US soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division salute their dead comrade, Specialist Edgar Daclan of the 1-77 Armored, who was killed on 10 September 2004, during a memorial service at a US military base in Balad, north of Baghdad.(AFP/Jewel Samad)
Posted on 09/13/2004 7:57:21 AM PDT by TexKat
I've read here or elsewhere that this is one of the benefits we've received from more involvement of the Iraqi's in their own security - better intelligence is making attacks on the terrorists.
In fact, the withdrawal from Fallujah might have promoted the population's willingness to turn in suspected terrorists' hideouts. Without the troops marching through the city, terrorists felt freer to congregate. Plus the city dwellers realized giving information was the only way to rid their neighborhoods of the terrorists.
US soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division salute their dead comrade, Specialist Edgar Daclan of the 1-77 Armored, who was killed on 10 September 2004, during a memorial service at a US military base in Balad, north of Baghdad.(AFP/Jewel Samad)
Secretary of State Colin Powell testifies before the U.S. Senate Governmental Affairs Committee on Capitol Hill, September 13, 2004. Powell, who made the case to the world that pre-war Iraq had stocks of chemical and biological weapons, said he now thought these will probably never be found. Photo by Larry Downing/Reuters
Powell: Unlikely WMD Stocks Will Be Found in Iraq
By Arshad Mohammed
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Colin Powell, who made the case to the world that pre-war Iraq had stocks of chemical and biological weapons, said on Monday he now thought these will probably never be found.
"I think it's unlikely that we will find any stockpiles," Powell told lawmakers when asked about the intelligence behind his Feb. 5, 2003, U.N. Security Council speech laying out U.S. arguments for the war with Iraq that began six weeks later.
Powell's latest comments appeared to be his most explicit to date suggesting that the central argument for President Bush's decision to invade Iraq -- the belief it possessed weapons of mass destruction -- was flawed.
As early as January Powell said it was an "open question" whether or not such arms would be found and he conceded the possibility Iraq might not have had any when the war began.
Bush himself had often said that even if no such weapons are found he did the right thing in invading Iraq in March 2003 and toppling Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, arguing that the country has been liberated from brutal dictatorship.
U.S. officials have also said that whether or not it had stockpiles in 2003, Iraq was a threat because it had possessed and used chemical weapons in the past, notably to kill 5,000 Iraqi Kurds in the town of Halabja in 1988.
The war in Iraq, in which more than 1,000 U.S. troops have died, and the violent insurgency that has developed since the U.S. invasion are a major issues in Bush's reelection battle against Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.
Powell made his comments as Charles Duelfer, the CIA -named leader of the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, is working on a report about his findings that was expected to be completed in the next few weeks.
Duelfer's predecessor, David Kay, said as he left the post in January that he believed there were no large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction when Washington went to war.
While he had reservations about the state of Iraq's efforts to obtain nuclear weapons when he spoke before the U.N. Security Council in February 2003, Powell insisted at that time that it had stocks of both biological and chemical weapons.
"There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more," Powell said then, at one point holding up a vial of simulated biological agent -- an image broadcast around the world.
"Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent," he said at the time.
FALLUJAH, Iraq (AFP) - Fifteen people died when US jets pounded Fallujah as Turkey warned Washington it would halt cooperation over Iraq if US forces did not stop an assault on the Turkmen town of Tall Afar.
Amid the country's relentless hostage crisis and desperate efforts by Canberra, Paris and Rome to secure the release of, or word on, nationals, grisly footage of the execution of a Turkish hostage was posted on an Islamist website.
In the notorious Sunni Arab insurgent bastion of Fallujah, US warplanes launched the latest in a string of strikes on alleged bases of Iraq's most wanted man, suspected Al-Qaeda operative Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, who is accused of masterminding some of the deadliest attacks since last year's US-led invasion.
"Intelligence reports indicated that only Zarqawi operatives and associates were at the meeting location at the time of the strike," the US military said.
Zarqawi loyalists claimed responsibility for a string of missile attacks and suicide bombings that saw 45 people killed and scores wounded in Iraq on Sunday.
But an undertaker and angry residents denounced US claims that the victims were all Zarqawi aides.
"So far we received 15 bodies. Among them is an ambulance driver and two nurses, plus five wounded who were in the ambulance when it was bombed," said undertaker Falah Abdullah.
Pick-up trucks carried the bodies to the cemetery, where a crowd of furious relatives washed and buried their loved ones, an AFP correspondent said.
Hamid Abbas, 32, said his windscreen smashed when a jet dropped a missile on the car in front.
"All of a sudden I heard a powerful explosion. A few seconds later, I saw the car on fire and charred bodies inside. People on the street were in a state of panic."
Medics said 20 people were wounded in the latest US strike on the militant stronghold since seven US marines were killed in a car bomb last Monday.
Four days after US-led Iraqi forces pressed an assault on the northern town of Tall Afar, an alleged staging point for militants infiltrating from Syria, neighbouring Turkey delivered a stark warning to traditional ally Washington.
"I myself spoke to the American Secretary of State (Colin Powell)," Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul was quoted as saying by Turkey's Anatolia news agency.
"We stated very clearly that if (the assault) continues, Turkey will end its partnership on all areas touching Iraq."
In an interview published in European and US newspapers, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi admitted that some Iraqis might be unable to vote in nationwide elections planned for January, despite insisting the polls would go ahead.
"If for any reason 300,000 people cannot have an election, cannot vote because terrorists decide so, then frankly 300,000 people... is not going to alter 25 million people voting," Allawi said.
In other violence Monday, one person was killed and three wounded in a US helicopter strike on a Baghdad commercial district, not far from the scene of heavy fighting between US troops and insurgents a day earlier, witnesses said.
A dead man was sprawled in the street, his stomach ripped to shreds by shrapnel. A child was among the wounded, AFP journalists saw.
In Kuwait, on an 11th-hour diplomatic tour to win the release of two Italian women hostages kidnapped in Baghdad, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini called for their immediate freedom at the landmark Great Mosque.
An Islamist website published a purported ultimatum from the pair's captors Sunday threatening to kill the two 29-year-olds unless Rome withdrew its troops from Iraq within 24 hours.
"I seize this opportunity to call for the release of the two Italian hostages and all hostages in Iraq," begged Frattini.
Canberra said it was "moving heaven and earth" to investigate claims that two Australians had been kidnapped in Iraq in a bid to force the government to withdraw its troops from the country.
"We tell the infidels of Australia that they have 24 hours to leave Iraq or the two Australians will be killed without a second chance," said a statement from the Secret Islamic Army's Horror Brigades circulated in Iraq.
Its authenticity could not be independently verified.
Australia took part in last year's US-led invasion and still maintains 850 troops in Iraq.
The ultimatum was all the chiller after bloody footage of last month's execution of a Turkish hostage by Islamic militants in Iraq was posted on an Islamist website.
In the video, three masked kidnappers are shown slitting the throat of the blindfolded trucker seized by Zarqawi's the Tawhid wal Jihad (Unification and Holy War) group in August.
France has also begun to dig in for the long haul as uncertainty persisted over the fate of two missing journalists kidnapped three weeks ago.
An U.S. soldier stands guard at a roadblock outside Tal Afar, Iraq, Monday Sept. 13, 2004. U.S. troops barred people from returning to their homes in the besieged city of Tal Afar on Monday as reports emerged of corpses littered across the city's orchards and the collapse of essential services such as water and electricity. (AP Photo/Mohammed Ibrahim)
A U.S. soldier, left, mans a roadblock along with an Iraqi soldier outside Tal Afar, Iraq, Monday Sept. 13, 2004. U.S. troops barred anguished crowds from returning to their homes in the besieged city of Tal Afar on Monday as reports emerged of corpses littered across the city's orchards and the collapse of essential services such as water and electricity. (AP Photo/Mohammed Ibrahim)
Bystanders look at a car along with Mohammed Jabbar, left, whose brother was killed by foreigners, according to eyewitnesses, in Baghdad, Iraq, Monday Sept. 13, 2004. Jabbar's father was injured in the incident when according to witnesses a four-wheel drive carrying foreigners in plainclothes was shot at, and the occupants retaliated, injuring and killing people in three cars. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)
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