U.S. obeys order to abandon checkpoints

Associated Press ^ | SINAN SALAHEDDIN

[Dubya]

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. troops on Tuesday abandoned checkpoints around the Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City on orders from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the latest in a series of moves by the Iraqi leader to assert his authority with the U.S. administration.

The U.S. military announced the deaths of two soldiers in fighting in the Baghdad area on Monday, one from small arms fire, the other from a roadside bomb. Those brought the number of troops killed in Iraq this month to 103.

U.S. forces disappeared from the checkpoints within hours of the order to remove the around-the-clock barriers by 5:00 p.m. (1400 GMT), setting off celebrations among civilians and armed men gathered on the edge of the sprawling slum that is under the control of the Mahdi Army militia run by radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Iraqi troops loaded coils of barbed wire and red traffic cones onto pickup trucks, while small groups of men and children danced in circles chanting slogans praising al-Sadr, who earlier Tuesday had ordered the area closed to the Iraqi government until U.S. troops lifted what he called their "siege" of the neighborhood.

Extra checkpoints were set up last week as U.S. troops launched an intensive search for a missing soldier, who has yet to be found.

Shortly after leaving Sadr city, U.S. troops dismantled other checkpoints in the downtown Karradah neighborhood where the soldier had been abducted, loading barbed wire coils onto their Stryker armored vehicles.

Al-Maliki's statement said U.S.-manned checkpoints "should not be taken except during nighttime curfew hours and emergencies."

"Joint efforts continue to pursue terrorists and outlaws who expose the lives of citizens to killings, abductions and explosions," said the statement, issued in al-Maliki's name in his capacity both as prime minister and commander of the Iraqi armed forces.

U.S. troops have increased their presence on Baghdad streets as part of a two-month-old security crackdown. However, they rarely man checkpoints in populated areas where they risk coming under attack or angering residents by conducting vehicle and body searches.

Al-Maliki's order underscored the his government's reliance of Shiite support and sensitivity to their concerns.

Besides al-Sadr, the largest Shiite coalition in the 275-member parliament, the United Iraqi Alliance, had also condemned the checkpoints for inflicting what it described as "collective punishment" against residents of Baghdad's Shiite neighborhoods.

"Kidnapping a man can't be a pretext for laying siege to these neighborhoods," Sheik Jalal Eddin al-Sagheer, a prominent Shiite lawmaker, said at a news conference.

Al-Maliki's threatened to further roil relations with the U.S. that hit a rough patch last week after Al-Maliki issued a string of bitter complaints - at one point saying he was not "America's man in Iraq."

Al-Maliki had apparently been angered by a statement from U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad that the prime minister had agreed to set a timeline for progress on reaching security and political goals - something al-Maliki denied. He also angrily rebuked the U.S. for a raid on Sadr city targeting an alleged death squad leader in which 10 people were killed.

U.S. concern over the relationship was signaled when National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley showed up unannounced in Baghdad on Monday to meet with al-Maliki and his security chief, Mouwafak al-Rubaie, telling them he "wanted to reinforce some of the things you have heard from our president."

Al-Rubaie told the AP late Monday that Hadley was here to discuss the work of a five-man committee that al-Maliki and Bush agreed to Saturday.

Hadley also presented some proposals concerning the training and equipping of Iraqi security forces as well as security plans. U.S. spokesmen could not immediately be reached on Tuesday and it wasn't known whether Hadley had yet returned to Washington.

American voter support for the war at a low point as the Nov. 7 congressional election approaches, and a top aide to al-Maliki said the Iraqi leader was using the Republicans' vulnerability on the issue to leverage concessions from the White House - particularly the speedy withdrawal of American forces from Iraqi cities to U.S. bases in the country.

Al-Maliki has said he believes that the continued presence of American forces in Iraq's population centers is partly behind the surge in violence.

His government depends heavily on the backing of a pair of Shiite political organizations and has resisted concerted American pressure to eradicate their private armies - al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade, the military wing of Iraq's most powerful Shiite political bloc, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI.

Three people were killed and five injured by a car bomb in Sadr City early Tuesday, a day after 33 were killed in a similar attack in the district targeting day laborers lining up for jobs.

Both attacks were carried out despite the U.S. security cordon, bringing accusations from residents that the checkpoints had decreased security by restricting the movement of Mahdi fighters.

At least three Iraqi policemen were also reported killed on Tuesday morning in Baghdad and the volatile western city of Fallujah, police said.

The bodies five unidentified people, including a woman, were found dumped early Tuesday morning in eastern Baghdad, police Maj. Mahir Hamid Mussa said. Those killed had been tied up and blindfolded, with their bodies showing signs of torture, Mussa said.

Five more bodies in similar condition were floating in the Tigris River near Suwayrah, 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Baghdad, a clerk at the town morgue, Hadi al-Etabi, said.

Further south, the morgue in the town of Kut reported receiving 10 bodies, including those of five people allegedly killed by U.S. forces in a raid on a house in the Shejeriyah area, 30 kilometers (18 miles) south of Baghdad, said Maamoun Ajil al-Robaeie, a morgue employee.

New violence was also reported in Baqouba, a chaotic city north of Baghdad where police and militants fought bloody gunbattles last week.

Unidentified gunmen killed three people in a downtown market and attacked a police patrol, killing one officer and injuring two others, according to a spokesman for the Diyala provincial police.

Five bodies were found in the Abu Seida district, 25 kilometers (10 hectares) northeast of the city, said the police spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

Gunmen killed Sheik Raed Naeem al-Juheishi, the head of a non-governmental organization dedicated to tracing the fate of victims of the former regime of Saddam Hussein, in a drive-by-shooting Monday night in Baghdad's chaotic Dora district, Col. Mohammed Ali said.

Saddam and seven co-defendants - including a half brother - have been on trial since Oct. 19, 2005 for their alleged roles in the deaths of about 150 Shiites in Dujail following an assassination attempt against the president in 1982.

A second trial - for genocide against the Kurds - began in August and more are expected to follow.

The military said U.S. troops killed five suspected insurgents and detained one on Tuesday morning during a raid in Baghdad targeting suspected associates of a senior of the al-Qaida in Iraq terrorist group.

[Dark Skies]

bump

[Yo-Yo]

Sir,

58,148 Americans died in Vietnam. In spite of the nonstop reporting to the contrary, Iraq has a ways to go before they even approach Vietnam, let alone become worse.

[Dead Dog]

And in which, for all too many, the defeat of the USA is "victory," even if it means that their country is reduced to being a chaotic hell-hole of murderous militias and religious fanaticism.

Synergy with the American left. They all live and love the lie. From that point on it all becomes very Biblical.

[Vicomte13]

Let's be deadly clear: the strategy America has pursued since the fall of Saddam CANNOT WIN.

What will happen is what IS happening: the country will fray due to sectarian violence and score-settling, and US casualties will go higher and higher and higher as the US haplessly tries to separate people who want to kill each other.

Eventually...not in 2006, but in 2008, or perhaps in 2012 (because the war will never end for as long as we fight it this way), American domestic resolve to continue to lose our own boys and girls, and to have five maimed for every one killed, in a forever war will collapse. The Democrats will be elected, they will cut the funding, and the Americans will pull out of Iraq in disgrace...just like Vietnam.

To AVOID this, to WIN the war, we need to get out of the way and let the Shi'ites destroy the Sunni Arabs, who have always been our enemies in that country. We need to favor some Shi'ite factions over others. It's the only way.

[conservativecorner]

JUST FRIGGIN' PATHETIC! The democracy thingy in Iraq sucks.

[TexKat]

Bookmark

[TheCrusader]

"Convincing the Iraqis that we really are just there to help now, that it's their county, is part of the way to victory."

Yep, strengthening al Sarde's powerful, anti-U.S. militia is the way to victory. This will just warm the hearts of Iraqis everywhere.

hahahahaha

[TexKat]

Iraqi civilians run for cover as smoke rises from a car bomb blast in Baghdad. Shiite militants have won a major political victory when Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered US and Iraqi units to lift a blockade around the flashpoint Baghdad suburb of Sadr City.(AFP/Ahmad Al-Rubaye)

A 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team soldier carries barbed wire as soldiers lift the security cordon around central Baghdad neighborhood Karradah Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2006. U.S. troops threw a security cordon around Karradah last Monday and conducted an intensive search for a missing soldier, who has yet to be found. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

Members of the Shi'ite Mehdi army man a checkpoint in Baghdad's Sadr city, October 31, 2006. (Kareem Raheem/Reuters)

172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team soldiers wind up barbed wire as they lift the security cordon around central Baghdad's neighborhood Karradah Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2006. U.S. troops threw a security cordon around Karradah last Monday and conducted an intensive search for a missing soldier, who has yet to be found. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

A 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team soldier plays with Iraqi kids just before they lifted the security cordon around central Baghdad's neighborhood Karradah Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2006. U.S. troops threw a security cordon around Karradah last Monday and conducted an intensive search for a missing soldier, who has yet to be found. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

[TexKat]

Residents chant slogans as they gather on a road after U.S. troops abandoned roadblocks in Baghdad's Sadr city, October 31, 2006. Iraq's prime minister, in a very public demonstration of his influence over the U.S. military, ordered the lifting on Tuesday of a week-old cordon around the Baghdad militia stronghold of one of his key Shi'ite allies. REUTERS/KAREEM RAHEEM

[TexKat]

Over 40 Iraqis kidnapped north of Baghdad - police
31 Oct 2006 16:53:12 GMT
Source: Reuters


TIKRIT, Iraq, Oct 31 (Reuters) - More than 40 people are missing after armed kidnappers ambushed minibuses travelling to Baghdad on a main road north of the Iraqi capital on Tuesday, police in the city of Tikrit said.

An Iraqi spokesman for the Joint Coordination Center of the Iraqi police and U.S. forces in the mainly Sunni Arab province of Salahaddin said "about 42" people were missing after the incident near Tarmiya, 30 km (20 miles) north of Baghdad.

The gunmen set up a fake checkpoint and stopped vehicles to ask drivers if they came from the Shi'ite villages of Balad and Dujail, the spokesman said.

In what has become a grim feature of the sectarian violence gripping Iraq, gunmen select their victims at random checkpoints based on their religious denomination. Most appear dead later.

Last week, fierce clashes broke out in Balad, 80 km (50 miles) north of the capital, involving Iraqi police that blocked Iraq's main highway north from Baghdad to Mosul and the Turkish border.

Dujail is the Shi'ite village where Saddam Hussein survived an assassination attempt in 1982, prompting a government crackdown for which the toppled leader has been tried. He is expecting to hear a possible death sentence verdict on Nov.5.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IBO159712.htm

[TexKat]

FACTBOX-Security developments in Iraq, Oct 31
31 Oct 2006 16:21:03 GMT
Source: Reuters

More Oct 31 (Reuters) - Following are security and other developments in Iraq as of 1600 GMT on Tuesday.

*NAJAF - Sixty gunmen of the Mehdi Army militia loyal to radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr will be disciplined by an internal court for "wrongdoings", an aide said. Abdul Razzak al-Nidway said the gunmen are said to have carried out killings and forced people to leave homes in different parts of Baghdad.

*BAGHDAD - A car bomb ripped through a wedding procession in the northeastern district of Ur in Baghdad, killing 15 people, including four children, Interior Ministry and police said.

*TIKRIT - More than 40 people are missing after armed kidnappers ambushed minibuses travelling to Baghdad on a main road north of the capital, police in the city of Tikrit said.

TARMIYA - More than 40 people were missing after gunmen mounted a mass kidnap attack on minibuses travelling to Baghdad near Tarmiya, 30 km (20 miles), north of the capital, a spokesman for the Joint Coordination Center for Iraqi and U.S. forces in the northern city of Tikrit said.

NEAR SUWAYRA - The bodies of five gunmen were found in an orchard which was the scene of clashes between gunmen and the police several days ago near the town of Suwayra, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

SUWAYRA - The bodies of three people were recovered from the Tigris river in the town of Suwayra, police said.

BAQUBA - The bodies of eight people were found, bound and gagged, in Baquba, police said. All the victims were shot in the head.

BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol killed a policeman and wounded three others near the southern Doura district of Baghdad, an Interior Ministry said.

BAQUBA - Clashes between gunmen and police left a policeman dead and three others wounded in Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

BAQUBA - Gunmen suspected of belonging to a militia run by Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, shot and wounded the owners of two shops in Baquba, police said.

FALLUJA - An Iraqi army soldier died in clashes with gunmen in the Sunni city of Falluja, 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad, police said.

TAL AFAR - Four gunmen and an Iraqi army soldier were killed in clashes in the northern town of Tal Afar, about 420 km (260 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - A U.S. soldier was on Monday shot dead by insurgents during combat operations in western Baghdad, the U.S. military said on Tuesday.

BAGHDAD - A U.S. soldier was killed on Monday when his vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb south of Baghdad, the U.S. military said on Tuesday.

BAGHDAD - A car bomb killed three civilians and wounded 10 others in northeastern Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source said.

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS

*BAGHDAD - A Kurdish man told a court trying Saddam Hussein for genocide he saw Iraqi soldiers marching Kurdish prisoners from a bus and killing them before dumping their bodies in a ditch. The judge later adjourned proceedings until Nov. 7.

BAGHDAD - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered all joint U.S. and Iraqi checkpoints in Baghdad's Shi'ite stronghold of Sadr City and other parts of the capital to be lifted as of 5 p.m. (1400 GMT) on Tuesday. ((Baghdad bureau))

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L31325264.htm

[RC51]

So you mean we let the Iranian type of Shiites kill off all the men, women and children of the wahabi Saudi kind of Sunni's?

Sounds like a plan to me. Maybe if we are lucky Iran will step in to help and Saudi Arabia will step in for the Sunni's. We could just make one giant killing field out of Iraq.

Maybe the Muslims will be so busy killing each other that they'll forgot all about wanting to make us their dhimmi slaves and turning the world back a thousand years under their global Mad Mohammedan Empire.

[The_Reader_David]

True, but having the goverment show that it can protect the interests of the Shia weakens Mookie's hand: his support is based on the perception that the goverment can't protect Shi'ite interests.

This symbolically shows the government can undo something the US did that was harming (in a prosaic, grid-lock inducing sort of way) the residents of Shi'ite neighborhoods of Baghdad.

Our boys will still be hunting for the kidnappers, and if we get lucky will catch Mookie himself in a firefight, we just won't be snarling traffic as a tactic for doing it.

[The_Reader_David]

Get out of here. The checkpoints weren't harming Mookie. If anything they were increasing popular support for him by having US troops hassle and inconvenience lots of Shi'ites in Baghdad.

[Vicomte13]

Not exactly, but close.

The Shi'ites of Iraq are divided into two groups. By far the largest are Arab nationalist Shi'ites. They have their own grand ayatollah (Sistani). They are Arabs and Iraqis, and do not want their country to become a religious province of Iran's mullocracy. Shi'ism is not like Catholicism, with an absolute center in the Pope at Rome. It is more like Eastern Orthodoxy, with several patriarchs, each independent, with the Ecumenical Patriarch theoretically first among equals, but with the Greek Church and Russian Church not giving a fig what the leadership of the other Orthodox branch orders. They respect their religious brethren, but they do not OBEY them. That is like most Iraqi Shi'ites. They're ARABS, not Persians. Many are veterans of the war with Iran. They have a deadly grudge against the Sunni Arabs who murdered them (who are not Wahabbis, but the way), not the Sunni Kurds who didn't (and who are also not Wahabbis, but are of a different school of Islam than the Sunni Iraqi Arabs).

The biggest portion of Iraqi shi'ites are Shi'ite Iraqi Arab nationalists.

The smaller portion, but bnetter armed and organized, are the Shi'ite Iraqis who take their religious leadership from Iran. Al Sadr needs to be another tragic case of terminal kinetic energy poisoning.

[TheCrusader]

"The checkpoints weren't harming Mookie. If anything they were increasing popular support for him by having US troops hassle and inconvenience lots of Shi'ites in Baghdad."

Have you seen the news on this strategic disaster? al Sadre's shiite-heads are dancing in the streets, proclaiming victory over running the Americans out of town, which is exactly what they did.

Al Sadre is a terrorist scum whom the U.S. government greatly fears, because he wields so much political power over a huge mass of shia'. In another time, in another war, this fat pig and his militia, would have been taken out years ago. But this is a new day and we live in "enlightented", politically correct times, even to the point of planning wars like she-men.