Update [2005-9-29 11:10AM PST by Oui]:
Q. – Major defeat for insurgents?
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Bush: This guy's a brutal killer.
Al-Qaida in Iraq issued an Internet statement denying that Abu Azzam was its deputy leader, calling him “one of al-Qaida’s many soldiers” and “the leader of one its battalions operating in Baghdad.” The US-led coalition however, called Abu Azzam the mastermind of escalation in suicide bombings, that have killed nearly 700 people in Baghdad since April.
“We can expect they’ll do everything in their power to try to stop the march of freedom,” Bush said. “And our troops are ready for it”.
A. – Iraq :: Balad 3-car bombs 85 killed & 110 wounded!
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An Iraqi woman cries while waiting for news about a relative wounded in a Baghdad shooting. Since Sunday, at least 89 people - including seven U.S. service members - have been killed in attacks in Iraq. AP Photo/Karim Kadim
BAGHDAD (AFP) – At least 85 people were killed and more than 110 wounded when three car bombs exploded within minutes of each other in the mainly Shiite central Iraqi town of Balad, police said.
Thirty-five women and 22 children were among the dead, said Lieutenant Colonel Adel Abdallah of the Balad police.
Fifty of those hurt were rushed to a nearby US military base, an interior ministry official said.
More to follow below the fold »»
Balad – 3 Suicide Car Bombs Killed 60 People and Wounded over 70
CBS/AP Sept. 29 — A roadside bomb killed five American soldiers Wednesday during combat in the western town of Ramadi, the military said. It was the deadliest single attack on U.S. troops since a roadside bomb killed 14 Marines near Haditha in western Iraq on Aug. 3.
The five dead Americans were assigned to the 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force and were hit while “conducting combat operations” in the insurgent hotbed, a statement by the Marines said.
The deaths brought to 13 the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq in the past four days. According to an Associated Press count, 1,934 U.S. troops have died since the war started in 2003.
COORDINATED SUICIDE CAR BOMB EXPLOSIONS
And continuing a week-long spate of violence, three suicide car bombs exploded nearly simultaneously this evening in a city north of Baghdad, killing at least 60 people and wounding approximately 70, a hospital official said.
The attacks at about 6:45 p.m. hit a bank, a vegetable market and another location in downtown Balad, a mostly Shiite city 50 miles north of the capital, witnesses said.
Dr. Khaled al-Azawi at Balad Hospital said scores were wounded in the blasts, many of them seriously, with burns and mutilated limbs.
IN RELATED DEVELOPMENTS
A judge has ruled that pictures of detainee abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison must be released over U.S. government claims that they could damage America’s image.
A Pentagon analyst charged with providing classified information to an Israeli official and members of a pro-Israeli lobbying group AIPAC will plead guilty, according to the U.S. District Court clerk’s office. Lawrence A. Franklin, 58, of Kearneysville, W.Va., was indicted in June on charges of leaking classified materials — including information about potential attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq — to two members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and an Israeli official.
U.S. troops could begin coming home from Iraq next year, but it depends on conditions during and after the upcoming elections there, the top U.S. commander in Iraq told Congress. The remarks by Gen. George Casey, along with similar comments he made a day before, represented a softening of his earlier assessment that a “fairly substantial” pullout could begin next spring and summer.
Suicide Attack Kills Eight in Iraq
BAGHDAD, Iraq : 30 minutes ago — A suicide attacker detonated explosives amid a crowd of job applicants at an army recruitment center in northern Iraq, killing at least eight people and wounding 37, police said.
The attacker had the explosives hidden beneath her clothes and struck in Tal Afar, about 95 miles east of the Syrian border and 260 miles northwest of Baghdad, police Brig. Saeed Ahmed Al-Jibori said.
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"Tal Afar is an amazing place - when I visited in June (2004) to do research for the book, I found there were no hotels. Imagine, a city of 400,000 people, with not one hotel! It's a closed little corner of northern Iraq, the place that time forgot."
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‘Operation Restoring Rights’ to secure Tal Afar
U.S.-led coalition forces routed insurgents from Tal Afar in a major offensive Sept. 8-12, killing nearly 200 suspected militants and capturing 315, Iraq’s military said.
That prompted Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born, Sunni Arab leader of the al-Qaida in Iraq insurgent group, to declare all-out war on Iraq’s majority Shiites.
Later, al-Zarqawi issued a qualifier, exempting certain groups, including followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, the renegade Shiite cleric based in the holy city of Najaf.
[Minor edits and links added – Oui]
Suicide Attack Northern Iraq – #2 man Abdullah Abu Azzam Killed in Baghdad – Execution 5 School Teachers
By Sayed Salahuddin – 30 minutes ago –
KABUL (Reuters) — At least 12 people were killed and 29 wounded when a suicide bomber dressed in an army uniform rammed a motorcycle into a convoy of buses carrying Afghan army officers in the capital Kabul.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack at the Kabul Military Training Center, set up by U.S.-led forces to train a new national army, and said more could be expected.
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International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) soldiers and Afghan police secure an area after a bomb blast in Kabul today. REUTERS/Omar Sobhani
It was the bloodiest of several suicide attacks in Kabul since U.S.-led forces overthrew the Taliban in late 2001 and came just 10 days after landmark parliamentary elections, which passed off relatively peacefully despite militant threats.
An Afghan intelligence official said at least 12 people died, most of them army officers, but he did not know if this figure included the bomber. The officer, who did not want to be identified, said some of the wounded were in critical condition.
Defense Ministry spokesman Zahir Azimi said earlier 10 people had been killed, including the bomber. Another ministry official said eight of the dead were soldiers and another a civilian.
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Throughout history, a turn for the worst in desperation occurs when women take part in such attacks. This has been seen with Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, Chechen rebels and from Palestinian territory.
In documentaries, the indication is this upsurge of attack is motivated by a girl friend, sister or just a relative of the earlier wave of attacks, followed by retaliation and further bloodshed of civil war.
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via a link on James Wolcott:
http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2005/09/systems_failure.php
Why Iraq Will End as Vietnam Did
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/crevald1.html
“the most important operational problem the US Forces were facing was intelligence, in other words the inability to distinguish the enemy from either the physical surroundings or the civilian population. Had intelligence been available then their enormous superiority in every kind of military hardware would have enabled them to win the War easily enough. In its absence, most of the blows they delivered – including no fewer than six million tons of bombs dropped – hit empty air. All they did was make the enemy disperse and merge into the civilian population, thus making it even harder to find him. Worst of all, lack of accurate intelligence meant that the Americans kept hitting noncombatants by mistake. They thus drove huge segments of the population straight into the arms of the Viet Cong; nothing is more conducive to hatred than the sight of relatives and friends being killed.”
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~ Posted from diary TIMELINE :: Basra Police Station – Jail Break – MoD Lies ~
The UK contingent is down from 35,000 to 8,500, in addition many coalition troops under UK Command have left Iraq: Spain, partly Poland and the Netherlands.
The British strategy is the same as where the Dutch were very successful: cooperation and coexistence with the local government. The liason on a daily basis with the local police and government is this lifeline to gather intelligence on subversive elements in the city and region. Meanwhile training the police forces to take over authority.
Following the Dutch closely, on just a few occasions the Dutch got into problems – and lost two men during their stay. These moments were when the U.S. Army pressured the militia of Muqtada Al Sadr near the holy sites of Najaf and the second attack launched by the U.S. on Fallujah and the UK Blackwatch Forces offered U.S. support near Baghdad.
During a period – April 2004 – the Dutch lost all cooperation and received no further intelligence. Rogue elements of Al Sadr militia from outside the province came in, got local support and launched terror attacks on the Dutch forces. In analogy, the Brits have just lost their eyes and ears to know what is happening in Basra. A dangerous and ominous sign, for the Iraqis have just one loyalty: Allah – thus the Islam – and Nationalism.
When the Al Sadr militia came in, they got full cooperation from not only local citizens, but also the police and local administration. Reminds me of a Dutch acquaintance in the oil business for over thirty years in Saudi Arabia. He meets with the Saudis regularly, believed he made friends, but there remains a separation undefined. He knows when violence would break out, he has to watch his back especially for these friends. Iraq is a keg of powder, one never knows if and when it will ignite.
To the contrary, I have made lifelong friendship with several Arab nationals in the Netherlands and in the U.S.
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It had been my thought that when women became willing to do these things, that the seriousness of the conflict was ratcheting up. This is bad news – it hardly seems appropriate to utter “thanks” for telling us, yet so little attention is paid here to these deaths, that go on and on and on.
I have talked to some of my American students, and their image of Iraq is so far from reality. . . and our television reports of the war, which is their source of information, almost exclusively, is limited to a very sanitized and filtered view of things.
We are insulated, viewing this through a velvet curtain of facade and thin “patriotism”.
I am grateful for your writing about this.
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What else can I say …
No democratic elections will change such violence!
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!@#$%&
like i’m not psychotic enough without this shit…
anyhoo, my question is: given that we haven’t the troop strength to properly manage iraq, nobody’s enlisting and we keep on losing our men and women in uniform to crap like this, what the fuck happens next? is bush’s prayer that something will turn around before the attrition rate gets completely untenable? are they just going to nuke baghdad? hope our permanent bases get built before our last soldier dies? seriously, wtf?
and my comment is: MyDD had a dope-ass post today about the apparently inexhaustible supply of “al qaeda #2” men. well worth a read.
http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/9/29/097/73029
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~ Earlier posted in The Civil War in Iraq ◊ by BooMan ~
Analyse the purpose, goals and targets of the suicide attack and you will understand there is a grand design behind them. First of all, it requires a vast organization, coordination and logistics to have multiple attacks take place within hours, and some have been announced one or two days ahead of time.
The Baathists, Sunnis and minor foreign Arab influence are part of this. It’s Saddam Husseins extended secret service who are involved, the U.S. hard-handed approach in central Iraq has created the opportunity for Iraqi factions to unite. A motivation for resistance is the presence of U.S. and British troops on Arab soil. The Iraqi population accepted in the early months the necessity of coalition troops to remove Saddam regime, a longer stay works counterproductive.
The US failed miserably to establish order and security in Baghdad and all of Iraq. The services for water, hygiene and electricity are lacking, worse than it ever was under Saddam Hussein and the UN embargo. Even the availability of fuel at the service station is poor. The unemployment level is high – 50% – offering recruits to the Iraqi resistance and “freedom fighters”.
The strategy has evolved as follows :: the targets
Terror attacks follow an established plan, designed before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The weapons and munitions caches are in place and are very numerous and extensive throughout the country. The Kurds increases tension by evicting Arabs from cities like Mosul and Kirkuk. The borders are open, have been for ages, and there is no way the Iraqis or MNF can shut down border infiltration without full backing of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey and Syria. The Kurds are creating problems in the southern portion of Turkey by invading, bombing and attacking the Turkish armed forces.
United States needs to GET OUT, sooner rather than later.
The number of Iraqi battalions capable of combat without U.S. support has dropped from three to one, the top American commander General Casey in Iraq, told Congress today.
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~ Earlier posted in Pentagon Cheats Iraq, Fails Katrina, Leaves Soldiers Behind ~
About a year ago, in a documentary by BBC about the transport route Kuwait to Baghdad, the many trucks that were stopped by throwing one or two grenades near diesel tank to set them on fire. The materials were stolen and offered for sale in a matter of hours in Baghdad shops. Especially new US body armor was offered, asking price $100,-.
A grave fuck-up by KBR and Halliburton, whomever got those highly profitable, “no-bid” contracts from DoD. US troops and transport are not secure to travel; the same problem exists for normal daily life for all residents of Baghdad, travel to schools, shops, work and family.
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Suspicions Strengthened by Earlier Reportsby Michael Keefer – GlobalResearch.ca
Sept. 25, 2005 — Articles published by Michel Chossudovsky, Larry Chin and Mike Whitney at the Centre for Research on Globalization’s website on September 20, 2005 have offered preliminary assessments of the claims of Iraqi authorities that two British soldiers in civilian clothes who were arrested by Iraqi police in Basra on September 19–and in short order released by a British tank and helicopter assault on the prison where they were being held–had been engaged in planting bombs in the city.
See: Article one – two – three
A further article by Kurt Nimmo points to false-flag operations carried out by British special forces troops in Northern Ireland and elsewhere, and to Donald Rumsfeld’s formation of the P2OG, or Proactive Preemptive Operations Group, as directly relevant to Iraqi charges of possible false-flag terror operations by the occupying powers in Iraq.
In May 2005 ‘Riverbend’, the Baghdad author of the widely-read blog Baghdad Burning, reported that what the international press was reporting as suicide bombings were often in fact “car bombs that are either being remotely detonated or maybe time bombs.” After one of the larger recent blasts, which occurred in the middle-class Ma’moun area of west Baghdad, a man living in a house in front of the blast site was reportedly arrested for having sniped an Iraqi National Guardsman. But according to ‘Riverbend’, his neighbours had a different story:
“People from the area claim that the man was taken away not because he shot anyone, but because he knew too much about the bomb. Rumor has it that he saw an American patrol passing through the area and pausing at the bomb site minutes before the explosion. Soon after they drove away, the bomb went off and chaos ensued. He ran out of his house screaming to the neighbors and bystanders that the Americans had either planted the bomb or seen the bomb and done nothing about it. He was promptly taken away.”
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Thank you for this coverage. Here we hear that GW says we are making progress in Iraq. Then he warns that there may be more “Terrorist attacks” as the elections in Iraq approach.
I would like to hear from you regarding our continued presence and the insurgency. Would there be even worse bloodshed if, like Cindy Sheehan advocates, the US military just picked up and went home. Your views on the probable effect of this kind of action would be appreciated. Thanks..
Oh shit
I have so little to add other than my heart feels so sick, so broken that the country that espouses democracy and freedom is doing this to Iraq. So THIS is what “the last throes” looks like. I was wondering. God asve us all and I do not use God very often.