Posted on 06/19/2005 11:21:55 PM PDT by TexKat
Workers lay feeder cable to the Hamdan electric substation project in Basrah, Iraq, June 7, 2005. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Gulf Region South is providing quality assurance and design work on the project. U.S. Army photo by B.J. Weiner
U.S. Army soldiers from Alpha Company, 3rd Battalion, 141st Infantry Regiment, Texas Army National Guard, prepare to move out during a quick reaction force exercise at East River Range near Bagram, Afghanistan, June 11, 2005. Soldiers from the Texas National Guard are stationed in Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Defense Dept. photo by U.S. Army Spc. Harold Fields
Operation Phantom Fury--Day 223 & 224 - Now Operations River Blitz; Matador--Day 118 & 119
20 Jun 2005 05:45:34 GMT
A suicide bomber has blown himself up outside a police station in Iraq, killing at least 20 people and wounding 50 more, police have said.According to reports, the blast happened during a roll call outside the traffic police headquarters in the Kurdish city of Irbil.Police said the bomber disguised himself as a policeman at a meeting of some 200 traffic officers gathered in a courtyard.
The attack occurred on a main road leading to the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk.
The attack came amid a surge in violence since the Shi'ite-led government of Prime Minister Ibrahim al Jaafari was announced on April 28.
On Sunday, 23 people including several policemen were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a popular Baghdad restaurant.
'Weak links' in Washington's war on terror make it unlikely that Osama bin Laden will be apprehended in the near future, CIA Director Porter Goss, pictured May 2005, said in a magazine interview, although he has an 'excellent idea' of the Al-Qaeda leader's whereabouts.(AFP/File/Micah Walter)
Goss Claims He Has Idea Where Bin Ladin Is
NEW YORK - The director of the CIA says he has an "excellent idea" where Osama bin Laden is hiding, but that the United States' respect for sovereign nations makes it more difficult to capture the al-Qaida chief.
In an interview with Time for the magazine's June 27 issue, Porter Goss was asked about the progress of the hunt for bin Laden.
"When you go to the question of dealing with sanctuaries in sovereign states, you're dealing with a problem of our sense of international obligation, fair play," Goss said. "We have to find a way to work in a conventional world in unconventional ways."
Asked whether that meant he knew where bin Laden is, Goss responded: "I have an excellent idea where he is. What's the next question?"
Goss did not say where he thinks bin Laden is, nor did he specify what country or countries he was referring to when he spoke of foreign sanctuaries. But American officials have long said they believed bin Laden was hiding in rugged mountains along the Afghan-Pakistani border.
U.S ambassador for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad views the weapons which have been handed over to the Laghman Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Laghman, east of Kabul, Afghanistan on Sunday, June 19, 2005. khalilzad visited the Laghaman province and PRT during his last days as U.S special envoy for Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)
Fierce Fighting Kills 21 in Afghanistan
By NOOR KHAN, Associated Press Writer
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Fierce fighting between Taliban rebels and Afghan security forces left 18 insurgents and three others dead, a day after the U.S. military pounded suspected rebels in airstrikes that killed as many as 20, officials said Monday.
A Taliban spokesman, meanwhile, claimed his fighters had assassinated a kidnapped Afghan police chief and five of his men for collaborating with the U.S.-led coalition.
Eleven rebels were killed in an hour-long firefight before dawn Monday after attacking a government office in the Washer district of Helmand province, said Haji Mohammed Wali, a spokesman for the governor. The district government chief and an Afghan soldier also died.
Seven rebels were killed late Sunday and early Monday after they attacked a police checkpoint on a stretch of the Kabul-Kandahar highway that runs through southern Zabul province, said Zabul's deputy police chief, Bari Gul. A policeman manning the post was also killed.
Three months of bloodshed across the south and east has left hundreds dead and sparked fears that the Afghan war is widening, rather than winding down. U.S. and Afghan officials warn things could get worse ahead of landmark parliamentary elections scheduled for September.
About 280 suspected rebels and 29 U.S. troops have been killed since March, according to Afghan and U.S. officials. More than three dozen Afghan police and soldiers also have died, as have more than 100 civilians.
On Sunday U.S. aircraft opened fire on a group of suspected Taliban along a narrow footpath in the high mountains northwest of Gereshk, in southern Helmand province, after rebels had pinned down a coalition ground patrol with rocket and small-arms fire.
"Initial battle-damage assessments indicate 15 to 20 enemies died and an enemy vehicle was destroyed," the U.S. Army said in a statement Sunday. No Americans were injured.
Military spokesman Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara added a warning to the insurgents.
"When these criminals engage coalition forces, they do so at considerable risk," he said. "We are not going to let up on them. There is not going to be a safe haven in Afghanistan."
O'Hara told The Associated Press that additional U.S. and Afghan forces had been sent to the scene and the numbers of rebel dead could rise.
Elsewhere in Helmand on Sunday, gunmen shot to death three men — a judge, an intelligence worker and an employee of the provincial education department, said Wali, the governor's spokesman.
He said it was not clear whether the Taliban or some other armed group was behind the Saturday night attack.
And in Kandahar, rebels fired three rockets into the city center early Sunday, jolting residents but causing no casualties.
Purported Taliban spokesman Mullah Latif Hakimi claimed responsibility for the ambush of a police convoy in southern Afghanistan earlier this week and said insurgents had killed a district police chief and five of his men after taking them captive.
Hakimi said five other officers captured in the Thursday ambush were alive. He said the men would face trial.
Hakimi often calls news organizations to claim responsibility for attacks on behalf of the Taliban. His information has sometimes proven untrue or exaggerated and his exact tie to the group's leadership is unclear.
Vietnamese Prime Minister Phan Van Khai waves from a plane as he departs for a landmark trip to the US at Hanoi's Noi Bai international airport. Khai is expected to push for closer ties with Vietnam's former enemy and in turn face demands for progress on human rights.(AFP/Hoang Dinh Nam)
Protests greet Vietnamese PM on landmark visit to United States
Sun Jun 19, 6:21 PM ET
SEATTLE, United States (AFP) - Vietnamese Prime Minister Phan Van Khai was hounded by protests against his government's human rights record as he began a historic visit to the United States, the first by a Vietnamese government leader since the Vietnam War.
Leading a 200-strong delegation including five ministers, Khai arrived in Seattle on his maiden stop of a week long trip to the country that includes talks with President George W. Bush in Washington on Tuesday.
Several hundred Vietnamese-Americans demonstrated in front of the hotel where Khai was billeted in this west coast city, shouting "Go home, Go home" and "You're not welcome here," witnesses said.
"We are demonstrating peacefully but with a strong message: The time has come for democracy in Vietnam and (to) stop human rights abuses there," said Sai Nguyen, head of the Vietnamese-American Coalition in Northwest America, who led the protests.
"Mr Bush must live up to his promise to spread democracy and tell the Vietnamese communist leadership that there must be respect for human rights, the rule of law, transparency and freedom of the press in Vietnam," said Chan Tran, an economics professor at the University of Phoenix in Sacramento, California, who joined the demonstration.
Khai, at a news conference, dismissed any notion of religious persecution in his country and defended his government's policies. He also challenged Vietnamese-Americans complaining about conditions in Vietnam to go there and look at "the progress" achieved.
"You should come back to Vietnam and see that lot of progress has been made to promote religious and human rights issues," he said. "During the thousands of years of history of Vietnam, there has been no religious conflict in the nation," he said.
Action was taken against people "who showed no respect for law and not for their religious activities," he said, adding that since September 2004, amnesty was granted to "thousands of convicted persons."
Khai said his government wanted to promote unity among Vietnamese "without any discrimination -- whether they are on this side or the other side."
The 71-year-old Vietnamese leader visited American aviation giant Boeing's plant south of Seattle on Sunday and is scheduled to hold talks with Microsoft chief Bill Gates on Monday. Vietnam is wooing Microsoft to invest in its emerging economy.
Vietnam Airlines, the national carrier, has forged a deal with Boeing to buy four wide-bodied 787-8 Dreamliners worth up to 500 million dollars.
Khai's landmark US visit caps a series of reconciliation moves by both countries since the bloody Vietnam War ended in 1975 after claiming the lives of more than 58,000 US soldiers and one million Vietnamese civilians and soldiers.
The two countries celebrate a decade of the renewal of diplomatic relations next month.
Many Vietnamese-Americans, who fled their native land after the communists from North Vietnam took over the US-backed southern administration at the end of the war, still harbour deep enmity towards the Hanoi regime.
Bush is expected to set the pace for greater political, economic and security ties with Vietnam but will find it difficult to ignore pressure from Congress which wants a clear message from the Vietnamese leader on democratic reforms and human rights.
A group of 45 US lawmakers has sent a letter to Bush urging him to convey to Khai "our deep concern over the conditions of human rights and religious freedom" in Vietnam.
Some one hundred religious leaders remain in prison or in "administrative detention," the legislators said in their letter.
Khai's government has repeatedly denied passports to victims of religious or political persecution being considered or accepted for refugee admission by the United States.
The United States last year designated Vietnam as a "country of particular concern" on account of its widespread violations of religious freedom. This year, international pressure has resulted in a number of prisoner releases.
The US House of Representatives has fittingly scheduled a hearing on human rights and religious freedom in Vietnam on Monday, when Khai arrives in Washington from Seattle.
Demonstrations have been planned in the US capital as well as in New York, where Khai will ring the bell during his visit to the world's busiest stock exchange.
Lebanese voters wave a national flag as they drive through the northern city of Tripoli. Lebanon's main anti-Syrian alliance leader Saad Hariri claimed victory for his list in Sunday's decisive final round of elections in the north, a success that would give the opposition a majority in parliament(AFP/Anwar Amro)
Hariri proclaims victory for anti-Syrian allies in north Lebanon
TRIPOLI, Lebanon (AFP) - Lebanon's main anti-Syrian alliance leader Saad Hariri claimed victory for his list in Sunday's decisive final round of elections in the north, a success that would give the opposition a majority in parliament.
The alliance was set to win the 21 seats it needed out of 28 up for grabs in the voting in the north, giving the anti-Syrian opposition a majority in the first parliament elected since Damascus withdrew its forces from Lebanon in April, according to incomplete results from the count witnessed by his campaign staff.
"The almost final results show that the people has had its say. It has said that it wants change and that's what we call for," Hariri told AFP early on Monday.
Opposing Hariri for seats in the 128-seat house was an unlikely alliance between Christian firebrand and former exile Michel Aoun and a raft of pro-Syrian figures.
Aoun's ally, pro-Syrian deputy Suleiman Franjieh, admitted defeat for his alliance. But "even if we have lost, we are the real representatives of the Christian areas in north Lebanon," he told the Lebanese satellite channel LBCI.
If confirmed by official results on Monday, the outcome would mark a major coup for the anti-Syrian alliance, which had faced an uphill battle after suffering a rout in the third round of elections the previous weekend.
The outcome would give Hariri, a 35-year-old businessman turned politician, the opportunity to become prime minister, following in the footsteps of his slain father Rafiq Hariri who held the post five times.
But it would fall short of the two-thirds majority required to change the constitution to cut short the term of under-fire pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud, who has more than two years to run in office after a controversial Damascus-inspired extension last September.
The four-round elections which kicked off on May 29 were the first since neighbouring Syria ended its three-decade troop presence in April amid the political turmoil that followed the February assassination of Rafiq Hariri.
About 700,000 people in two northern constituencies were eligible to vote on Sunday.
With 21 seats already in the bag from previous rounds, Aoun had threatened to upset the Hariri list's ambition to take sole control of the long Syrian-dominated legislature.
Hariri's bloc won 44 seats in previous rounds while 35 seats went to the pro-Syrian alliance of Shiite factions Amal and Hezbollah.
Amid a fierce race between the Aoun and Hariri lists, turnout on Sunday reached 48 percent, according to preliminary official estimates, well up on the 40 percent recorded in the last elections in the northern region in 2000.
In a vitriolic campaign, both sides had repeatedly attacked each other's anti-Syrian credentials, with Aoun accusing Hariri and his allies of being belated converts to the cause, while they took aim at his pro-Damascus allies.
Hariri's huge personal fortune also fanned allegations of vote buying.
The official ANI news agency reported some minor incidents, including a man arrested in Tripoli after a grenade was found on him, and an exchange of fire between soldiers and a passing car.
In the Syrian border town of Abbudieh, an AFP photographer saw security forces intervene after rival supporters exchanged blows and smashed car windscreens.
A clear-cut outcome was likely to provide a major boost for a country which could ill afford an extended period of uncertainty.
The turmoil following February's massive bomb blast which killed Rafiq Hariri already dented confidence in an economy burdened with a massive national debt of some 35.5 billion dollars.
The central bank warned last week that it expected gross domestic product to fall this year, with inflation of four percent outstripping growth of two percent.
Security was tight for the election in a region where Syrian troops held sway for years.
As he cast his vote in Tripoli, caretaker Prime Minister Najib Miqati rejected Hariri bloc accusations that a continuing Syrian intelligence presence had intimidated voters.
"The voting has been completely free," insisted Miqati, who was approved as a compromise figurehead by the opposition despite his links with Damascus. "There's been no intervention by Syria to influence voters. There are no Syrian agents at work."
European and other foreign observers monitored the conduct of the vote.
Iraqi investigators looks at the remnants of a suicide car bomb which was driven into a crowd of traffic police recruits in the northern Iraqi city or Arbil June 20, 2005. At least 10 people were killed and 100 injured by the bomb. REUTERS/Azad Lashkri
A US soldier gives a toy to an Iraqi boy in the city of Kufa, south of Baghdad. Television channel Al-Arabiya said US military authorities had refused to authorize the evacuation from Iraq of reporter Jawad Kazem, who was wounded by armed men Saturday in Baghdad(AFP/Qassem Zein)
Australian Muslim cleric, who returned home on Monday after six weeks in Iraq, says the Australian hostage Douglas Wood, a 63-year-old engineer, would have been released even if the raids had not been successful due to the contacts he had made with local officials. REUTERS/David Gray
Released Australian captive Douglas Wood embraces his wife Yvonne after returning home from Iraq to Tullamarine Airport in Melbourne June 20, 2005. Wood, a 63-year-old engineer abducted at the end of April, was found Thursday under a blanket on a bed in a sideroom of the house, which Khalif's troops suspected was being used to store weapons. REUTERS/David Callow
U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Kurt Rardin, left, of Roanoke, Virginia and Lance Cpl. Troy Weber of Canton, Ohio sleep in a house commandeered by Marines in Karabilah, 320 kilometers (200 miles) west of Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, June 19, 2005. About 1,000 U.S. Marines are participating in Operation Spear near Iraqi-Syrian border town. (AP Photo/Jacob Silberberg)
Nicole Bennett is swept up in her husbands arms, Sgt. Charles Bennett, after his return from deployment in Afghanistan at Marine Corps Base Hawaii in Kaneohe, Hawaii June 19, 2005. Bennett returned from a seven month deployment with about 1,000 other Marines from the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment reinforced. The troop movement is part of more than 10,000 military personnel deployed last year from Hawaii to Iraq and Afghanistan. This continues the largest troop movement since the Vietnam war from Hawaii. REUTERS/Lucy Pemoni
Al-Arabiya journalist Jawad Kazem is rushed to hospital. Kazem, 39, was shot in the neck when gunmen opened fire as he walked out of a restaurant at lunchtime, his colleagues said(AFP/Karim Sahib)
Al-Arabiya says US refuses to allow evacuation of its wounded reporter
DUBAI (AFP) - Television channel Al-Arabiya said US military authorities had refused to authorize the evacuation from Iraq of reporter Jawad Kazem, who was wounded by armed men Saturday in Baghdad.
In a statement received by AFP, Al-Arabiya said its attempts to obtain the go-ahead for a medical aircraft to evacuate its journalist from Baghdad had met with "a refusal from the American military authorities."
In "intensive" contacts with "the Iraqi government, the Pentagon, the State Department and American Central Command (Centcom) in Qatar" Al-Arabiya had explained "the gravity of the state of health" of Kazem and "the need to transfer him out of Iraq in the hope of saving his life," the statement said.
While continuing contacts with the American and Iraqi sides, the TV station said it was "deeply worried by the lack of cooperation with its request" and said it would hold them responsible for any deterioration in the condition of the journalist.
One of his doctors in Baghdad told Al-Arabiya that Kazem, 37, had been wounded in the jaw, the windpipe and the spine "which caused partial paralysis" of his legs.
Colleagues said the armed men had tried to kidnap Kazem as he left a Baghdad restaurant.
The Dubai-based Al-Arabiya, launched in 2003 with largely Saudi capital, has lost two journalists and a cameraman in Iraq.
Al-Arabiya reporter shot in Iraq kidnap attempt
Sat Jun 18, 1:59 PM ET
BAGHDAD (AFP) - An Iraqi correspondent with the Arab news channel Al-Arabiya was shot and seriously injured in an attempted kidnapping in the heart of Baghdad.
Jawad Kazem, 39, was shot in the neck when gunmen opened fire as he walked out of a restaurant at lunchtime, his colleagues said Saturday.
A doctor at Baghdad's Medical City hospital said he was in critical condition and was undergoing surgery.
Before entering the operating room, he was seen with his face bloodied and an oxygen mask over his mouth as weeping colleagues from the Dubai-based channel's Baghdad bureau surrounded him.
One colleague said the attack happened at about 2:30 pm (1030 GMT) when Kazem and a few of his friends came out of the White Palace restaurant in the central Karradah district.
Several gunmen tried to kidnap Kazem, but he resisted and was able to run away before he was shot by one of the gunmen, who quickly fled the scene, the colleague added.
"One of two gunmen held Jawad Kazem and threatened to shoot him if he did not go with them... As Jawad resisted the kidnappers, one of them shot him with a pistol," said another Al-Arabiya correspondent who was with Kazem at the time.
A spokeswoman for Al-Arabiya said Kazem had been working for the channel for two years.
Seven people were killed and 20 wounded in a massive car bombing outside the Baghdad offices of Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya on October 30. Since then the bulk of the channel's staff have been operating from inside the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, home to the Iraqi government and US military and diplomatic personnel.
"Jawad is a professional reporter and just focuses on his work. He has never received any threats before," said his brother Ahmed.
At least 50 journalists and other media workers have been killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion more than two years ago.
DUBAI (Reuters) - A Sunni Muslim group said in an Internet statement it had tried to assassinate Al Arabiya television's senior correspondent for what it said was the channel's bias against Sunnis in Iraq.
"We claim responsibility for the assassination attempt of the evil Shi'ite Jawad Kadhem," said Jamaat Jund al-Sahaba (Soldiers of the Prophet's Companions) in a statement dated Sunday and posted on a Web site often used by militants.
"Al Arabiya channel has harmed Sunnis in Iraq and is the tongue of Americans and dirty Shi'ites in (Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim) Jaafari's government," the group said.
The 37-year-old Iraqi journalist was shot on Saturday while leaving a Baghdad restaurant in what appeared to be a kidnapping attempt. Al Arabiya said on Sunday that Iraqi and U.S. authorities were delaying the evacuation of Kadhem for medical treatment.
"Kadhem's fate will be the fate of every media group that aligns itself with the infidels against Sunnis," warned the statement, which could not be immediately authenticated.
In May, the group claimed a car bombing near a Shi'ite Muslim mosque in Baghdad and another attack that killed at least 31 people in a Shi'ite town.
Mainly Sunni Arab insurgents have stepped up attacks on Shi'ite and other targets in their campaign against the U.S.-backed, Shi'ite-led government.
It's been dicey around there lately. I imagien they'll be marked for a cleanup operation before too long.
In other news, I was just talking to some of our Iraqi contractors, and they were commenting about how the U.S. news "always shows the dark side of the moon. Nothing but bad."
So, even the locals notice it. LOL
Oh...and I agreed with them wholeheartedly.
Oh...and my typing sucks. HAHA
Could you answer a question? After reading these articles I am confused about the origin of Al-Arabiya. I was under the impression that it was US backed. One of the articles stated it was Saudi backed. Do you know which it is?
You know, I honestly don't know. I have it on my satellite TV here, but it's in Arabic. I also have Al Iraqya and a bunch of other Arabic channels. (The soap operas and the music videos are absolutely hilarious - even in Arabic...LOL)
I can ask a couple of the Iraqis around if they know. I do know that it's based in Saudi.
An Iraqi police car is seen parked next a crater left by a car bomb after an attack by insurgents in the south western Al-Bayaa district of Baghdad June 20, 2005. Police and U.S. forces, and Iraqi interior ministry forces surrounded the area after an attack on a local police station. Photo by Ali Jasim/Reuters
Car bombs hit Baghdad and north Iraq, 17 dead
By Luke Baker Mon Jun 20, 7:27 AM ET
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - At least six car bombs exploded across Iraq on Monday killing at least 17 people as insurgents defied a widespread U.S.-Iraqi security clampdown.
In the Kurdish city of Arbil, a suicide bomber drove his car into a crowd of police recruits, killing at least 12 and wounding about 100 on a soccer field, officials said. Five car bombs blew up in Baghdad, targeting Iraqi police and soldiers.
The wave of violence came as two influential U.S. senators criticized fellow Republican President Bush's handling of the two-year-old war and said Americans needed to be told that U.S. troops faced a "long, hard slog" in Iraq.
The Arbil bombing was the second time in six weeks that the relative peace has been shattered in the northern Kurdish area, where a regional president was sworn in last week. In early May a suicide bomber killed 46 police recruits in the city.
On Monday, a crowd of around 200 traffic police recruits had gathered for roll call in a dusty field behind the police headquarters when the suicide bomber raced his red vehicle toward them and blew up among them as they scattered.
"Some people were running away but others couldn't move and the car blew up," said Raeder Mohammed, one of the trainees.
The attack followed a major pre-dawn raid by insurgents on a police station in southwest Baghdad, where they detonated two car bombs and then ambushed Iraqi police and soldiers who came to assist a U.S. unit that also came under fire.
The U.S. military said five police and soldiers were killed and 20 wounded in the complex attack, which only subsided after U.S. air and ground support was called in. Iraqi police at the scene told Reuters 18 insurgents were killed and 14 captured.
Al Qaeda in Iraq, the group led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility in an Web posting.
Reuters television pictures showed smoke rising from buildings as a helicopter circled low and gunfire rang out.
It was not the first time a Baghdad police station has been attacked, but the assault appeared particularly brazen coming during Operation Lightning, a high-profile sweep by around 40,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops and police in the city.
Two more car bombs targeted Iraqi police in the Mansour district of western Baghdad, Iraq's Defense Ministry said, and a fifth blew up at a checkpoint on the road to Baghdad airport. Early reports said three people were wounded in those blasts.
The series of explosions came a day after 23 people, many of them police and security guards, were killed and 30 wounded when a suicide bomber walked into a busy restaurant and blew himself up, the worst bombing in Baghdad in six weeks. Zarqawi's group also claimed the restuarant bombing.
REPUBLICAN CRITICISM
Zarqawi, for whom Washington is offering a $25 million bounty, has come to symbolise the U.S. military's struggle to bring order to Iraq.
The perceived failure to make inroads against him and the broader Iraqi insurgency may have hit Bush's approval ratings, a recent poll indicated.
Another U.S. soldier died on Monday after being hit in a roadside bomb blast in the northern town of Tal Afar, raising to at least 1,720 the number of troops to have died in the war.
On Sunday, two senior Republicans advised the U.S. administration to play straighter with the public.
"Too often we've been told, and the American people have been told, that we're at a turning point," Senator John McCain said. "What the American people should have been told and should be told ... (is that) it's long, it's hard, it's tough."
"It's going to be at least a couple more years," said McCain, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Senator Chuck Hagel, another Republican, was quoted by weekly magazine U.S. News and World Report as saying the administration's Iraq policy was failing.
"Things aren't getting better, they're getting worse," he said. "The reality is that we're losing in Iraq."
The director of the CIA, Porter Goss, backed recent remarks by Vice President Dick Cheney, who said the insurgency was in its last throes, and said progress was being made.
U.S. commanders say Operation Lightning, launched a month ago, is having an impact with around 1,200 suspects detained, car bomb "factories" uncovered and suicide attacks down. But insurgents still appear determined to strike whenever possible.
Since late April, when a new Shi'ite-led government was formed, attacks have surged, with more than 1,000 Iraqis, many of them police and soldiers, and around 120 U.S. troops killed.
(Additional reporting by Shamal Aqrawi in Arbil, Peter Graff in Karabila and Waleed Ibrahim and Alastair Macdonald in Baghdad)
A group of detainees sit on the ground with their hands tied and wearing blindfolds in the village of Buhruz, Iraq, Monday, 20 June 2005. More than 20 were arrested and weapons seized by US troops and Iraqi forces during a raid in the area Monday. (AP Photo/Mohammed Adnan)
Cameramen put down their cameras in tribute to French cameraman Fred Nerac, who is still missing in Iraq, outside Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt's office in Brussels June 20, 2005. The media are calling on the Belgian government to urge participants at a conference on Iraq in Brussels this week to investigate the disappearance of Nerac. He has been missing for more than two years since an exchange of fire between U.S troops and an Iraqi vehicle in the southern city of Basra. REUTERS/Yves Herman
Iraqis queue up for water at a distribution point in Baghdad June 20, 2005. 14 districts situated on the west of the river Tigris, which divides Baghdad, have no running water after a main supply line was damaged by an explosion yesterday, the U.S. forces said. REUTERS/Faleh Kheiber
US soldiers from Delta Company 1-184 Infantry search an Iraqi house south of Baghdad. The US administration goes into an international conference on Iraq this week seeking a new display of world support for its policies that are losing confidence at home.(AFP/Yuri Cortez)
Thanks for your response Allegra. I think you answered my question unwittingly. I believe I confused Al-Arabiya with Al-Iraqya, the latter being backed by the US. Sorry, I keep getting the Al-'s mixed up. ;*)
I have it on my satellite TV here, but it's in Arabic. I also have Al Iraqya and a bunch of other Arabic channels. (The soap operas and the music videos are absolutely hilarious - even in Arabic...LOL)
I am glad you have entertainment. ;*)
I believe if you would contact Amnesty Int'l. you may claim torture by only having access to arabic language tv.
Just a thought. ;*)
HAHAHA...it's not that bad. I have lots of American channels on our Orbit satellite, too. American movie channels, sit-coms, news channels, ESPN...and they all have Arabic sub-titles. We're corrupting 'em over here real good.
I even hear young Iraqis listening to hip-hop sometimes and I hear American "light rock" coming from the street cafes here in town.
I don't think you'd have ever heard things like that in Saddam's days.
Confusion between Al Arabiya and Al Hurra?
I see, Al Iraqiya.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.