Posted on 12/08/2004 6:39:42 AM PST by TexKat
A US soldier shakes hands with an Iraqi boy in Baghdad's Kadesia district Wednesday Dec 8, 2004. US troops searched houses for weapons in the neighborhood Wednesday. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)
30,000 Americans in Saudi Arabia warned
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Tuesday, December 7, 2004
ABU DHABI – The United States has alerted its 30,000 citizens in Saudi Arabia to the threat of imminent terrorist attacks.
The U.S. embassy in Riyad issued a security warning that Americans remain a target of Al Qaida and related groups. The warning said Islamic insurgents were believed to have targeted housing compounds, hotels, transportation and shopping malls frequented by Westerners.
"American citizens in Saudi Arabia are strongly urged to exercise utmost security precautions and to review the current Travel Warning for Saudi Arabia dated October 27, 2004," the consulate said on Monday.
The warning was issued hours after the U.S. consulate in Jedda was taken over by Al Qaida insurgents, Middle East Newsline reported. No Americans were killed in the three-hour siege.
The U.S. embassy urged Americans to avoid staying in Saudi hotels or housing compounds that are not properly secured. The embassy cited the need for an armed force, inspection of all vehicles and a hardened security perimeter to prevent unauthorized vehicles from approaching the facility.
"Private Americans currently in Saudi Arabia are strongly urged to depart," a State Department travel warning updated as of Tuesday said.
The warning also cited Saudi government facilities as targets of Al Qaida. The embassy has warned that Al Qaida was capable of launching attacks by numerous gunmen in an attempt to penetrate secure facilities.
In April 2004, the United States ordered the departure of non-emergency employees and all dependents of the U.S. embassy in Riyad as well as the consulates in Dhahran and Jedda. Officials said they have not been permitted to return.
On Tuesday, the United States closed all of its diplomatic facilities in Saudi Arabia. U.S. diplomatic sources said some of the facilities would be reopened later this week.
"They want us to leave Saudi Arabia," President George Bush said. "They want us to leave Iraq. They want us to grow timid and weary in the face of their willingness to kill randomly and kill innocent people."
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/breaking_7.html
Peter Alford, Tokyo correspondent December 09, 2004
JAPAN'S cabinet will today recommit the nation's troops to the Iraq war for another 12 months.
Ministers will decide after hearing a report from Japan Defence Agency chief Yoshinori Ono. who on Monday inspected security in Samawah, where the Japanese Self-Defence Force soldiers operate.
Between 500 and 600 troops are doing civil reconstruction work, such as rebuilding schools and repairing water supplies, in one of the safer southern parts of Iraq. The SDF is restricted by Japan's constitution from engaging in combat activities abroad, except in self-defence. The troops are protected by a Dutch contingent.
But the Dutch forces are to withdraw in March, and the Japanese have not been able to get an undertaking from any other ally to replace them. It is likely Iraqi police will have to take on the responsibility.
Security concerns, the murder of a Japanese hostage by terrorists six weeks ago and growing -- though not overwhelming -- public opinion against the commitment has made today's decision more difficult for Junichiro Koizumi's Government.
But Mr Koizumi is adamant the troops should stay in Iraq -- he is understood to have given an undertaking to US President George W. Bush -- and Mr Ono made clear he would recommend this to cabinet.
"While the security situation in Samawah is still unpredictable, it has become more stable," Mr Ono said after his visit on Monday. "It is important the SDF continues with its humanitarian assistance activities."
The Liberal Democratic Party's governing partner New Komeito, although closely associated with the pacifist Buddhist lay movement Soka Gakkai, has fallen into line.
"The security situation in Samawah is stable, people in Samawah welcome the Self-Defence Force troops," New Komeito leader Takenori Kanzaki said yesterday.
The first SDF contingent was sent to Iraq for 12 months by an initially dubious Government under strong pressure from the US, Japan's key ally and security guarantor in northeast Asia.
While the Government insists the issues of Iraq and the US alliance are separate, the Samawah deployment has become part of a push by LDP hawks to create a more "normal" military function for the SDF after 60 years of operating under the constraints of Japan's post-war pacifist constitution.
The progress of that effort will become clearer tomorrow when the Koizumi cabinet approves a new National Defence Program Outline -- essentially Japan's military policy framework for the next decade.
The outline should make clear the government and defence agency priorities on such potentially controversial issues as ballistic missile defence, long-range aerial capabilities, an anti-terrorist rapid response force, defence equipment exports and overall force size and structures.
But newspaper reports suggest the LDP has shelved a proposal for a ground-to-ground strategic missile system that would allow Japan to strike at military threats to its remote islands or on nearby foreign soil -- North Korea, for instance.
The reports say New Komeito has blocked the proposal and also insisted that the embargo on military exports remain, except where it would hinder Japan-US co-operation on ballistic missile defence.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair departs No10 Downing Street. Blair rejected a call for an independent inquiry into civilian deaths in Iraq, saying 'terrorists and insurgents' were to blame for fatalities in the run-up to elections.(AFP/Jim Watson)
UK's Blair challenged to tally Iraq war dead
Updated: 2004-12-08 14:52
British diplomats and peers joined scientists and churchmen on Wednesday to urge Prime Minister Tony Blair to publish a death toll in the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
In an unusual open letter to the premier made available to Reuters, the 44 signatories said Blair had rejected other death counts from the war -- figures span 14,000 to 100,000 -- without releasing one of his own.
Any totaling of the Iraqi war dead could embarrass Blair ahead of a general election expected in months in a country that opposed the U.S.-led war.
The group urged Blair to commission an urgent probe into the number of dead and injured and keep counting so long as British soldiers remain in Iraq alongside their American allies.
"Your government is obliged under international humanitarian law to protect the civilian population during military operations in Iraq, and you have consistently promised to do so," they wrote in the letter to be published on Wednesday.
"However, without counting the dead and injured, no one can know whether Britain and its coalition partners are meeting these obligations."
The inquiry, they added, should be independent of government, conducted according to accepted scientific methods and subjected to peer review.
Signatories included Air Marshal Sir Timothy Garden, who spent 32 years in the military; Sir Stephen Egerton, a former British ambassador to Iraq; human rights campaigner Bianca Jagger and the Lord Bishop of Coventry, Colin Bennetts.
Britain and the United States have suffered around 1,070 losses in the war so far. The Iraq-wide casualty count is not known, and a high tally could wreak political damage in Britain, where Blair is expected to win a 2005 election but with a reduced majority.
HOW MANY DEAD?
The writers, also including philosophers and lawyers, said their letter reflects "an influential and growing body of opinion that the government's failure to provide estimates of Iraqi casualties is unacceptable."
Former Foreign Office legal adviser Elizabeth Wilmshurst signed up, along with Iqbal Sacranie, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, writer Gillian Slovo and experts in public health.
The toll of the 20-month U.S.-led war is highly contentious.
In a report released in October by the Lancet medical journal, days before the U.S. election that returned President Bush to power, a group of American scientists put civilian deaths at 100,000.
But the Iraq Body Count (IBC) -- an Anglo-American research group tracking civilian deaths via numerous sources -- has come up with a much lower toll of about 14,000-16,000.
The IBC has now joined forces with Medact, a charity that says the war has crippled Iraq's medical system, to launch a new campaign challenging the government to publish casualties.
"No figures in a war zone are going to be perfect -- but that's no excuse for not trying," said John Sloboda, IBC co-founder.
Medact director Mike Rowson said: "Without information, everyone is working in the dark. The overstretched Iraqi health system should not be left to do this job alone. Britain and its coalition partners have a responsibility."
Charles Krauthammer Tuesday December 7, 2004 The Guardian
In 1864, 11 of the 36 states did not participate in the American presidential election. Was Lincoln's election therefore illegitimate?
In 1868, three years after the security situation had, shall we say, stabilised, three states (and not insignificant ones: Texas, Virginia and Mississippi) did not participate in the election. Was Grant's election illegitimate?
There has been much talk that if the Iraqi election is held and some Sunni Arab provinces (perhaps three of the 18) do not participate, the election will be illegitimate. Nonsense. The election should be held. It should be open to everyone. If Iraq's Sunni Arabs - barely 20% of the population - decide that they cannot abide giving up their 80 years of minority rule, which ended with 30 years of Saddam Hussein's atrocious tyranny, then tough luck. They forfeit their chance to shape and to participate in the new Iraq.
Americans are dying right now to give them that very chance. The US is making a costly last-ditch effort to midwife a new, unitary Iraq. The Falluja offensive and related actions are designed to reduce the brutal intimidation of the Sunni population by the dead-end Ba'athists and others seeking to retake the power that they enjoyed under Saddam. But when those offensives are over, the Sunnis themselves - ordinary people who, out of either fear or sympathy, have been giving refuge and support to the terrorist insurgents - will have to make a choice. Either they join the new Iraq by participating in the coming election, or they institutionalise the civil war that their side has already begun.
People keep warning about the danger of civil war. This is absurd. There already is a civil war. It is raging before our eyes. Problem is, only one side is fighting it. The other side, the Shias and the Kurds, are largely watching as their part of the fight is borne primarily by the US. Both have an interest in the outcome. The Shias constitute a majority of Iraqis and will inevitably inherit power in any democratic arrangement. The Kurds want to retain their successful autonomous zone without worrying about new depredations at the hands of the Sunni Arabs.
This is the Shias' and the Kurds' fight. Yet when police stations are ravaged by Sunni Arab insurgents in Mosul, American soldiers are rushed in to fight them. The obvious question is: why don't we unleash the fierce and well-trained Kurdish peshmerga militias against them? (Mosul is heavily Kurdish and suffered a terrible Kurdish expulsion under Saddam.)
Yes, some of the Iraqi police/national guard units fighting alongside our troops are largely Kurdish. But they, like the Shias, fight in an avowedly non-sectarian Iraqi force. Why? Because we want to maintain this idea of a unified, non-ethnic Iraq. At some point, however, we must decide whether that is possible, and how many American lives should be sacrificed in its name.
In April I wrote in these pages that, while our "goal has been to build a united, pluralistic, democratic Iraq in which the factions negotiate their differences the way we do in the west", that goal "may be, in the short run, a bridge too far... [We] should lower our ambitions and see Iraqi factionalisation as a useful tool."
For example, we (and the British) have been spearheading a new counteroffensive against Sunni guerrillas south of Baghdad. Where are the Shias? I understand Shia wariness about fighting alongside us. It is not, as conventional wisdom has it, because of some deep-seated Iraqi nationalism. In 1991 the Shias were begging the US to intervene during their uprising against Saddam. They were dying, literally, for the American army to help them. Unfortunately - and this misfortune haunts us to this day - they were betrayed. Having encouraged the Shias to rebel, we did not lift a finger as Saddam slaughtered them by the thousands.
Given that history, the Shias are today understandably wary about American steadfastness and intentions. If the Shias do go out on a limb and pick up the fight against the insurgent Sunnis, will we leave them hanging again?
Our taking on the Sunnis is a way of demonstrating good faith. As is our intention to hold the election no matter what. Everyone knows that the outcome of the election will be a historic transfer of power to the Shias (and, to some extent, to the Kurds). We must make it clear that we will be there to support that new government. But we also have to make it clear that we are not there to lead the fight indefinitely. It is their civil war.
President Bush speaks to Marines during a visit to Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base in San Diego. (AP)
Bush issues call to sacrifice on behalf of troops deployed over holidays
By Associated Press Wednesday, December 8, 2004
CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. - Standing before thousands of Marines, President Bush [related, bio] asked other Americans on Tuesday to make the war their own by helping battle-weary troops and their families.
``The time of war is a time of sacrifice, especially for our military families,'' Bush said, wearing a tan military jacket with epaulets. ``I urge every American to find some way to thank our military and to help out the military family down the street.''
In October 2001, shortly after the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, Bush ordered the invasion of Afghanistan to rout the terrorist-protecting Taliban government. The military took on the additional burden of the war in Iraq starting with the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.
In all that time, while traveling widely to visit military personnel and sit at the bedsides of the wounded, the president has asked little of the civilian public.
But with casualties increasing and the number of U.S. troops in Iraq slated to rise before next month's planned elections there, Bush urged civilians to do more.
Speaking on the 63rd anniversary of Pearl Harbor, Bush's call to sacrifice recalled President Roosevelt's World War II-era requests for Americans to pitch in for the war effort. Citizens responded then by planting victory gardens, purchasing war bonds, contributing metals and transforming commercial factories into weapons-makers.
Bush, who flew across the country and back in one long day to a base that has seen one of the highest casualty rates in Iraq, suggested ways Americans now can support troops - and their left-behind families - by citing the example of several already doing so. Groups have been established to welcome home the wounded, collect thank-you letters, build homes adapted to disabled vets, and raise money for military families who must forsake home and jobs to stand beside a recovering soldier, he said.
``In this season of giving, let us stand with the men and women who stand up for America, our military,'' Bush said.
The president spent the bulk of his visit to this southern California base behind closed doors.
After his speech, he joined troops in a mess hall decorated for Christmas for a lunch of beef, noodles and rice. He then went into a base gymnasium to spend over two hours face-to-face with more than 50 families of the fallen. He awarded one soldier, left unidentified by the White House, a posthumous Bronze Star.
White House spokesman Trent Duffy said there was ``a lot of emotion, a lot of hugs'' between the president and the families.
According to a Camp Pendleton spokesman, Cpl. Patrick Carroll, 269 Marines from the base have been killed in action in Iraq. A total of more than 1,270 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war, including nearly 1,000 who have died as a result of hostile action.
In his public remarks, Bush sought to console the survivors.
``Words can only go so far in capturing the grief and sense of loss for the families of those who have died,'' he said. ``But you can know this: They gave their lives for a cause that is just. And as in other generations, their sacrifice will have spared millions from the lives of tyranny and sorrow.''
Recently, more than 21,000 Camp Pendleton Marines have been serving in Iraq's al-Anbar province, including the battle to secure the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.
Other missions have included being the first conventional forces to fight in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and rolling across Iraq's border for the march to Baghdad that toppled Saddam Hussein's regime.
Bush declared the Fallujah campaign a success, saying, ``We have dealt the enemy a severe blow.''
But he warned that troops will see more attacks and, without saying it explicitly, more losses as Iraq's Jan. 30 elections approach.
``The enemies of freedom in Iraq have been wounded, but they're not yet defeated,'' the president said. ``We can expect further violence from the terrorists. ... The terrorists will do all they can to delay and disrupt free elections in Iraq. And they will fail.''
Bush promised, as he has repeatedly over recent days, that the elections ``will proceed as planned.''
Russia to pursue its interests in Iraq
MOSCOW - Russia has written off more debts of Iraq that other members of the Paris Club, and its interests in Iraq should be taken into account, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared at a meeting with the Prime Minister of Iraq. The Russian President remarked that Russia had written off the debts because of solidarity, however, it assumed that Russian companies' interests would be taken into account by the Iraqi leadership and the future government after the elections in Iraq, Rossiya (Russia) television reported. Earlier Putin announced that in total, Russia would write off about 90 percent of Iraq's debt.
Additionally, the Russian President commented on the forthcoming elections in Iraq, scheduled for January 30, 2005. "I see no way to organize elections in a country that is completely occupied by foreign forces but at the same time I see no way for you to independently restore the country and prevent its disintegration," Putin pointed out.
Russian Finance Minister Alexey Kudrin reported earlier that following the writing off of debts, the amount of Iraqi debt to Russia would be between $700m and $1bn. "The Iraqi debts are being verified now, and as a result, the debt will be restructured," the minister said. According to Kudrin, the repayment of Iraq's debts to Russia is to be delayed for three years.
Chemicals supplied killed 5000 Kurds
AMSTERDAM Prosecutors said yesterday they would charge a 62-year-old Dutchman as an accomplice to genocide and other war crimes for supplying Saddam Hussein's regime with lethal chemicals used in the 1988 chemical attack on the Kurdish town of Halabjah.
Wim de Bruin of the national prosecutor's office said the man, who was arrested in Amsterdam on Monday, would face charges "for violating the laws of war and involvement in genocide".
"The man is suspected of delivering thousands of tons of raw materials for chemical weapons to the former regime in Baghdad between 1984 and 1988," prosecutors said in a statement.
About 5000 civilians died in the infamous chemical attack.
The man was not named by prosecutors, but was identified by Dutch media as Frans van Anraat, a chemicals dealer.
Prosecutors said the man had been a suspect since 1989, when he was arrested in Milan, Italy, at the request of the US government.
He was later released and fled to Iraq, where he remained until 2003. After the US-led invasion in March 2003, he returned to the Netherlands via Syria.
The United Nations suspects the man was a major chemicals supplier to Saddam's regime, having made 36 separate shipments, including raw materials for nerve gas and mustard gas originating in the US and Japan.
The chemicals were shipped via Antwerp, Belgium, through Aqaba in Jordan before reaching Iraq, the prosecution statement said.
Authorities in the US, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and Jordan helped in the investigation, and witnesses were interviewed in the UK, Denmark, Jordan and the Netherlands, prosecutors said.
In a 2003 interview with Dutch television programme, Netwerk, Anraat said he had shipped materials to Iraq but was innocent of wrongdoing.
"This was not my main business, this is something I did in passing," he said.
"Somewhere once back then, I got the request whether I could deliver certain products to them, which they needed.
"And because I had a very good relationship with the (Iraqi) oil ministry, and that's where the request came from, I tried to see if I could do it," he said.
"And that was successful and we did deliver some materials."
Prosecutors said Anraat "knew the destination and ultimate purpose of the materials he was shipping". Sapa-AFP
Thanks for the ping! In addition to the great photographs you posted there are some really wonderful ones on this thread. The women doing the Charlie's Angels pose is too cute, but they should be George's Angels. ;-)
And the ones of the South Korean president are wonderful also. He looks very loved by his troops.
tex.. do you (anyone) know what kind of tank in pix 1
what is the middle one? a house? subterranian?
bottom? is that one of the Baghdad govt building we took over March 03?
This has been a daily thread since the Fallujah campaign began. TexKat does a great job in posting information / pix. Others jump in with pertinent info & pictures also almost every day .
I as usual post pictures, movie information & humor. The few things I now and then trip on were already posted.. Sigh, it is tough being a blonde!!!
Hope you are well. going to inauguration?
No, not this time around. I know everyone will have a blast and I will be there in spirit!
Good find Gucho.
I don't know anything about tanks DC, but after searching for images of them, the vehicle is pix 1 looks like it could possibly be one of the stryker models.
But don't take that to the bank. LOL!!!
Here you go, knock yourself out. Military tanks 101 Army Technology.com
Wed Dec 8, 2004 10:28 AM ET
By Michael Georgy
FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) - The offensive that crushed Iraq's fiercest insurgents in Falluja in November turned U.S. Marines into heroes and insurgents into celebrated martyrs.
But there has been little glory from the countless unreported battles that just push up U.S. casualty figures, like the one that killed Marine Captain Patrick Rapicault in Ramadi.
A Frenchmen who became an American citizen, Rapicault had dreamed of becoming a Marine his whole life.
"If there was anyone who was going to make it big, Rapicault was the man," said his friend, Marine Captain Robert Bodisch. "He was very determined and he was completely dedicated to the mission in Iraq. He believed in it."
After surviving several roadside bomb attacks, Rapicault's dreams were cut short by a suicide bomber who rammed a car into his routine patrol, far from the television cameras in the high-profile battle for Falluja.
"I heard the news at the mess hall," said Bodisch, a tank company commander who fought in Falluja. "I could not believe he was gone. The world will just forget him."
The 1,000th U.S. soldier was killed Tuesday in action in the war that ousted Saddam Hussein last year. Including noncombat deaths the figure is more than 1,200.
The Falluja fighting raised the monthly U.S. death toll to one of its highest levels since the start of the war. It's the type of conflict that yields many Purple Heart medals.
But most American troops have fallen in the ordinary, daily grind of clashes with insurgents, deaths that appear buried in long lists in newspapers and U.S. military Web sites.
"The Marines need to be humanized. You see the lists of the dead, but more people need to know who these people were and what they were fighting for in Iraq," said Bodisch.
"We get support back home but people need to know about people like Patrick and what he stood for."
Heroes, Martyrs and Unknowns in Iraq Fighting (Continued)
MARTYRDOM GLORIFIED BY INSURGENTS
Insurgents and foreign fighters don't face that problem. Death always brings recognition in Iraq or their hometowns in other Arab states.
They are celebrated as martyrs in the struggle against U.S. troops in Iraq.
Their bodies, still in fighting outfits, are wrapped in Iraqi flags. Families of martyrs offer meals and sweets to neighbors, relatives and friends in tents for up to three days.
One insurgent sniper named Ammar, who was killed in a U.S. air strike in Falluja before the offensive, was not given the whole treatment because people were afraid that gathering in large groups would arouse American suspicion.
But his name was hoisted on banners, and like other martyrs, it will go down in legendary tales about those who challenged American firepower in Iraq.
Many guerrillas go into battle hoping to be killed.
It's a concept that's alien to people like Bodisch and many other Marines who see their mission in Iraq as a war against "terrorists," not martyrs, to prevent a repeat of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
Bodisch, who saw major combat for the first time in Falluja, gained a first hand view of insurgents in the western Iraqi city 32 miles west of Baghdad.
"Now I have no doubt about what these people are all about and what they are trying to do and just how dangerous they are," he said, recalling how hard-core militants jumped in front of his 70-ton tank and fired rocket-propelled grenades.
It convinced him that the United States should be fighting in Iraq.
As he sat in a mess hall where Marines boasted of success in Falluja, he learned of another militant, the suicide bomber who killed Rapicault, a Marine he never thought would fall.
Bodisch, 32, of Austin, Texas, first met Rapicault at a school for Marine Captains. He spoke of Rapicault's strong will, even in the face of constant attacks in the guerrilla-infested town of Ramadi. Perhaps it was determination that eventually cost the 34-year-old Rapicault, of St. Augustine, Florida, his life.
"I just hope his death won't be in vain," said Bodisch.
Bodisch said he doesn't have much time to reflect on whether Rapicault will just be another name on a list. His men are still in Falluja, searching for insurgents hoping for martyrdom.
"I can't really think too much about Patrick. I can't right now," he said. "I will have to wait until I can sit down alone when I get home to really understand it all."
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