Today in Iraq

War News for January 11, 2004 Bring 'em on: British troops kill five Iraqi protesters in Amarah. Bring 'em on: Iraqis resist raids in Baquba. Bring 'em on: Attacks on US troops averaged 18 per day over last week. Bring 'em on: Iraqi-American CPA official assassinated in Basra. Bring 'em on: Protestors stone British troops as demonstrations continue in Amarah. Bring 'em on: Two Estonian soldiers wounded in grenade ambush in Baghdad. (Last Paragraph.) Bring 'em on: PUK offices in Mosul mortared. Bring 'em on: Two bombs explode in Kirkuk. (Second to last paragraph.) Non-combat casualties in Iraq cause alarm. Challenge for General Sanchez: Winning over wary Iraqis. Nice bio piece on General Sanchez. But winning the confidence of the Iraqis was L. Paul Bremer's mission and he failed miserably - although he remains the heart-throb of many neo-conservatives because he cuts such a dash in his combat boots and Gucci suit. Sectarian tensions rising in Iraq. Baghdad fashion maven and incompetent administrator L. Paul Bremer plans to leave his position in June. Although a June departure means Bremer won't be around to administer the July 1st transition plan, his departure is the best plan Bremer has ever had. Former cabinet officer reveals Bushies began scheming to attack Iraq in January 2001. "'From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,' O'Neill told the news program, according to excerpts released yesterday. 'For me, the notion of preemption, that the US has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap.'" The real scandal is that the Bushies planned this operation for two years, and they still screwed it up. Saudi newspaper says Saddam was actually captured in September 2003. Report from Fallujah. "Drinkwine leaves it to his battalion intelligence officer, Captain Gary Love, to fill in the picture. Love brings up a second map in which the city is sectored into areas of colour. Predominant is red. 'The red,' says Captain Love, 'is high threat. That is two-thirds of the city. I want you to notice that there is no green,' he says. 'There are no areas where the threat is low.'" Army begins relief-in-place in Iraq. "More than 240,000 soldiers and Marines are to move into and out of Iraq from now to May, testing the military's ability to handle a major logistical feat while battling the Iraqi insurgency. From remote camps in northern Iraq to the port here, this swapping of forces amounts to the U.S. military's largest troop rotation since World War II." Commentary Opinion: Bush lied to us about Iraq's threat. "As long as this powerful, false notion lives, the administration will continue to mislead and control a frightened, gullible public. Meanwhile, U.S. and coalition troops and civilians, on both sides, will continue to die in a war that was initiated by George W. Bush - who was going to war no matter what." Editorial: The Boy Who Cried Wolf. "There's still a chance -- growing slimmer by the day -- that American forces will find prohibited weapons. Anything found at this late date, though, would arouse suspicions of it's being planted by U.S. forces. That suspicion is just a part of the damage caused by the Bush administration's rush to invade. The inability to produce the weapons that the administration insisted that Saddam still possessed has seriously eroded American credibility with the rest of the world. The United States flouted world opinion to take pre-emptive action. The next threat to international security may be very real and require concerted action. But the United States would have an even harder time mustering support to act, now that it appears to have cried wolf in Iraq." Book Review: "American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush." "… there is certainly enough to suggest that the Bush dynasty's many decades of entanglement and money-hunting in the Middle East have created a major conflict of interest that deserves to be part of the 2004 political debate. No previous presidency has had anything remotely similar. Not one. " Opinion: Lieutenant AWOL's record speaks for itself. "While the U.S. has long held world respect, we now are at the lowest point in world opinion; through the eyes of the world we are no longer seen as defenders of human rights but as the military aggressor. After months of U.N. weapons inspections and being advised that no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, our administration insisted there were." Opinion: Turn off the TV. "Television becomes a tool of the Bush administration, which has been able to excuse every civil liberties violation, every attack on the environment and every budget busting deficit, not to mention the war in Iraq, on the continuing threat of terror." Casualty Reports Local story: Maryland soldier killed in Iraq. Home Front Report from Fort Carson, Colorado.