Sat Jun 25, 6:12 PM ET - A US soldier of Charlie Company 4-64, secures the area Iraqi policemen patrol in central Baghdad. Persistent Iraq violence killed at least 37 people and wounded dozens more.(AFP/Yuri Cortez)
Posted on 06/25/2005 7:14:49 PM PDT by Gucho
By Kevin Dougherty, Stars and Stripes Mideast edition, Saturday, June 25, 2005
SULAYMANIYAH, Iraq — Sonny Sebastian is running ahead of schedule, and he wants to keep it that way.
Sporting an orange hardhat, the 50-year-old Texan ambles from one building to the next to check the progress on the construction of a $16 million academy for the Iraqi Border Police. He talks with a foreman, points here and points there, and then moves on to another supervisor.
Originally scheduled for completion in August, the academy may open next month. Located in Sulaymaniyah in northern Iraq, the 22-building academy will include barracks, a dining hall, classrooms and an armory.
“The key to building in Iraq,” said Sebastian, a project manager for ECC International, a civilian contractor, “is to let them work the way they know how to work, with an emphasis on quality.”
There are hundreds of other major projects for Iraqi security forces that are either completed, in progress or on the drawing board. Of the $5.2 billion already allocated to Iraqi security forces, $1.7 billion has gone toward constructing or improving facilities, said Lt. Col. David Youngberg, an Army comptroller based in Baghdad.
Sebastian’s academy represents just one piece of a vast puzzle being pieced together by Youngberg and others assigned to the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq, which oversees the training and equipping of Iraqi security forces.
It’s a Herculean task that involves, either directly or indirectly, every servicemember deployed to Iraq. At the center of it all are the 1,100 military personnel — 950 of whom are Americans — assigned to MNSTC-I.
The $5.2 billion the organization currently has on its ledgers came in two separate appropriations. Five billion dollars of that was part of the $18.4 billion Congress approved in November 2003 for Iraqi reconstruction.
Initially, $3.4 billion was set aside for training and equipping Iraqi security forces, Youngberg said. Last year, when the insurgency brought to a standstill many civil projects, from restoring the oil infrastructure to fixing electrical power grids, an additional $1.8 billion was reallocated to MNSTC-I.
That increase allowed the organization to accelerate its work. At the time, one of the expectations was that speeding up the process would lead to greater stability, since more security forces would be trained and equipped.
But the insurgency hasn’t waned. Since late April, the number of attacks and deaths has risen sharply. Despite the violence, the train-and-equip program has continued unabated.
Last September, when MNSTC-I finished reassessing its matrix for determining who is and isn’t ready for duty, the number of “trained and equipped” Iraqi security forces stood at 96,000. Today, the organization puts that total at more than 168,000, but there are questions about how many of those forces are actually combat ready.
By July 2006, that number is projected to climb to 270,000, with the greatest growth occurring in the support areas, such as transportation and logistics. The money to pay for that side of the equation should be available soon.
“There has been a lot of progress in the last nine months,” Youngberg said.
In the supplemental appropriations bill signed by President Bush last month, an additional $5.4 billion was earmarked for training, equipment and construction. That money is for expenses through September 2006.
Managing the billions of dollars the United States is spending to overhaul and equip Iraqi security forces is a challenge even the ablest of accountants would find taxing.
“It’s an interesting exercise,” Youngberg said. “You have to make sure you have everything working in a synchronized plan.”
That means juggling such issues as whom to hire and where to billet them. There’s also a multitude of things to buy in terms of equipment, and, lastly, there is the training.
Essentially, every dollar MNSTC-I spends goes toward one of two Iraqi ministries: defense or interior.
By far, most of the defense dollars go toward rebuilding and equipping the Iraqi army, which will have 10 fully manned divisions and other elements, such as base support, signal and engineering.
The procurement list is lengthy, from bullets, guns and vehicles to uniforms, helmets and body armor. There are radios, generators and explosive ordnance equipment to acquire, along with reams of paper. After all, what’s an army without paperwork?
Expenses on the interior side are a mixed bag, since it involves such diverse entities as local police departments, commando units, highway patrol, borders and emergency services.
“We are nowhere near the end of the line, but we’re making progress,” said a senior coalition official associated with training Iraqi security forces.
Facilities construction is perhaps the most tangible testament to the monumental effort to remake and retool Iraqi security forces. Some units will use existing structures, while others are getting new digs.
For example, plans call for building or repairing about 1,000 police stations at a cost of $256 million, according to Air Force Lt. Col. Stephen Blalock, the executive officer in MNSTC-I’s engineering office. There will be three facilities for major crime units in Baghdad, including a $1 million forensic lab referred to it as “CSI Baghdad.”
Sebastian’s academy is one of three being built for the Iraqi Border Police. To illustrate the scope of just that one department, MNSTC-I has plans to build or refurbish 254 border forts and 12 ports of entry at a cost of more than $100 million.
The senior coalition official likened the whole endeavor to a cattle drive. At first, he said, there might be some strays, “but pretty soon, the whole herd is going in the right direction.”
In typically Texan fashion, Sebastian cut right to the chase.
“Our problem here,” he said, “is time.”
(PREVIOUS STORY: Turning the fight over to the Iraqis
By Teri Weaver - Stars and Stripes Mideast edition
Saturday, June 25, 2005
FORWARD OPERATING BASE MacKENZIE, Iraq — For some, a boost in morale comes from a care package, a scoop of ice cream, an afternoon swim at the on-base pool.
For the soldiers with the 1st Squadron, 17th Cavalry, it comes in the form of surround-sound stereo, nine laptop computers, four phones and a wagon-wheel chandelier.
More than 200 pilots, mechanics and support staff for 1st Squadron moved into Forward Operating Base MacKenzie in February and found next to nothing to make them smile. An airplane hangar converted into barracks was full of rats, mice and snakes. They didn’t even have a walled-in headquarters building, said Lt. Col. Frank Muth, the squadron’s commander.
Spc. Russell Elleby, 22, of Lumberton, N.C., left, plays Battleship on Tuesday night with Sgt. Sean Connelly, 24, of Oregon, Ill., in the Palehorse Saloon at Camp MacKenzie. Connelly helped design and build the recreation center in an aircraft hangar. (Teri Weaver / S&S)
In the past four months, these soldiers have worked to make “the far side of the moon,” as Muth calls MacKenzie, feel more like home. They closed in their headquarters building, built a larger, more secure tent for the mess hall and organized the housing trailers into a small village.
It’s common sense to put your house in order. But the soldiers here did more than that. This cavalry unit called Palehorse built a saloon-style recreation center complete with swinging doors, a sheriff’s jail and a two-story bar.
The bar only serves non-alcoholic beer and is still without a television. But the entire place has made everyone feel better about living in the middle of a desert, where the only green things are a small garden of morning glories outside the personnel office and outhouses.
“It gets used almost every night now,” said Sgt. David Christman, 23, of Monroe, La., who helped design and build the rec center. “It’s a place to take a break. People go over there with dinner and lunch. It gets you out of the tent environment.”
Last February, the soldiers were told to build four equally sized rooms and leave an open space for gym equipment, said Christman and Sgt. Sean Connelly, 24, of Oregon, Ill., who also helped with the design.
The two sergeants decided to improve on the idea and came up with the idea for a saloon instead of a game room. They and their friends added the second floor in three days, working 20 hours a day so that their progress would outweigh their sergeant major’s surprise when he saw the bar.
As the soldiers worked, someone started teasing them that the saloon — which has a sombrero, bugle and BB gun on the walls — needed a chandelier in the shape of a wagon wheel. “I got tired of everyone talking about it,” Connelly said, “so I put one together.”
The soldiers did the bulk of the work in February and March, but it wasn’t until this month that their officers secured the Internet and phone service in the building. That communications link has made the place more of a hangout, 24 hours a day.
“There was absolutely nothing to do. Now there’s a place to hang out,” said Staff Sgt. Angeline Jepsen, 37, of Hope Mills, N.C.
The soldiers buy long-distance minutes on the Internet to use the phones. The “birdcage,” or movie theater, has surround-sound stereo that blasts music through the gym when movies aren’t playing.
The squadron’s improvements aren’t finished, even though they have less than five months left in Iraq. Eighteen new living trailers have arrived, but the squadron hasn’t gotten the money to install, wire, air condition and inspect the new living quarters, Muth and his officers told his boss, Maj. Gen. Joseph J. Taluto.
Taluto commands New York’s 42nd Infantry Division in Iraq, which depends on Palehorse’s helicopters for above-ground reconnaissance and support. Taluto visited the tiny base on Thursday to hear about their recent missions and see how they were doing.
After updating the general on flight hours and missions, the officers gave a brief update on living conditions and the frustrations of looking at housing units instead of living in them.
“All right. I got it,” Taluto responded. “We’ll put it in the hopper and get some visibility on it.”
Stars and Stripes - Mideast edition
Saturday, June 25, 2005
A U.S. Apache helicopter was forced into an emergency landing Friday morning in an area east of Kandahar, according to U.S. officials in Afghanistan.
The pilots were not injured in the incident, which the U.S. military command said was not the result of enemy fire.
“Initial reports indicate the emergency landing was a result of mechanical difficulties,” a military press release read. “The helicopter was on a re-supply mission at the time.”
Efforts are under way to recover the AH-64 helicopter.
In separate missions, U.S. helicopters are being used to help move Afghan refugees from areas being hit with large-scale flooding, officials said Friday.
continues to criticize administration on IraqSaturday June 25, 2005
By The Grand Island Independent
GRAND ISLAND — U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel continues to fire away at the Bush administration's handling of Iraq, telling an American Legion convention Saturday that a gap is growing between the American people and the troops they've sent to secure the Iraqis' freedom.
"We are losing in Iraq," he said.
"The war in Iraq isn't exactly the same as the Vietnam War," said Hagel, who was wounded twice in Vietnam, "but the level of American support is becoming comparable."
The American people don't think they are being told the truth about the war, he said, and many are uncertain about U.S. aims.
His comments echoed those he made last week to U.S. News & World Report:
"Things (in Iraq) aren't getting better; they're getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality," he said. "It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is, we're losing in Iraq."
Some 53 percent of people surveyed say the United States made a mistake going to war in Iraq in March 2003, according to an AP-Ipsos poll released Friday. That is the highest number in AP-Ipsos polling who have said the war was a mistake.
The numbers are approaching the levels of public discontent registered in the final years of the Vietnam War.
The administration says Iraq has not become a Vietnam-like quagmire.
At a White House meeting on Friday with Iraq's interim prime minister, President Bush said he would not lay out a U.S. withdrawal strategy or bow to pressure from war critics. "I'm not giving up on the mission," Bush said.
Hagel said Saturday that the administration must regain the trust of the American people.
If U.S. aims were clear, Hagel said, U.S. military recruitment would regain momentum and there would be public support for further training of Iraqi forces to defend their wobbly government.
Hagel's criticism stopped short of calling for a U.S. withdrawal timetable, as was suggested in legislation introduced last week.
Without U.S. troop support for the Iraqi government, Hagel said, Iraq would be more dangerous than it currently is.
From InstaPundit:
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KARL ZINSMEISTER says the war is over and we won:
Your editor returned to Iraq in April and May of 2005 for another embedded period of reporting. I could immediately see improvements compared to my earlier extended tours during 2003 and 2004. The Iraqi security forces, for example, are vastly more competent, and in some cases quite inspiring. Baghdad is now choked with traffic. Cell phones have spread like wildfire. And satellite TV dishes sprout from even the most humble mud hovels in the countryside.
Many of the soldiers I spent time with during this spring had also been deployed during the initial invasion back in 2003. Almost universally they talked to me about how much change they could see in the country. They noted progress in the attitudes of the people, in the condition of important infrastructure, in security.
This will come as news to many people. Austin Bay noted similar progress in his most recent column, but was also quite hard on the Bush Administration for not explaining what is going on with the war, and why.
UPDATE: G-Scobe thinks that Zinsmeister is being irresponsibly optimistic.
More comments on Zinsmeister here.
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Excerpted from section titled Who's On First?
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What does it mean to win a war against guerilla insurgents? What does it mean for a guerilla insurgency to triumph? The one answer that is popularly advanced -- one that is implicit in Scoblete's argument -- is that guerillas win if they simply remain in existence. This site lists more than 383 armed guerilla groups extant in the world today. Clearly all of them exist and just clearly not all of them are triumphant. There are, for instance 27 armed guerilla groups in India, 9 in Britain (the most famous of which is the Irish Republican Army) and 11 in the United States. Yet no one asks whether it is premature to declare the Westminster Parliament in control of the Northern Ireland or wonder whether Los Matcheteros will take over the Washington DC. And the reason is simple: while the IRA and Los Matcheteros are still likely to exist in 2010, there is little or no chance that these organizations will seize state power in all or even part of Britain or the United States. Seizing state power over a definite territory is the explicit objective of nearly every guerilla armed force in the world today: if they can achieve that, they win. If they cannot achieve that and have no realistic prospect of ever achieving that, they are defeated, however long they may continue to exist.
Guerilla leaders themselves know this and invariably attempt to create a state-in-waiting in the course of their campaign based on an armed force, a united front of allies willing to support the guerilla's political objectives and a hard leadership core in firm control of both. They also attempt to create micro-states in the course of insurgency usually styled "base areas" or "liberated zones". Political influence, combat capability and territorial control are the real metrics of a successful guerilla campaign. The argument that mere existence or avoidance of defeat constitutes victory is hogwash: both the IRA and the Red Hand Commandos exist, but clearly the IRA is the more successful guerilla organization because it has a national united front, some combat capability and hard and diverse leadership core where the Red Hand Commandos do not. Even Al Qaeda, which some claim to be a creature of pure thought has sought to control territory in Afghanistan and spread its influence through Islamic "charities" while under the control of a central group of militants. It was, in other words, no different from any other classic guerilla organization.
While the Iraqi insurgents still retain the capability to kill significant numbers of people they are almost total losers by the traditional metric of guerilla warfare. First of all, by attacking civilians of every ethnic group and vowing to resubjugate the majority ethnic groups in the country they have at a stroke made creating a national united front against the United States a near impossibility. Second, there is a battle for supremacy among the insurgent leaders. The New York Times (hat tip: DL) reports:
Late Sunday night, American marines watching the skyline from their second-story perch in an abandoned house here saw a curious thing: in the distance, mortar and gunfire popped, but the volleys did not seem to be aimed at them. In the dark, one spoke in hushed code words on a radio, and after a minute found the answer. "Red on red," he said, using a military term for enemy-on-enemy fire. ... "There is a rift," said the official, who requested anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the talks he had held. "I'm certain that the nationalist Iraqi part of the insurgency is very much fed up with the Jihadists grabbing the headlines and carrying out the sort of violence that they don't want against innocent civilians."
In that context, the battlefield victories of the US Armed Forces and its coalition allies are not the empty triumphs the press sometimes represents them to be but expressions of the complete strategic bankruptcy of the insurgency. No national united front; no united hard core of leadership; no victorious armed force. This in addition to no territory and increasingly, no money and what is there left? Well there is the ability to kill civilians and to avoid being totally exterminated by the Coalition; but that is not insurgent victory nor even the prospect of victory.
When Austin Bay, upon returning to Baghdad after the absence of a year notes that "the Baghdad of June 2005 is not the Baghdad I left in September 2004" because:
It was the first time I saw independently deployed Iraqi forces. Now, I see senior Iraqi officers in the hallways of Al Faw Palace conducting operational liaison with U.S. and coalition forces. I hear reports of the Iraqi Army conducting independent street-clearing and neighborhood search operations. Brigadier Gen. Karl Horst of US Third Infantry Division told me about an Iraqi battalion's success on the perennially challenging Haifa Street.
it is not an irrelevant anecdotal fact. It is an observation that the new Iraqi government increasingly has a national united front; control of territory and an ever more potent army at its disposal. This condition has a name, although it may be irresponsible to use it.
See above.
Local Marine backs U.S. role, has concerns about future
6/25/05
Doug Erickson Wisconsin State Journal
Marine Sgt. Mike McVay is just starting to watch television news again, two months after returning from Iraq.
He needed a break from the war and the intense grip it had on his life for seven months, he said.
When he watches news reports now, he thinks about the insurgents' motives.
"They've learned that they can't fight us head-to-head, so they're targeting their own people," said McVay, 27, a delivery truck driver in Mineral Point. "They're killing all these civilians and saying that our military is causing it, as if we're the problem. I hope people in our country are smart enough not to fall for that."
McVay worries that people here aren't getting the full story. "People need to know we've made tremendous progress over there that the media don't show. For every bad thing that happens, 100 good things happen."
McVay said he fully supports why the U.S. is in Iraq, yet he has serious reservations about this country's future involvement.
"Honestly, I think we're all sick of losing people over there," he said.
Four members of his company died in explosions during his tour of duty. Another of his friends, Mark Maida of Madison, was killed May 26 in Iraq.
"In my eyes, it's almost like we're overstaying our welcome," McVay said. "We need to start pulling people out. What the Iraqi people need to do is elect a president who's going to take charge of their country."
He agrees with Gen. John Abizaid, who commands all U.S. forces in the Middle East and who told lawmakers in Washington Thursday that the insurgency's strength has not weakened in the last six months.
"These guys are recruiting faster than we're getting rid of them," McVay said. "We put a big dent in them, but when you're pulling people from other countries, it's hard to slow it down."
McVay, who is married with two children, served in Iraq from September through April with the Madison-based Golf Company, 2nd Battalion, 24th Marines, 4th Marine Division.
His unit spent the bulk of its time apprehending insurgents in cities south of Baghdad.
At first, he rarely saw civilians - they stayed in their homes, scared of bombs and bullets. Within a few months, McVay's company had sent dozens of insurgents to the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Children began to ride their bikes again and play soccer. Adults gardened in their yards and walked to the market.
"It made us feel really good that we could give them that confidence to go about their daily lives. These communities have horrible poverty. So when someone like us comes in there to help them have a better life, you can't imagine the way their eyes light up."
McVay helped secure a polling site Jan. 30, watching as grateful civilians risked mortar fire and rocket-propelled grenade attacks to vote in the first democratic elections in Iraq since before 1958.
"The difference we've made since we were over there is unbelievable," he said.
http://www.madison.com/wsj/mad/local/index.php?ntid=44892
Bump
Edward Wong - New York Times
June 26, 2005
ABOARD IRAQI AIRWAYS FLIGHT 15, ABOVE SOUTHERN IRAQ -- The smiling flight attendants strode down the aisle of the Boeing 727 in crisp green uniforms, handing out cold cans of Sprite and pieces of cake.
But it was more than just the food service that brought a sense of relief to the passengers.
Just minutes earlier, the plane had leveled off after a steep corkscrew ascent from Baghdad International Airport. It was cruising at 23,000 feet. In one piece.
No smoke trails from surface-to-air missiles, no rocket attacks, no mortar hits.
"The flight will be good, God willing," said Awadees Razoiam, 55, an oil geologist, as he bit into his cake.
Such is the scene aboard the Iraqi equivalent of the New York-to-Washington shuttle -- a 55-minute hop between Baghdad and the southern oil city of Basra that costs $75 for a one-way coach ticket. The flight, begun this month, is the first domestic service operated by state-owned Iraqi Airways since the U.S.-led invasion.
There are no frequent-flyer benefits and no free newspapers at the gate. But the flight allows quick and safe passage (relatively speaking) between the capital and the city at the heart of Iraq's economy, making it perhaps the most significant in-country transportation development since the war.
Jets carry travelers over a parched landscape containing some of the most dangerous terrain in the country: over the insurgent-dominated area south of Baghdad known as the Triangle of Death; over swaths of marshlands plagued by bandits; over the roadways in the south, where radical Shiite fighters plant bombs to ambush British army convoys.
There was little to love about the six-hour drive between Baghdad and Basra, Razoiam said. "You have to hide all your money and all your jewels."
Iraqi officials say the flight is a crucial step in restoring an air network that was ravaged by the economic sanctions imposed after the Persian Gulf War of 1991.
Residents of Basra, a relatively safe city of at least two million that is the second-largest in Iraq, also boast that the new route could herald the rebirth of the city as a Middle East aviation hub. Because Baghdad is steeped in violence, they say, business people and tourists will want to fly into Basra instead.
From 1932 to 1964, Al Maaqal Airport in Basra, built by the British in the twilight days of empire, served as the main commercial airport in Iraq and a major regional hub, with Trans World Airlines and others touching down there on a traverse of Asia, said Ibrahim Abid Ali, an airport manager and air traffic controller. But in 1964, the national government ordered international flights to route through Baghdad instead. Befitting its colonial past, Al Maaqal now serves as a base for the British army, charged with controlling southern Iraq.
Iraqi Airways operates out of a relatively new site, Basra International Airport, lined with Italian marble and completed by German engineers in 1987. It was inaugurated with an Iraqi Airways flight to Asia. But most flights were grounded by the sanctions of the 1990s, and it was not until 2001, after other Middle Eastern airlines had already defied the United Nations by flying into Baghdad, that Iraqi Airways began regular daily flights between Baghdad and Basra.
The British military also occupies half the main terminal of the new airport, but is expected to leave this fall. The U.S. government has already hired contractors to begin renovating the airport and expects to spend at least $40 million on the project.
"The opening of Basra airport gives us a lot of optimism," said Muhammad al-Waeli, the governor of Basra province, referring to the airport's June reopening. "It will help bring investment and capital to our city. It's a safe airport, safer than Baghdad."
From the capital, Iraqi Airways also operates daily flights to Amman, Jordan and Damascus, Syria, as well as thrice weekly flights to the Kurdish provincial capital of Erbil, which started on June 14. Royal Jordanian also runs daily flights to Amman, and there are smaller airlines that serve Dubai.
So a traveler can fly into Basra or Erbil from outside the country with just a single connection, making it possible to avoid setting foot in the volatile streets of the capital -- in particular, the bomb-infested five-mile stretch of highway that connects the airport to downtown Baghdad.
That drive is considered the most dangerous part of air travel here.
Then there are the corkscrew ascents and descents to avoid projectiles fired by the mujahedeen.
In November 2003, a DHL cargo plane was forced to make an emergency landing after a wing was hit in a rocket attack. There have been no such attacks reported recently.
Iraqi Airways has plans to expand its international routes. The airline expects to lease seven or eight additional 737s to add to its fleet of two jets in coming weeks, and will start flying to Dubai by the end of June and to Istanbul soon afterward, Ali said. There is a bid to get slots at Heathrow International Airport in London.
The airline also has Boeing jets stranded in nearby capitals from the start of the 1991 war -- five aircraft in Amman, five in Tehran and three in Tunis.
By MICHAEL MOSS
Published: June 26, 2005
When Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld visited Iraq last year to tour the Abu Ghraib prison camp, military officials did not rely on a government-issued Humvee to transport him safely on the ground. Instead, they turned to Halliburton, the oil services contractor, which lent the Pentagon a rolling fortress of steel called the Rhino Runner.
During a visit to Iraq last year, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld rode in a Rhino Runner, a steel-reinforced vehicle that its maker says is designed to withstand 7.62 x 39-millimeter and 5.56-millimeter ammunition, overhead airbursts and explosive devices up to 1,000 pounds.
State Department officials traveling in Iraq use armored vehicles that are built with V-shaped hulls to better deflect bullets and bombs. Members of Congress favor another model, called the M1117, which can endure 12-pound explosives and .50-caliber armor-piercing rounds. Unlike the Humvee, the Pentagon's vehicle of choice for American troops, the others were designed from scratch to withstand attacks in battlefields like Iraq with no safe zones. Last fall, for instance, a Rhino traveling the treacherous airport road in Baghdad endured a bomb that left a six-foot-wide crater. The passengers walked away unscathed. "I have no doubt should I have been in any other vehicle," wrote an Army captain, the lone military passenger, "the results would have been catastrophically different."......(Excerpt)
26/06/2005 - 15:46:35
Jordan has refused to license the printing of a novel written by Saddam Hussein because it would harm the kingdom’s relations with its eastern neighbour, a senior government official said today.
Saddam’s eldest daughter, Raghad, said recently that a Jordanian publishing house would print the book, titled ”Ekhroj minha ya mal’un,” Arabic for “Get out, damned one.”
“I have declined to ordain the printing and circulation of the novel said to be written by Saddam because we in Jordan will not sacrifice our ties with Iraq for anything,” said Ahmad Qudah, head of the Press and Publications Department.
He said he recently received a request to publish the book but had no copy of the novel. His decision means no Jordanian publisher can print the book.
The novel tells the story of a man called Ezekiel who plots to overthrow a town’s sheikh, but is defeated in his quest by the sheikh’s daughter and an Arab warrior.
The story is apparently a metaphor for a Zionist-Christian plot against Arabs and Muslims. Ezekiel is meant to symbolise the Jews.
Raghad Hussein said last week that the fallen Iraqi dictator finished his novel on March 18, 2003 – a day before the US-led war on Iraq began – and had expressed a wish to publish the book under his name.
She said an Iraqi artist designed the book’s cover and that a Jordanian publishing house would print the book in Arabic. English and French translations will follow, she added.
Today she was unavailable for comment.
Qudah said his department “did not tackle the content of the novel.”
“I just assessed whether this would be in Jordan’s national interest and I thought it was not because the whole issue bears political ramifications which do not serve Jordan at all,” he said.
Jordan enjoys cordial relations with the elected government in Iraq, a close business associate and one-time oil supplier to the cash-strapped kingdom under Saddam Hussein.
Amman now hosts training sponsored by its long-time US ally to Iraqi police cadets, army and anti-terrorism units as part of the kingdom’s contribution to Iraq’s post-war reconstruction.
Saddam’s novel opens with a narrator, who bears a resemblance to the Jewish, Christian and Muslim patriarch Abraham, telling cousins Ezekiel, Youssef and Mahmoud that Satan lives in the ruins of Babylon destroyed by the Persians and the Jews.
Ezekiel is portrayed as greedy, ambitious and destructive and Youssef, who symbolises the Christians, is portrayed as generous and tolerant – at least in the early passages.
“Even if you seize all the property of others, you will suffer all your life,” the narrator tells him.
Saddam also has been credited with writing three previous novels.
Report: U.S. held talks with insurgents in Iraq
June 26, 2005
LONDON -- U.S. officials recently met secretly with Iraqi insurgent commanders at a summer villa north of Baghdad to try to negotiate an end to the bloodshed, a British newspaper reported Sunday.
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, asked about the report, suggested that meetings between Iraqi officials and insurgents "go on all the time" and said "we facilitate those from time to time."
The insurgent commanders "apparently came face to face" with four American officials during meetings on June 3 and June 13 at a summer villa near Balad, about 25 miles north of Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, The Sunday Times newspaper in London said.
The report, which quoted unidentified Iraqis whose groups were purportedly involved in the meetings, said the insurgents at the first meeting included the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, which claimed responsibility for suicide bombings in Iraq and an attack that killed 22 people in the dining hall of a U.S. base at Mosul last Christmas.
Two others were Mohammed's Army and the Islamic Army in Iraq, which in August reportedly killed Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni, the newspaper said.
One American at the talks introduced himself as a Pentagon representative and declared himself ready to "find ways of stopping the bloodshed on both sides and to listen to demands and grievances," The Sunday Times said.
The official indicated that the results of the talks would be relayed to his superiors in Washington, the newspaper said.
Rumsfeld sought to play down the report, saying the Shiite-dominated government was reaching out to the disaffected Sunni minority -- believed to be the driving force behind Iraq's insurgency -- and the Americans were helping them.
"The Iraqis have a sovereign government. They will decide what their relationships with various elements of insurgents will be. We facilitate those from time to time," he said on "Fox News Sunday."
"My understanding is some London paper reported this and everyone is chasing it. I would not make a big deal out of it. Meetings go on frequently with people," Rumsfeld said.
Discussing the report on ABC's "This Week," the defense secretary said: "I get reports on dozens of meetings. If you're asking: 'Are the Iraqis -- whose country it is -- reaching out to the Sunnis?' Yes, they are."
"Are our people involved in helping them? Sure. We talk to people all the time," he added.
The U.S. officials tried to gather information about the structure, leadership and operations of the insurgent groups, which irritated some members, who had been told the talks would consider their main demand, a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, the newspaper said.
During the June 13 talks, the U.S. officials demanded that two other insurgent groups, the 1920 Revolution and the Majhadeen Shoura Council, cut ties with the country's most-feared insurgent group, al-Qaida in Iraq, according to the report.
A senior U.S. official said earlier this month that American authorities have negotiated with key Sunni leaders, who are in turn talking with insurgents and trying to persuade them to lay down their arms. The official, who did not give his name so as not to undercut the new government's authority, did not name the Sunni leaders engaged in dialogue.
Iraq's former electricity minister, Ayham al-Samarie, has told The Associated Press that two insurgent groups -- the Islamic Army in Iraq and the Army of Mujahedeen -- were willing to negotiate with the Iraqi government, possibly opening a new political front in the country.
Al-Samarie, a Sunni Muslim, said he had established contact with the groups which account for a large part of the Sunni insurgents and were responsible for attacks against Iraqis and foreigners, including assassinations and kidnappings.
A senior Shiite legislator, Hummam Hammoudi, also told AP recently that the Iraqi government had opened indirect channels of communication with some insurgent groups.
The contacts were "becoming more promising and they give us reason to continue," Hammoudi said, without providing details.
U.S. and Iraqi officials also are considering amnesty for their enemies as they look for ways to end the country's rampant insurgency and isolate extremists wanting to start a civil war.
© 2005 The Associated Press
http://www.abc2news.com/news/new-site/05-06-26-iraq-insurgents.shtml
27jun05
A HOSTAGE held alongside Douglas Wood in Iraq has hired bounty hunters to track down his captors, promising to eliminate them one by one.
Swede Ulf Hjertstrom, who was held for several weeks with Mr Wood in Baghdad, was released by his kidnappers on May 30.
Mr Hjertstrom has since claimed he shared information with US and Iraqi troops about Mr Wood that led to the release of the 63-year-old engineers two weeks ago, after 47 days in captivity.
Now, Mr Hjertstrom wants to find those responsible for their ordeal.
"I have now put some people to work to find these bastards," he told the Ten Network.
"I invested about $50,000 so far, and we will get them one by one." – AAP
June 26, 2005
Mosul: A string of suicide attacks killed at least 36 people and wounded 19 more in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Sunday, the U.S. military and police officials said.
The first attack happened at a police headquarters in Mosul, killing 13 policemen and two civilians and wounding six more, said U.S. Army Capt. Mark Walter, a spokesman in Mosul. Earlier reports put the death toll at six. Less than two hours later, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a parking lot outside an Iraqi army base, killing 16 and wounding seven more, Walter said.
Almost all of the victims were civilian workers arriving at the site, he said. A third attacker strapped with a belt of explosives walked into Mosul Jumhouri Teaching Hospital and blew himself up in a room for police officers guarding the facility, killing five policemen and wounding six others, police Brig. Gen. Wathiq Mohammed Tahr said. Mosul, the country's third-largest city, is 360 kilometers northwest of Baghdad and considered an insurgent stronghold.
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