraqi politics is not between Sunni and Shia or supporters of the Iraqi government and "anti-government forces," nor is it a clash of "moderates" against "radicals"; the defining battle for Iraq at the political level today is between nationalists trying to hold the Iraqi state together and separatists backed, so far, by the United States and Britain.

Iraqi Parliament Accuses Al-Jazeera

Parliament overwhelmingly voted Wednesday to start legal proceedings against Al-Jazeera television over perceived insults by the Arabic news channel against Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. It was not immediately clear what the legal action would amount to. Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, a Sunni Arab, said only that the matter would be decided by parliament's legal department. The move by the 275-seat house followed protests Friday in the southern cities of Basra and Najaf by hundreds of Shiites angered by an Al-Jazeera talk show in which the host questioned al-Sistani's leadership credentials and appeared to cast doubt on whether he personally authored his edicts. The controversy has received extensive coverage by the Iraqi media, with some Shiite television channels devoting hours of air time to politicians and clerics expressing indignation. And in Shiite Iran, al-Sistani's birthplace, parliament on Sunday decided to ban Al-Jazeera reporters from its building in protest.

REPORTS – US/UK/OTHERS IN IRAQ

[It wasn’t the helicopter] US Says Helicopter Killed Five Bystanders

A U.S. attack helicopter killed five bystanders including two children when it fired on insurgents north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said on Wednesday. Lieutenant-Colonel Mike Donnelly, a spokesman for U.S. forces stationed north of the Iraqi capital, denied some media reports that the helicopter had fired on a school on Tuesday. "It's traumatic and entirely unfortunate that this happened," Donnelly said by telephone, adding an investigation had been opened into how the civilans could have been killed. He said insurgents had been seen placing roadside bombs and operating an illegal checkpoint near the town of Mandali in Diyala province, prompting the U.S. military to call for air support.

Major Coalition Attacks, Bases and Prisons (as of April 2007) – PDF

[Sure they are] US Says Iran Helping Some Sunni Insurgents

A U.S. military spokesman said Wednesday that Shiite-dominated Iran is providing support to some Sunni insurgents fighting American forces in Iraq. Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said the military had credible intelligence to support the allegation but did not elaborate. He said the support to Sunni insurgents was limited to select groups, which he did not identify. "It's not all Sunni insurgents but rather we do know that there is a direct awareness by Iranian intelligence officials that they are providing support to some select Sunni insurgent elements," Caldwell told reporters. On Sunday, a U.S. general also said powerful armor-penetrating roadside bombs believed to be of Iranian origin were turning up in the hands of Sunni insurgents south of Baghdad. [Those armor-penetrating bombs are made right in Iraq, and the people likely helping Sunni extremists in Iraq are the (bushies-funded) Sunni extremists groups in Saudi Arabia. He’s also funding Sunni extremists in Lebanon, but I think the are busy stirring up trouble in Lebanon. Also, the bushies are running covert operations in Iran. I guess (when you are an evil little shit) that is how they try to be “neighborly”. – dancewater]

Cheney Pressures Iraqi Leaders to Make More Progress As Explosion Rattles Embassy Windows

[In light of the fact that the terrorists are really trying to get Cheney in Iraq and in Afghanistan, I vote that he stay in those countries rather than have them follow him home to the USA. You know, fight them over there…………… - of course, he should stay far away from any civilians. – dancewater]

US Embassy in Iraq Tells People to Wear Flak Jacket and Helmuts

A sharp increase in mortar attacks on the Green Zone - the one-time oasis of security in Iraq's turbulent capital - has prompted the U.S. Embassy to issue a strict new order telling all employees to wear flak vests and helmets while in unprotected buildings or whenever they are outside.

Dutchman Jailed for 17 Years Over Iraq Poison Gas

A Dutch appeals court raised the prison sentence of a Dutch businessman to 17 years after confirming on Wednesday he was guilty of complicity in war crimes for selling chemicals to Iraq used in deadly gas attacks. Frans Van Anraat was sentenced in 2005 to 15 years in prison for complicity in war crimes for supplying raw materials that were used to make poison gas by Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the 1980-1988 war with Iran. The poison gas was also used against Iraq's own Kurdish population, including an attack on the town of Halabja in 1988 which killed an estimated 5,000 people. Van Anraat had appealed against the sentence but the court turned down his appeal and increased the sentence by two years. "The court decided to increase the jail sentence because Van Anraat committed these crimes several times, not just once, out of pure greed," the spokeswoman for the appeals court in The Hague said. [Some justice, at least, for one who helped murder people he never knew. – dancewater]

Britons Found Guilty Of Breaching Official Secrets Law

A civil servant and a political aide were convicted of breaching Britain's Official Secrets Act on Wednesday for leaking a classified memo of a meeting between Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George W. Bush. David Keogh, a code specialist at a top security government communications centre, was found guilty of making a copy of the memo of talks held in the White House in April 2004 and handing it to Leo O'Connor, a political researcher. Both Keogh, 50, and O'Connor, 44, had pleaded not guilty to the charges of making a "damaging disclosure". They are due to be sentenced on Thursday. Key parts of the three-week trial were held behind closed doors. The judge ruled that the contents of the memo could not be revealed, referred to or reported in any way other than as they were discussed in open court.

COMMENTARY

OPINION: Iraqis say U.S. is wrong

I was speaking with one of my Iraqi relatives the other day and asked about the feelings over there concerning the war. He told me that most Iraqi people agree that America was wrong about the weapons, the terrorists and the elections. While the elections were supposed to bring freedom and representative government to Iraq, all they did was bring roadblocks, check points, home raids, and curfews. He told me "fundamentally, we live under martial law and that is wrong; why don't those Americans just go home and locate their own oil and fix their own problems?" I told him that the Republicans are very difficult to reason with.

OPINION: Cheney won't be able to reverse the impact of what he helped cause

US Vice President Dick Cheney's tour of the region this week, which began with a surprise visit to Baghdad on Wednesday, represents another desperate attempt on the part of the Bush administration to salvage the floundering American mission in Iraq. Cheney, who has played an extremely active role in his post compared to his predecessors, is himself in large part to blame for the disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq. Cheney was among the strongest advocates of the invasion and has subsequently played an influential role in managing America's occupation policies. Cheney's advocacy of the Iraq war has contributed to his diminished popularity at home - the vice president now has the approval of only a small percentage of the US public - and a growing number of Americans are openly calling for his impeachment. Cheney is even less liked here in this region, as is clearly indicated by the fact that his recent visits have been accompanied by angry demonstrations and bombings.

Opinion: Hard to Deny – It Is All About The Oil

In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2002-2003, oil was seldom mentioned. Yes, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz did describe the country as afloat "on a sea of oil" (which might fund any American war and reconstruction program there); and, yes, on rare occasions, the President did speak reverentially of preserving "the patrimony of the people of Iraq" -- by which he meant not cuneiform tablets or ancient statues in the National Museum in Baghdad, but the country's vast oil reserves, known and suspected. And yes, oil did make it prominently onto the signs of war protestors at home and abroad.

Everybody who was anybody in Washington and the media, not to speak of the punditocracy and think-tank-ocracy of our nation knew, however, that those bobbing signs among the millions of antiwar demonstrators that said "No Blood for Oil" were just so simplistic, if not utterly simpleminded. Oil news, as was only proper, was generally relegated to the business pages of our papers, or even more properly -- since it was at best but one modest factor among so very many in Bush administration calculations -- roundly ignored. Admittedly, the first "reconstruction" contract the administration issued was to Halliburton to rescue that country's "patrimony," its oil fields, from potential self-destruction during the invasion, and the key instructions -- possibly just about the only instructions -- issued to U.S. troops after taking Baghdad were to guard the Oil Ministry. Then again, everyone knew this crew had their idiosyncrasies. Ever since, oil has played a remarkably small part in the consideration of, coverage of, or retrospective assessments of the invasion, occupation, and war in Iraq (unless you lived on the Internet). To give but a single example, the index to Thomas E. Ricks' almost 500-page bestseller, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, has but a single relevant entry: "oil exports and postwar reconstruction, Wolfowitz on, 98."

Opinion: Keep Cheney Away from U.S. Diplomacy

Similar to Ariel Sharon's disastrous and oft-discussed visit to Jerusalem's Temple Mount (Sep 28, 2000) -- a symbolic slap in the face that led to an escalation in Middle East tension -- Dick Cheney's upcoming "diplomatic" visit to the Middle East will be nothing more than a provocation resulting in yet another explosion of violence. More Americans and more Iraqis will die as a result of his trip. If the Bush administration was serious about saving lives, building U.S. credibility in the world, involving regional allies, and ending the Iraq occupation -- then they would put Dick Cheney back in his hidden location, lock the door from the outside and throw away the key. Cheney should not be allowed anywhere near Middle East diplomacy. Any diplomatic effort that involves Dick Cheney will result in one thing and one thing only: more violence, more failure, more death.

Quote of the day: "Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. "In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force of the people. "The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." ~James Madison, April 20, 1795