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<p>BAGHDAD, May 17 (Reuters) - A car bomb exploded on Monday near a U.S. base in western Baghdad and there were several casualties, witnesses at the scene said.</p> <p>Cars were on fire and a large column of thick black smoke rose into the sky. U.S. troops blocked off the area.</p>

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WASHINGTON, April 24. — The USA and the top UN envoy to Iraq have decided to exclude the majority of politicians the US-led coalition relied on over the past year when they select an Iraqi government to assume power on 30 June, officials said. The latest shift in policy comes as the US-led coalition faces some contentious and long-standing issues ahead of the power transfer, the Washington Post reported quoting US and UN officials. At the top of the list of those likely to be jettisoned was Mr Ahmed Chalabi, a Shiite politician who for years was a favourite of...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Some senior Iraqi officials sacked in a purge of those connected with Saddam Hussein's regime will be brought back in an overhaul of the policy, a spokesman for the U.S.-led administration said Thursday. Dan Senor suggested the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council had gone overboard in preventing former senior members of Saddam's Baath Party from returning to work. "We want it to be implemented in the way it was designed," Senor told a news conference. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, would address the nation Friday on the issue, he added. Senor said there was "no room...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States is set to rehire thousands of members of fallen Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s Baath party and former Iraqi military to help rebuild Iraq (news - web sites), The Washington Post said citing US officials. The move, proposed by US administrator for Iraq Paul Bremer, is aimed at enticing the Sunni minority back into politics and weaken support for the insurgency in the Sunni triangle, the officials said. After the US-led occupation of Iraq, all Baath Party members who were teachers, doctors or in top government positions were systematically fired, sowing...

The Iraqi rebels show me their latest victim: a German in a pool of blood By Lee Gordon (Filed: 11/04/2004) A young Iraqi mujahideen fighter poses in triumph by the smouldering wreck, his face obscured by a red and white kaffiyeh scarf, his high-powered sniper's rifle ready for action. It is only minutes since a white Japanese 4x4 vehicle was forced off the road and its two occupants, both German, killed in a firefight and their bodies dragged from the vehicle when it burst into flames. Now, a mile away, I have been brought to the scene of their deaths...

<p>There must be a temptation, when confronted with the Dantesque scenes from Fallujah, to surrender to something like existential despair. The mob could have cooked and eaten its victims without making things very much worse. One especially appreciated the detail of the heroes who menaced the nurses, when they came to try and remove the charred trophies.</p>

I will keep this brief... It seems to me that the war in Iraq has its share of problems in the chaotic aftermath of Saddam's fall. Not that I never supported it. I did from the start and I still do today. I believe it was and is a neccessary war, and the terrorism that is going on there today proves it so. I am not going to bother getting into the details as to why this war was just and neccessary, and how it has produced more good than bad, because I think it all has been said...

Despite all obstacles, the United States remains committed to the establishment of a free, democratic Iraq, a senior State Department official said here March 15. Diehard Saddam Hussein regime followers and foreign terrorists in Iraq have lately stepped up deadly attacks on U.S.-coalition forces, Iraqi security personnel and civilians, presumably to torpedo the slated June 30 transfer of sovereignty from the Coalition Provisional Authority to an interim Iraqi government. "These killers are a small handful of the population of Iraq and we have no intention of letting them sabotage the hopes of 24 million Iraqis," said Deputy Secretary of State...

Baathists, Islamic radicals, and foreign fighters in Iraq have adjusted their sights in their efforts to torpedo the establishment of a democratic government in that country, a senior U.S. military officer said here today. Since terrorists in Iraq have had scant success against U.S. and coalition troops, they're now focusing attacks on newly trained Iraqi security forces and other targets, U.S. Army Gen. John Abizaid told Senate Armed Services Committee members. There are now, he said, about 200,000 Iraqi security forces. Abizaid is commander of U.S. Central Command. In addition to attacks on Iraqi police stations, the March 2 bombings...

An experiment in an Iraqi region is using new methods to disarm potential insurgents. TALAFAR, IRAQ - It's one of the US military's most innovative efforts to deal with Iraq's postwar insurgency. Last Monday, after weeks of talks, the 12 senior Baathists in the Talafar region, about 210 miles northwest of Baghdad, met with US officers. They denounced the Baath Party in a ceremony broadcast on radio and arranged to hand over of more than 522 AK-47s, dozens of rocket-propelled grenades, and nearly 100 mortar rounds and the tools to fire them. About 200 more Baath Party members from the...

After SaddamTime for the U.S. to Play Good Cop by Alan W. Dowd Saddam Hussein ruled Iraqfor almost 24 years—longer than Hitler controlled Germany, longer than Tojo dominated Japan. So total was his tyranny that the fall of his regime wasn’t enough to free his subjects. That didn’t happen until last weekend, when some 600 regular troops from the 4th Infantry Division and a few dozen Special Forces from Task Force 121 found him cowering in a holeContrary to the chattering class, the capture of Saddam won’t end the guerilla attacks. Indeed, his arrival in Baghdadwas greeted by car bombs....

<p>PARIS — A senior Iraqi Governing Council member, Jalal Talabani, yesterday urged fellow Iraqis to reject President Bush's suggestion that Saddam Hussein should face the death penalty for his crimes.</p> <p>"I want Saddam put in jail for life," Mr. Talabani said in an interview. "I want him to suffer daily as he realizes how his people hate him. Let him see how we build a new Iraq free from his evil grip."</p>

<p>BAGHDAD — The leader of a militant cell mounting attacks on U.S. forces from its Baghdad neighborhood says groups like his operate with little supervision from Ba'athist leaders but receive occasional help from outsiders who may be al Qaeda operatives.</p>

December 05, 2003, 8:38 a.m.A Real WarFighting the worst fascists since Hitler. Saddam's Baathists recently blew apart Japanese diplomats on their way to a meeting in Tikrit to discuss sending millions of dollars in aid to Iraq's poor. Their ghosts join those of U.N. officials who likewise were slain for their humanitarian efforts. On the West Bank, three Americans were killed: Their felony was trying to interview young Palestinians for Fulbright fellowships for study in the United States. In turn, their would-be rescuers were stoned by furious crowds — not unlike the throngs that chant for Saddam on al...

Just announced on Fox News...

<p>Nov. 29 (Bloomberg) -- U.S.-trained Iraqi police may have taken part in some of the attacks on U.S. and Iraqi targets, the Associated Press reported, citing U.S. Army Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez.</p> <p>Attacks on U.S. troops and others in northern Iraq have increased in the past month. Last week, Major General David Petraeus, the 101st Airborne's commander, said Iraqi resistance was increasing. Guerrillas have launched more than 150 attacks on Iraqi civilian and police targets, the AP said, citing Sanchez.</p>

President Bush's new strategy of transferring power quickly to Iraqis, and his critics' alternatives, share a fundamental flaw: all commit the United States to a unified Iraq, artificially and fatefully made whole from three distinct ethnic and sectarian communities. That has been possible in the past only by the application of overwhelming and brutal force. President Bush wants to hold Iraq together by conducting democratic elections countrywide. But by his daily reassurances to the contrary, he only fans devastating rumors of an American pullout. Meanwhile, influential senators have called for more and better American troops to defeat the insurgency. Yet...

Attack of the INGOTs Posted: November 22, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern By Tom Marzullo © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com Currently, "What next?" seems to be a common thread in the mainstream media. For a group of educated people who spend most of their waking hours broadcasting and writing about everything that they think you should know about trees, there seems to be a certain lack of understanding that a sufficient number of them will join to comprise a forest. Now that I have been sufficiently obscure, let us look at one such military and political forest in Saudi Arabia by discussing a...

Date: Friday, November 21, 2003 6:40:58 PM EST By RICHARD SALE, UPI Intelligence Correspondent American's top man in Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer, last week fired 28,000 Iraqi teachers as political punishment for their former membership in the Saddam Hussein-dominated Baath Party, fueling anti-U.S. resistance on the ground, administration officials have told United Press International. A Central Command spokesman, speaking to UPI from Baghdad, acknowledged that the firings had taken place but said the figure of 28,000 "is too high." He was unable, however, after two days, to supply UPI with a lower, revised total. The Central Command spokesman attributed the...

Will Bush exit – or escalate? Posted: November 19, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc. "Watch what we do, not what we say," was the retort of Attorney General John Mitchell to reporters questioning Nixon's commitment to desegregation. Though mocked for cynicism, Mitchell was right. Even as Nixon's men were railing at the radical idiocy of forced busing for racial balance, they were desegregating six times as many schools as LBJ. Bush's tough talk, too, about staying the course – "We're not leaving until the job is done, pure and simple" – may not be a smokescreen...

<p>"We think the Iraqi people are plenty capable of running their own country," George W. Bush told David Frost in a PBS-BBC interview Sunday morning. His assertion was hardly surprising after the White House announcement two days earlier that Iraq would get self-rule by next June. But there are those who believe -- happily in some cases and unhappily in others -- that the president was rushed by critics citing the mounting death toll among U.S. troops.</p>

17 Nov 2003 11:59:40 GMTFear, loyalty keep $25 mln Saddam bounty untouched By Dean Yates TIKRIT, Iraq, Nov 17 (Reuters) - On paper, the $25 million bounty on Saddam Hussein's head looks mighty attractive. Yet no Iraqi has come forward with the decisive tip-off, even though many celebrated Saddam's ouster by U.S.-led forces in April. Seven months later, he is still on the run despite the reward Washington has offered for his capture or proof of death. On Sunday, a new audio tape purportedly recorded by Saddam was broadcast by Arab television network Al Arabiya, a further reminder to...

A group called Fellowship of Reconciliation -- its mission is to "replace violence, war, racism and economic injustice with nonviolence, peace and justice" -- has been hosting a "Women of Iraq Tour" of the United States. The tour stars are "two remarkable Iraqi women" -- Amal al-Khedairy and Nermin al-Mufti -- who "survived through the Persian Gulf War, the ensuing 13 years of oppressive sanctions and now the U.S. occupation." It's no accident that tour promotions don't question how the two women survived Saddam Hussein. Wednesday night, a professor at Mills College in Oakland parroted the promotion material as she...

Sunday, Nov. 16, 2003A while back, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dubbed the insurgents who are making life so difficult for coalition forces, Iraqi authorities and anyone caught in the cross fire "dead-enders," losers from Saddam Hussein's regime with nothing left to do but go down fighting. U.S. military officials said the enemy fighters lacked organization and coordination. No one would say any of this now. American officials acknowledge that the insurgents are a potent and increasingly structured force. A former Saddam aide who is close to insurgents in Anbar province, west of Baghdad, agrees. What were once dispersed cells are...

For Immediate ReleaseOffice of the Press SecretaryNovember 1, 2003 President's Radio Address      Audio THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. This week terrorists launched a series of attacks in Iraq. Their targets included police stations in Baghdad and Fallujah, the headquarters of the International Red Cross, and living quarters for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. The majority of their victims were Iraqis working to rebuild and restore order to their country, and citizens of other nations engaged in purely humanitarian missions. Some of the killers behind these attacks are loyalists of the Saddam regime who seek to regain power and who resent...

<p>Basra, Iraq -- Over the past month, more than a dozen former senior members of Saddam Hussein's government have been shot dead in the streets of this normally peaceful city -- two of them this week alone, both shot in the head at close range.</p>

<p>BAGHDAD, Iraq — A series of car bomb attacks on Monday killed 34 people, excluding the homicide bombers, in Baghdad, shattering what should have been a solemn day as Iraq began observing the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.</p> <p>About 12 people were killed at the International Committee of the Red Cross (search) building in central Baghdad and 27 others were slain in attacks on three police stations. Most of the victims were Iraqis. The U.S. military said one American soldier was killed in one of the police station attacks.</p>

SELECTIONS In the aftermath of Wednesday's attack on American personnel in Gaza, the US announced that the FBI will conduct a thorough investigation. ........... Last week, WorldNetDaily reported that the FBI has rejected, apparently systematically, applications from Jewish Arabic speakers to serve as translators for the Bureau. ............. Two weeks ago, Abdulrahman Alamoudi, the Muslim-American responsible for for vetting and accrediting candidates for Islamic chaplaincy positions in the US military, was arrested on terrorism-related charges. ............... Last year, in the face of public protests, FBI Director Robert Mueller spoke at Alamoudi's American Muslim Council's annual dinner. FBI spokesmen have referred...

<p>Having won a splendid military victory in Iraq, President Bush now faces the tedious process of mopping up hit-and-run guerrillas. And having won overwhelming public support, he now faces home-front guerrilla assaults as well.</p> <p>The latter problem is the serious one. With press coverage starting to balance the good news and the bad, we're coming to understand that on the ground in Iraq the guerrillas are isolated. The Baathist remnants and Arab militants have nothing like the external sanctuary and superpower support that sustained the North Vietnamese and anti-Soviet Afghans. For the moment terrorists can still ambush Americans and assassinate pro-peace Iraqi leaders, but exhausting them is only a matter of time and patience.</p>

I am an optimist by nature, and last week in Tel Aviv an Israeli friend told me he knew why. He said it was because I was short — and short people tend to be optimists because they can only see the part of the glass that is half full, not half empty. These days, though, even someone at my eye level is having a hard time seeing the part of the glass in Iraq that is half full. I am still an optimist on Iraq, but a "worried optimist." My optimism is based on one big thing that has...

The message in the Baghdad bombing? Posted: August 25, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc. If terrorism is the murder of innocents for political ends, Aug. 19 was the Day of the Terrorist. In Jerusalem, a suicide bomber blew up a bus packed with Orthodox Jews. In Baghdad, a terrorist drove a truckload of bombs into the hotel-headquarters of the United Nations. Forty perished in the two attacks, 20 are still missing in Baghdad, over 200 were wounded. Both were acts of pure terror, massacres of noncombatants. But as the World Trade Center attacks bore a message...

Resistance to U.S. Is Loosely Organized FALLUJAH, Iraq, June 21 -- Groups of armed fighters from the Baath Party and security agencies of ousted President Saddam Hussein have organized a loose network called the Return to harass U.S. occupation forces, with the goal of driving them out of the country, and the group is partially responsible for the string of fatal attacks on American soldiers in recent weeks, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials.The intensified resistance has been reinforced by the participation of foreign fighters coming into Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, the civilian administrator of Iraq, told reporters at a...

United States Department of Defense News TranscriptPresenter: Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, Commander, Combined Joint Task Force Seven (CJTF-7) Tuesday, July 22, 2003 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lt. Gen. Sanchez Press Briefing on Uday and Qusay Hussein Sanchez: Good evening. How are you all doing this evening? Q: (Off mike.) Sanchez: I'm going to give a short statement. I'll answer a couple of questions. And then tomorrow morning, Eastern Time, I will come back and present a detailed briefing on the operation that was conducted today. Today our coalition forces associated with the 101st Airborne Division, Special Forces and Air Force assets conducted...

BAGHDAD, Iraq Americans can be proud of the role their fighting men and women played in freeing Iraq of Saddam Hussein and his cronies. The people of Iraq are now on the road to political and economic independence.The first official step in this political transition at the national level occurs today, with the convening of the Iraqi Governing Council. This is the latest sign of progress. For the first time in decades, Iraqis are truly free. More than 150 newspapers have been started since liberation. All major cities and 85 percent of towns now have a municipal council where Iraqis...

CAMP BOOM, Iraq - U.S. forces launched a massive operation early Sunday to crush insurgents and capture senior figures from the ousted regime in a show of force designed to stem a wave of deadly attacks on U.S. troops. The operation, dubbed "Desert Sidewinder," is taking place in a huge swath of central Iraq stretching from the Iranian border to the areas north of Baghdad, and is expected to last for several days, military officials said. Americans arrested a man in Khalis, 45 miles north of Baghdad. He is suspected of recruiting young men to launch attacks on Americans, according...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - The Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera on Thursday reported it had received a statement and videotape from an Iraqi resistance group that claimed responsibility for attacks on American forces and threatened more. It was believed to be the first such claim, and the first time a group said it had organized the increasingly bloody offensive. The Pentagon repeatedly has said the attacks - that have killed at least 18 American lives since May 1 when President Bush declared the major fighting over - were not the work of any organized resistance. Six British soldiers were...

FALLUJAH, Iraq (AP) - Attacks against U.S. forces showed no sign of letting up Friday after a rocket-propelled grenade slammed into a power station in Fallujah, injuring two American soldiers and blacking out much of the city - a center of anti-American hostility. At Friday prayers, imams preached anti-American sermons, claiming Jews are buying up real estate in Iraq. Based on groundless rumors, the warnings from pulpits, on leaflets and in Iraqi newspapers reflected Iraqis' fear and anger over the U.S.-led occupation. After weeks of sniping and ambushes around Iraq, American forces raided nine locations Friday "to isolate and defeat...

DEBKAfile Special Military Report June 15, 2003, 1:10 AM (GMT+02:00) US army hits back at Saddam loyalists who lean on clandestine support from Damascus The cat was out of the bag - almost - as a result of Operation Peninsula Strike, the massive US crackdown against a lethal brew of anti-American resistance forces which have been bedeviling US troops north of Baghdad. A substantial quotient of foreign combatants from Arab countries - Saudis, Yemenis, Egyptians, Jordanians, Syrians and Palestinians from Syria or Lebanon - was discovered to be mixed in with the Fedayeen Saddam, Baathists and former Republican Guards officers...

Saudi nationals have joined the Sunni insurgency against U.S. troops in Iraq. At least one U.S. soldier daily has been killed over the last few weeks. Meanwhile, a U.S.based Saudi opposition organization has reported that two Saudi nationals have been killed in the sporadic fighting, Middle East Newsline reported. Last week, the U.S. Army's Third Division sent its 2nd Brigade to launch an operation in several Sunni cities to quell the insurgency. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Health insurance for the self-employed: Special offer -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- U.S. officials confirmed that Saudi nationals have financed and participated in the Sunni insurgency. They said elements in Saudi...

BAGHDAD (AFP) — American military police raided the new Iraqi police academy Saturday and detained 15 senior officers holding a secret meeting of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, the US policing supremo Bernard Kerik said. "Fourteen people were arrested for taking part in an illegal activity and one for resisting arrest," he told reporters. Those detained included the dean of the academy, Major General Akram Abdul Razak, five brigadier generals, three colonels and a lieutenant colonel. Kerik said the raid followed a tip-off earlier this week which had been followed by an investigation lasting several days. "On May 26 ... members...

Article published May 24, 2003 Shiites Reportedly Hunting Baathists By HAMZA HENDAWI Associated Press Writer The Shiite Muslim cleric sat cross-legged on the floor. With chilling calm, he explained the criteria - how to decide which of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party officials are permitted to live, and which of them will die. Only officials attempting to return to positions they held under Saddam should be killed - and only after a fair warning, said Sheik Ali al-Gharawi, one of several community leaders in a poverty-ridden Baghdad district known as al-Thawra, where an estimated 2 million Shiites live. "People come to...

In two different speeches after the start of the war, Saddam Hussein promised that there would be "chaos" if the United States were to control Iraq, warning Iraqis to expect something akin to the Mongolian invasion of Baghdad in 1258. Though what has happened of late is nothing on the scale of 750 years ago, there has been a significant level of disorder and unrest. Hyperbole aside, Saddam was either remarkably prescient — or simply accurate in predicting what his henchmen would be able to carry out in the aftermath of the war. The psyche of the Iraqi people,...

BAGHDAD: Western administrators may ban from public office between 15,000-30,000 die-hard Saddam Hussein loyalists of Iraq's dissolved Baath Party, senior officials said on Friday. But Iraqi intellectuals said the United States risked emulating Saddam by purging the Iraqi bureaucracy in favour of loyalty to America as criteria for hiring civil servants as it restores government to Baghdad. Two senior officials of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) -- which runs Iraq until an Iraqi interim authority takes over -- told reporters they recognised the risks of such a vetting process in a society where up to 700,000 people...

FOR a few days Abid Minqash was the most famous man in Iraq. Today, however, his farm, in the Hindiyah district, an hour’s drive from Baghdad, takes some finding. It is not just the confusing network of lanes and irrigation canals, or the dust storm that throws an orange cast over the land. Strangers have been here before asking after Mr Abid, and the local people do not like talking about him. “Don’t know” is the typical answer to inquiries about his whereabouts. Two children point in opposite and equally misleading directions. “He’s one of the big liars,” one man...

Intelligence examines cargo flight from Baghdad to Belarus SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COMFriday, April 25, 2003 Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has obtained safe haven in Belarus, several intelligence agencies believe. Western intelligence sources said several intelligence agencies in the Middle East and Europe base this assessment on new information about a March 29 flight from Baghdad to Minsk. They said the flight of a chartered cargo plane could have transported Saddam, his sons and much of his family to Belarus. "There's no proof that Saddam was on the plane but we have proof that a plane left on that day...

Saddam Hussein sought to protect George Galloway by severing the Iraqi intelligence service's contacts with the Labour backbencher, according to an official document found by The Daily Telegraph in Baghdad. This letter, found in the files of the Iraqi foreign ministry, explained that any disclosure of Mr Galloway's "relationship" with the Mukhabarat, which operated as both secret police and intelligence service, would do great harm to his political career. A letter from Izzat Ibrahim, Saddam's deputy on the Ba'ath Party's Revolutionary Command Council, dated May 6, 2000 stated that: "It is better not to engage the Mukhabarat in the relationship...

Baghdad, Iraq—The grave diggers say that the bodies in many of the graves here in a walled-off enclave of the Kirkh Islamic Cemetery, a mile down the road from the big prison, lie twisted in twos and threes. For over 20 years, they report, almost no one has been allowed to visit here, apart from a lone shovel man and the secret police who heaved the bodies from their cars toward the holes in the earth. The head grave digger, Hatem, says he watched these events from behind the wispy eucalyptus trees lining the western wall; he adds that the...

U.S. Probes Fortune in Cash Found in Iraq By JEANNINE AVERSA .c The Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) - Piles of U.S. currency, hundreds of millions of dollars so far, are being found in Iraq, even though the country has been under economic sanctions for nearly 13 years. Investigators - on the ground in Iraq and in the United States - are trying to track the money back to where it came from, a Herculean task, both officials and outside experts say. The experts say there are plenty of possibilities, including oil and cash smuggling schemes, illegal trade deals, sham businesses...

Kuwaiti Paper Criticizes SyriaBy MEMRIMEMRI | April 22, 2003 Over the past week, Ahmad Al-Jarallah, editor of the Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyasa, wrote a series of articles which were critical of the Syrian regime. The following are excerpts from the articles: If Syria Follows Iraq's Example, It Will Share Iraq's FateIn the first article of the series, titled "Damascus On the Path to Baghdad's Abyss," Al-Jarallah wrote: "Following the completion of the mission of 'liberating Iraq,' the pressure has now shifted to Damascus – and there are signs that the next step will be 'liberating Syria.' This renewed pressure is worrying,...