Free Republic

Reds under the ruinsBy Paul Belden BAGHDAD - He still calls himself Abu Ayad, but that's only because old habits die hard. "It's my secret name," he explains with a smile, wiping his professorial spectacles against the sleeve of his neat, nerdy, button-down yellow shirt. This secret-named, hardened political fighter is, it turns out, a shy man at heart. Shy - but not embarrassed. The name and the reason behind it, may seem to be holdovers of a different era, but they were once the dead-serious necessities of political activism in this land where even the suspicion of such an...

<p>FALLUJAH, Iraq — Attackers lobbed two grenades over a wall and into a compound of U.S. troops in Fallujah (search) on Thursday, wounding seven soldiers just hours after they had opened fire on anti-American protesters, a U.S. intelligence officer reported.</p>

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration has chosen L. Paul Bremer, a former head of the State Department's counterterrorism office, to become civilian administrator in Iraq and oversee the country's transition to democratic rule. Bremer's selection, disclosed Wednesday by a senior U.S. official, will put him in charge of a transition team that includes retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay Garner and Zalmay Khalilzad, the special White House envoy in the Persian Gulf region. Bremer left the State Department, where he was an assistant to former secretaries William P. Rogers and Henry Kissinger, to join Kissinger Associates, a consulting firm...

NEW DELHI APRIL 29. NDTV brings you a world exclusive from Baghdad. Did the people of Iraq welcome the American troops or not? Does the ordinary Iraqi want the Americans to stay or go back now that Saddam Hussein is dethroned? If Saddam Hussein is found do the people of Iraq want to see him punished or not? Is this war all about oil or not? With the embedded Western media being widely accused of bias there appear to be no reliable answers to many of these questions. In order to cut through the cacophony of opinions and views, NDTV...

QUM, Iran, April 26 — A black-turbaned Iraqi cleric, his belongings packed in a small blue bag sitting at his feet, led about 50 clerics in prayer. Kneeling on red Persian rugs, the men, many of whom who had spent the last two decades in Iran, gathered to catch the train that would take them to Iraq. "I am going first to Kazemein for a pilgrimage and then will go to Baghdad to find a home for my family," said Muhammad Hassani, a 52-year-old mid-ranking cleric, who had lived in Iran since 1980. Mr. Hassani, the father of 10, had...

Submitted by: 15th MEU Story Identification Number: 200342534427 Story by Cpl. Anthony R. Blanco AN NASIRIYAH, Iraq(April 25, 2003) -- Marines and Sailors of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable) are working together with local law enforcements to restore law and order in an area where it has been absent since the start of the war. Some of the first steps in re-establishing the legal system is to clean up the courthouse, institute a police force and start a penal system to help Iraqi's transition from a United States military presence to a local one. To kick things...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 25 — A religious edict issued in Iran and distributed to Shiite mullahs in Iraq calls on them "to seize the first possible opportunity to fill the power vacuum in the administration of Iraqi cities." The edict, or fatwa, issued on April 8 by Kadhem al-Husseini al-Haeri, an Iraqi-born cleric based in the Iranian holy city of Qum, suggests that Shiite clerics in Iraq are receiving significant direction from Iran as they try to assert the power of Iraq's long-oppressed religious majority. It is not yet clear how much popular support Mr. Haeri and other clerics emerging...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. forces on Sunday arrested an Iraqi exile who had proclaimed himself Baghdad's mayor, saying he was exerting authority he didn't have. Mohammed Mohsen al-Zubaidi was arrested at 5 p.m. in downtown Baghdad "for his inability to support the coalition military authority and for exercising authority which was not his," said U.S. military spokesman Capt. David Connolly, speaking in Baghdad. Soldiers arrested seven others found with al-Zubaidi, Connolly said without identifying them. Al-Zubaidi, who has cast himself as a volunteer to help Iraq (news - web sites) get back on its feet, never discouraged widespread rumors that...

Suspects in USS Cole Attack Escape Prison Friday April 11, 2003 12:20 PM SAN`A, Yemen (AP) - Yemeni authorities were hunting for 10 of the main suspects in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole after they escaped from prison Friday, officials said. The fugitives, including chief suspect Jamal al-Badawi, had been jailed in the port city of Aden since shortly after the destroyer was bombed, killing 17 American sailors. Officials at Aden's governor's office would not say how the men escaped early Friday. But they quoted intelligence sources as saying security forces were out in force in a major...

<p>Carolyn McIntyre can hardly wait to go back to Iraq.</p> <p>The Middle East director for San Francisco adventure travel company Geographic Expeditions last saw Baghdad in the late 1970s, just as Saddam Hussein was taking over and long before the first Gulf War and trade sanctions put Iraq off-limits for U.S. companies.</p>

ISTANBUL, Turkey - Turkey's foreign ministry summoned the U.S. ambassador Friday to explain a reported reference by the U.S. official in charge of rebuilding Iraq to a northern Iraqi city as Kurdish. Turkish media reported that retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner had characterized Kirkuk as a "Kurdish city" during talks in northern Iraq earlier this week. Ambassador Robert Pearson told reporters he discussed the issue with officials at the foreign ministry Friday. Pearson said he did not know if Garner had made such a statement, but reiterated U.S. assurances that the city, that sits in one of the world's richest...

The United States will next week appoint a former head of Shell Oil to run Iraq's oil industry, it was reported today. "The US Government is setting up Iraq's oil industry to run much like an American corporation, with a chief executive and management team vetted by US officials who would answer to a multinational board of advisers," the Wall Street Journal Europe reported.The advisory board would be chaired by Philip J Carroll, a former chief executive of Shell Oil, the US unit of the Dutch-British oil giant Royal Dutch/Shell, the newspaper reported.Mr Carroll would work closely with an Iraqi...

WASHINGTON, April 23, 2003 – Coalition forces are nearing the end of combat operations, but the campaign will continue, the chief of coalition land forces said during an interview from Baghdad. In a videoconferenced briefing with Pentagon reporters, Army Lt. Gen. David McKiernan said the ground campaign against the regime of Saddam Hussein is making a "blurred transition" from combat operations to post-hostilities operations. He listed the three types of resistance coalition forces still face: regime pockets , paramilitary formations – including foreign fighters -- and terrorist attacks. He said the whole coalition military plan was characterized by the speed...

Baghdad - Once every hour the new radio station set up by the United States forces has been telling its listeners over recent days that they "have started a new life in a liberated Iraq thanks to the coalition troops". But at the home of Sahar, a Baghdad teacher, nothing has changed. In the corner of her small living room a photograph of President Saddam Hussein holding a rifle still stands in its accustomed place of honour. "We want our Saddam back," she says with anger in her voice. In this neighbourhood of Sunni families living along the narrow alleyways...

Over 70% of Iraq's population are Shiite Muslims. The fanatic Shiite movement was founded in Muslim terrorist Iran, where Shiite spiritual leaders reside to this day. Indeed, Iraq's Shiite ayatollahs and imams are still living in Iran, although they are now promising to return to Iraq. Last week, tens of thousands of Iraqi Shiites held mass demonstrations in Baghdad, Basrah and other Iraqi cities, demanding the immediate withdrawal of the "infidel" American occupation forces from the "Muslim soil of Iraq." Brutally suppressed for decades by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, Iraq's Shiite majority is now free to demand what they have...

<p>BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 22 (UPI) -- The Kadhimain Mosque is crowded with devout Shiite Muslims at noon prayer. Sayed Hussein Al-Hayderi greets his non-Muslim visitors with soft handshakes and a welcome to the mosque the Shiites consider the most holy in Baghdad. Speaking softly through a translator, the leader of this mosque –- who is accepted by Muslims as a direct descendant of the Prophet Mohammed –- calls on the American and British forces to work hard to rebuild Iraq -– and then to leave.</p>

WASHINGTON — There's nothing scarier than conservatives in transports of social and political engineering. The Republicans strain to appear diffident in Iraq, not wanting to be cast as overbearing imperialists. (Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, the new American viceroy, affects a Dockers look while meeting Arabs in jackets and ties.)The Bushies pretend that we don't want an all-access pass to Iraqi bases (we do); that we are not interested in influencing the disposition of Iraqi oil (we are); that we will stay out of Iraqi politics, even if they go fundamentalist (we won't); and that we will leave Iraq soon (we...

Saudi TV to Launch Telethon for Iraqis on Saturday P.K. Abdul Ghafour, Arab News Staff JEDDAH, 23 April 2003 — Saudi Television will launch a fund-raising campaign on Saturday to collect money for the Iraqi people, it was announced yesterday. The telethon was ordered by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd to alleviate the suffering of the Iraqi people hit by the US-led war. In an appeal carried by the Saudi Press Agency, King Fahd urged Saudis and expatriates to cooperate with the campaign to make it a success. The fund will be used to meet the...

<p>April 23, 2003 -- BAGHDAD - They're tough, seasoned and lethal when they need to be - and they're working secretly in Baghdad, masking their identity by wearing U.S. Army uniforms and traveling in U.S. military vehicles.</p> <p>Fortunately, they're on our side. They're members of Britain's elite, highly secretive SAS, the special operations group that inspired the Army's counter-terrorist Delta Force.</p>

The top American civilian administrator for Iraq met today in northern Iraq with the two main Kurdish leaders and called for a new Iraqi government to be a "mosaic," fairly representing all Iraqis. The official, Jay Garner, a retired Army lieutenant general, received a notably warmer greeting in the north than he had the day before in Baghdad, with cheers, hugs and a shower of flower petals reflecting his efforts in the early 1990's to help create the thriving Kurdish autonomous area of northeastern Iraq. "The new government of Iraq will have one leader, one army, one government," General Garner...