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ain't got nothin on Baghdad
Security Situation in Baghdad Sinking like the anic
From Juan Cole:
Juan ColeThe situation has deteriorated in Baghdad dramatically today. Five neighborhoods (hay) in Baghdad are controlled by insurgents, and they are Amiraya, Ghazilya, Shurta, Yarmouk and Doura. It is very bad. My guys there report that cars have come into these neighborhoods and blocked off the streets. Masked gunmen with AKs and other weapons are roaming these areas, announcing that people should stay home. One of my drivers in Amiraya reports that his neighborhood is shut down totally, and even those who need food or provisions are warned not to go out.
The government will respond feebly. It will go into a contested neighborhood, and then just like Fallujah, Ramadi, Tel Afar, the insurgents will flee to take over another area on another day. Bit by bit they are taking over the main parts of Baghdad. The only place we are sure they cannot control is Sadr City, unless of course they want to take on Jaish Mahdy , and that would be bloody.
A few minutes ago Jaafari came on television to tell everyone in Baghdad to stay home. Can't wait for his next bold move.
There are flyers in public areas of Baghdad warning people not to gather in large numbers because they will thereby become targets. I am trying to get a copy of the flyer.
Notwithstanding Al-Hayat's claim that Zarqawi and the Sunni resistance are not together, my street listeners claim otherwise. My folks are convinced that the two groups, broadly defined, are together, "100 percent" is the claim of certainty. It is hard to get a handle on this because people in Baghdad tend to lump all resistance groups, except for Zarqawi, into one large category.
More and more of even the most patriotic intelligentsia are departing. The situation is dire, and those with escape valves are using them. sending more of staff to Arbil and Sulamaniyah and out of Baghdad. Until about March this year, thought that there was a chance of returning to Baghdad. It is remarkable how incapable this government is. Its only success is that it exists at all.
In the meantime, the embassy people act as if nothing in Baghdad is wrong (except that they cannot walk in the Green Zone without body armor and they have to take precautions against kidnapping). Recently, a group from State and the military parachuted in from Washington . . . It is a fantasy world."
Damn, This is like Vietnam, only in fast forward.
ain't got nothin on Baghdad
The Army's "enemy body counts" are back!
They like to keep "we're winning progress metrics" nice and simple!
This really is a quagmire all over again!!
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washingtonpost.com
U.S. Claims Success in Iraq Despite Onslaught
Body Counts Now Cited as Benchmarks
By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, September 19, 2005; A01
BAGHDAD -- Using enemy body counts as a benchmark, the U.S. military claimed gains against Abu Musab Zarqawi's foreign-led fighters last week even as they mounted their deadliest attacks on Iraq's capital.
But by many standards, including increasingly high death tolls in insurgent strikes, Zarqawi's group, al Qaeda in Iraq, could claim to be the side that's gaining after 2 1/2 years of war. August was the third-deadliest month of the war for U.S. troops.
Zarqawi's guerrillas this spring and summer showed themselves to be capable of mounting waves of suicide bombings and car bombings that could kill scores at a time and paralyze the Iraqi capital. Insurgents have also launched dozens of attacks every day in other parts of Iraq and laid open claim this summer to cities and towns in the critical far west, despite hit-and-run offensives by U.S. forces.
Last week, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, declared "great successes" against insurgents. But Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, where Lynch briefed reporters, was under stepped-up security screening and U.S. guard for fear of suicide bombings. Insurgents for three days running last week managed to lob mortar rounds into the Green Zone, the heart of the U.S. and Iraqi administration.
Lynch spoke at the close of a two-day onslaught of bombings and shootings that killed nearly 190 people, the bloodiest days in Baghdad since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.
Over 17 days this month, guerrillas across Iraq killed at least 116 Iraqi forces and 346 Iraqi civilians in drive-by shootings, bombings and other violence, according to Iraqi officials.
And in the west, Zarqawi's foreign and Iraqi fighters this month raised the black banners of al Qaeda in Iraq in the border city of Qaim, one of many areas in the region where Iraqi government forces have feared to take up positions or moved out. Al Qaeda fighters recently carried out public executions of men suspected of supporting U.S. forces or the Iraqi government.
"Whoever is protected by Americans is in our sight and in the range of our fire," Zarqawi's group declared in statements posted Thursday in Anbar province's capital of Ramadi, which along with nearby Fallujah is a major stronghold of the estimated 30,000 U.S. forces in the western province. The statement appeared hours after al Qaeda rocket and mortar strikes on U.S. military installations in Ramadi killed one Marine.
The same morning, scores of al Qaeda fighters streamed into the streets of Ramadi, taking up positions with new automatic weapons. Witnesses said one group of insurgents proudly displayed a new rocket launcher that put U.S. armored vehicles in the glowing red beam of its targeting laser.
The fact that American forces still attack entire cities and towns in the west is a sign of how much territory remains out of U.S. and Iraqi government control, said Abu Hatem Dulaimi, a member of the Zarqawi-allied Ansar al-Sunna Army.
"I can say that the legend of the undefeated U.S. Army is gone, owing to our rockets and mines, which are separating them from it day after day," Dulaimi said in a telephone interview. "If they bet that time will be the way to end the resistance, they are wrong, because we are stronger since a year ago or maybe more."
Twenty-five members of Ansar al-Sunna killed themselves and others in suicide attacks last month, he said, and 53 volunteers for suicide attacks have arrived since.
"The problem is, I have seen no meaningful" goal posts, said Anthony Cordesman, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, "and a great many conflicting points" on U.S. claims to be winning against the insurgency.
While the U.S. military seems to have made some progress in parts of the west and parts of Baghdad, Cordesman said, "it isn't clear in doing so that it has really crippled any part of the insurgency."
Jeffrey White, an analyst with the Washington Ins ute for Near East Policy, said insurgents have fought U.S.-led forces to a stalemate at least in Anbar province, northern Babil province and some other areas.
The Meaning of Victory
After generally rejecting body counts as standards of success in the Iraq war, the U.S. military last week embraced them -- just as it did during the Vietnam War. As the carnage grew in Baghdad, U.S. officials produced charts showing the number of suspects killed or detained in offensives in the west.
Lynch, the military spokesman, cited killings and detentions of 1,534 insurgents in the region. The fact that the number of insurgents killed or captured in the northern city of Tall Afar was roughly equal to advance estimates of their strength, he said, was proof that insurgents weren't simply escaping to fight another day -- and that U.S. forces were doing more than razing infrastructure. "Zarqawi is on the ropes," Lynch told reporters.
It was not clear, however, how many of those detained or killed in the offensives were insurgents. Since 2003, U.S. forces have detained 40,000 people, twice U.S. generals' highest public estimate of the number of fighters in the insurgency. On Saturday, the Iraqi government said it had released for lack of evidence more than 500 of the 757 suspects detained in ongoing operations in the northern city of Mosul.
Many of the men detained in Tall Afar last week were rounded up on the advice of local teenagers who had stepped forward as informants, at times for what American soldiers said they suspected amounted to no more than settling local scores.
"The question is, what does victory mean? It certainly isn't the number of people we kill or detain," Cordesman said. The U.S. death and detention counts have "zero credibility," since U.S. forces provide little detail on those being killed and detained, he said.
U.S. military officials have set broad goals for what cons utes victory in Iraq, including denying terrorists a haven and reducing the insurgency to a level that the fledgling Iraqi security forces can handle. The United States aims to leave behind an Iraq with a representative government that respects human rights and is at peace with its neighbors, the officials said.
The effort against the insurgency clearly has made some gains. Iraqi forces, disbanded in 2003, have been rebuilt to 190,000 trained and equipped members, according to U.S. figures. With Saddam Hussein-era veterans leading them, the Iraqi forces appear to be a credible army in some areas.
Iraq's disaffected Sunni Arab minority has been at least partly persuaded to join the political process to regain a measure of its power, a shift that might help defuse the homegrown part of the insurgency. And Iraqis as a whole show little support for Zarqawi and have resisted his efforts to goad Sunnis and Shiites into civil war.
From Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, down to his underlings, American officials have insisted this summer that, at the least, the insurgency is not growing. Pressed to explain the claim, U.S. military officials said recently that they meant only that they believe the insurgency remains concentrated in no more than four of Iraq's 18 provinces.
But Cordesman, the Washington-based analyst, said there was evidence that more foreign volunteers were arriving and more Iraqis were joining the insurgency. U.S. officials claim to have eliminated a number of insurgent leaders, he said, but the insurgency doesn't seem to have slowed.
"On a day-to-day basis, the overall level of security is obviously low. We can't secure the airport road, can't stop the incoming into the Green Zone, can't stop the killings and kidnappings," Cordesman said.
U.S. and Iraqi forces offer scant protection to any Iraqis who stand up to Zarqawi's fighters. Insurgents -- through intimidation rather than popularity -- still have the upper hand in cities and towns where the U.S. and Iraqi military presence is weak and transient. In Anbar, a tribe near Qaim that vowed to fight Zarqawi was left this month battered and holed up in its village, calling for U.S. help.
"Is there enough force here right now to secure this area permanently? No. Are there opportunities for the enemy in other areas within our region? Yes," said Col. H.R. McMaster, commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Tall Afar.
For Zarqawi's purposes, U.S. claims of denying insurgents a lasting haven probably mean little, Cordesman said. "Being fluid, dynamic, scattered, broken out into cells seems to be the way any effective insurgency wins, or certainly endures," he said.
A Multifaceted Solution
Since the start of the war, the U.S. military appears to have been limited by having too few troops to block either the emergence or the growth of the insurgency. Last week, Lynch advised what he called "combat patience" regarding plans to target the insurgents' Euphrates River strongholds in western Anbar. U.S. ground commanders there have said thousands more American forces are needed to secure towns and close the Syrian border.
Cordesman and other analysts said that ultimately, a bulked-up U.S. presence in any one area, with troops who speak no Arabic and have comparatively little expertise in counterinsurgency, risks spurring new fighters to join the insurgency at least as fast as old ones are eliminated.
The answer, military officials and analysts say, lies in something the U.S. and Iraqi governments haven't been able to achieve: the creation of a truly national army that includes Sunni Arabs for deployment into Anbar and other hot spots, and of a national government that gives the Sunni minority back a share of political power.
"You can't win in Anbar, Baghdad or anywhere else except politically," Cordesman said.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
Meanwhile, re-construction aka "nation building" (we bust up nations real good) is ed up and dragging its butt, but we can be sure Halliburton and friends are cashing their checks right on time.
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September 18, 2005
Poor Planning and Corruption Hobble Reconstruction of Iraq
By CRAIG S. SMITH
NAJAF, Iraq - In April, Najaf's main maternity hospital received rare good news: an $8 million refurbishment program financed by the United States would begin immediately. But five months and millions of dollars later, the hospital administrators say they have little but frustration to show for it.
"They keep saying there's renovation but, frankly, we don't see it," said Liqaa al-Yassin, director of the hospital, her exasperated face framed by a black hijab, or scarf. "Each day I sign in 80 workers, and sometimes I see them, sometimes I don't."
She walks a visitor through the hospital's hot, dim halls, the peeling linoleum on the floors stained by the thousands of lighted cigarettes crushed underfoot. Anxious women, draped in black head-to-foot chadors, or veils, sit in the sultry rooms fanning their sick children.
"My child has heart problems, she can't take this heat," pleaded one mother as Dr. Yassin walked past.
The United States has poured more than $200 million into reconstruction projects in this city, part of the $10 billion it has spent to rebuild Iraq. Najaf is widely cited by the military as one of the success stories in that effort, but American officers involved in the rebuilding say that reconstruction projects here, as elsewhere in the country, are hobbled by poor planning, corrupt contractors and a lack of continuity among the rotating coalition officers charged with overseeing the spending.
"This country is filled with projects that were never completed or were completed and have never been used," said a frustrated civil affairs officer who asked not to be identified because he had not been cleared to speak about the reconstruction.
Najaf would seem to be one of Iraq's most promising places to rebuild. As a Shiite holy place, it has few Sunnis and, as a result, none of the insurgent attacks and sabotage that plague other parts of the country. Just a year after fighting between American forces and Shiite militias left much of the city in smoking ruins, a new police force is patrolling the streets and security in the city has been handed over to Iraqis.
There are some successes. The Army Corps of Engineers has finished refurbishing several police and fire stations, one of which has shiny new fire engines donated by <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/japan/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>Japan. It is spending tens of thousands of dollars to refurbish crumbling schools and has replaced aging clay water pipes in the suburb of Kufa with more durable plastic ones. It is even spending half a million dollars to renovate the city's soccer stadium, putting in new lights and laying fresh sod.
But in a series of interviews, American military officers and Iraqi officials involved in the reconstruction described a pattern of failures and frustrations that Army officers who have worked in other parts of Iraq say are routine. Residents complain that the many of the city's critical needs remain unfulfilled and the Army concedes that many projects it has financed are far behind schedule. Officers with the American military say that corruption and poor oversight are largely to blame.
"We were told to stimulate the economy any way we can, and a lot of money was wasted in the process," said Capt. Kelly Mims, part of the Army liaison team that maintains an office in Najaf's local government building. "Now we're focused on spending the money more wisely."
He said the Army was forming a committee with provincial authorities to create a master list of all current and future projects so that the money goes where it is most needed.
Several agencies are charged with reconstruction in Iraq. In Najaf it is primarily the work of the Army Corps of Engineers and the United States Agency for International Development.
They award some projects to foreign contractors, many of them American companies that hold master contracts for reconstruction work. Other projects are awarded directly to Iraqi companies, but even the American companies subcontract much of the work to Iraqis. A handful of Army reservists and civilian employees hand out cash to Iraqi contractors and try to keep track of the projects they underwrite.
But American officers say there is almost no oversight after a contractor is given the job. The Army pays small Iraqi contractors in installments - 10 percent at the outset, 40 percent when the work is half done, 40 percent on completion and the final 10 percent after fixing problems identified in a final inspection. On larger projects, contractors are paid by the month, regardless of how much work is actually done.
Penalty clauses for missing deadlines are rare, and some contractors drag out their projects for months, officers say, then demand more money and threaten to walk away if it is not forthcoming.
Maj. William Smith, charged with overseeing most of the reconstruction work in the area, walks around the bright blue pipes and yellow tanks of an unfinished water treatment plant outside of town. A control panel with its array of monitoring lights sits baking in the sun beside broken bags of filtering sand. The plant was supposed to be finished in June, but the feed pipe from the river has not even been connected; it was buried unmarked and now has to be relocated.
"Sometimes, the only way to go is to pay off the contractor and put it out for new bids," the major said with a weary chuckle. He said the water treatment plant was one of four that he was considering repossessing, even though he has paid out more than $200,000 on each one.
Major Smith says that contractors can technically be blacklisted. But they simply change the names of their companies and submit bids for new projects, "and we don't really have a choice but to use them" if they submit the winning bid, he said. That is because the United States blacklists only companies, not individuals, he said.
Army engineers have to scrutinize tenders carefully because contractors sometimes leave out major pieces of equipment to lower their bids, he said. Once the contract is awarded and the omission is discovered, the Army is forced to pay more to complete the project.
All bids must be submitted in English and the companies are required to have an English-speaking representative on site whenever the Americans visit, but they rarely do, many officers said.
At a United States-financed health clinic going up on the outskirts of town, Major Smith resorts to pantomime as he tries to make himself understood to an eager foreman. In response, the foreman draws furiously in the sand, but all a bemused Major Smith can say is, "O.K., O.K." He promises to return with an interpreter in a few days, but even that message is lost.
Driving through the city, Major Smith points out a new, $5.5 million sewage treatment plant, built by Bechtel with funds from the Agency for International Development. The plant was completed in February but was not commissioned until August because no one in Najaf had been trained on how to operate it. The agency said that it was now operating at full capacity, serving 141,000 people. But a similar plant has sat unused in the nearby town of Diwaniya since its completion last December, also for lack of trained personnel. An agency spokesman said it was expected to begin operating in September.
Muhammad Yusef al-Yasiri, an engineer who sits on the project committee of Najaf's city council, grumbled that the Americans hired contractors and handed out projects without consulting the local ins utions involved. "Even the hospitals have no idea what kind of work is being done," he said. As a result, he added, "the money isn't going to the right places."
He cited the Al Sadr Teaching Hospital, which was caught in last year's crossfire between coalition forces and fighters loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, son of the grand ayatollah for whom the hospital is named. Mr. Sadr's fighters used the hospital's high floors to fire on a coalition base nearby before being driven out.
After coalition troops pulled out in July last year, looters moved in, carting away almost anything of value. To refurbish the hospital, the Army hired the Parsons Corporation, a private engineering and construction company that has been awarded a master contract to build and renovate hospitals and health centers throughout the country. It was paid $2 million to lay new linoleum and hang new ceiling tiles in the hospital's ground floor, drain the flooded basement and fix the central air-conditioning.
But the work has not assuaged angry doctors whose first priority is to replace the equipment lost in the looting, which they say the United States should have prevented in the first place.
A resident doctor who gave his name as Ather led a visitor through the hospital, pointing out where the advanced equipment once stood. Looters damaged the magnetic resonance imaging machine and stole the control unit of the CT scanner. The large white doughnut of the scanner sits idle in a pristine room, untouched by the fighting. Only two of the hospital's four X-ray machines remain.
In the emergency room, a family sat on a blanket eating a lunch of bread, grilled meat and cu bers. "This was Najaf's most advanced hospital," he said with distress. "A lot of money has been spent on the rehabilitation of this hospital, but not very much has changed."
Part of the problem is that much of the money is spent before any work is done. The International Monetary Fund reported recently that a third to half of the money paid to foreign contractors is spent on security and insurance. Importing equipment also eats up cash. Major Smith said the hospital's new boiler, for example, was being shipped from the United States.
At the maternity hospital across town, Dr. Yassin could hardly disguise her mounting frustration. She said the contractor, the Parsons Corporation, had repaired the hospital's reverse osmosis water purification equipment, but that little else had been accomplished in the five months since the renovation began.
Only one of the hospital's four elevators is working, and that is the one Parsons left in operation while the others were supposedly being repaired, she said, adding that no one is working on the elevators now. Major Smith said Parsons had completed the work but that it was so shoddy the Army would not certify the elevators for use. He said the company had since agreed to bring in elevator specialists to redo the job.
Parsons was also supposed to fix the hospital's incinerators, but it completed the work without hooking up gas lines to fuel them, Dr. Yassin said.
A Parsons spokesman in California said that all work on the hospital would be completed in November and blamed insurgent activity in the area for the delays. The hospital director, though, said that there had never been any fighting around the site, and that Najaf had been free of major violence for more than a year.
Dr. Yassin said that, in any event, she would prefer that the money be spent on new facilities and had asked the Ministry of Health to finance an expansion.
"Were doing our best, despite this process of rehabilitation," she said. "I hope that they will work faster in the future."
*Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
The US can't quell the Sunni and jihadis now.
If the Shiites crack and start to retaliate (perhaps under fatwa from Iran), with help from next-door and heavily equipped Shiite Iran, plus whatever jihadis happen to be in the neighborhood to stir the pot, GAMEOVER.
The much-anticipiated and much-dreaded Shiite/Sunni/Kurd civil war will be in full force, as Iraq cracks into its 3 "natural" pieces.
===============================================
The New York Times
September 19, 2005
Relentless Rebel Attacks Test Shiite Endurance
By SABRINA TAVERNISE and ROBERT F. WORTH
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 18 - The rooms of the dead are mostly empty now. Their meager belongings are all that remain: A small pile of pickles wrapped in plastic. A bag of salt. Pairs of old shoes. Work shirts and towels draped on a coat rack in the corner.
The items, left in a hostel in Baghdad's Kadhimiya neighborhood, belonged to poor Shiite day laborers who were killed Wednesday in a suicide bombing. The attacker lured them to his van with promises of work, then blew himself up, killing 114 people. It was this city's deadliest bombing since the American invasion and, it seemed to many, one of the cruelest.
That attack, and a string of others that have followed, all aimed at Shiites, have brought new vulnerability and dysfunction to the streets of Baghdad, the capital. For days, three of the four main roads leading in and out of Kadhimiya have been closed. Neighborhoods have been unusually quiet, as Shiites stay home, afraid to venture out. The violence has also reinforced a new reality of the war here: That Shiites are now paying the highest price in blood of any group in Iraq.
"Americans are not attacked anymore, it's the Shiites who suffer from these bombings," said a 40-year-old owner of a cigarette shop in front of the bombing site, who gave only his nickname, Abu Ali. "It is increasing now. Sometimes several in one day."
American service members clearly are still a major target of insurgent attacks, with deaths reported every week, and the overall toll in the war nearing 2,000. But in recent months, insurgents have pointedly shifted their focus toward killing Shiite civilians, with the number of attacks on mosques, markets and populated areas rising sharply since the spring. The threat of further massacres was sharpened last week when the architect of much of the killing, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, declared a "full-scale war on Shiites all over Iraq, wherever and whenever they are found."
If the country has not yet slid into open civil war, it is mainly because the vast majority of Shiites have refused to be drawn into the killing. Adhering to the commands of their religious leaders in Najaf, they speak of the bombing in Kadhimiya as the latest tragedy in the long tale of suffering that dates to the founding of Shiism in the 7th century.
But as the insurgency grows ever more deadly, the question is whether that historic tolerance for suffering will hold.
In Kadhimiya, the answer, at least so far, seemed to be yes.
"It is God's will," said Ali Hussein, a 38-year-old laborer from Nasiriya, who lives in the hostel, called Haji Awda. "Since ancient times it has been this way. It is our fate."
The blast has torn apart Mr. Hussein's family. His brother-in-law, with whom he shared a room, has been missing since the bombing. Mr. Hussein has not been able to bring himself to call his sister, hoping first to find news of her husband, whom she married just two months ago. Since Wednesday, Mr. Hussein has searched 12 hospitals in Baghdad without success.
Still, the tiny room they once shared was filled not with outrage but with a quiet acceptance and sadness at the loss. Mr. Hussein laid his brother-in-law's few belongings - a frayed shirt, flowing cotton pants, and a dishdasha, or traditional gown - on his cot to show a visitor.
"As Shiites, we say that we Iraqis are all one hand - Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and Christians."
Still, the unrelenting attacks have deepened the sense of anguish among Shiites, who say the fear of more massacres has seeped into all parts of their lives. Nowhere does that appear more strongly than in Kadhimiya, where black banners bearing the names of some of the dead flutter like flags from building facades, workers are still shoveling piles of rubble from the blast and most windows lack glass.
The streets around the Kadhimiya bomb site, though somber, hummed Sunday with quiet repairs. Shop owners stood among piles of rubble and surveyed damage to the sounds of sweeping and hammering. Mussa Awda, one of three brothers who run the hostel, pointed to where plywood had been nailed to replace a roof that had collapsed in the blast. "We have enough patience," Mr. Awda said. "And thank God for that."
In more than a dozen interviews this weekend, the desire to seek revenge never came up.
"If I chose to fight," said Dhafer Amer, 23, who works in his father's rug shop not far from where the bomb went off in Kadhimiya, "it would only make things worse."
Still, there are signs that the ageless Shiite tolerance may already be wearing thin. Some Shiites have begun accusing the government - dominated by Shiite religious parties - of failing to act decisively enough against those who carry out the attacks.
"Our patience shows that we are much stronger than them," said Abbas Swadi, who works in a Kadhimiya tea house. "But we're fighting with our patience."
Many Shiites also complained that Sunni Arab leaders have not spoken out forcefully enough against the bombings. Shortly after the attacks on Wednesday, Iraq's most prominent hard-line Sunni clerical group, the Muslim Scholars Association, responded to Mr. Zarqawi's declaration of war with a mild public statement that "advised" him to desist. The remark did not go unnoticed in the Shiite neighborhoods that bore the brunt of Wednesday's pain.
"How dare they say it so weakly," said Falah Jiad, an ice cream shop worker in Shula, another Shiite area in Baghdad that was bombed on Wednesday. "It makes us think that they accept Zarqawi's attacks on us."
Sunnis are also being killed, and clerics have blamed the assassination-style hits on Shiite militias. The clerics never fail to point out their own pain, even in the fact of much greater losses among Shiites. Losses among Shiites are generally greater, and some Shiites have expressed frustration that the imbalance is rarely acknowledged.
The victims are often this city's poorest in a country where unemployment is at least 30 percent. Mr. Swadi, 25, who is from Nasiriya and lost several friends in the blast, supports his wife and children by working several jobs, including in a tea shop for $4.79 a day. He sleeps on the shop floor. Other laborers pay about 60 cents for a night on a cot in hostels like Mr. Awda's.
Kadhimiya has seen violence before; it was near here that almost 1,000 Shiite pilgrims were killed in a stampede three weeks ago that was set off by fears of a suicide bomber. Even so, the sheer scale of the suffering in Wednesday's attack was staggering.
Karim al-Azawi was on his way to open his breakfast shop on the morning of the blast. He ran to help people, but found himself collecting parts of bodies - legs, arms, even a torso - instead of whole bodies, and stacking them in a pile. Later, when he went to survey the damage from the roof of his building, he found a human back, sheared of bone, lying flat on the dusty concrete.
A long, dark oily smudge was all that remained Sunday of the horrifying sight.
But nothing, it seemed, could dampen Shiite resilience. On Sunday evening, crowds of Shiite pilgrims from southern and central Iraq poured into the holy Shiite city of Karbala for the Shiite holiday of Shabaniya, a celebration of the birth of the 12th Shiite imam.
In Baghdad, about 60 miles north, Mr. Hussein pondered making the trip. When asked how he would get there, he replied without hesitation, "By walking on my feet."
Sahar Najib and Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedy contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Karbala.
* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Maybe what we ought to be asking is, who are the real terrorists anyway?
GuardianViolence erupted in Basra this afternoon following the arrest of two British soldiers for allegedly killing one policeman and wounding another.
British troops exchanged gunfire with protesters as two tanks were reportedly set on fire. Four civilians are said to have been wounded in the clashes.
The fighting broke out after two British soldiers, allegedly dressed as Arabs, opened fire on a police patrol killing one officer and wounding another.
The Ministry of Defence confirmed that two military personnel were detained by Iraqi authorities today, but would not comment on rumours that the soldiers were working undercover.
This may explain the Al Zarqawi phenomenon?
The Bush administration had numerous chances to arrest the Jordanian militant Ahmad al-Khalayleh, known as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, if he does really exist, since February 2003 speech of the former Secretary of State Colin Powell at United Nations Security Council, a great portion of which was given to the “terrorist camp in Khurmal”, in the pre-invasion Kurdish enclave.
It was at that camp that Zarqawi supposedly fled Afghanistan, and Kurds were receiving intensive training to produce the poison ricin and cyanide.
At that time, the Khurmal camp and the area surrounding it were out of Saddam Hussein's control, but Powell fabricated evidence, largely discredited by the intelligence community, to show that Zarqawi does have ties to the Iraqi regime.
AljazeeraAl Zarqawi's "headquarters" were bombed to the ground by U.S. forces that year, and some news sources claimed that he had been killed, but his name keeps recurring whenever the U.S. needs.
Almost every attack that takes place in Iraq is attributed to Al Zarqawi, and his so-called Al Qaeda military wing in Iraq. No car or roadside bomb attacks occur unless they're attributed to him by the U.S.
UK soldiers freed from Basra jail
British soldiers had to jump from their burning tank
Two UK soldiers arrested by police after a shooting incident in the southern Iraqi city of Basra are back in British custody, UK officials say.
Reports say the men were freed when British tanks smashed down the walls of the prison where they were held.
However, the Ministry of Defence would not comment on the report.
The soldiers' arrests sparked clashes in the city and two British tanks sent to the prison where the men were being held, were set alight.
Civilians 'killed'
The BBC's Richard Galpin said it seemed more and more as if British forces had stormed the prison.
Witnesses told the Associated Press that around 150 prisoners escaped at the same time.
Earlier, two British tanks, sent to the police station where the soldiers are being held, were set alight in clashes.
Crowds of angry protesters hurled petrol bombs and stones injuring three servicemen and several civilians.
TV pictures showed soldiers in combat gear, clambering from one of the flaming tanks and making their escape.
A local council spokesman said two civilians were killed in the earlier clashes. Up to 15 civilians were also reported injured in the demonstrations.
Tensions have been running high in the city since the arrest of a senior figure in the Shia Mehdi Army by UK troops.
In other developments:
* Nine Iraqi police and a civilian have died in suicide bombings between Baghdad and Karbala, where Shias are attending a major religious festival
* The Iraqi government says a nephew of Saddam Hussein, Ayman Sabawi, has been sentenced to life in prison for funding Iraq's insurgency
* An Iraqi reporter working for the New York Times, Fakher Haider, has been found dead in Basra
* Iraq's Finance Minister, Ali Allawi, tells the UK's Independent newspaper that large-scale corruption in Iraq's ministries, particularly the defence ministry, has led to the theft of more than $1bn.
Civilian clothes
An Iraqi official in Basra said the British military had informed him the detained men were under cover soldiers.
This has not been confirmed, but pictures of two soldiers being detained in police cells show the men wearing civilian clothes.
The official said: "They were driving a civilian car and were dressed in civilian clothes when a shooting took place between them and Iraqi patrols.
"We are investigating and an Iraqi judge is on the case questioning them."
BBC world affairs correspondent Richard Galpin said tension had been growing in Basra since the arrest on Sunday of a senior figure in the Shia Mehdi Army militia, suspected by the British military of being behind a series of attacks on troops.
His arrest drew crowds onto the streets of Basra demanding his release.
Richard Galpin said British troops had since carried out further raids and made more arrests, sparking further unrest.
Violence has been increasing in the British-controlled Basra region in recent months, with two soldiers killed by a roadside bomb on 5 September and a third on 11 September.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/h...st/4262336.stm
British tanks smash Iraqi jail to free UK soldiers
Alertnet.orgBASRA, Iraq, Sept 19 (Reuters) - British forces used tanks to smash down the walls of a prison in the southern city of Basra and freed two undercover British soldiers seized earlier by Iraqi forces, an Interior Ministry official said on Monday.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said half a dozen tanks had broken down the walls of the jail and troops had then stormed in to free the two British soldiers. The governor of Basra confirmed that the jail had been broken into.
The Interior Ministry official said dozens of Iraqi prisoners being held at the jail had escaped at the same time.
GTF out of here!
them Brits have lost it
ADNKIIRAQ: NEW YORK TIMES REPORTER SLAIN
Baghdad, 19 Sept. (AKI) - The body of an Iraqi journalist working for the US daily New York Times was found abandoned in a street near the southern city of Basra on Monday. Four gunmen, apparently wearing police uniforms, abducted the reporter, Fakher Al-Tamini, from his home on Sunday night. The group told his wife they were taking Al-Tamini away as part of a "routine investigation."
Al-Tamimi, 38, began working for the New York Times in Iraq in 2003 and was also employed as a reporter by a local television station.
SORRY, WRONG THREAD
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