Today in Iraq

War News for May 17, 2004 Note to Readers "Today in Iraq" is receiving an unusually large volume of traffic today. If the page doesn't fully load, you can either hit the "refresh" button or re-size your screen. Either action causes the page to load completely. Don't ask me why. It's magic. Bring ‘em on: IGC President assassinated by car bomb in Baghdad. Bring ‘em on: Ten Italian soldiers wounded as Mahdi Army seizes Nasiriyah. Bring ‘em on: One US soldier killed, two wounded in fighting south of Baghdad. Bring ‘em on: Five Shi’ite militiamen killed in fighting near Karbala. Bring ‘em on: CPA offices in Nasiriyah evacuated. Bring ‘em on: Relative of Najaf’s new governor assassinated near Kufa. Italy asks US to curtail offensive operations around Karbala, Kufa, and Najaf. “Large-scale” anti-US protests reported in Karbala. Italian soldier dies of wounds received in fighting near Nasiriyah. Philippines forbids citizens from working in Iraq due to poor security. Soldier son killed in Iraq, mom faces deportation for drug offense. “In many cases, including Cabral's, immigration judges are barred from showing mercy. The law requires deportation for most drug possession charges, even for the mother of a dead hero. ‘My son gave his life for his country,’ Cabral said of Juan, 25, an Army mechanic who died in January near Kirkuk. ‘To me, he is still alive.’” I wonder if Lieutenant AWOL hugged this mom. Bremer’s soup sandwich. “For weeks, the American occupation authority in Iraq has been updating the timetable leading to the day it is supposed to go out of business, on June 30, declaring on its Web site on Sunday that there were ‘46 days until Iraqi sovereignty.’ Yet nowhere on the Web site, or anyplace else in official American statements, can be found the identity of the new Iraqi leadership or the precise powers of the new Iraqi government over many important matters, including the full authority over Iraqi armed forces.” Camp Cropper. “About 100 high-ranking Iraqi prisoners held for months at a time in spartan conditions on the outskirts of Baghdad International Airport are being detained under a special chain of command, under conditions not subject to approval by the top American commander in Iraq, according to military officials. The unusual lines of authority in the detainees' handling are part of a tangled network of authority over prisoners in Iraq, in which the military police, military intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, various military commanders and the Pentagon itself have all played a role. Congressional investigators who are looking into the scandal over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners say those arrangements have made it difficult to determine where the final authority lies.” Second thoughts. “After the setbacks in Falluja and Najaf, followed by the prisoner abuse scandal, hawks are glumly trying to reconcile the reality in Iraq with the predictions they made before the war. A few have already given up on the idea of a stable democracy in Iraq, and many are predicting failure unless there's a dramatic change in policy - a new date for elections, a new secretary of defense, a new exit strategy.” US plans to redeploy one combat brigade from Korea to Iraq. Commentary Opinion: “This wrong was not committed by accident but by design. In the revelatory new documentary about Al Jazeera, ‘Control Room,’ opening in New York this Friday before fanning out nationally, we are taken into our own Central Command's media center in Doha, Qatar, in early April 2003 to see American mythmaking in action. The Lynch episode came at a troubling moment in the war; our troops were being stretched thin, the coalition had mistakenly shot up a van full of Iraqi women and children, and three Marines had just been killed in the latest helicopter crash. But as we see in ‘Control Room,’ the CentCom press operation was determined to drown out such bad news by disseminating the triumphant prepackaged saga of its manufactured heroine no matter what.” Casualty Reports Local story: California soldier dies in Iraq. Local story: Florida sailor wounded in Iraq. 86-43-04. Pass it on.