Posted on 08/01/2003 4:55:55 PM PDT by Shermy
BAGHDAD (AFP) - Saboteurs blew up a key oil pipeline in northern Iraq, clashes left four Iraqis dead and three US soldiers lightly wounded and yet another tape purporting to be from Saddam Hussein popped up on Arab television
Polish troops joining the US-led coalition's rebuilding efforts also received a baptism of fire when five mortar bombs were launched at their base in Hilla, south of Baghdad, with the violence coming three months to the day since US President George W. Bush s - web sites) declared the war effectively over.
The pipeline fire in the northern refinery hub of Baiji, still seen raging Friday, was certain to throw off US plans to further resuscitate Iraq's massive but crippled energy sector.
Only a day earlier, US officials hailed the expected reopening early this month of the country's main oil pipeline from the petroleum centre of Kirkuk to the Turkish Mediterranean terminal of Ceyhan, wrecked in a previous sabotage attack.
Oil exports are supposed to provide the financial muscle needed to foot the massive bill for Iraqi reconstruction expected to run to tens of billions of dollars per year.
Suspected former regime loyalists in the Fallujah area again clashed with US troops amid an escalation of anti-US violence in the region west of Baghdad seen as a haven of Saddam supporters.
Four Iraqi men were killed when they assaulted a US military convoy with rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), Sergeant Keith O'Donnell told AFP at a US base in Ramadi, near Fallujah where US troops come under daily attack.
"It was one of eight attacks in the last 24 hours west of Baghdad, the most extensive attacks in a while," O'Donnell said.
In a separate incident, three soldiers were lightly wounded when their vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device near a US base, O'Donnell said.
As the assaults on US forces continued unabated, so did the hunt for Iraq's most-wanted man.
Finding Saddam is clearly a top priority for the United States, which has handed out retouched photographs showing the ousted strongman without a moustache, with a beard and in other possible guises.
The photos were the latest indication of an increasingly concentrated search for Saddam, who US intelligence sources assume has tried to change his appearance to escape capture after four months on the run.
The elusive former president has purportedly delivered a new message to the Iraqi people, with a voice said to be his popping up on Qatar's Al-Jazeera satellite TV Friday.
In the audiotape supposedly recorded July 27, the speaker called on Iraqis to safeguard the properties of the state and the ousted Baath party until "things return to normal", and spoke of the need to "salvage" Iraqis who have strayed from the right path.
While declaring that only resistance would end the US occupation of Iraq, the speaker said Iraqis should treat any foreign troops that "surrender" in accordance with international law and the tenets of Islam.
The message, the sixth since his regime collapsed April 9, comes amid confirmation that two of his daughters, Raghad and Rana, and their nine children arrived in Amman from Syria and were being given Jordanian protection.
And the young incendiary cleric, Moqtada Sadr, launched another barb against the Americans as he seeks the wrest the mantle of leadership of the country's majority Shiite population.
In his Friday sermon, Sadr took the US troops to task over heavy-handed tactics in their security sweeps.
Speaking to a gathering of around 100,000 faithful, Sadr asked: "Must we accept that Iraqis are humiliated and dragged helplessly along the ground by these soldiers? We demand that they be judged according to the sharia (Islamic law)."
Until this is explained to the Iraqi people, and everyone, Bush will lose out to a conspiracy theory that he's behind it.
I'm not one who can be convinced there are enough GOOD humans in that corrupt society who could take over and survive. They are all killers, thieves, sodomites, racist, adulteress swines.
We don't have enough money, will, patients or troops to out last these poisoned religious loons.
Either let them have what they earned and wished for or get them to stand up and FIGHT with us.
Americans are killed everyday and they stand around and watch. They make no attempt at apprehension of these individuals. Is there a HERO amongst them swines.
IF SO, STAND AND BE COUNTED
To agree with the opposite would be to believe an illusion. An illusion that these folks are all going to meet their maker and he'll reward them with virgins and kill all the rest of us who believe in the other GOD.
The battle of Armageddon is for real and on the right battle field, in the right place on this earth, with the right people and it will be final for them.
Yes, Religion with out faith is a loser. Some folks either have no idea where they will go when they die or they add other selections to the only two that are available. There are no options. It's an up or down vote. Can't hide no more.
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