Today in Iraq

DAILY WAR NEWS FOR SATURDAY, July 1, 2006 Photo: Scores of people were killed when an explosion tore through a busy market in Baghdad's Sadr City. (See first entry under "Baghdad" below; more pictures at the link) Bring ‘em on: Cpl. Ryan. J. Clark, 19, of Lancaster, Calif., died on June 29 in the Brooke Army Medical Center, San Antonio, Texas, of injuries sustained on June 17 when an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV during combat operations in Ar Ramadi, Iraq. Clark was assigned to the 40th Engineer Battalion, 1st Brigade Combat Team, Baumholder, Germany. OTHER SECURITY INCIDENTS Baghdad: A car bomb tore through a market in a poor Shi'ite district of Baghdad on Saturday, killing 62 people and wounding 114 in the bloodiest attack in Iraq for three months. Police said the market bomb went off in mid-morning as a police patrol was passing a parked car in a market area of the capital's eastern Sadr City district, a stronghold of the Mehdi Army militia of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. A roadside bomb struck an Iraqi police commando patrol in central Baghdad, killing three commando members. Four bodies were found around Baghdad. Iraqi police found a grave of several men who were apparently shot to death more than a month ago in Baghdad. Lt. Thaer Mahmoud said police had recovered at least six badly decomposed bodies in the grave. Police found six bodies dumped inside a house under construction in the southern Baghdad district of Dora. Baqubah: A former senior police officer under Saddam Hussein's regime was killed in a drive-by shooting as he was leaving his house in Baqouba. Gunmen opened fire on a barber shop in Baqouba, wounding four people, including two children. Diyala province: Gunmen kidnapped a Sunni Arab lawmaker and seven of her bodyguards in a Baghdad neighbourhood. Taiseer Najah al-Mashhadani, a member of the Accordance Front, the largest parliamentary bloc of the Sunni minority, was abducted in northeastern Shaab district after gunmen in two cars cut off her convoy, police said. An eighth bodyguard managed to escape, they added. Adnan al-Dulaimi, head of the Accordance Front, said Mashhadani was driving from her native Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, to the capital when she was kidnapped. Kirkuk: Iraqi soldiers found the bodies of three soldiers who were abducted Friday, as well as an unidentified man, near Kirkuk. Two other soldiers were still missing. Gunmen killed a policeman in a drive-by shooting in the center of Kirkuk. Mosul: A suicide car bomber killed two policemen and wounded six people, including three women, when he attacked a police patrol in Mosul. Clashes between police and insurgents killed one civilian and wounded a policeman in Mosul. Fallujah: Gunmen shot dead a policeman in Falluja. Ramadi: A suicide car bomber attacked a joint Iraqi and U.S. military checkpoint in Ramadi. There were no details on casualties and no comment was immediately available from the U.S. military. Khafajiya: Five people were killed and 12 wounded when an explosion, apparently caused by a mortar, destroyed three houses in the village of Khafajiya, just outside the western city of Haditha, local residents said. Al Anbar Prov: A civilian truck driver working with the US army in Iraq was killed today due to two explosive packs planted on the side of the road in Al Anbar area. The US forces cordoned off the area of the explosion and arrested four suspects. >> NEWS Investigators believe American soldiers spent nearly a week plotting an attack in which they raped an Iraqi woman, then killed her and her family, a U.S. military official said Saturday. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, said the attack appeared "totally premeditated" and that the soldiers apparently "studied" the family for about a week before carrying out the attack. Baghdad's morgue has run out room to store bodies as more victims of smoldering violence in the Iraqi capital are delivered. More than 100 bodies are being held at room temperature because morgue refrigerators are full, inspector-general of Iraq's health ministry Adil Abdul Muhsin told Al-Mada news. Muhsin said the morgue had received 8,000 bodies so far this year, compared with 10,150 for the whole of last year. Moqtada al-Sadr has demanded the reconstruction of a revered Shiite shrine that was allegedly bombed by Al-Qaeda and the withdrawal of US troops from the country: "We have said previously that the Iraqi government should rebuild the Shiite shrine in Samarra, but we have not seen anything but talk," he said in a sermon in the southern Shiite town of Kufa. Sadr urged the people to help rebuild the shrine whose bombing in February triggered nationwide sectarian clashes between Shiites and Sunnis. (…) The radical cleric also rejected any reconciliation with the US authorities. "I strongly reject reconciliation with three groups -- first the US, the nawasib (the killers of Shiites), and the Baathists" of the deposed Saddam Hussein regime, Sadr said. "We demand that the occupiers leave and offer a timetable for their withdrawal and not extend their stay here," Sadr said, adding that de-Baathification must be activated fast and "their leader executed". He also called for the release of detainees from Najaf who had fought the US forces during a rebellion in the summer of 2004. Insurgent attacks in Baghdad have risen despite a recent security crackdown that added thousands of troops and new checkpoints to the streets of Iraq's capital, a U.S. commander said on Friday. "I think since we have started Operation Together Forward, you'll find that the number of attacks are going up," Army Col. Jeffrey Snow told reporters on a videoconference from Baghdad, referring to the security crackdown. Snow could not provide statistics on the increase in attacks. He said steps to tell the Iraqi people about new security measures kept insurgents informed of the military's plans. He said he was not surprised at the increase in attacks. "As we populated and put additional patrols, both dismounted and mounted, into neighborhoods ... and we increased the number of checkpoints, we expected that there would be an increase in the number of attacks," Snow said. "And that is precisely what's happened." An American soldier in Iraq has died of a non-combat-related injury. The U.S. military says the soldier was assigned to the 43rd Military Police Brigade. No further details were released. >> REPORTS A STATEMENT BY THE PATRIOTIC, NATIONAL AND ISLAMIC FRONT OF IRAQ Nuri al Maliki, the president of the Occupation appointed government has announced an (initiative for dialogue and national reconciliation) designed by Iraq governor the US ambassador (Zalmay Zad) in a new miserable and desperate attempt to quell the intensification and the widening of the activities and the capabilities of the heroic and Patriotic Iraqi Resistance. The Patriotic, National and Islamic Front would like to explain, assert and declare the following : (...) The factions of the Mujahid Iraqi Resistance assert that their main objective is to expel the Occupation and to achieve the total and utter liberation of the soil of Iraq and reject every kind of contact or negotiation with the Occupation unless it officially accept our people's and its Armed Resistance conditions and then and only then negotiations will be possible with the occupation to precisely set, a program to execute the demands of our people and its Armed Resistance! That is : 1. The enemy command should announce officially the total withdrawal of all its forces, all its servants and dogs and put an immediate end to all its military, security, political, and economic existence in our homeland Iraq without any conditions. 2. Freeing all the detainees, prisoners, and jailed Iraqi with no exception and to immediately stop every kidnapping, home raiding, detention at random. The enemy should gather its forces to withdraw to chosen areas away from cities and inhabited regions. 3. The enemy should commit himself and with the United Nations and the Security Council guarantees to total compensation for all the damages endured by Iraq and its people due to the Occupation. 4. The cancellation of the decision to disband the Army, the internal Security forces and let them work according to their rules and organizations they belonged to before the Occupation. 5.To recognize the National Resistance as the sole and unique representative of Iraq and its people. 6.The enemy must commit himself and with the Security council guarantee to return back all the ancient manuscripts and Iraqi archeological treasures looted by the Mafia gangsters brought down by the Occupation, and robbed from Iraq Museums and Iraqi archeological sites. 7. The enemy should commit himself not to help the traitors, the criminals and the gangsters to flee Iraq and that he should deliver them to the Resistance for a fair and public trial. read in full... >> COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS DIABETES AND DEPLETED URANIUM "You are not being truthful about the purpose of your visit to Italy. What is your interest in diabetes and depleted uranium?" the Italian consul in Bombay demanded to know. "I am just traveling to Italy to meet with Leuren Moret," the famous Indian doctor answered. Leuren Moret recounted the episode in an interview June 29, 2006. She said, "The doctor had never mentioned either diabetes or depleted uranium." The Italian government official was grilling one of the leading doctors in India. This "interview" at the Italian embassy took place June 27, 2006, in Bombay, India. The doctor had traveled to Italy several times before and did not expect such outrageous treatment. The consul denied the doctor permission to travel to Italy to meet with Moret. The doctor had said nothing about diabetes and nothing about depleted uranium. The embassy official had just let the cat out of the bag and confirmed the link between the global epidemic of diabetes and the use of depleted uranium by the U.S.-U.K. expeditionary forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and the former Yugoslavia. The official could only have known about the diabetes link to depleted uranium from the U.S. State Department and the source of it all: the Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab, "managed" for 61 years by the University of California. The University of California nuclear weapons labs are the core of the nuclear weapons program in the U.S., the only remaining superpower. The clumsy intervention by a superpower in the travel plans of a private individual to confer with a scientific colleague about global public health concerns highlights the explosive significance that the U.S. attaches to uncontrolled information about the global epidemic of diabetes. On May 29, Moret charged the University of California and the Los Alamos and Livermore Nuclear Weapons Labs with engineering the largest global increase of diabetes in history and trying to cover it up. Fine uranium dust, vaporized into a poison radioactive gas by exploding uranium bombs, missiles and bullets, hitches a ride on dry desert winds to circle the globe in days. Dr. Chris Busby, a leading British radiation expert, got data from a nuclear weapons air monitoring facility at Aldemaston, England, which identified depleted uranium in the British atmosphere only nine days after the "shock and awe" carpet bombing of Baghdad, started in March of 2003. link >> BEYOND IRAQ Afghanistan: Bring ‘em on: Two rockets fired by insurgents slammed into the main coalition military base at Kandahar Airport southern Afghanistan, wounding seven foreign soldiers and three foreign contract workers. The wounded included five American and two Canadian soldiers. Their nationalities were not immediately released. One Canadian and one American soldier were seriously injured, and were being flown to Germany for medical treatment, he said. The other eight received treatment for minor wounds, he said. Military data obtained by The Associated Press shows that 38 suicide attacks were recorded in Afghanistan in the first six months of 2006, compared to just 11 in the previous six, a more than threefold increase. WHEN DID THIS "WAR" START, AND WHEN WILL IT END? Sadly we are living an Orwellian nightmare wherein the threat of terrorism is with us at all times, sold to the public over and over again. The threat is real, yet we should not let it destroy our freedom. I have had an opportunity to admire the extraordinary creativity of this administration that has managed to use derivatives of "the war on terror" to justify everything and anything. Why not violate the constitution? After all we are at war. To avoid being pilloried (my latest favorite word); I would like to state that I know that all of the world is now and has been, threatened by terrorist activity. All nations must take steps to protect their people from these terrorists as best as they can. We have the latest event between the administration and the NY Times playing out at this moment. I just adore the following from Tony Snow: "Traditionally in this country in a time of war, members of the press have acknowledged that the commander in chief, in the exercise of his powers, sometimes has to do things secretly in order to protect the public." Mr. Snow also said "... engage in a thoughtful debate about the role of the press in the struggle against terrorism." (…) Mr. Snow, do you seriously believe for one moment that the "bad guys" don't know that we ("the good guys") are monitoring their financial transactions? It was only the American public that didn't know. Since 9/11, our government has been "selling" America that the President is allowed to fracture major parts of the constitution because we are "at war" with terrorists. "AT A TIME OF WAR" has become the rallying cry of those who want to do whatever they want to do and if questioned they want to claim "BUT WE ARE AT WAR". If given the opportunity I would ask Tony Snow a couple of questions regarding his statements. When did terrorist attacks begin anywhere in the world? When did America's war on terror begin? Are Terrorist acts criminal? Should they be treated as such? How will Americans know when the war on terrorism has ended? If terrorists have existed for thousands of years, when did what we are doing to combat them become a war? Are you comfortable using the same word (war) to describe what we are doing when we use the word to describe what we were doing in World Wars one and two? To me, our country has been "turned upside down", not by the terrorists, but by the administration and its disregard for a bunch of different parts of the Constitution. The administration is constantly being disingenuous in its explanations to the public about its activities. Even I would have had difficulty saying that I ordered wiretaps kept secret because I didn't "want to tip off the enemy". Of course the "bad guys" never would have guessed that "the good guys" would be monitoring their phone calls. Good grief! read in full… THE [ISRAELI] GOVERNMENT IS LOSING ITS REASON Bombing bridges that can be circumvented both by car and on foot; seizing an airport that has been in ruins for years; destroying a power station, plunging large parts of the Gaza Strip into darkness; distributing flyers suggesting that people be concerned about their fate; a menacing flight over Bashar Assad's palace; and arresting elected Hamas officials: The government wishes to convince us that all these actions are intended only to release the soldier Gilad Shalit. But the greater the government's creativity in inventing tactics, the more it seems to reflect a loss of direction rather than an overall conception based on reason and common sense. On the face of it, Israel wishes to exert increasing pressure both on Hamas' political leadership and on the Palestinian public, in order to induce it to pressure its leadership to release the soldier. At the same time, the government claims that Syria - or at least Khaled Meshal, who is living in Syria - holds the key. If so, what is the point of pressuring the local Palestinian leadership, which did not know of the planned attack and which, when it found out, demanded that the kidnappers take good care of their victim and return him? read in full... QUOTE OF THE DAY: "There are nations that are in a state of perpetual war with each other. The state of war is used by each of these countries to justify the control of their populations by artificially creating fear and hate of an enemy, the actual existence of which is never made completely certain, the governments provided an excuse for their failures and enforced obedience to Big Brothers "siege mentality" in which hatred of the enemy and love for the government's protection were social norms." -- from a synopsis of the George Orwell book "1984."