Saturday, May 24, 2003
Shiites Reportedly Hunting Baathists
From: spliffslips
--------------------
Shiites Reportedly Hunting Baathists
--------------------
By HAMZA HENDAWI
Associated Press Writer
May 24, 2003, 3:24 PM EDT
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The Shiite Muslim cleric sat cross-legged on the floor. With chilling calm, he explained the criteria -- how to decide which of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party officials are permitted to live, and which of them will die.
Only officials attempting to return to positions they held under Saddam should be killed -- and only after a fair warning, said Sheik Ali al-Gharawi, one of several community leaders in a poverty-ridden Baghdad district known as al-Thawra, where an estimated 2 million Shiites live.
"People come to me and say they want to kill such and such Baathist. I tell them to threaten them first," al-Gharawi said, his voice flat. "If they don't heed the threat, then they must live with the consequences."
Encouraged by the security vacuum in the wake of Saddam's overthrow last month, some Iraqis -- particularly members of the long-oppressed Shiite majority -- are reported by residents of al-Thawra to be hunting down and killing former Baath officials.
In al-Thawra, which was officially called Saddam City until last month but renamed al-Sadr City in honor of a top Shiite cleric killed by the government in 1999, residents say between five and 10 Baathists have been killed so far.
"Tribal and clan leaders are trying to stop them," said Sha'a Jassim, a 42-year-old resident of al-Thawra. "It's not a trend. There are just a few isolated cases."
Information Radio, the voice of the U.S.-led coalition heard in Baghdad, also has repeatedly exhorted Iraqis not to take the law into their own hands. But the steady spread of menacing graffiti -- and, in one case, the public posting of "wanted" lists in a Baghdad neighborhood -- suggests more to come.
"We demand punishment for those who planted fear in the heart of the innocent," says a typed sign posted outside the al-Hikmah mosque.
"Baathists: There is nowhere to escape," says graffiti on a main thoroughfare.
"The cursed Saddam and his cowardly Baathist scum have fallen," declares another.
The Baath monopolized political power in Iraq from 1968 until Saddam's ouster. Under its rule, party membership became a prerequisite for advancement in government jobs, the armed forces, even academia.
Party activists doubled as informants, spying on fellow Iraqis and reporting suspicious activity or hints of dissent. Such reports were used by Saddam's security agencies as a basis for arrest, imprisoning and state-sponsored killing.
That angered a generation of Shiites, who make up 60 percent of Iraq's estimated 24 million people but were politically sidelined and persecuted under Saddam, a member of Iraq's Sunni minority.
On Saturday, several elderly Shiite men lounged together on cushions near a mosque and offered these conclusions: The killings do not appear to be the work of a systematic political movement. Instead, they are motivated by rage -- about the loss of a friend or family member at the hands of Saddam's thugs.
The men discussed the issue freely with a visiting reporter, but all except one refused to give their names.
In veiled terms, they tacitly condoned the killings.
"The people who are being killed, these are people who have been pinpointed as responsible for an execution or a disappearance," said an elderly man in a traditional Arab robe and head cover, raising his voice in emphasis.
The best-known Baathist killed since Saddam's ouster was Dawood al-Qais, a singer who became famous with songs praising Saddam that were aired repeatedly on state television. He was shot dead at point-blank range outside his Baghdad home earlier this month.
Al-Gharawi justifies the killing of Baathists with a verse from the Quran that encourages Muslims to punish killers. Those who take it upon themselves to murder Baathists, he explained, do so in secrecy to avoid vendettas.
His conditional endorsement of such killings runs counter to the refusal by Sheik Ali al-Sistani -- a Shiite religious leader known for his moderate views -- to condone them. A statement issued by al-Sistani's office in Najaf quotes him as saying that retaliation should be left to Islamic courts.
Saddam's army killed tens of thousands of Shiites when they rose up against his rule after the 1991 Gulf War. Politically sidelined since the birth of modern Iraq some 80 years ago, Shiites insist they now want representation proportionate to their numbers.
American occupying forces have made clear that they, too, want hard-core Baathists excluded from Iraq's future.
Gen. Tommy Franks, the top commander in the U.S.-led war on Iraq, dissolved the Baath Party this month, and an American ban on senior Baathists taking government jobs followed.
But since most bureaucrats were required to pledge allegiance to the party to be employed, the United States wants to make sure it does not wipe out the entire civil service.
On Saturday, Information Radio encouraged Iraqis who it said had been forced to join the party to return to work.
"There is no need to be frightened or confused by the coalition," it said. "Your skills are vital to the reconstruction of Iraq."
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-killing-baathists,0,4340840.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
--------------------
Shiites Reportedly Hunting Baathists
--------------------
By HAMZA HENDAWI
Associated Press Writer
May 24, 2003, 3:24 PM EDT
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The Shiite Muslim cleric sat cross-legged on the floor. With chilling calm, he explained the criteria -- how to decide which of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party officials are permitted to live, and which of them will die.
Only officials attempting to return to positions they held under Saddam should be killed -- and only after a fair warning, said Sheik Ali al-Gharawi, one of several community leaders in a poverty-ridden Baghdad district known as al-Thawra, where an estimated 2 million Shiites live.
"People come to me and say they want to kill such and such Baathist. I tell them to threaten them first," al-Gharawi said, his voice flat. "If they don't heed the threat, then they must live with the consequences."
Encouraged by the security vacuum in the wake of Saddam's overthrow last month, some Iraqis -- particularly members of the long-oppressed Shiite majority -- are reported by residents of al-Thawra to be hunting down and killing former Baath officials.
In al-Thawra, which was officially called Saddam City until last month but renamed al-Sadr City in honor of a top Shiite cleric killed by the government in 1999, residents say between five and 10 Baathists have been killed so far.
"Tribal and clan leaders are trying to stop them," said Sha'a Jassim, a 42-year-old resident of al-Thawra. "It's not a trend. There are just a few isolated cases."
Information Radio, the voice of the U.S.-led coalition heard in Baghdad, also has repeatedly exhorted Iraqis not to take the law into their own hands. But the steady spread of menacing graffiti -- and, in one case, the public posting of "wanted" lists in a Baghdad neighborhood -- suggests more to come.
"We demand punishment for those who planted fear in the heart of the innocent," says a typed sign posted outside the al-Hikmah mosque.
"Baathists: There is nowhere to escape," says graffiti on a main thoroughfare.
"The cursed Saddam and his cowardly Baathist scum have fallen," declares another.
The Baath monopolized political power in Iraq from 1968 until Saddam's ouster. Under its rule, party membership became a prerequisite for advancement in government jobs, the armed forces, even academia.
Party activists doubled as informants, spying on fellow Iraqis and reporting suspicious activity or hints of dissent. Such reports were used by Saddam's security agencies as a basis for arrest, imprisoning and state-sponsored killing.
That angered a generation of Shiites, who make up 60 percent of Iraq's estimated 24 million people but were politically sidelined and persecuted under Saddam, a member of Iraq's Sunni minority.
On Saturday, several elderly Shiite men lounged together on cushions near a mosque and offered these conclusions: The killings do not appear to be the work of a systematic political movement. Instead, they are motivated by rage -- about the loss of a friend or family member at the hands of Saddam's thugs.
The men discussed the issue freely with a visiting reporter, but all except one refused to give their names.
In veiled terms, they tacitly condoned the killings.
"The people who are being killed, these are people who have been pinpointed as responsible for an execution or a disappearance," said an elderly man in a traditional Arab robe and head cover, raising his voice in emphasis.
The best-known Baathist killed since Saddam's ouster was Dawood al-Qais, a singer who became famous with songs praising Saddam that were aired repeatedly on state television. He was shot dead at point-blank range outside his Baghdad home earlier this month.
Al-Gharawi justifies the killing of Baathists with a verse from the Quran that encourages Muslims to punish killers. Those who take it upon themselves to murder Baathists, he explained, do so in secrecy to avoid vendettas.
His conditional endorsement of such killings runs counter to the refusal by Sheik Ali al-Sistani -- a Shiite religious leader known for his moderate views -- to condone them. A statement issued by al-Sistani's office in Najaf quotes him as saying that retaliation should be left to Islamic courts.
Saddam's army killed tens of thousands of Shiites when they rose up against his rule after the 1991 Gulf War. Politically sidelined since the birth of modern Iraq some 80 years ago, Shiites insist they now want representation proportionate to their numbers.
American occupying forces have made clear that they, too, want hard-core Baathists excluded from Iraq's future.
Gen. Tommy Franks, the top commander in the U.S.-led war on Iraq, dissolved the Baath Party this month, and an American ban on senior Baathists taking government jobs followed.
But since most bureaucrats were required to pledge allegiance to the party to be employed, the United States wants to make sure it does not wipe out the entire civil service.
On Saturday, Information Radio encouraged Iraqis who it said had been forced to join the party to return to work.
"There is no need to be frightened or confused by the coalition," it said. "Your skills are vital to the reconstruction of Iraq."
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-killing-baathists,0,4340840.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
Fresh Troops Taking Control of Baghdad
From: spliffslips
--------------------
Fresh Troops Taking Control of Baghdad
--------------------
By CHRIS TOMLINSON
Associated Press Writer
May 24, 2003, 3:58 PM EDT
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Staff Sgt. Bryce Ivings spent Saturday giving the grand tour of his adopted neighborhood: Here were the Iraqi civilians he worked with so closely, here were the generators that power the place, here was the water main still so desperately in need of repair.
Fresh troops had arrived, and it was time to hand over control -- and to introduce the man replacing him. The soldiers who won the war were leaving, and the ones charged with maintaining the fragile peace were coming in.
Ivings' unit -- A Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment -- arrived April 7 and captured two presidential palaces in the Tashri Quarter, the heart of Baghdad where the ruling elite once lived. When they moved into a former Baath Party building, the 50 houses around it were abandoned and looted.
Since then, the neighborhood has come back to life.
Most of the civil servants and retirees who lived around A Company's command post have moved home and started rebuilding their lives. And the infantrymen have become part of the community, providing security, restoring electricity and rehabilitating schools.
Now that Ivings and his company are scheduled to leave in coming days, he is helping the Iraqis get to know the new soldier responsible for the neighborhood -- Staff Sgt. Andrew Bishop of Piedmont, W.Va.
The first resident Bishop meets is Ali Jamal, head of the neighborhood's watch group. Ivings explains how the Army pays Jamal $3 a day to lead an unarmed group of men who each get $2 a day to make repairs and determine who belongs in the neighborhood.
"If they need wire for the neighborhood -- to connect houses to the generators -- we give them a pass to go to the warehouse," Ivings tells Bishop.
The soldiers control an agricultural warehouse where building materials were stored.
Then Ivings introduces Ali Radhi, a civil engineer who has helped the soldiers connect diesel generators from bombed-out government buildings to neighborhood houses. He operates a generator in his front yard that powers a dozen homes through wires strung across streets and over tree limbs.
The men immediately discuss the lack of water caused by a water main break in a private zoo owned by former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's son, Odai.
As the men talk, teenagers in white-and-navy school uniforms walk by, one of them a girl escorted to school by her father. Iraqis drive up to the checkpoint at the main intersection and show their passes to soldiers, who wave them through.
Ivings, of Sarasota, Fla., takes Bishop and the new soldiers from C Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry through the neighborhood. He shows them where his men found Odai Hussein's private gun collection, where more than 6,000 pistols were discovered and where Saddam kept a safe house.
The soldiers, who are still required to wear full combat gear and carry their weapons, inspect the generators, electrical cables and garden hoses that carry water from another water main into homes.
At the zoo, almost a third of the ground is now covered with water, and the water main leak is much worse. While the soldiers inspect the expanding pond, the workers return with more people. Among them is an engineer named Mohammed Sawan, who says he has a contract with UNICEF to repair water line breaks.
"We need a pass to enter this area so we can make the repairs," Sawan tells Ivings, who assures him that will not be a problem. "We will pay these workers now. My company will take over responsibility now and make sure the water gets repaired."
Ivings tells Bishop, "That's a relief. That's one less thing you have to worry about."
Bishop says his experience in peacekeeping missions in Bosnia and Kosovo will help him in this job.
"I know how to deal with the people, know when they have legitimate complaints and when they don't," Bishop says. "As long as we can do some good, I like it."
At first, Radhi says, residents were angry at the soldiers because they did not allow people to return to their homes immediately after the war ended. But, he says, everyone's lives have improved since then.
"Most of them are helpful," Radhi says of the soldiers. "They are good people."
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-running-the-neighborhood,0,765003.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
--------------------
Fresh Troops Taking Control of Baghdad
--------------------
By CHRIS TOMLINSON
Associated Press Writer
May 24, 2003, 3:58 PM EDT
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Staff Sgt. Bryce Ivings spent Saturday giving the grand tour of his adopted neighborhood: Here were the Iraqi civilians he worked with so closely, here were the generators that power the place, here was the water main still so desperately in need of repair.
Fresh troops had arrived, and it was time to hand over control -- and to introduce the man replacing him. The soldiers who won the war were leaving, and the ones charged with maintaining the fragile peace were coming in.
Ivings' unit -- A Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment -- arrived April 7 and captured two presidential palaces in the Tashri Quarter, the heart of Baghdad where the ruling elite once lived. When they moved into a former Baath Party building, the 50 houses around it were abandoned and looted.
Since then, the neighborhood has come back to life.
Most of the civil servants and retirees who lived around A Company's command post have moved home and started rebuilding their lives. And the infantrymen have become part of the community, providing security, restoring electricity and rehabilitating schools.
Now that Ivings and his company are scheduled to leave in coming days, he is helping the Iraqis get to know the new soldier responsible for the neighborhood -- Staff Sgt. Andrew Bishop of Piedmont, W.Va.
The first resident Bishop meets is Ali Jamal, head of the neighborhood's watch group. Ivings explains how the Army pays Jamal $3 a day to lead an unarmed group of men who each get $2 a day to make repairs and determine who belongs in the neighborhood.
"If they need wire for the neighborhood -- to connect houses to the generators -- we give them a pass to go to the warehouse," Ivings tells Bishop.
The soldiers control an agricultural warehouse where building materials were stored.
Then Ivings introduces Ali Radhi, a civil engineer who has helped the soldiers connect diesel generators from bombed-out government buildings to neighborhood houses. He operates a generator in his front yard that powers a dozen homes through wires strung across streets and over tree limbs.
The men immediately discuss the lack of water caused by a water main break in a private zoo owned by former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's son, Odai.
As the men talk, teenagers in white-and-navy school uniforms walk by, one of them a girl escorted to school by her father. Iraqis drive up to the checkpoint at the main intersection and show their passes to soldiers, who wave them through.
Ivings, of Sarasota, Fla., takes Bishop and the new soldiers from C Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry through the neighborhood. He shows them where his men found Odai Hussein's private gun collection, where more than 6,000 pistols were discovered and where Saddam kept a safe house.
The soldiers, who are still required to wear full combat gear and carry their weapons, inspect the generators, electrical cables and garden hoses that carry water from another water main into homes.
At the zoo, almost a third of the ground is now covered with water, and the water main leak is much worse. While the soldiers inspect the expanding pond, the workers return with more people. Among them is an engineer named Mohammed Sawan, who says he has a contract with UNICEF to repair water line breaks.
"We need a pass to enter this area so we can make the repairs," Sawan tells Ivings, who assures him that will not be a problem. "We will pay these workers now. My company will take over responsibility now and make sure the water gets repaired."
Ivings tells Bishop, "That's a relief. That's one less thing you have to worry about."
Bishop says his experience in peacekeeping missions in Bosnia and Kosovo will help him in this job.
"I know how to deal with the people, know when they have legitimate complaints and when they don't," Bishop says. "As long as we can do some good, I like it."
At first, Radhi says, residents were angry at the soldiers because they did not allow people to return to their homes immediately after the war ended. But, he says, everyone's lives have improved since then.
"Most of them are helpful," Radhi says of the soldiers. "They are good people."
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-running-the-neighborhood,0,765003.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
Fresh Troops Taking Control of Baghdad
From: spliffslips
--------------------
Fresh Troops Taking Control of Baghdad
--------------------
By CHRIS TOMLINSON
Associated Press Writer
May 24, 2003, 3:58 PM EDT
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Staff Sgt. Bryce Ivings spent Saturday giving the grand tour of his adopted neighborhood: Here were the Iraqi civilians he worked with so closely, here were the generators that power the place, here was the water main still so desperately in need of repair.
Fresh troops had arrived, and it was time to hand over control -- and to introduce the man replacing him. The soldiers who won the war were leaving, and the ones charged with maintaining the fragile peace were coming in.
Ivings' unit -- A Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment -- arrived April 7 and captured two presidential palaces in the Tashri Quarter, the heart of Baghdad where the ruling elite once lived. When they moved into a former Baath Party building, the 50 houses around it were abandoned and looted.
Since then, the neighborhood has come back to life.
Most of the civil servants and retirees who lived around A Company's command post have moved home and started rebuilding their lives. And the infantrymen have become part of the community, providing security, restoring electricity and rehabilitating schools.
Now that Ivings and his company are scheduled to leave in coming days, he is helping the Iraqis get to know the new soldier responsible for the neighborhood -- Staff Sgt. Andrew Bishop of Piedmont, W.Va.
The first resident Bishop meets is Ali Jamal, head of the neighborhood's watch group. Ivings explains how the Army pays Jamal $3 a day to lead an unarmed group of men who each get $2 a day to make repairs and determine who belongs in the neighborhood.
"If they need wire for the neighborhood -- to connect houses to the generators -- we give them a pass to go to the warehouse," Ivings tells Bishop.
The soldiers control an agricultural warehouse where building materials were stored.
Then Ivings introduces Ali Radhi, a civil engineer who has helped the soldiers connect diesel generators from bombed-out government buildings to neighborhood houses. He operates a generator in his front yard that powers a dozen homes through wires strung across streets and over tree limbs.
The men immediately discuss the lack of water caused by a water main break in a private zoo owned by former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's son, Odai.
As the men talk, teenagers in white-and-navy school uniforms walk by, one of them a girl escorted to school by her father. Iraqis drive up to the checkpoint at the main intersection and show their passes to soldiers, who wave them through.
Ivings, of Sarasota, Fla., takes Bishop and the new soldiers from C Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry through the neighborhood. He shows them where his men found Odai Hussein's private gun collection, where more than 6,000 pistols were discovered and where Saddam kept a safe house.
The soldiers, who are still required to wear full combat gear and carry their weapons, inspect the generators, electrical cables and garden hoses that carry water from another water main into homes.
At the zoo, almost a third of the ground is now covered with water, and the water main leak is much worse. While the soldiers inspect the expanding pond, the workers return with more people. Among them is an engineer named Mohammed Sawan, who says he has a contract with UNICEF to repair water line breaks.
"We need a pass to enter this area so we can make the repairs," Sawan tells Ivings, who assures him that will not be a problem. "We will pay these workers now. My company will take over responsibility now and make sure the water gets repaired."
Ivings tells Bishop, "That's a relief. That's one less thing you have to worry about."
Bishop says his experience in peacekeeping missions in Bosnia and Kosovo will help him in this job.
"I know how to deal with the people, know when they have legitimate complaints and when they don't," Bishop says. "As long as we can do some good, I like it."
At first, Radhi says, residents were angry at the soldiers because they did not allow people to return to their homes immediately after the war ended. But, he says, everyone's lives have improved since then.
"Most of them are helpful," Radhi says of the soldiers. "They are good people."
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-running-the-neighborhood,0,765003.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
--------------------
Fresh Troops Taking Control of Baghdad
--------------------
By CHRIS TOMLINSON
Associated Press Writer
May 24, 2003, 3:58 PM EDT
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Staff Sgt. Bryce Ivings spent Saturday giving the grand tour of his adopted neighborhood: Here were the Iraqi civilians he worked with so closely, here were the generators that power the place, here was the water main still so desperately in need of repair.
Fresh troops had arrived, and it was time to hand over control -- and to introduce the man replacing him. The soldiers who won the war were leaving, and the ones charged with maintaining the fragile peace were coming in.
Ivings' unit -- A Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment -- arrived April 7 and captured two presidential palaces in the Tashri Quarter, the heart of Baghdad where the ruling elite once lived. When they moved into a former Baath Party building, the 50 houses around it were abandoned and looted.
Since then, the neighborhood has come back to life.
Most of the civil servants and retirees who lived around A Company's command post have moved home and started rebuilding their lives. And the infantrymen have become part of the community, providing security, restoring electricity and rehabilitating schools.
Now that Ivings and his company are scheduled to leave in coming days, he is helping the Iraqis get to know the new soldier responsible for the neighborhood -- Staff Sgt. Andrew Bishop of Piedmont, W.Va.
The first resident Bishop meets is Ali Jamal, head of the neighborhood's watch group. Ivings explains how the Army pays Jamal $3 a day to lead an unarmed group of men who each get $2 a day to make repairs and determine who belongs in the neighborhood.
"If they need wire for the neighborhood -- to connect houses to the generators -- we give them a pass to go to the warehouse," Ivings tells Bishop.
The soldiers control an agricultural warehouse where building materials were stored.
Then Ivings introduces Ali Radhi, a civil engineer who has helped the soldiers connect diesel generators from bombed-out government buildings to neighborhood houses. He operates a generator in his front yard that powers a dozen homes through wires strung across streets and over tree limbs.
The men immediately discuss the lack of water caused by a water main break in a private zoo owned by former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's son, Odai.
As the men talk, teenagers in white-and-navy school uniforms walk by, one of them a girl escorted to school by her father. Iraqis drive up to the checkpoint at the main intersection and show their passes to soldiers, who wave them through.
Ivings, of Sarasota, Fla., takes Bishop and the new soldiers from C Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry through the neighborhood. He shows them where his men found Odai Hussein's private gun collection, where more than 6,000 pistols were discovered and where Saddam kept a safe house.
The soldiers, who are still required to wear full combat gear and carry their weapons, inspect the generators, electrical cables and garden hoses that carry water from another water main into homes.
At the zoo, almost a third of the ground is now covered with water, and the water main leak is much worse. While the soldiers inspect the expanding pond, the workers return with more people. Among them is an engineer named Mohammed Sawan, who says he has a contract with UNICEF to repair water line breaks.
"We need a pass to enter this area so we can make the repairs," Sawan tells Ivings, who assures him that will not be a problem. "We will pay these workers now. My company will take over responsibility now and make sure the water gets repaired."
Ivings tells Bishop, "That's a relief. That's one less thing you have to worry about."
Bishop says his experience in peacekeeping missions in Bosnia and Kosovo will help him in this job.
"I know how to deal with the people, know when they have legitimate complaints and when they don't," Bishop says. "As long as we can do some good, I like it."
At first, Radhi says, residents were angry at the soldiers because they did not allow people to return to their homes immediately after the war ended. But, he says, everyone's lives have improved since then.
"Most of them are helpful," Radhi says of the soldiers. "They are good people."
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-running-the-neighborhood,0,765003.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
Baghdad Lions to Be Released in S. Africa
From: spliffslips
--------------------
Baghdad Lions to Be Released in S. Africa
--------------------
By SAHM VENTER
May 24, 2003, 5:33 PM EDT
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Six lion cubs born in the cramped zoo owned by Saddam Hussein's son Odai will find freedom in the African bush.
The nonprofit SanWild Wildlife Sanctuary has secured the release of the six cubs, their mother and two other lions.
"I am just sorry we could not get all the animals out," Louise Joubert, founder of the group based in the northern Limpopo Province, told The Associated Press.
American troops rescued the lions in April, along with two cheetahs and a blind bear from a private zoo set up by Odai in one of Baghdad's presidential palaces, and moved them to the Baghdad municipal zoo. There was so little food to feed the lions that they had to snack on military rations U.S. soldiers tossed inside their cages. Most other animals were set loose by the troops or looters.
The lions are scheduled to arrive in South Africa in July and will be taken to SanWild, about 280 miles north of Johannesburg.
The lioness and her six cubs will be in isolation for 10 months to a year before being taken as a group to the Ngome Community Reserve in the KwaZulu-Natal province, Joubert said.
The other two lions will remain at SanWild, where they will be placed with a brother and sister pair in the hope that they would be incorporated into the group, she said.
"On the trauma side there is not much that one can do. They will be in nature which will enable them to be lions again. There is nothing like nature to heal," Joubert said. "Lions never ever lose their natural instincts to hunt. They just have to be allowed to get used to hunting again."
The bear is expected to be sent to Greece, where it will be operated on by a Johannesburg veterinarian who has volunteered to help it see again free of charge, Joubert said.
Another South African veterinarian will travel to Baghdad with a SanWild employee to accompany the lions back to South Africa, she said.
The South Africans have joined forces with Care for the Wild International to raise funds to improve the conditions for the remaining animals at Baghdad Zoo, Joubert said.
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-south-africa-iraq-lions,0,7982077.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
--------------------
Baghdad Lions to Be Released in S. Africa
--------------------
By SAHM VENTER
May 24, 2003, 5:33 PM EDT
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Six lion cubs born in the cramped zoo owned by Saddam Hussein's son Odai will find freedom in the African bush.
The nonprofit SanWild Wildlife Sanctuary has secured the release of the six cubs, their mother and two other lions.
"I am just sorry we could not get all the animals out," Louise Joubert, founder of the group based in the northern Limpopo Province, told The Associated Press.
American troops rescued the lions in April, along with two cheetahs and a blind bear from a private zoo set up by Odai in one of Baghdad's presidential palaces, and moved them to the Baghdad municipal zoo. There was so little food to feed the lions that they had to snack on military rations U.S. soldiers tossed inside their cages. Most other animals were set loose by the troops or looters.
The lions are scheduled to arrive in South Africa in July and will be taken to SanWild, about 280 miles north of Johannesburg.
The lioness and her six cubs will be in isolation for 10 months to a year before being taken as a group to the Ngome Community Reserve in the KwaZulu-Natal province, Joubert said.
The other two lions will remain at SanWild, where they will be placed with a brother and sister pair in the hope that they would be incorporated into the group, she said.
"On the trauma side there is not much that one can do. They will be in nature which will enable them to be lions again. There is nothing like nature to heal," Joubert said. "Lions never ever lose their natural instincts to hunt. They just have to be allowed to get used to hunting again."
The bear is expected to be sent to Greece, where it will be operated on by a Johannesburg veterinarian who has volunteered to help it see again free of charge, Joubert said.
Another South African veterinarian will travel to Baghdad with a SanWild employee to accompany the lions back to South Africa, she said.
The South Africans have joined forces with Care for the Wild International to raise funds to improve the conditions for the remaining animals at Baghdad Zoo, Joubert said.
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-south-africa-iraq-lions,0,7982077.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
'Ali Baba' Now Synonymous With Thievery
From: spliffslips
--------------------
'Ali Baba' Now Synonymous With Thievery
--------------------
By BASSEM MROUE
Associated Press Writer
May 24, 2003, 5:24 AM EDT
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- In the chaos and lawlessness of postwar Baghdad, even the good name of Ali Baba, a much-loved character of Arab folklore, has become synonymous with thievery.
Hardly anyone in Iraq doesn't know who Ali Baba is, but the name is being tossed around the capital these days in a decidedly unliterary way -- to refer to looting that followed the fall of Baghdad to U.S. troops April 9.
"Ali Baba," reads a sign on a storefront, explaining why it's empty. "No Ali Baba!" says graffiti on a wall, exhorting American troops to keep looters away.
"After the looting of ministries and banks, Ali Baba became the symbol of theft," says Waddah Hassan, 43, who owns a carpenter shop.
But the reference is wrong: In the actual story, Ali Baba wasn't a thief. He was the honest guy -- the one the thieves tried to kill.
In the tale, Ali Baba is in the forest with his donkeys to collect wood when he sees a large group of men on horseback riding toward him. He watches them enter a cave and stash their gold and silver inside. Later, when the men -- the 40 thieves -- realize he knows their secret, they decide to kill him.
The thieves' leader then comes to town posing as an oil merchant. With his men hiding in huge oil jars, he makes his way into Ali Baba's house. But Ali Baba's slave girl spots their ruse and kills each thief by pouring boiling oil into the jars.
Ali Baba is a familiar character in Baghdad. The city's Kahramana Square -- informally called Ali Baba Square -- features a statue of a young woman pouring water into 40 huge jars, symbolizing the ancient tale. The square is also known as "40 Thieves Square."
The phrase was kicking around Baghdad before the war, though it was nowhere near as common.
Fadhel Jasem, 59, tells the story of how American soldiers chased looters from the Al-Hurriya printing house in Baghdad's Bab al-Muadham neighborhood.
"Of course the Americans don't speak Arabic. So they shouted to them, `Ali Baba! Ali Baba!'" Jasem said. "Ali Baba represents theft to foreigners."
Some blame it on Saddam, who proclaimed a general amnesty in October that left tens of thousands of hardened criminals on the streets -- and who left his people poor.
"This led to robbing and looting," said Ghaleb al-Zaidi, 27, a businessman. "And people started calling thieves Ali Baba."
Last month, London-based Amnesty International criticized the United States after seeing a Norwegian newspaper report about U.S. forces escorting three men naked through a Baghdad park. The story featured three photographs, including one showing a man with the words "Ali Baba -- thief" scrawled in Arabic on his chest. The United States said at the time that it was looking into the matter.
On Baghdad's Haifa Street, the looters aren't the only ones being blamed for thievery. But the old standard is still being pressed into service, as a sign on a wall this week illustrated.
"The real Ali Baba," it said, "is the USA."
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-ali-baba,0,7861267.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
--------------------
'Ali Baba' Now Synonymous With Thievery
--------------------
By BASSEM MROUE
Associated Press Writer
May 24, 2003, 5:24 AM EDT
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- In the chaos and lawlessness of postwar Baghdad, even the good name of Ali Baba, a much-loved character of Arab folklore, has become synonymous with thievery.
Hardly anyone in Iraq doesn't know who Ali Baba is, but the name is being tossed around the capital these days in a decidedly unliterary way -- to refer to looting that followed the fall of Baghdad to U.S. troops April 9.
"Ali Baba," reads a sign on a storefront, explaining why it's empty. "No Ali Baba!" says graffiti on a wall, exhorting American troops to keep looters away.
"After the looting of ministries and banks, Ali Baba became the symbol of theft," says Waddah Hassan, 43, who owns a carpenter shop.
But the reference is wrong: In the actual story, Ali Baba wasn't a thief. He was the honest guy -- the one the thieves tried to kill.
In the tale, Ali Baba is in the forest with his donkeys to collect wood when he sees a large group of men on horseback riding toward him. He watches them enter a cave and stash their gold and silver inside. Later, when the men -- the 40 thieves -- realize he knows their secret, they decide to kill him.
The thieves' leader then comes to town posing as an oil merchant. With his men hiding in huge oil jars, he makes his way into Ali Baba's house. But Ali Baba's slave girl spots their ruse and kills each thief by pouring boiling oil into the jars.
Ali Baba is a familiar character in Baghdad. The city's Kahramana Square -- informally called Ali Baba Square -- features a statue of a young woman pouring water into 40 huge jars, symbolizing the ancient tale. The square is also known as "40 Thieves Square."
The phrase was kicking around Baghdad before the war, though it was nowhere near as common.
Fadhel Jasem, 59, tells the story of how American soldiers chased looters from the Al-Hurriya printing house in Baghdad's Bab al-Muadham neighborhood.
"Of course the Americans don't speak Arabic. So they shouted to them, `Ali Baba! Ali Baba!'" Jasem said. "Ali Baba represents theft to foreigners."
Some blame it on Saddam, who proclaimed a general amnesty in October that left tens of thousands of hardened criminals on the streets -- and who left his people poor.
"This led to robbing and looting," said Ghaleb al-Zaidi, 27, a businessman. "And people started calling thieves Ali Baba."
Last month, London-based Amnesty International criticized the United States after seeing a Norwegian newspaper report about U.S. forces escorting three men naked through a Baghdad park. The story featured three photographs, including one showing a man with the words "Ali Baba -- thief" scrawled in Arabic on his chest. The United States said at the time that it was looking into the matter.
On Baghdad's Haifa Street, the looters aren't the only ones being blamed for thievery. But the old standard is still being pressed into service, as a sign on a wall this week illustrated.
"The real Ali Baba," it said, "is the USA."
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-ali-baba,0,7861267.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
AP-Latest-Iraq-War-Headlines At 9:30 a.m. EDT
From: spliffslips
Military Care Packages Iraq War Updates
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AP-Latest-Iraq-War-Headlines At 9:30 a.m. EDT
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By Associated Press
May 24, 2003, 9:32 AM EDT
Iraq Could Double Crude Output in a Month and Resume Exports in 3 Weeks, Acting Oil Chief Says
Good Name of 'Ali Baba' Now Synonymous With Thievery in Chaos and Looting of Postwar Baghdad
Iraqi Doctors Uneasy About Health Concerns After Wartime Use of Depleted Uranium
U.N. Special Representative Faces Challenge of Carving Out U.N. Role in Postwar Iraq
U.S. Military Official in Iraq Says No Surrender Talks Taking Place for Saddam's Son Odai
Key Developments Concerning Iraq
Iraqi Oil Bosses Welcome End of U.N. Sanctions but Warn of More Hurdles Ahead
U.S. Authorities to Clamp Down on Iraqi Arms Possession in Bid to Restore Peace
Vanquished Iraqi Military Disbanded; U.S. Occupying Force to Set Up New Army
Poland Says It Has Enough Participants to Make Up Peacekeeping Force
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-latest-iraq-war-headlines,0,6613873.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
Military Care Packages Iraq War Updates
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AP-Latest-Iraq-War-Headlines At 9:30 a.m. EDT
--------------------
By Associated Press
May 24, 2003, 9:32 AM EDT
Iraq Could Double Crude Output in a Month and Resume Exports in 3 Weeks, Acting Oil Chief Says
Good Name of 'Ali Baba' Now Synonymous With Thievery in Chaos and Looting of Postwar Baghdad
Iraqi Doctors Uneasy About Health Concerns After Wartime Use of Depleted Uranium
U.N. Special Representative Faces Challenge of Carving Out U.N. Role in Postwar Iraq
U.S. Military Official in Iraq Says No Surrender Talks Taking Place for Saddam's Son Odai
Key Developments Concerning Iraq
Iraqi Oil Bosses Welcome End of U.N. Sanctions but Warn of More Hurdles Ahead
U.S. Authorities to Clamp Down on Iraqi Arms Possession in Bid to Restore Peace
Vanquished Iraqi Military Disbanded; U.S. Occupying Force to Set Up New Army
Poland Says It Has Enough Participants to Make Up Peacekeeping Force
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-latest-iraq-war-headlines,0,6613873.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
Friday, May 23, 2003
Glance at Vets Data
From: spliffslips
Military Care Packages Updates
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Glance at Vets Data
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By The Associated Press
May 23, 2003, 5:01 PM EDT
Data on the nation's military veterans in 2000, according to the Census Bureau.
* _
Number of veterans 18 and over: 26,403,703
* Median age: 43.5
* Women: 6 percent
* Employed: 54.7 percent
* Living in poverty: 5.6 percent
* Disabled: 29.1 percent
* _
Veterans by period of service (includes veterans serving in more than one time period):
* Aug. 1990 or later (including Gulf War): 11.5 percent
* Sept. 1980 to July 1990: 14.4 percent
* May 1975 to Aug. 1980: 10.5 percent
* Vietnam era (Aug. 1964 to April 1975): 31.7 percent
* February 1955 to July 1964: 16.5 percent
* Korean War (June 1950 to Jan. 1955): 15.3 percent
* World War II (Sept. 1940 to July 1947): 21.7 percent
* Other: 1.2 percent
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-vets-glance,0,1779107.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
Military Care Packages Updates
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Glance at Vets Data
--------------------
By The Associated Press
May 23, 2003, 5:01 PM EDT
Data on the nation's military veterans in 2000, according to the Census Bureau.
* _
Number of veterans 18 and over: 26,403,703
* Median age: 43.5
* Women: 6 percent
* Employed: 54.7 percent
* Living in poverty: 5.6 percent
* Disabled: 29.1 percent
* _
Veterans by period of service (includes veterans serving in more than one time period):
* Aug. 1990 or later (including Gulf War): 11.5 percent
* Sept. 1980 to July 1990: 14.4 percent
* May 1975 to Aug. 1980: 10.5 percent
* Vietnam era (Aug. 1964 to April 1975): 31.7 percent
* February 1955 to July 1964: 16.5 percent
* Korean War (June 1950 to Jan. 1955): 15.3 percent
* World War II (Sept. 1940 to July 1947): 21.7 percent
* Other: 1.2 percent
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-vets-glance,0,1779107.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
U.S.: No Negotiations on Saddam's Son
From: spliffslips
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U.S.: No Negotiations on Saddam's Son
--------------------
By HAMZA HENDAWI
Associated Press Writer
May 23, 2003, 4:34 PM EDT
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- American military commanders are making it clear that the Bush administration will accept nothing less than unconditional surrender from Saddam Hussein's eldest son -- and, by implication, his top advisers and Baath Party members still hiding in Iraq.
The commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq, responding to a report that Odai Hussein might be seeking to surrender, said Friday he knew of no negotiations being held with envoys of Saddam's eldest son, and he insisted the U.S. military isn't seeking to cut any deals.
"Nobody's brought an offer from Odai to me, and I would facilitate his coming on in. But it would be unconditional," Lt. Gen. David McKiernan said at a security briefing in Baghdad.
"There are no negotiations," he said. "There is a lot of intel, there's a lot of reports that we follow up on -- on locations -- but there are no negotiations going on. Nor would there be."
McKiernan's comments came in response to a report Friday in The Wall Street Journal, which said Odai was considering surrendering to American forces. The newspaper cited "a third party with knowledge of the discussions."
U.S. officials said they have no information that would verify the claim.
Apprehending Odai Saddam Hussein, the ace of hearts in the coalition's deck of cards and No. 3 on its most-wanted list, would be a major victory for U.S. forces in postwar Iraq. Odai, known for being cruel and something of a loose cannon, oversaw the Saddam's Fedayeen fighting force.
Saddam himself remains unaccounted for, and it is uncertain whether he is alive. The same goes for his second son, Qusai. The Journal quoted the source as saying Saddam was alive and also in suburban Baghdad.
"From day one, and it continues today, we're searching for everybody on the blacklist, including his family," McKiernan said.
The Journal's "third party" said Odai had been reluctant to surrender because the U.S. government had taken a hard line and because he wanted to know what the charges against him would be. Odai also fears that Iraqi citizens will kill him if they find him, the Journal reported, saying he "may instead choose the safety of a U.S. prison."
Officials at the Baghdad headquarters of the Iraqi National Congress, which has previously taken officials into custody and handed them over to the United States, were not in their offices Friday afternoon, the Muslim sabbath.
This week, the U.S. military captured the most senior Baath Party leader yet -- Aziz Saleh al-Numan -- after reported efforts by his family to negotiate a surrender and to throw U.S. forces off track by publishing a death notice. He was No. 8 on Central Command's list.
U.S. officials have said al-Numan is one of nine top Iraqi leaders whom the United States wants to see tried for war crimes or crimes against humanity.
He was prominent in the quelling of the Shiite Muslim uprising in the immediate aftermath of the 1991 U.S.-led attack that ousted the Iraqi army from Kuwait. A Shiite, he had a reputation for cruel treatment of the rebels, accused by opposition groups of killing and torture.
Before the uprising, when he was governor of Najaf, he was accused of arresting, torturing and killing Shiite clerics during the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran war.
The capture of al-Numan brought to 25 the number of Iraqis from the top 55 list who are in coalition custody, by Pentagon count.
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-odai,0,5288088.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
--------------------
U.S.: No Negotiations on Saddam's Son
--------------------
By HAMZA HENDAWI
Associated Press Writer
May 23, 2003, 4:34 PM EDT
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- American military commanders are making it clear that the Bush administration will accept nothing less than unconditional surrender from Saddam Hussein's eldest son -- and, by implication, his top advisers and Baath Party members still hiding in Iraq.
The commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq, responding to a report that Odai Hussein might be seeking to surrender, said Friday he knew of no negotiations being held with envoys of Saddam's eldest son, and he insisted the U.S. military isn't seeking to cut any deals.
"Nobody's brought an offer from Odai to me, and I would facilitate his coming on in. But it would be unconditional," Lt. Gen. David McKiernan said at a security briefing in Baghdad.
"There are no negotiations," he said. "There is a lot of intel, there's a lot of reports that we follow up on -- on locations -- but there are no negotiations going on. Nor would there be."
McKiernan's comments came in response to a report Friday in The Wall Street Journal, which said Odai was considering surrendering to American forces. The newspaper cited "a third party with knowledge of the discussions."
U.S. officials said they have no information that would verify the claim.
Apprehending Odai Saddam Hussein, the ace of hearts in the coalition's deck of cards and No. 3 on its most-wanted list, would be a major victory for U.S. forces in postwar Iraq. Odai, known for being cruel and something of a loose cannon, oversaw the Saddam's Fedayeen fighting force.
Saddam himself remains unaccounted for, and it is uncertain whether he is alive. The same goes for his second son, Qusai. The Journal quoted the source as saying Saddam was alive and also in suburban Baghdad.
"From day one, and it continues today, we're searching for everybody on the blacklist, including his family," McKiernan said.
The Journal's "third party" said Odai had been reluctant to surrender because the U.S. government had taken a hard line and because he wanted to know what the charges against him would be. Odai also fears that Iraqi citizens will kill him if they find him, the Journal reported, saying he "may instead choose the safety of a U.S. prison."
Officials at the Baghdad headquarters of the Iraqi National Congress, which has previously taken officials into custody and handed them over to the United States, were not in their offices Friday afternoon, the Muslim sabbath.
This week, the U.S. military captured the most senior Baath Party leader yet -- Aziz Saleh al-Numan -- after reported efforts by his family to negotiate a surrender and to throw U.S. forces off track by publishing a death notice. He was No. 8 on Central Command's list.
U.S. officials have said al-Numan is one of nine top Iraqi leaders whom the United States wants to see tried for war crimes or crimes against humanity.
He was prominent in the quelling of the Shiite Muslim uprising in the immediate aftermath of the 1991 U.S.-led attack that ousted the Iraqi army from Kuwait. A Shiite, he had a reputation for cruel treatment of the rebels, accused by opposition groups of killing and torture.
Before the uprising, when he was governor of Najaf, he was accused of arresting, torturing and killing Shiite clerics during the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran war.
The capture of al-Numan brought to 25 the number of Iraqis from the top 55 list who are in coalition custody, by Pentagon count.
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-odai,0,5288088.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
U.S. to Clamp Down on Iraqi Weapons
From: spliffslips
Military Care Packages Iraq War Updates
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U.S. to Clamp Down on Iraqi Weapons
--------------------
By HAMZA HENDAWI
Associated Press Writer
May 23, 2003, 3:26 PM EDT
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A new U.S. policy aimed at drastically reducing the number of weapons in Iraq will allow people to keep guns for self defense at home but outlaw them almost everywhere else, the commander of American ground forces in Iraq said Friday.
Lt. Gen. David McKiernan said permits will be granted to keep guns at home. There will be limits on the type of weapon allowed and the bullet caliber, he said.
"The intent is not to completely disarm the Iraqi population of all weapons. That is neither practical nor necessary," McKiernan said at a news briefing.
Restricting gun ownership is likely to be extremely unpopular in Iraq, where -- as in many clan-based societies -- firearms have a special role in the national culture.
Owning a firearm is a matter of pride and a sign of manhood to many Iraqi men, especially in rural areas where tribalism and traditional values endure.
Saddam Hussein deepened the country's gun culture by appearing frequently in public with a firearm. An image of Saddam firing a rifle with one hand became an icon of his rule, depicted in thousands of posters and murals.
Disarming the population, even partially, would help fight crime in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq.
Thousands of Iraqis bought firearms in the run-up to the U.S.-led war. Guns stored in military armories, and looted after the collapse of Saddam's government, also found their way into the country's lucrative weapons market.
The new U.S. policy will outlaw celebratory fire, customary in Iraq during occasions like weddings and birth celebrations. There will also be restrictions on firearms carried by bodyguards.
"This country, over the last 30 years ... has become one large ammo and weapons cache," McKiernan said.
The policy is expected to take effect next month and would give Iraqis 14 days to give up their guns. McKiernan said penalties for offenders hadn't been decided, and no details were given on how the weapons would be collected.
McKiernan said security is improving in Baghdad, where U.S. forces have been criticized for failing to stem lawlessness and looting.
"Quiet is good, and every day here in Baghdad and across Iraq, (it) is quieter," McKiernan said. "Normalcy is good, and we have a lot more of both than we had a week ago."
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-disarming-the-people,0,2677112.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
Military Care Packages Iraq War Updates
--------------------
U.S. to Clamp Down on Iraqi Weapons
--------------------
By HAMZA HENDAWI
Associated Press Writer
May 23, 2003, 3:26 PM EDT
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A new U.S. policy aimed at drastically reducing the number of weapons in Iraq will allow people to keep guns for self defense at home but outlaw them almost everywhere else, the commander of American ground forces in Iraq said Friday.
Lt. Gen. David McKiernan said permits will be granted to keep guns at home. There will be limits on the type of weapon allowed and the bullet caliber, he said.
"The intent is not to completely disarm the Iraqi population of all weapons. That is neither practical nor necessary," McKiernan said at a news briefing.
Restricting gun ownership is likely to be extremely unpopular in Iraq, where -- as in many clan-based societies -- firearms have a special role in the national culture.
Owning a firearm is a matter of pride and a sign of manhood to many Iraqi men, especially in rural areas where tribalism and traditional values endure.
Saddam Hussein deepened the country's gun culture by appearing frequently in public with a firearm. An image of Saddam firing a rifle with one hand became an icon of his rule, depicted in thousands of posters and murals.
Disarming the population, even partially, would help fight crime in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq.
Thousands of Iraqis bought firearms in the run-up to the U.S.-led war. Guns stored in military armories, and looted after the collapse of Saddam's government, also found their way into the country's lucrative weapons market.
The new U.S. policy will outlaw celebratory fire, customary in Iraq during occasions like weddings and birth celebrations. There will also be restrictions on firearms carried by bodyguards.
"This country, over the last 30 years ... has become one large ammo and weapons cache," McKiernan said.
The policy is expected to take effect next month and would give Iraqis 14 days to give up their guns. McKiernan said penalties for offenders hadn't been decided, and no details were given on how the weapons would be collected.
McKiernan said security is improving in Baghdad, where U.S. forces have been criticized for failing to stem lawlessness and looting.
"Quiet is good, and every day here in Baghdad and across Iraq, (it) is quieter," McKiernan said. "Normalcy is good, and we have a lot more of both than we had a week ago."
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-disarming-the-people,0,2677112.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
AP Top News at 1:58 p.m. EDT
From: spliffslips
--------------------
AP Top News at 1:58 p.m. EDT
--------------------
By Associated Press
May 23, 2003, 1:59 PM EDT
Congress Approves $330B in Tax Cuts
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congress gave its final approval Friday to $330 billion in new tax cuts for families, investors and businesses, handing President Bush a victory despite sharply curtailing his plan for lifting the economy from its knees. The Republican-led Senate approved the measure by 51-50, with Vice President Dick Cheney casting the decisive vote in the narrowly divided chamber. Two hours after midnight, the GOP-run House had used a 231-200 vote to approve the legislation, which also included $20 billion in aid for cash-hungry states. Bush was poised to sign the bill.
Sharon Accepts U.S.-Backed Peace Plan
JERUSALEM (AP) -- After weeks of hesitation, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told the United States on Friday that he accepts a U.S.-backed peace plan that would create a Palestinian state within three years. Sharon said he will present the plan to his Cabinet for approval as early as Sunday. Sharon's statement came just hours after the Bush administration pledged to "fully and seriously" address Israel's concerns about the plan -- though Secretary of State Colin Powell said Washington did not intend to change the road map.
Congress Passes Jobless Benefits Bill
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congress sent President Bush legislation Friday extending a program that provides 13 weeks of emergency unemployment benefits to job-hunters who have used up their state aid. The Senate vote on the House-passed bill came quickly and without debate or a roll call, with senators facing adjournment later today for a weeklong holiday recess.
Bush May Meet With Mideast Leaders
CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) -- President Bush said Friday he will consider meeting with the Palestinian and Israeli prime ministers if it will help them move toward creating a Palestinian state. "I understand it's going to be difficult to achieve peace. But I believe it can happen," Bush told reporters after meeting at his ranch with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
Bush Warns North Korea on Nuke Weapons
CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) -- President Bush and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Friday that "tougher measures" will be warranted against North Korea if it escalates nuclear tensions while asserting confidence that diplomatic tactics will prevail. Bush said he and the Japanese leader view the nuclear crisis in "exactly the same way" -- an absolute unwillingness to let Pyongyang become a nuclear-armed power.
Algerian Earthquake Death Toll Tops 1,600
BOUMERDES, Algeria (AP) -- Bodies wrapped in blankets and plastic bags piled up in morgues Friday as the death toll from Algeria's earthquake topped 1,600, with more than 7,000 injured. Weary volunteers, their faces caked with cement dust and sweat, climbed huge mounds of smashed concrete looking for more victims, though rescuers saw little chance of finding survivors two days after the quake.
U.S. Says Iraqi Military Is Dissolved
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraq's military and the security organizations that supported Saddam Hussein's regime have been officially dissolved, and a new defense force "representative of all Iraqis" will be set up to replace them, the U.S. civil administrator announced Friday. Also Friday, U.S. defense officials said American troops at a checkpoint near the Syrian border confiscated what they believe may be gold bars worth up to $500 million.
Dow Gains 11, Nasdaq Up 3 Before Holiday
NEW YORK (AP) -- Investors wary of making major commitments ahead of the long weekend traded cautiously Friday, nudging stocks moderately higher after a lower start. There was also a lack of economic or earnings news to otherwise guide investors. In early afternoon trading, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 11.28, or 0.1 percent, at 8,605.30, having gained 77.59 on Thursday. The market's broader gauges were also higher. The Nasdaq composite index rose 3.63, or 0.2 percent, to 1,511.18. The Standard & Poor's 500 index advanced 1.45, or 0.2 percent, to 933.32.
Sorenstam to Try and Make Cut at Colonial
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) -- Annika Sorenstam has already made history. Now she's trying to make the cut. Still, no matter what happens Friday in the second round of the Colonial, the first woman to play in a PGA Tour event in 58 years has already accomplished most of what she set out to do. "Personally, I came here to test myself. I'm very proud of the way I was focusing and the way I made decisions and stuck to them," Sorenstam said after her opening 71 Thursday. "That's why I'm here. I wanted to see if I could do it. That's all that matters to me."
Senators, Devils Set for Game 7 Showdown
OTTAWA (AP) -- New Jersey Devils coach Pat Burns tried to put a little added pressure on the Ottawa Senators. "It's not us anymore," Burns said Thursday. "They're going back home and they have to win at home." Ottawa has rallied from a 3-1 deficit to force a deciding Game 7 Friday night in the Eastern Conference finals, with the winner to face the well-rested Anaheim Mighty Ducks in the Stanley Cup finals. New Jersey goalie Martin Brodeur called it a toss-up.
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-newsbrief,0,4876546.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
--------------------
AP Top News at 1:58 p.m. EDT
--------------------
By Associated Press
May 23, 2003, 1:59 PM EDT
Congress Approves $330B in Tax Cuts
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congress gave its final approval Friday to $330 billion in new tax cuts for families, investors and businesses, handing President Bush a victory despite sharply curtailing his plan for lifting the economy from its knees. The Republican-led Senate approved the measure by 51-50, with Vice President Dick Cheney casting the decisive vote in the narrowly divided chamber. Two hours after midnight, the GOP-run House had used a 231-200 vote to approve the legislation, which also included $20 billion in aid for cash-hungry states. Bush was poised to sign the bill.
Sharon Accepts U.S.-Backed Peace Plan
JERUSALEM (AP) -- After weeks of hesitation, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told the United States on Friday that he accepts a U.S.-backed peace plan that would create a Palestinian state within three years. Sharon said he will present the plan to his Cabinet for approval as early as Sunday. Sharon's statement came just hours after the Bush administration pledged to "fully and seriously" address Israel's concerns about the plan -- though Secretary of State Colin Powell said Washington did not intend to change the road map.
Congress Passes Jobless Benefits Bill
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congress sent President Bush legislation Friday extending a program that provides 13 weeks of emergency unemployment benefits to job-hunters who have used up their state aid. The Senate vote on the House-passed bill came quickly and without debate or a roll call, with senators facing adjournment later today for a weeklong holiday recess.
Bush May Meet With Mideast Leaders
CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) -- President Bush said Friday he will consider meeting with the Palestinian and Israeli prime ministers if it will help them move toward creating a Palestinian state. "I understand it's going to be difficult to achieve peace. But I believe it can happen," Bush told reporters after meeting at his ranch with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
Bush Warns North Korea on Nuke Weapons
CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) -- President Bush and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Friday that "tougher measures" will be warranted against North Korea if it escalates nuclear tensions while asserting confidence that diplomatic tactics will prevail. Bush said he and the Japanese leader view the nuclear crisis in "exactly the same way" -- an absolute unwillingness to let Pyongyang become a nuclear-armed power.
Algerian Earthquake Death Toll Tops 1,600
BOUMERDES, Algeria (AP) -- Bodies wrapped in blankets and plastic bags piled up in morgues Friday as the death toll from Algeria's earthquake topped 1,600, with more than 7,000 injured. Weary volunteers, their faces caked with cement dust and sweat, climbed huge mounds of smashed concrete looking for more victims, though rescuers saw little chance of finding survivors two days after the quake.
U.S. Says Iraqi Military Is Dissolved
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraq's military and the security organizations that supported Saddam Hussein's regime have been officially dissolved, and a new defense force "representative of all Iraqis" will be set up to replace them, the U.S. civil administrator announced Friday. Also Friday, U.S. defense officials said American troops at a checkpoint near the Syrian border confiscated what they believe may be gold bars worth up to $500 million.
Dow Gains 11, Nasdaq Up 3 Before Holiday
NEW YORK (AP) -- Investors wary of making major commitments ahead of the long weekend traded cautiously Friday, nudging stocks moderately higher after a lower start. There was also a lack of economic or earnings news to otherwise guide investors. In early afternoon trading, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 11.28, or 0.1 percent, at 8,605.30, having gained 77.59 on Thursday. The market's broader gauges were also higher. The Nasdaq composite index rose 3.63, or 0.2 percent, to 1,511.18. The Standard & Poor's 500 index advanced 1.45, or 0.2 percent, to 933.32.
Sorenstam to Try and Make Cut at Colonial
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) -- Annika Sorenstam has already made history. Now she's trying to make the cut. Still, no matter what happens Friday in the second round of the Colonial, the first woman to play in a PGA Tour event in 58 years has already accomplished most of what she set out to do. "Personally, I came here to test myself. I'm very proud of the way I was focusing and the way I made decisions and stuck to them," Sorenstam said after her opening 71 Thursday. "That's why I'm here. I wanted to see if I could do it. That's all that matters to me."
Senators, Devils Set for Game 7 Showdown
OTTAWA (AP) -- New Jersey Devils coach Pat Burns tried to put a little added pressure on the Ottawa Senators. "It's not us anymore," Burns said Thursday. "They're going back home and they have to win at home." Ottawa has rallied from a 3-1 deficit to force a deciding Game 7 Friday night in the Eastern Conference finals, with the winner to face the well-rested Anaheim Mighty Ducks in the Stanley Cup finals. New Jersey goalie Martin Brodeur called it a toss-up.
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-newsbrief,0,4876546.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
U.S. Troops in Iraq Find $34M in Gold
From: spliffslips
--------------------
U.S. Troops in Iraq Find $34M in Gold
--------------------
By Associated Press
May 23, 2003, 10:06 AM EDT
WASHINGTON -- American troops confiscated gold bars valued at $34 million from a truck in northern Iraq, defense officials said Friday.
The truck carrying 1,600 gold bars was stopped at a military checkpoint near Qaim, a northwestern city near Iraq's border with Syria, Pentagon officials said.
Two men were taken into custody, but there were no details on who they were, their nationality, nor where they got the gold.
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-us-military,0,6523017.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
--------------------
U.S. Troops in Iraq Find $34M in Gold
--------------------
By Associated Press
May 23, 2003, 10:06 AM EDT
WASHINGTON -- American troops confiscated gold bars valued at $34 million from a truck in northern Iraq, defense officials said Friday.
The truck carrying 1,600 gold bars was stopped at a military checkpoint near Qaim, a northwestern city near Iraq's border with Syria, Pentagon officials said.
Two men were taken into custody, but there were no details on who they were, their nationality, nor where they got the gold.
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-us-military,0,6523017.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
Baghdad Police Join U.S. Military in Raid
From: spliffslips
Military Care Packages
--------------------
Baghdad Police Join U.S. Military in Raid
--------------------
By JIM KRANE
Associated Press Writer
May 23, 2003, 3:25 AM EDT
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- It was not unlike other recent raids in this lawless capital, with U.S. troops in helmets and flak vests running crouched down along the perimeter of a building, then dashing into an open doorway.
Except two of the raiders had no helmets and were wearing the white shirts and green pants of Baghdad's reconstituted police force.
Although joint U.S.-Iraqi patrols of Baghdad's streets began almost two weeks ago, Thursday's raid on a three-building complex in western Baghdad brought Iraqi police deeper into the Army's crackdown on crime.
The Iraqi officers helped plan and carry out the raid, which forced 25 residents and workers from three buildings housing apartments and offices. MPs detained the group, sitting them against a wall and searching their quarters for what a tipster described as a large stockpile of AK-47 machine guns.
On May 16, Baghdad officers rode along and watched a U.S. raid for the first time. Typically, numbers of U.S. forces far outweigh those of the Iraqis. Thursday's ratio was about 50 Americans to four Iraqis.
"The real message is to the locals," said Lt. Col. Richard Vanderlinden, commander of the U.S. Army's 709th Military Police Battalion, who leaned over the hood of a Humvee and smoked a cigar as the raid kicked into action. "We're going to start taking down buildings and people who are spreading weapons."
Two hours later, there were just two seized AK-47s to show for the effort.
One was taken from a young man who told Iraqi police he was guarding two cases of Pepsi inside a storehouse -- a statement that brought guffaws from both Americans and Iraqis. The other turned up in an open-air bazaar across the street, where women in flowing black robes did a brisk trade in refilled propane tanks.
MPs held four of those captured, briefly pasting red duct tape over the mouths of two angry men who yelled at U.S. troops. Vanderlinden said the four would be interrogated and, perhaps, held for 21 days -- the maximum sentence for disturbance offenses in Baghdad. MPs released the rest when the raid was finished.
Despite the paltry seizure, the joint raid appeared to cater to the strong suits of both the U.S. and Iraqi forces.
The U.S. team clearly excelled in planning and coordination. It deftly sealed off streets. An Army psychological operations team set up a megaphone blaring an Arabic message to "Stay off the streets!" MPs with assault rifles and sledgehammers led the teams clearing and searching the buildings.
But Baghdad police also played a role.
They seemed comfortable in the familiar neighborhood of concrete homes with flower gardens and weren't scanning rooftops for snipers, as U.S. forces were.
Speaking in Arabic, Baghdad officers calmed neighbors and those captured -- most of whom were guilty of nothing beyond living near a building that held a weapon. They assured the detainees they would be released soon.
"We're not scared because we know Iraqi criminals can't shoot," said one Baghdad officer, Sgt. Mohammed Jassim Isa, 28, a wiry man with an upright brush of black hair.
Isa said he didn't envy the sweating MPs in their five-pound Kevlar helmets and heavy vests.
"Why do we need helmets? These are our people. We're here to help them," he said of the row of detainees -- men crouched against the wall, hands clasped behind them in plastic handcuffs. A group of women detainees struck a dignified pose nearby, calm faces framed in black robes undulating in the morning breeze.
Baghdad police learned from the Americans, though. On their own raids, Isa said three officers would handle such a raid with no planning, no temporary detainees, no blocking of the streets. Unless, of course, they were chasing an armed murderer: For that, Isa said, they'd send 10 officers.
"We're going to go with the same formation, the same order, the same methods," he said through a translator.
But with just 8,000 Iraqi police patrolling a city of 5 million, it remains to be seen whether the Baghdad police will have men to spare for American-style raids.
They will, however, soon be toting more than handguns.
As Americans seize weapons, they have begun using them to rearm the Baghdad police, with the intent of giving them enough firepower to combat well-armed criminals. U.S. forces have already handed over more than 1,000 AK-47s to the police, who are cleared to use them after attending a U.S. training course.
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-police,0,2897817.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
Military Care Packages
--------------------
Baghdad Police Join U.S. Military in Raid
--------------------
By JIM KRANE
Associated Press Writer
May 23, 2003, 3:25 AM EDT
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- It was not unlike other recent raids in this lawless capital, with U.S. troops in helmets and flak vests running crouched down along the perimeter of a building, then dashing into an open doorway.
Except two of the raiders had no helmets and were wearing the white shirts and green pants of Baghdad's reconstituted police force.
Although joint U.S.-Iraqi patrols of Baghdad's streets began almost two weeks ago, Thursday's raid on a three-building complex in western Baghdad brought Iraqi police deeper into the Army's crackdown on crime.
The Iraqi officers helped plan and carry out the raid, which forced 25 residents and workers from three buildings housing apartments and offices. MPs detained the group, sitting them against a wall and searching their quarters for what a tipster described as a large stockpile of AK-47 machine guns.
On May 16, Baghdad officers rode along and watched a U.S. raid for the first time. Typically, numbers of U.S. forces far outweigh those of the Iraqis. Thursday's ratio was about 50 Americans to four Iraqis.
"The real message is to the locals," said Lt. Col. Richard Vanderlinden, commander of the U.S. Army's 709th Military Police Battalion, who leaned over the hood of a Humvee and smoked a cigar as the raid kicked into action. "We're going to start taking down buildings and people who are spreading weapons."
Two hours later, there were just two seized AK-47s to show for the effort.
One was taken from a young man who told Iraqi police he was guarding two cases of Pepsi inside a storehouse -- a statement that brought guffaws from both Americans and Iraqis. The other turned up in an open-air bazaar across the street, where women in flowing black robes did a brisk trade in refilled propane tanks.
MPs held four of those captured, briefly pasting red duct tape over the mouths of two angry men who yelled at U.S. troops. Vanderlinden said the four would be interrogated and, perhaps, held for 21 days -- the maximum sentence for disturbance offenses in Baghdad. MPs released the rest when the raid was finished.
Despite the paltry seizure, the joint raid appeared to cater to the strong suits of both the U.S. and Iraqi forces.
The U.S. team clearly excelled in planning and coordination. It deftly sealed off streets. An Army psychological operations team set up a megaphone blaring an Arabic message to "Stay off the streets!" MPs with assault rifles and sledgehammers led the teams clearing and searching the buildings.
But Baghdad police also played a role.
They seemed comfortable in the familiar neighborhood of concrete homes with flower gardens and weren't scanning rooftops for snipers, as U.S. forces were.
Speaking in Arabic, Baghdad officers calmed neighbors and those captured -- most of whom were guilty of nothing beyond living near a building that held a weapon. They assured the detainees they would be released soon.
"We're not scared because we know Iraqi criminals can't shoot," said one Baghdad officer, Sgt. Mohammed Jassim Isa, 28, a wiry man with an upright brush of black hair.
Isa said he didn't envy the sweating MPs in their five-pound Kevlar helmets and heavy vests.
"Why do we need helmets? These are our people. We're here to help them," he said of the row of detainees -- men crouched against the wall, hands clasped behind them in plastic handcuffs. A group of women detainees struck a dignified pose nearby, calm faces framed in black robes undulating in the morning breeze.
Baghdad police learned from the Americans, though. On their own raids, Isa said three officers would handle such a raid with no planning, no temporary detainees, no blocking of the streets. Unless, of course, they were chasing an armed murderer: For that, Isa said, they'd send 10 officers.
"We're going to go with the same formation, the same order, the same methods," he said through a translator.
But with just 8,000 Iraqi police patrolling a city of 5 million, it remains to be seen whether the Baghdad police will have men to spare for American-style raids.
They will, however, soon be toting more than handguns.
As Americans seize weapons, they have begun using them to rearm the Baghdad police, with the intent of giving them enough firepower to combat well-armed criminals. U.S. forces have already handed over more than 1,000 AK-47s to the police, who are cleared to use them after attending a U.S. training course.
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-police,0,2897817.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
AP-Latest-Iraq-War-Headlines At 9:30 a.m. EDT
From: spliffslips
--------------------
AP-Latest-Iraq-War-Headlines At 9:30 a.m. EDT
--------------------
By Associated Press
May 23, 2003, 9:32 AM EDT
Iraq's Armed Forces Dissolved, New Defense Force to Be Formed, U.S. Administrator Says
Oil Trade Free to Restart Now That U.N. Sanctions Against Iraq Have Been Lifted
Television Returns to Air in Baghdad, Without Controls Imposed During Saddam Hussein's Reign
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz Rejects Criticism of U.S. Efforts in Postwar Iraq
Powell Says U.S. Has Not Gotten Over Disappointment With French Actions Before Iraq War
Baghdad Police Join U.S. Military to Raid Suspected Stockpile of AK-47 Machine Guns
Pentagon Releases Names of Four Marines Killed in Helicopter Crash in Central Iraq
Top American Administrator in Iraq Visits Mass Grave Believed to Contain Remains of Thousands
Senior Baath Party Leader Aziz Saleh Al-Numan Now in U.S. Custody, Despite Family's Efforts
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-latest-iraq-war-headlines,0,6613873.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
--------------------
AP-Latest-Iraq-War-Headlines At 9:30 a.m. EDT
--------------------
By Associated Press
May 23, 2003, 9:32 AM EDT
Iraq's Armed Forces Dissolved, New Defense Force to Be Formed, U.S. Administrator Says
Oil Trade Free to Restart Now That U.N. Sanctions Against Iraq Have Been Lifted
Television Returns to Air in Baghdad, Without Controls Imposed During Saddam Hussein's Reign
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz Rejects Criticism of U.S. Efforts in Postwar Iraq
Powell Says U.S. Has Not Gotten Over Disappointment With French Actions Before Iraq War
Baghdad Police Join U.S. Military to Raid Suspected Stockpile of AK-47 Machine Guns
Pentagon Releases Names of Four Marines Killed in Helicopter Crash in Central Iraq
Top American Administrator in Iraq Visits Mass Grave Believed to Contain Remains of Thousands
Senior Baath Party Leader Aziz Saleh Al-Numan Now in U.S. Custody, Despite Family's Efforts
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-latest-iraq-war-headlines,0,6613873.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
Thursday, May 22, 2003
Md. Gov. Signs Medical Marijuana Bill
From: spliffslips
ONE FOR THE GOOD GUYS
--------------------
Md. Gov. Signs Medical Marijuana Bill
--------------------
By ANGELA POTTER
Associated Press Writer
May 22, 2003, 5:44 PM EDT
BALTIMORE -- Refusing to bend to pressure from the Bush administration, Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich signed a bill Thursday that reduces criminal penalties for seriously ill people who smoke marijuana.
Ehrlich is the first GOP governor to sign a bill protecting medical marijuana patients from jail, according to the Marijuana Policy Project. The Bush administration had pressed him to veto the measure.
Ehrlich had indicated his support for the bill early on as a way to help people with chronic illnesses ease their pain.
"This is a position I've had for many, many years," Ehrlich said Thursday. "It's not without controversy across parties, across chambers, across states, across the country."
The new law does not legalize marijuana, but reduces the penalty to a maximum $100 fine with no jail time if defendants convince a judge they need marijuana for medical reasons. Previously, possession or use of marijuana brought penalties of up to a year in prison or a $1,000 fine.
Supporters of the legislation say smoking marijuana can ease the symptoms of serious illnesses such as cancer or AIDS and help patients suffering from nausea hold down food and medications.
Opponents, including White House drug czar John P. Walters, have objected that marijuana is a false and illegal remedy.
"It would be truly unfortunate if today's actions led, however unintentionally, to greater use or availability of dangerous drugs in Maryland," Walters said.
Eight other states -- Hawaii, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Colorado, Nevada and Maine -- have medical marijuana laws.
In Washington, House Republicans want to move drug enforcement money from state and local police officers to federal agents in states that have legalized medical marijuana.
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-medical-marijuana,0,4874270.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
ONE FOR THE GOOD GUYS
--------------------
Md. Gov. Signs Medical Marijuana Bill
--------------------
By ANGELA POTTER
Associated Press Writer
May 22, 2003, 5:44 PM EDT
BALTIMORE -- Refusing to bend to pressure from the Bush administration, Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich signed a bill Thursday that reduces criminal penalties for seriously ill people who smoke marijuana.
Ehrlich is the first GOP governor to sign a bill protecting medical marijuana patients from jail, according to the Marijuana Policy Project. The Bush administration had pressed him to veto the measure.
Ehrlich had indicated his support for the bill early on as a way to help people with chronic illnesses ease their pain.
"This is a position I've had for many, many years," Ehrlich said Thursday. "It's not without controversy across parties, across chambers, across states, across the country."
The new law does not legalize marijuana, but reduces the penalty to a maximum $100 fine with no jail time if defendants convince a judge they need marijuana for medical reasons. Previously, possession or use of marijuana brought penalties of up to a year in prison or a $1,000 fine.
Supporters of the legislation say smoking marijuana can ease the symptoms of serious illnesses such as cancer or AIDS and help patients suffering from nausea hold down food and medications.
Opponents, including White House drug czar John P. Walters, have objected that marijuana is a false and illegal remedy.
"It would be truly unfortunate if today's actions led, however unintentionally, to greater use or availability of dangerous drugs in Maryland," Walters said.
Eight other states -- Hawaii, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Colorado, Nevada and Maine -- have medical marijuana laws.
In Washington, House Republicans want to move drug enforcement money from state and local police officers to federal agents in states that have legalized medical marijuana.
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-medical-marijuana,0,4874270.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
Iraq's Post-Saddam Landscape Is Diverse
From: spliffslips
--------------------
Iraq's Post-Saddam Landscape Is Diverse
--------------------
By HAMZA HENDAWI
Associated Press Writer
May 22, 2003, 4:14 PM EDT
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- For a generation they were forbidden, and any whiff of political activity could have meant punishment, even death. But now, in the maze of postwar Iraq, political parties are flourishing -- and facing a future they are determined to help shape.
More than 100 newly created parties have sprung up since Saddam Hussein was toppled last month, offering Iraqis accustomed to one-party rule everything from Islamic militancy to monarchy, from ethnic nationalism to Christian fundamentalism.
The explosion of political energy in today's Iraq is a response to decades of authoritarian rule and a celebration of newfound freedom. It also appears to be an expression of the anarchy that is prevailing in the absence of a government.
Gauging the extent of support enjoyed by any of the new parties is difficult until a general election is held -- something not expected to happen for more than a year at the earliest. Iraq has been without any national government since U.S. forces captured Baghdad on April 9.
What is evident, however, is that many of the parties barely exist.
One is based in a mosque. Another is using a mall where Saddam's wife Sajida shopped at expensive boutiques. Many squat in offices that once belonged to intelligence and security agencies. Others use homes of senior Baath officials who fled with their families.
Some amount to nothing more than a paper sign hung outside a building, and others enjoy the support of only a few dozen relatives and friends.
"I can show you photos and a video that prove that more than 1,000 people received me when I returned to Iraq," Aziz al-Yasseri, leader of the Iraqi Democratic Movement, a new party, tells a visitor hopefully.
Kurdish, Arab and Assyrian parties are adopting programs designed to exclusively serve the interests of their ethnicities -- including an Assyrian Christian fundamentalist party in this overwhelmingly Muslim country. The Iraqi Islamic Party wants its own pure religious state. The Constitutional Monarchy Movement wants to restore the royal system that was toppled in 1958.
The emergence of so many new groups comes as powerful Iraqi politicians return from years in exile -- or, in two cases, from the northern Kurdish enclave -- to take what they believe are their rightful places atop a new government.
Two powerful Kurdish organizations, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party, are part of a core group talking with the U.S.-led occupation force about future governance. So is the Iraqi National Congress, the influential group long headed from London by Ahmad Chalabi.
Not everyone is happy about the returnees taking a front seat. Some of the new parties are vigorously promoting the notion that they pose a danger to the new Iraq.
"Members of my party are Iraqis who don't include anyone who had fled the country," boasts Nouri Jaber Ali, leader of the National Movement for the Liberation of Iraq.
Iraq, a mosaic of ethnic and religious groups, existed for nearly 400 years as three separate Ottoman provinces until Britain joined them together in 1920. The country is deeply divided along tribal fault lines that Saddam tried to deepen so he could consolidate his support.
When a British-backed monarchy was installed in 1921, a pluralistic political system was tried. Fifty-eight Cabinets came and went before the monarchy was toppled in a coup in 1958. Ten years later, Saddam's Baath Party took power for good.
In the years since, some parties worked covertly to undermine the Baathists. Some of those appearing on the streets today are old experts at that game -- like Ali Hussein Abu Seif of the Iraqi Communist Party.
He introduces himself as a comrade and a party leader, but he doesn't stand on ceremony, wearing trousers rolled up to just below the knees and a pair of plastic slippers to receive visitors.
Only weeks ago, he would have been a perfect candidate for Saddam's gallows. Now that Iraq's dictator is gone, he sits in a large, wood-paneled office in a riverside building that once belonged to Saddam's Baath party.
"My party runs in my blood," declares Abu Seif, who hid from Saddam's dreaded security agents for more than 20 years, making a living as a clothes retailer while he recruited members and organized underground cells.
Where political parties tread, demanding constituencies soon follow. And lawless, jumbled Baghdad is unlikely to be an exception. Just ask Abdul-Jabar al-Izzawi, 75, a retired businessman smoking a water pipe at Baghdad's al-Shahbandar cafe.
"What is the benefit of having freedom and so many parties," he asks, "if I cannot even feel safe coming to this cafe and returning home every day?"
* __
EDITOR'S NOTE -- Associated Press Correspondent Bassem Mroue contributed to this report.
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-instant-politics,0,7426799.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
--------------------
Iraq's Post-Saddam Landscape Is Diverse
--------------------
By HAMZA HENDAWI
Associated Press Writer
May 22, 2003, 4:14 PM EDT
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- For a generation they were forbidden, and any whiff of political activity could have meant punishment, even death. But now, in the maze of postwar Iraq, political parties are flourishing -- and facing a future they are determined to help shape.
More than 100 newly created parties have sprung up since Saddam Hussein was toppled last month, offering Iraqis accustomed to one-party rule everything from Islamic militancy to monarchy, from ethnic nationalism to Christian fundamentalism.
The explosion of political energy in today's Iraq is a response to decades of authoritarian rule and a celebration of newfound freedom. It also appears to be an expression of the anarchy that is prevailing in the absence of a government.
Gauging the extent of support enjoyed by any of the new parties is difficult until a general election is held -- something not expected to happen for more than a year at the earliest. Iraq has been without any national government since U.S. forces captured Baghdad on April 9.
What is evident, however, is that many of the parties barely exist.
One is based in a mosque. Another is using a mall where Saddam's wife Sajida shopped at expensive boutiques. Many squat in offices that once belonged to intelligence and security agencies. Others use homes of senior Baath officials who fled with their families.
Some amount to nothing more than a paper sign hung outside a building, and others enjoy the support of only a few dozen relatives and friends.
"I can show you photos and a video that prove that more than 1,000 people received me when I returned to Iraq," Aziz al-Yasseri, leader of the Iraqi Democratic Movement, a new party, tells a visitor hopefully.
Kurdish, Arab and Assyrian parties are adopting programs designed to exclusively serve the interests of their ethnicities -- including an Assyrian Christian fundamentalist party in this overwhelmingly Muslim country. The Iraqi Islamic Party wants its own pure religious state. The Constitutional Monarchy Movement wants to restore the royal system that was toppled in 1958.
The emergence of so many new groups comes as powerful Iraqi politicians return from years in exile -- or, in two cases, from the northern Kurdish enclave -- to take what they believe are their rightful places atop a new government.
Two powerful Kurdish organizations, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party, are part of a core group talking with the U.S.-led occupation force about future governance. So is the Iraqi National Congress, the influential group long headed from London by Ahmad Chalabi.
Not everyone is happy about the returnees taking a front seat. Some of the new parties are vigorously promoting the notion that they pose a danger to the new Iraq.
"Members of my party are Iraqis who don't include anyone who had fled the country," boasts Nouri Jaber Ali, leader of the National Movement for the Liberation of Iraq.
Iraq, a mosaic of ethnic and religious groups, existed for nearly 400 years as three separate Ottoman provinces until Britain joined them together in 1920. The country is deeply divided along tribal fault lines that Saddam tried to deepen so he could consolidate his support.
When a British-backed monarchy was installed in 1921, a pluralistic political system was tried. Fifty-eight Cabinets came and went before the monarchy was toppled in a coup in 1958. Ten years later, Saddam's Baath Party took power for good.
In the years since, some parties worked covertly to undermine the Baathists. Some of those appearing on the streets today are old experts at that game -- like Ali Hussein Abu Seif of the Iraqi Communist Party.
He introduces himself as a comrade and a party leader, but he doesn't stand on ceremony, wearing trousers rolled up to just below the knees and a pair of plastic slippers to receive visitors.
Only weeks ago, he would have been a perfect candidate for Saddam's gallows. Now that Iraq's dictator is gone, he sits in a large, wood-paneled office in a riverside building that once belonged to Saddam's Baath party.
"My party runs in my blood," declares Abu Seif, who hid from Saddam's dreaded security agents for more than 20 years, making a living as a clothes retailer while he recruited members and organized underground cells.
Where political parties tread, demanding constituencies soon follow. And lawless, jumbled Baghdad is unlikely to be an exception. Just ask Abdul-Jabar al-Izzawi, 75, a retired businessman smoking a water pipe at Baghdad's al-Shahbandar cafe.
"What is the benefit of having freedom and so many parties," he asks, "if I cannot even feel safe coming to this cafe and returning home every day?"
* __
EDITOR'S NOTE -- Associated Press Correspondent Bassem Mroue contributed to this report.
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-instant-politics,0,7426799.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
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AP-Latest-Iraq-War-Headlines At 12:30 p.m. EDT
From: spliffslips
--------------------
AP-Latest-Iraq-War-Headlines At 12:30 p.m. EDT
--------------------
By Associated Press
May 22, 2003, 12:32 PM EDT
Members of Congress Press for Public Disclosure of Iraq Contract Information
Security Council Approves U.S.-Led Administration of Iraq and Lifts Economic Sanctions
Warsaw Seeks Participants for Polish-Led Stabilization Force in Iraq
U.S. Forces Capture Former Senior Baath Party Leader Who Is No. 8 on List of Most-Wanted Iraqis
All Members of Saddam's Toppled Baath Party Must Identify Themselves, Gen. Franks Orders
U.N. Passes Resolution to Lift Iraqi Sanctions; U.S. Troops Arrest Baath Party Leader
Key Developments Concerning Iraq
Iraq's Power Situation to Improve Soon, U.N. Agency Predicts
AP Corrects Iraq-Cholera-Outbreak Story
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-latest-iraq-war-headlines,0,6613873.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
--------------------
AP-Latest-Iraq-War-Headlines At 12:30 p.m. EDT
--------------------
By Associated Press
May 22, 2003, 12:32 PM EDT
Members of Congress Press for Public Disclosure of Iraq Contract Information
Security Council Approves U.S.-Led Administration of Iraq and Lifts Economic Sanctions
Warsaw Seeks Participants for Polish-Led Stabilization Force in Iraq
U.S. Forces Capture Former Senior Baath Party Leader Who Is No. 8 on List of Most-Wanted Iraqis
All Members of Saddam's Toppled Baath Party Must Identify Themselves, Gen. Franks Orders
U.N. Passes Resolution to Lift Iraqi Sanctions; U.S. Troops Arrest Baath Party Leader
Key Developments Concerning Iraq
Iraq's Power Situation to Improve Soon, U.N. Agency Predicts
AP Corrects Iraq-Cholera-Outbreak Story
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-latest-iraq-war-headlines,0,6613873.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
AP-Latest-Iraq-War-Headlines At 10:30 a.m. EDT
From: spliffslips
Military Care Packages War Blog Updates
--------------------
AP-Latest-Iraq-War-Headlines At 10:30 a.m. EDT
--------------------
By Associated Press
May 22, 2003, 10:32 AM EDT
Security Council Approves U.S.-Led Administration of Iraq and Lifts Economic Sanctions
Key Developments Concerning Iraq
U.S. Begins Deploying Peacekeeping Unit in Baghdad As U.N. Set to Lift Sanctions
Iraq's Power Situation to Improve Soon, U.N. Agency Predicts
AP Corrects Iraq-Cholera-Outbreak Story
All Members of Saddam's Toppled Baath Party Must Identify Themselves, Gen. Franks Orders
Host of Mideast Issues on Table at Secretary of State Colin Powell's Meetings in Europe
Host of Mideast Issues on Table at Secretary of State ColinPowell Meetings in Europe
Kurds Flock Back to Iraqi Oil City of Kirkuk As Tensions With Arabs Soar
U.S. Armored Vehicle Damaged in Ambush in Iraqi Town Where U.S. Troops Fired on Crowd
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-latest-iraq-war-headlines,0,6613873.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
Military Care Packages War Blog Updates
--------------------
AP-Latest-Iraq-War-Headlines At 10:30 a.m. EDT
--------------------
By Associated Press
May 22, 2003, 10:32 AM EDT
Security Council Approves U.S.-Led Administration of Iraq and Lifts Economic Sanctions
Key Developments Concerning Iraq
U.S. Begins Deploying Peacekeeping Unit in Baghdad As U.N. Set to Lift Sanctions
Iraq's Power Situation to Improve Soon, U.N. Agency Predicts
AP Corrects Iraq-Cholera-Outbreak Story
All Members of Saddam's Toppled Baath Party Must Identify Themselves, Gen. Franks Orders
Host of Mideast Issues on Table at Secretary of State Colin Powell's Meetings in Europe
Host of Mideast Issues on Table at Secretary of State ColinPowell Meetings in Europe
Kurds Flock Back to Iraqi Oil City of Kirkuk As Tensions With Arabs Soar
U.S. Armored Vehicle Damaged in Ambush in Iraqi Town Where U.S. Troops Fired on Crowd
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-latest-iraq-war-headlines,0,6613873.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
Wednesday, May 21, 2003
Recommended: "US troops eye Iraq's future with realism, philosophy"
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The Christian Science Monitor's electronic edition.
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Headline: US troops eye Iraq's future with realism, philosophy
Byline: Warren Richey Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Date: 05/21/2003
(BAGHDAD)American soldiers in Iraq are learning firsthand that sometimes the
hardest part of writing history is not knowing how it will end.
There are few places in this war-torn country where the final outcome
of Operation Iraqi Freedom is more uncertain than in the heavily Shiite
Muslim neighborhoods of eastern Baghdad.
In Thawra, also called Sadr City by many of its Shiite residents, US
commanders are maneuvering their way through an ever-changing political
landscape.
Various Shiite clerics are sending conflicting signals to US officials,
telling military officers one thing and then acting and saying
something completely different to others. US troops also face an
ever-present threat from remnants of the Saddam Fedayeen, Baath Party
stalwarts, and a large group of armed criminals.
On the other side, the US government's Office of Reconstruction and
Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) in Iraq seems to have adopted a go-slow
posture - perhaps, analysts say, to allow Iraqi infighting to sort
itself out before identifying appropriate local leaders.
Caught in the middle of this swirl of posturing and jockeying are US
soldiers - America's sons and daughters, mothers and fathers -
patrolling the front lines of the second phase of the war in Iraq.
Many are beginning to form opinions about what will likely be written
in the final chapter of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The soldiers quoted here from the US Army's 2nd Armored Cavalry
Regiment are not Middle East experts, learned political scientists, or
foreign-policy specialists. They are simply a cross section of the US,
ordinary Americans who have had the benefit of two months on the ground
in Iraq seeing the situation for themselves.
Many of them have had to dodge bullets. All of them face the prospect
of a dangerous and uncertain stay in what to them is a very foreign
land.
Most see much painstaking work ahead - work that will hardly be
completed in a few months' time.
"As long as we are here, everything will be stable, but as soon as we
leave, another Saddam will pop up, and it is this thing all over
again," says Sgt. Eric Fitzgerald of Baltimore. "It will turn out like
another Bosnia or Kosovo."
Pvt. John Hecht of Merrill, Iowa, wants to know where the next
generation of Iraqi leaders are - the Iraqi version of America's James
Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton. Men with courage and
vision and an honest conviction to place the goals of the nation above
those of any individual or faction.
"They need a strong leader who won't take sides," Private Hecht says.
The problem in Iraq, Hecht and others say, is that many of the most
talented potential leaders were discovered first by Saddam Hussein's
security service and executed.
Others see an important role for ordinary Iraqis. "The Iraqi people are
going to have to start taking care of themselves before this gets
better," says Pvt. William Craig of Neosho, Mo. "I don't know if the
new Iraqi government will be democratic," he says. "But if it doesn't
happen right away, I think five or 10 years down the road it will be
democratic."
Pvt. David Padilla of East Los Angeles, Calif., agrees on the task's
lengthy duration. "It's going to take 10 to 15 years," he says. "What
I'm hoping is we help the younger generation because ... the only way
we can help this country is through the kids."
He adds, "We're just helping them get their foot in the door. It is up
to them to save themselves."
Says Pvt. Joel Burden of Winter Park, Fla.: "We're here for 10 years of
occupation so the younger generation gets to understand what democracy
feels like and enjoy it," But he adds, "Then in 15 years, we will have
to come back and do the same thing all over again because war is
ingrained in these people."
If democracy comes to Iraq, Lt. Stephen Johnson of Lompoc, Calif., says
it will most likely be a "false democracy" with rigged elections. He
says there will be more freedom than under Mr. Hussein, "but a true
democracy is decades off."
The lieutenant adds, "I don't think we will be out of here until the
Palestinians and Israelis have peace."
"This place could be a paradise," observes Sgt. Herman Herrera of
Gunnison, Colo., but only as long as the US is willing to maintain a
military presence here.
"We are going to get the country above where Saddam had it," he says.
"But I believe it is going to go right down as soon as we leave."
(c) Copyright 2003 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.
Click here to email this story to a friend:
http://www.csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/send-story?2003/0521/p02s01-woiq.txt
The Christian Science Monitor-- an independent daily newspaper providing context and clarity on national and international news, peoples and cultures, and social trends. Online at http://www.csmonitor.com
Click here to order a free sample copy of the print edition of the Monitor:
http://www.csmonitor.com/aboutus/sample_issue.html
_________________________________________________________________________
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The Christian Science Monitor's electronic edition.
_________________________________________________________________________
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_________________________________________________________________________
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Click here to read this story online:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0521/p02s01-woiq.html
Headline: US troops eye Iraq's future with realism, philosophy
Byline: Warren Richey Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Date: 05/21/2003
(BAGHDAD)American soldiers in Iraq are learning firsthand that sometimes the
hardest part of writing history is not knowing how it will end.
There are few places in this war-torn country where the final outcome
of Operation Iraqi Freedom is more uncertain than in the heavily Shiite
Muslim neighborhoods of eastern Baghdad.
In Thawra, also called Sadr City by many of its Shiite residents, US
commanders are maneuvering their way through an ever-changing political
landscape.
Various Shiite clerics are sending conflicting signals to US officials,
telling military officers one thing and then acting and saying
something completely different to others. US troops also face an
ever-present threat from remnants of the Saddam Fedayeen, Baath Party
stalwarts, and a large group of armed criminals.
On the other side, the US government's Office of Reconstruction and
Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) in Iraq seems to have adopted a go-slow
posture - perhaps, analysts say, to allow Iraqi infighting to sort
itself out before identifying appropriate local leaders.
Caught in the middle of this swirl of posturing and jockeying are US
soldiers - America's sons and daughters, mothers and fathers -
patrolling the front lines of the second phase of the war in Iraq.
Many are beginning to form opinions about what will likely be written
in the final chapter of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The soldiers quoted here from the US Army's 2nd Armored Cavalry
Regiment are not Middle East experts, learned political scientists, or
foreign-policy specialists. They are simply a cross section of the US,
ordinary Americans who have had the benefit of two months on the ground
in Iraq seeing the situation for themselves.
Many of them have had to dodge bullets. All of them face the prospect
of a dangerous and uncertain stay in what to them is a very foreign
land.
Most see much painstaking work ahead - work that will hardly be
completed in a few months' time.
"As long as we are here, everything will be stable, but as soon as we
leave, another Saddam will pop up, and it is this thing all over
again," says Sgt. Eric Fitzgerald of Baltimore. "It will turn out like
another Bosnia or Kosovo."
Pvt. John Hecht of Merrill, Iowa, wants to know where the next
generation of Iraqi leaders are - the Iraqi version of America's James
Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton. Men with courage and
vision and an honest conviction to place the goals of the nation above
those of any individual or faction.
"They need a strong leader who won't take sides," Private Hecht says.
The problem in Iraq, Hecht and others say, is that many of the most
talented potential leaders were discovered first by Saddam Hussein's
security service and executed.
Others see an important role for ordinary Iraqis. "The Iraqi people are
going to have to start taking care of themselves before this gets
better," says Pvt. William Craig of Neosho, Mo. "I don't know if the
new Iraqi government will be democratic," he says. "But if it doesn't
happen right away, I think five or 10 years down the road it will be
democratic."
Pvt. David Padilla of East Los Angeles, Calif., agrees on the task's
lengthy duration. "It's going to take 10 to 15 years," he says. "What
I'm hoping is we help the younger generation because ... the only way
we can help this country is through the kids."
He adds, "We're just helping them get their foot in the door. It is up
to them to save themselves."
Says Pvt. Joel Burden of Winter Park, Fla.: "We're here for 10 years of
occupation so the younger generation gets to understand what democracy
feels like and enjoy it," But he adds, "Then in 15 years, we will have
to come back and do the same thing all over again because war is
ingrained in these people."
If democracy comes to Iraq, Lt. Stephen Johnson of Lompoc, Calif., says
it will most likely be a "false democracy" with rigged elections. He
says there will be more freedom than under Mr. Hussein, "but a true
democracy is decades off."
The lieutenant adds, "I don't think we will be out of here until the
Palestinians and Israelis have peace."
"This place could be a paradise," observes Sgt. Herman Herrera of
Gunnison, Colo., but only as long as the US is willing to maintain a
military presence here.
"We are going to get the country above where Saddam had it," he says.
"But I believe it is going to go right down as soon as we leave."
(c) Copyright 2003 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.
Click here to email this story to a friend:
http://www.csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/send-story?2003/0521/p02s01-woiq.txt
The Christian Science Monitor-- an independent daily newspaper providing context and clarity on national and international news, peoples and cultures, and social trends. Online at http://www.csmonitor.com
Click here to order a free sample copy of the print edition of the Monitor:
http://www.csmonitor.com/aboutus/sample_issue.html
_________________________________________________________________________
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Sign up for the Monitor News Alert to be notified of special war coverage.
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Germany Calls for Stronger Europe Defense
From: spliffslips
Military Care Packages Updates
--------------------
Germany Calls for Stronger Europe Defense
--------------------
By TONY CZUCZKA
Associated Press Writer
May 21, 2003, 3:01 PM EDT
BERLIN -- Germany unveiled its first new military strategy in 11 years Wednesday, calling for stronger European defense capabilities while saying that the United States remains "indispensable" for Europe's security.
Defense Minister Peter Struck said Germany would shut nine bases and disband dozens of units over the next few years as the military shifts from a heavily armored bulwark at ground zero of the Cold War to a mobile, modern force for international peacekeeping missions and combating terrorism.
The strategy overhaul reflects events like the Balkan wars of the 1990s and the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, which led Germany to send peacekeepers to Afghanistan, contribute troops for the U.S.-led war on terrorism and even saw German pilots help patrol U.S. skies.
"The result is that international conflict prevention and crisis management, including the fight against international terrorism, have moved up to No. 1 of our task spectrum," Struck said in a statement after Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Cabinet approved the new guidelines.
The new guidelines try to steer a middle course between recognition of U.S. power and Europe's quest for more military muscle of its own, which Struck said would allow European nations to intervene in trouble spots where the NATO alliance doesn't want to get involved.
But the document emphasized allegiance to Washington, strained in recent months by the German government's fierce anti-war stand on Iraq.
"Also in future, there can be no security in and for Europe without the United States," the paper said. "Germany will continue to make a substantial contribution to the trans-Atlantic partnership."
Despite a shrinking defense budget, the guidelines foresee Germany keeping a conscript army -- something opposed by the Greens party, the junior coalition partner of Schroeder's Social Democrats.
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-germany-military,0,6827741.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
Military Care Packages Updates
--------------------
Germany Calls for Stronger Europe Defense
--------------------
By TONY CZUCZKA
Associated Press Writer
May 21, 2003, 3:01 PM EDT
BERLIN -- Germany unveiled its first new military strategy in 11 years Wednesday, calling for stronger European defense capabilities while saying that the United States remains "indispensable" for Europe's security.
Defense Minister Peter Struck said Germany would shut nine bases and disband dozens of units over the next few years as the military shifts from a heavily armored bulwark at ground zero of the Cold War to a mobile, modern force for international peacekeeping missions and combating terrorism.
The strategy overhaul reflects events like the Balkan wars of the 1990s and the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, which led Germany to send peacekeepers to Afghanistan, contribute troops for the U.S.-led war on terrorism and even saw German pilots help patrol U.S. skies.
"The result is that international conflict prevention and crisis management, including the fight against international terrorism, have moved up to No. 1 of our task spectrum," Struck said in a statement after Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Cabinet approved the new guidelines.
The new guidelines try to steer a middle course between recognition of U.S. power and Europe's quest for more military muscle of its own, which Struck said would allow European nations to intervene in trouble spots where the NATO alliance doesn't want to get involved.
But the document emphasized allegiance to Washington, strained in recent months by the German government's fierce anti-war stand on Iraq.
"Also in future, there can be no security in and for Europe without the United States," the paper said. "Germany will continue to make a substantial contribution to the trans-Atlantic partnership."
Despite a shrinking defense budget, the guidelines foresee Germany keeping a conscript army -- something opposed by the Greens party, the junior coalition partner of Schroeder's Social Democrats.
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-germany-military,0,6827741.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
Purported al-Qaida Threat Stuns Norway
From: spliffslips
No One Is Safe
--------------------
Purported al-Qaida Threat Stuns Norway
--------------------
By DOUG MELLGREN
Associated Press Writer
May 21, 2003, 4:40 PM EDT
OSLO, Norway -- Norwegians, proud of their role as a global peacemaker, were puzzled and concerned Wednesday that a leading al-Qaida member singled out their country in a terrorist threat.
The Arab television station Al-Jazeera aired an audio tape purportedly by Ayman al-Zawahri, the top lieutenant of Osama bin Laden, urging renewed attacks on the United States, Britain and Australia, which participated in the war against Iraq.
But the inclusion of the Scandinavian nation in his warning drew questions.
Norway didn't support the war in Iraq but sent troops and fighter planes to help oust al-Qaida and the Taliban forces from Afghanistan.
"We were surprised," Norwegian Foreign Ministry spokesman Karsten Klepsvik said, adding that experts were racing to try to figure out why al-Qaida would want to threaten Norway.
He said Norwegian interests, including embassies in the Middle East, were advised of the threat.
Brynjar Lia, a terrorism expert with the government's Norwegian Defense Research Establishment in the capital, Oslo, said there plenty of reasons for radical Muslims to hate Norway as an oil-rich, highly developed and overwhelmingly Lutheran kingdom in the north.
"But the (al-Qaida) list of enemy states is getting to be very long and I would think Norway would be very far down the list," he said.
Others said al-Zawahri may have confused Norway with neighboring Denmark, which supported the U.S.-led war on Iraq by sending a submarine and escort ship.
NATO-member Norway has played pivotal roles in helping settle world conflicts and is the home of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Lia said that Oslo, site of key Israel-Palestinian negotiations, also symbolized the Mideast peace process that some want to stop. Norway secretly brokered a 1993 accord and has been involved in trying to find a lasting peace there.
Norway also chaired the U.N. Security Council's Sanctions Committee on Iraq until last year, and is investigating Mullah Krekar, a refugee in Norway who led the Kurdish Islamic military group Ansar al-Islam suspected of having ties to al-Qaida.
Krekar's lawyer, Brynjar Meling, said his client has no ties to the terror group and has no idea why it would threaten Norway.
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-norway-al-qaida-tape,0,7927986.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
No One Is Safe
--------------------
Purported al-Qaida Threat Stuns Norway
--------------------
By DOUG MELLGREN
Associated Press Writer
May 21, 2003, 4:40 PM EDT
OSLO, Norway -- Norwegians, proud of their role as a global peacemaker, were puzzled and concerned Wednesday that a leading al-Qaida member singled out their country in a terrorist threat.
The Arab television station Al-Jazeera aired an audio tape purportedly by Ayman al-Zawahri, the top lieutenant of Osama bin Laden, urging renewed attacks on the United States, Britain and Australia, which participated in the war against Iraq.
But the inclusion of the Scandinavian nation in his warning drew questions.
Norway didn't support the war in Iraq but sent troops and fighter planes to help oust al-Qaida and the Taliban forces from Afghanistan.
"We were surprised," Norwegian Foreign Ministry spokesman Karsten Klepsvik said, adding that experts were racing to try to figure out why al-Qaida would want to threaten Norway.
He said Norwegian interests, including embassies in the Middle East, were advised of the threat.
Brynjar Lia, a terrorism expert with the government's Norwegian Defense Research Establishment in the capital, Oslo, said there plenty of reasons for radical Muslims to hate Norway as an oil-rich, highly developed and overwhelmingly Lutheran kingdom in the north.
"But the (al-Qaida) list of enemy states is getting to be very long and I would think Norway would be very far down the list," he said.
Others said al-Zawahri may have confused Norway with neighboring Denmark, which supported the U.S.-led war on Iraq by sending a submarine and escort ship.
NATO-member Norway has played pivotal roles in helping settle world conflicts and is the home of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Lia said that Oslo, site of key Israel-Palestinian negotiations, also symbolized the Mideast peace process that some want to stop. Norway secretly brokered a 1993 accord and has been involved in trying to find a lasting peace there.
Norway also chaired the U.N. Security Council's Sanctions Committee on Iraq until last year, and is investigating Mullah Krekar, a refugee in Norway who led the Kurdish Islamic military group Ansar al-Islam suspected of having ties to al-Qaida.
Krekar's lawyer, Brynjar Meling, said his client has no ties to the terror group and has no idea why it would threaten Norway.
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-norway-al-qaida-tape,0,7927986.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
Excerpts of Purported al-Qaida Tape
From: spliffslips
--------------------
Excerpts of Purported al-Qaida Tape
--------------------
By The Associated Press
May 21, 2003, 2:05 PM EDT
Excerpts from a tape aired Wednesday that the Arab satellite network al-Jazeera said was made by al-Qaida top lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahri. The excerpts were translated from the Arabic by The Associated Press.
* __
Here is Saudi Arabia, where planes are launched from their airports, from its lands. Here is Kuwait, where the heavy armies march from its lands. Here is Qatar, where the command of the campaign is based. Here is Bahrain, the command of the Fifth Fleet remains inside it. Here is Egypt, the marine ships pass through its canal. Here is Yemen, the crusader ships are provided with fuel. Here is Jordan, where the crusader troops are present and the batteries of the Patriot missiles are erected to protect Israel.
After all of that, they shout with all hypocrisy and trickery that they are against the war on Iraq.
* __
Protests, demonstrations, and conferences won't work. Nothing will help you except carrying weapons, harming your enemies -- American and Jews.
* __
Oh Muslims, take your decision against the embassies of America, England Australia, and Norway, their interests, their companies, and their employees. Turn the earth under their feet into fire.
* __
Don't allow Americans, Britons, Australians, Norwegians or any other crusaders, who are the killers of your brothers in Iraq, to live in your countries, enjoy your resources and corrupt the earth.
Consider your 19 brothers who attacked America in Washington and New York with their planes as an example. They inflicted upon them an unprecedented attack they never experienced before, and even now they are still suffering.
* __
The mujahedeen in Palestine, Afghanistan and Chechnya and also in the heart of America and the West are making those crusaders taste all sorts and colors of death and the coming days will bring news that will warm your heart, God willing.
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-al-qaida-excerpts,0,6217166.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
--------------------
Excerpts of Purported al-Qaida Tape
--------------------
By The Associated Press
May 21, 2003, 2:05 PM EDT
Excerpts from a tape aired Wednesday that the Arab satellite network al-Jazeera said was made by al-Qaida top lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahri. The excerpts were translated from the Arabic by The Associated Press.
* __
Here is Saudi Arabia, where planes are launched from their airports, from its lands. Here is Kuwait, where the heavy armies march from its lands. Here is Qatar, where the command of the campaign is based. Here is Bahrain, the command of the Fifth Fleet remains inside it. Here is Egypt, the marine ships pass through its canal. Here is Yemen, the crusader ships are provided with fuel. Here is Jordan, where the crusader troops are present and the batteries of the Patriot missiles are erected to protect Israel.
After all of that, they shout with all hypocrisy and trickery that they are against the war on Iraq.
* __
Protests, demonstrations, and conferences won't work. Nothing will help you except carrying weapons, harming your enemies -- American and Jews.
* __
Oh Muslims, take your decision against the embassies of America, England Australia, and Norway, their interests, their companies, and their employees. Turn the earth under their feet into fire.
* __
Don't allow Americans, Britons, Australians, Norwegians or any other crusaders, who are the killers of your brothers in Iraq, to live in your countries, enjoy your resources and corrupt the earth.
Consider your 19 brothers who attacked America in Washington and New York with their planes as an example. They inflicted upon them an unprecedented attack they never experienced before, and even now they are still suffering.
* __
The mujahedeen in Palestine, Afghanistan and Chechnya and also in the heart of America and the West are making those crusaders taste all sorts and colors of death and the coming days will bring news that will warm your heart, God willing.
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-al-qaida-excerpts,0,6217166.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
Baghdad Struggles With Sweeping Changes
From: spliffslips
--------------------
Baghdad Struggles With Sweeping Changes
--------------------
By HAMZA HENDAWI
Associated Press Writer
May 21, 2003, 2:12 PM EDT
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The artist couldn't sit still. He puffed nervously on his cigarette and wouldn't make eye contact with his foreign visitor. "How can I be sure that you are not a security agent?" he said. "I know that they use non-Iraqis sometimes."
It was February, and Abdel-Ameer Ilwan, one of Iraq's best-known painters, was scared -- as he had been for much of his life and well into Baghdad's strange spring.
Three months later, Saddam Hussein is gone. And suddenly, Ilwan finds himself in a different world.
"You must accept my apology, but I really thought you were a security agent," Ilwan, flashing a broad smile, now tells the same visiting journalist. "Blame Saddam, not me. He made us all paranoid."
Frightened and dangerous, chaotic and defeated, occupied and free, a new Baghdad has emerged in the wake of its dictator's departure.
Baghdad today is a place where 5 million people are making sense of newfound freedom, doing and saying things that mere weeks ago were unthinkable, even punishable by cruel death. "A free country and a happy people," one political party declares in banners and graffiti across the city.
This freedom, though, has thrown many off balance. In a country where fear and intimidation directed every aspect of public life for an entire generation, some find the change too sweeping to digest so quickly.
In Baghdad today, just about anything goes.
On April 9, hours after American forces took Iraq's capital, it fell into lawlessness and anarchy. Looters and arsonists tore through the city, their wanton destruction shocking and shaming most Baghdadis.
Even now, many of the city's landmark buildings lie in ruins. Basic services are not yet fully restored, and many say the sight of American occupation is heartbreaking.
Roads, ineffectively policed, have become a free-for-all. Menacing gangs of youths roam the streets, and bursts of automatic gunfire pierce the night, and even the afternoon.
Liquor, its sale restricted under Saddam, is sold from the backs of pickup trucks on main roads. Boys in their mid-teens sit defiantly at outdoor cafes, drinking beer.
Vendors have overrun sidewalks to hawk everything from cans of food to imported bananas and satellite dishes. A new generation of moneychangers wanders in and out of traffic, thrusting fistfuls of Iraqi dinars at motorists. Each bill features Saddam's face.
Looted cars, office chairs, TV sets and light fixtures are available on street markets said by residents to be crawling with hardened criminals robbing shoppers at gunpoint. Tales of rape, holdups in restaurants and rage shootouts in the long lines for gasoline are making the rounds.
A drama group recently announced a single showing of "They Passed From Here." Leaflets said the venue was "the ruins of al-Rasheed Theater."
Ilwan, chain-smoking cigarettes, said he wept when he returned from his war refuge in the countryside to a burning Baghdad. It was then that he made a decision -- to change his baby daughter's name from Wed to Amman.
In Arabic, Wed means compassion. Amman means safety.
"There is no safety," Ilwan said. So he created a little one of his own.
* __
"Was she injured in the face? Tell me, please, because I did not get a chance to look at her," Wafa'a Abdel-Fattah, 40, tells a visitor who saw the body of her youngest child, Rowand, lying on the floor of the emergency ward in Yarmouk Hospital.
"Are you sure that her face was not hurt?"
Rowand, the youngest of five, was barely 8 months old when she was killed April 11. A small cluster bomblet brought home by her eldest brother Seif, 17, went off. Seif was injured in the left foot and back; his sister, Reeman, 14, also was hurt, together with a nephew and a niece of their father, Mohammed Suleiman.
Abdel-Fattah, a Baghdad-born schoolteacher of Palestinian descent, suffered injuries in her left hand and leg. Recalling the events with tear-filled eyes, she said Rowand's body was taken from Yarmouk on the same day without the family's knowledge and buried in the courtyard of another hospital, al-Iskan.
After making frantic inquiries for days, the father exhumed the body and reburied it in the family's cemetery.
"Oh, she is gone. That's it -- she's gone," Abdel-Fattah says. "What crime did she commit to deserve that? Please tell me."
Her mother, Hassna Qassim, comforted her.
"There is nothing you can do," she said, weeping. "It's God's choice."
Abdel-Fattah's twin daughters, Reeman and Rym, have tried to ease their mother's pain by hiding their dead sister's pictures. But Seif produced one for a visitor.
It was taken in February at a Baghdad amusement park during Eid al-Adha, the Muslim feast of sacrifice. Rowand was being carried by her smiling twin sisters. She just gazed at the camera, the face of a baby with less than two months to live.
* __
It was April 6. U.S. troops were already in parts of Baghdad and the rest of the city was to fall three days later. But Nizar Faleh, in the Baath Party's olive uniform at his sandbagged position in al-Harthiya district, was unperturbed.
He had confidence that the epic "battle for Baghdad" promised by Saddam was finally at hand. And Faleh, a father of five, was ready to die defending his country.
"It's the war between the forces of the faithful and the forces of the infidels," he said then, speaking from his fighting position on al-Kindi street. His AK-47 assault rifle stood between his legs.
"This is a crusade -- a war against Islam," he said.
Now it is May, and Faleh's crusade has ended. His leader is gone, his disappointment evident. He sits in his home with his children, bags under his eyes, and speaks quietly, deliberately -- as if betrayed.
The Americans didn't defeat Baghdad, Faleh says; treason did. Leaders of the party he had joined as a young man, together with the commanders of elite army divisions, laid down their arms and went home. How, he wondered, could that have happened?
"I told my men not to fire at the Americans," he says, sitting in his living room in a robe. "What was the point? Instead, I ordered them to take off their uniforms and scatter throughout al-Harthiya to protect properties from looters."
He is not sure what to make of this peculiar new Baghdad. The past is dead, he says, and the future unborn.
"I am happy that Saddam has fallen, but that doesn't mean that the ideology of the Baath has fallen, too," Faleh says. "He did not turn out to be the man we all thought he would be. We lived a big lie."
* __
In the 14th century, the Arab traveler Ibn Battuta wrote this about Baghdad: "She is the abode of peace and the capital of Islam."
Today, to Muslims and Arabs, the city still stands as an enduring symbol of Arab glory: seat of a vast medieval empire, home to a plethora of saints and generals, pioneering men of science and composers of immortal poetry.
It is much more than what it first appears to be -- a city in ruins. And its people, shocked and shamed enough by what they see, insist that Baghdad today is not who they really are.
"We are a very civilized people," says Qassim Mohammed, an English lecturer with a master's degree in the works of Thornton Wilder, the American playwright who wrote about how and why communities and people change. "I challenge you to find me a people who can continue to live under these circumstances for as long we have."
These days, Ilwan, the artist, sits in his sweltering and unlit studio and sips a beer. He is still unsure what to make of his adopted city as it charts a new course under American military occupation.
In February he showed a watercolor of an orchard where the trees bear not fruit but hell-tormented human faces. At that time he said it represented Iraqis suffering under more than a decade of U.N. sanctions.
Today, asked whether his interpretation is the same, he laughs.
"I had to say that," he says, and offers a new interpretation: "The faces represent the suffering of Iraqis under Saddam's rule."
In Baghdad, as summer comes, the painting on the wall hasn't changed a bit. But Iraq is a different place, and Abdel-Ameer Ilwan is a different man.
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-baghdad-blues,0,495967.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
--------------------
Baghdad Struggles With Sweeping Changes
--------------------
By HAMZA HENDAWI
Associated Press Writer
May 21, 2003, 2:12 PM EDT
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The artist couldn't sit still. He puffed nervously on his cigarette and wouldn't make eye contact with his foreign visitor. "How can I be sure that you are not a security agent?" he said. "I know that they use non-Iraqis sometimes."
It was February, and Abdel-Ameer Ilwan, one of Iraq's best-known painters, was scared -- as he had been for much of his life and well into Baghdad's strange spring.
Three months later, Saddam Hussein is gone. And suddenly, Ilwan finds himself in a different world.
"You must accept my apology, but I really thought you were a security agent," Ilwan, flashing a broad smile, now tells the same visiting journalist. "Blame Saddam, not me. He made us all paranoid."
Frightened and dangerous, chaotic and defeated, occupied and free, a new Baghdad has emerged in the wake of its dictator's departure.
Baghdad today is a place where 5 million people are making sense of newfound freedom, doing and saying things that mere weeks ago were unthinkable, even punishable by cruel death. "A free country and a happy people," one political party declares in banners and graffiti across the city.
This freedom, though, has thrown many off balance. In a country where fear and intimidation directed every aspect of public life for an entire generation, some find the change too sweeping to digest so quickly.
In Baghdad today, just about anything goes.
On April 9, hours after American forces took Iraq's capital, it fell into lawlessness and anarchy. Looters and arsonists tore through the city, their wanton destruction shocking and shaming most Baghdadis.
Even now, many of the city's landmark buildings lie in ruins. Basic services are not yet fully restored, and many say the sight of American occupation is heartbreaking.
Roads, ineffectively policed, have become a free-for-all. Menacing gangs of youths roam the streets, and bursts of automatic gunfire pierce the night, and even the afternoon.
Liquor, its sale restricted under Saddam, is sold from the backs of pickup trucks on main roads. Boys in their mid-teens sit defiantly at outdoor cafes, drinking beer.
Vendors have overrun sidewalks to hawk everything from cans of food to imported bananas and satellite dishes. A new generation of moneychangers wanders in and out of traffic, thrusting fistfuls of Iraqi dinars at motorists. Each bill features Saddam's face.
Looted cars, office chairs, TV sets and light fixtures are available on street markets said by residents to be crawling with hardened criminals robbing shoppers at gunpoint. Tales of rape, holdups in restaurants and rage shootouts in the long lines for gasoline are making the rounds.
A drama group recently announced a single showing of "They Passed From Here." Leaflets said the venue was "the ruins of al-Rasheed Theater."
Ilwan, chain-smoking cigarettes, said he wept when he returned from his war refuge in the countryside to a burning Baghdad. It was then that he made a decision -- to change his baby daughter's name from Wed to Amman.
In Arabic, Wed means compassion. Amman means safety.
"There is no safety," Ilwan said. So he created a little one of his own.
* __
"Was she injured in the face? Tell me, please, because I did not get a chance to look at her," Wafa'a Abdel-Fattah, 40, tells a visitor who saw the body of her youngest child, Rowand, lying on the floor of the emergency ward in Yarmouk Hospital.
"Are you sure that her face was not hurt?"
Rowand, the youngest of five, was barely 8 months old when she was killed April 11. A small cluster bomblet brought home by her eldest brother Seif, 17, went off. Seif was injured in the left foot and back; his sister, Reeman, 14, also was hurt, together with a nephew and a niece of their father, Mohammed Suleiman.
Abdel-Fattah, a Baghdad-born schoolteacher of Palestinian descent, suffered injuries in her left hand and leg. Recalling the events with tear-filled eyes, she said Rowand's body was taken from Yarmouk on the same day without the family's knowledge and buried in the courtyard of another hospital, al-Iskan.
After making frantic inquiries for days, the father exhumed the body and reburied it in the family's cemetery.
"Oh, she is gone. That's it -- she's gone," Abdel-Fattah says. "What crime did she commit to deserve that? Please tell me."
Her mother, Hassna Qassim, comforted her.
"There is nothing you can do," she said, weeping. "It's God's choice."
Abdel-Fattah's twin daughters, Reeman and Rym, have tried to ease their mother's pain by hiding their dead sister's pictures. But Seif produced one for a visitor.
It was taken in February at a Baghdad amusement park during Eid al-Adha, the Muslim feast of sacrifice. Rowand was being carried by her smiling twin sisters. She just gazed at the camera, the face of a baby with less than two months to live.
* __
It was April 6. U.S. troops were already in parts of Baghdad and the rest of the city was to fall three days later. But Nizar Faleh, in the Baath Party's olive uniform at his sandbagged position in al-Harthiya district, was unperturbed.
He had confidence that the epic "battle for Baghdad" promised by Saddam was finally at hand. And Faleh, a father of five, was ready to die defending his country.
"It's the war between the forces of the faithful and the forces of the infidels," he said then, speaking from his fighting position on al-Kindi street. His AK-47 assault rifle stood between his legs.
"This is a crusade -- a war against Islam," he said.
Now it is May, and Faleh's crusade has ended. His leader is gone, his disappointment evident. He sits in his home with his children, bags under his eyes, and speaks quietly, deliberately -- as if betrayed.
The Americans didn't defeat Baghdad, Faleh says; treason did. Leaders of the party he had joined as a young man, together with the commanders of elite army divisions, laid down their arms and went home. How, he wondered, could that have happened?
"I told my men not to fire at the Americans," he says, sitting in his living room in a robe. "What was the point? Instead, I ordered them to take off their uniforms and scatter throughout al-Harthiya to protect properties from looters."
He is not sure what to make of this peculiar new Baghdad. The past is dead, he says, and the future unborn.
"I am happy that Saddam has fallen, but that doesn't mean that the ideology of the Baath has fallen, too," Faleh says. "He did not turn out to be the man we all thought he would be. We lived a big lie."
* __
In the 14th century, the Arab traveler Ibn Battuta wrote this about Baghdad: "She is the abode of peace and the capital of Islam."
Today, to Muslims and Arabs, the city still stands as an enduring symbol of Arab glory: seat of a vast medieval empire, home to a plethora of saints and generals, pioneering men of science and composers of immortal poetry.
It is much more than what it first appears to be -- a city in ruins. And its people, shocked and shamed enough by what they see, insist that Baghdad today is not who they really are.
"We are a very civilized people," says Qassim Mohammed, an English lecturer with a master's degree in the works of Thornton Wilder, the American playwright who wrote about how and why communities and people change. "I challenge you to find me a people who can continue to live under these circumstances for as long we have."
These days, Ilwan, the artist, sits in his sweltering and unlit studio and sips a beer. He is still unsure what to make of his adopted city as it charts a new course under American military occupation.
In February he showed a watercolor of an orchard where the trees bear not fruit but hell-tormented human faces. At that time he said it represented Iraqis suffering under more than a decade of U.N. sanctions.
Today, asked whether his interpretation is the same, he laughs.
"I had to say that," he says, and offers a new interpretation: "The faces represent the suffering of Iraqis under Saddam's rule."
In Baghdad, as summer comes, the painting on the wall hasn't changed a bit. But Iraq is a different place, and Abdel-Ameer Ilwan is a different man.
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-baghdad-blues,0,495967.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
Iraq Gov't. Workers to Get April Salaries
From: spliffslips
--------------------
Iraq Gov't. Workers to Get April Salaries
--------------------
By HAMZA HENDAWI
Associated Press Writer
May 21, 2003, 2:31 PM EDT
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Some 1.4 million Iraqi government employees will collect their first salaries in two months this week, the man who launched the American civilian administration in Iraq said Wednesday.
Retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner told reporters that $45 million in April salaries would be paid starting Saturday.
Members of Iraq's disbanded armed forces and intelligence services will not be paid. Nor will employees who haven't worked since the capture of Baghdad by U.S. forces on April 9.
Employees will also get an emergency payment of $30 along with the $20 they received earlier this month.
All workers will be paid in Iraqi dinars, except for those in autonomous Kurdish areas, who will be paid in U.S. dollars. The payments will be made in cash.
Garner said government employees will get their May and June salaries by the end of June. The money, he said, came from Iraqi assets frozen abroad after Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
"Salaries in the new Iraq will be determined by rank and merit, not by party status," said a press release issued by the U.S.-led Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. "The old system of allowances and bribes has gone."
David Nummy, senior U.S. Treasury Department representative in Iraq, said new salary scales are based on qualifications, merit and years of service. Most government employees will be collecting higher salaries than they did under Saddam's rule, he said.
"There are a few losers," Nummy said, citing former presidential employees.
Salaries will now range between 100,000 dinars and 500,000 a month -- or about $80-$400 by Wednesday's exchange rate. Schoolteachers who were making an average of 20,000 dinars will now receive 100,000, or about $80. Policemen will make 120,000 dinars on average, or about $100 -- twice what they previously made.
The dinar has been fluctuating wildly against the dollar, but since peaking at nearly 4,000 to the dollar during the fighting, it has been steadily gaining strength, standing at about 1,200 to the dollar on Wednesday.
Garner said the salaries and the additional emergency payment would be "a good boost to the economy" and said payments in Iraqi dinars are meant to support the national currency in a country where the dollar currently reigns.
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-paychecks-at-last,0,544293.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
--------------------
Iraq Gov't. Workers to Get April Salaries
--------------------
By HAMZA HENDAWI
Associated Press Writer
May 21, 2003, 2:31 PM EDT
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Some 1.4 million Iraqi government employees will collect their first salaries in two months this week, the man who launched the American civilian administration in Iraq said Wednesday.
Retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner told reporters that $45 million in April salaries would be paid starting Saturday.
Members of Iraq's disbanded armed forces and intelligence services will not be paid. Nor will employees who haven't worked since the capture of Baghdad by U.S. forces on April 9.
Employees will also get an emergency payment of $30 along with the $20 they received earlier this month.
All workers will be paid in Iraqi dinars, except for those in autonomous Kurdish areas, who will be paid in U.S. dollars. The payments will be made in cash.
Garner said government employees will get their May and June salaries by the end of June. The money, he said, came from Iraqi assets frozen abroad after Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
"Salaries in the new Iraq will be determined by rank and merit, not by party status," said a press release issued by the U.S.-led Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. "The old system of allowances and bribes has gone."
David Nummy, senior U.S. Treasury Department representative in Iraq, said new salary scales are based on qualifications, merit and years of service. Most government employees will be collecting higher salaries than they did under Saddam's rule, he said.
"There are a few losers," Nummy said, citing former presidential employees.
Salaries will now range between 100,000 dinars and 500,000 a month -- or about $80-$400 by Wednesday's exchange rate. Schoolteachers who were making an average of 20,000 dinars will now receive 100,000, or about $80. Policemen will make 120,000 dinars on average, or about $100 -- twice what they previously made.
The dinar has been fluctuating wildly against the dollar, but since peaking at nearly 4,000 to the dollar during the fighting, it has been steadily gaining strength, standing at about 1,200 to the dollar on Wednesday.
Garner said the salaries and the additional emergency payment would be "a good boost to the economy" and said payments in Iraqi dinars are meant to support the national currency in a country where the dollar currently reigns.
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-paychecks-at-last,0,544293.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
AP-Latest-Iraq-War-Headlines At 1 p.m. EDT
From: spliffslips
Military Care Packages Iraq War Updates
--------------------
AP-Latest-Iraq-War-Headlines At 1 p.m. EDT
--------------------
By Associated Press
May 21, 2003, 1:02 PM EDT
French President Chirac Appeals to Leaders to Put Aside Differences to Kickstart Global Economy
NATO Agrees to Help Poland Lead Iraq Peacekeeping Force in Move That Could Heal Alliance's Rifts
Some Barrels Missing From Iraqi Nuclear Site, but Most Radioactive Material Safe, U.S. Says
Top Marine Says All of His Forces Should Be Out of Gulf Area by End of August
British Army Officer Under Investigation Over Allegations He Mistreated Iraq Prisoners
Conference to Select Iraq's Interim Government Likely Will Be Delayed Until July, Official Says
Key Developments Concerning Iraq
U.S. Calls for Thursday U.N. Vote on Allowing Coalition to Run Iraq Until Government Established
Belgian Government Sends War Crimes Complaint Against Gen. Franks to U.S.; Lawyer to Appeal
Vote on Iraq Interim Government Will Happen in Mid-July at the Earliest
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-latest-iraq-war-headlines,0,6613873.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
Military Care Packages Iraq War Updates
--------------------
AP-Latest-Iraq-War-Headlines At 1 p.m. EDT
--------------------
By Associated Press
May 21, 2003, 1:02 PM EDT
French President Chirac Appeals to Leaders to Put Aside Differences to Kickstart Global Economy
NATO Agrees to Help Poland Lead Iraq Peacekeeping Force in Move That Could Heal Alliance's Rifts
Some Barrels Missing From Iraqi Nuclear Site, but Most Radioactive Material Safe, U.S. Says
Top Marine Says All of His Forces Should Be Out of Gulf Area by End of August
British Army Officer Under Investigation Over Allegations He Mistreated Iraq Prisoners
Conference to Select Iraq's Interim Government Likely Will Be Delayed Until July, Official Says
Key Developments Concerning Iraq
U.S. Calls for Thursday U.N. Vote on Allowing Coalition to Run Iraq Until Government Established
Belgian Government Sends War Crimes Complaint Against Gen. Franks to U.S.; Lawyer to Appeal
Vote on Iraq Interim Government Will Happen in Mid-July at the Earliest
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-latest-iraq-war-headlines,0,6613873.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
Tuesday, May 20, 2003
Ethnic Tensions Boil in Northern Iraq
From: spliffslips
--------------------
Ethnic Tensions Boil in Northern Iraq
--------------------
By LOUIS MEIXLER
Associated Press Writer
May 20, 2003, 4:48 PM EDT
HAWIJEH, Iraq -- Backed by armored vehicles, U.S. soldiers patrolled the streets of a northern town Tuesday after a weekend of Arab-Kurdish violence left at least 11 people dead and a U.S. soldier wounded in a key Iraqi oil-producing area.
At least two dozen Iraqis were injured in the fighting, which threatens to destabilize the region just days after top U.S. officers showcased it as an example of a district whose wealth and diversity could make it a model for a democratic Iraq.
Kurdish and Arab leaders were planning to meet Tuesday night in a mosque in Kirkuk, the city at the center of dispute, to mediate the tensions.
The area around the city is dotted with oil wells that produced slightly less than half of Iraq's oil before the war started on March 20. On Saturday, representatives of the city's ethnic groups are scheduled to meet with U.S. officers to elect a city council.
At the heart of the dispute appears to be the thousands of Kurds who have been returning to Kirkuk and the surrounding area since the fall of Saddam Hussein, who drove out Kurds and other non-Arabs and moved in Arabs to change the ethnic balance to one more likely to support his regime.
After Saddam's fall, Kurdish guerrillas moved into the town and Kurdish families began to return, in some cases displacing Arabs.
"Arabs feel that this is their city. Kurds also believe it is their city," said Rifaat Abdullah, the top Kurdish official in Kirkuk.
Shooting incidents have been common in the city, but the tensions exploded Saturday when Arabs and Kurds confronted each other near a marketplace. U.S. and Kurdish officials had only sketchy details of the fighting, and accounts from witnesses varied significantly.
Abdullah said 11 people were killed, including seven Kurds. U.S. soldiers say the number could be closer to 15.
Both seemed to agree that many of the attackers may have been Arabs from Hawijeh, a town of some 20,000 some 30 miles outside of Kirkuk.
Many Saddam loyalists fled to the town after the Kurds moved into Kirkuk. Officials from Saddam's Baath Party and members of his Saddam Fedayeen militia are believed to be active in the city.
On Sunday, a 400-man U.S. task force backed by tanks and attack helicopters headed out to Hawijeh, but was ambushed a few miles outside of the city by assailants with assault rifles and heavy machine guns.
"There was a lot of gunfire," said Maj. Rob Gowan of the 173rd Airborne Brigade. He said the shooting lasted about a half hour. One soldier manning a machine gun atop a jeep was shot in the side and injured, though not seriously, Gowan said.
On Tuesday, several hundred U.S. soldiers patrolled the town, some with their faces smeared with green camouflage paint.
"We've heard the Baath Party and Fedayeen Saddam are here, so we are here to show a presence," said Sgt. David Maurer of Curtis, Wis., as he led a 10-man patrol.
Nearby, armored personnel carriers rumbled through the dusty streets, cutting track marks into the soft asphalt. The town is in the middle of cotton and wheat fields, and cows wandered through the streets.
Soldiers said they were having little success in catching Saddam's loyalists.
"Everywhere we go, they just run away," said Capt. Jack Senneff of the 4th Infantry Division.
One soldier shouted to a group of men standing at the doorway of a cinderblock home, "Did you see any of the Fedayeen?"
"Yes, a man standing in a doorway shouted back, pointing left.
The soldiers ignored him and pressed forward.
"There are no Fedayeen here," said Kazim Ali Meri, a 31-year-old taxi driver. "The real problem is the Kurds." He said that Kurds came to the area last month killing four Arabs.
U.S. forces have been blocking Kurdish guerrillas from entering Arab areas, Gowan said. But the tensions remain, and Abdullah said the reconciliation meetings will not solve the core problems.
Abdullah, from a village outside of Kirkuk, was forced out in 1987. Like many Kurds, he wants the Arabs living in what was his home to give it back.
"I won't force them out with weapons," he said, "but they have to leave."
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-ethnic-tensions,0,4773143.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
--------------------
Ethnic Tensions Boil in Northern Iraq
--------------------
By LOUIS MEIXLER
Associated Press Writer
May 20, 2003, 4:48 PM EDT
HAWIJEH, Iraq -- Backed by armored vehicles, U.S. soldiers patrolled the streets of a northern town Tuesday after a weekend of Arab-Kurdish violence left at least 11 people dead and a U.S. soldier wounded in a key Iraqi oil-producing area.
At least two dozen Iraqis were injured in the fighting, which threatens to destabilize the region just days after top U.S. officers showcased it as an example of a district whose wealth and diversity could make it a model for a democratic Iraq.
Kurdish and Arab leaders were planning to meet Tuesday night in a mosque in Kirkuk, the city at the center of dispute, to mediate the tensions.
The area around the city is dotted with oil wells that produced slightly less than half of Iraq's oil before the war started on March 20. On Saturday, representatives of the city's ethnic groups are scheduled to meet with U.S. officers to elect a city council.
At the heart of the dispute appears to be the thousands of Kurds who have been returning to Kirkuk and the surrounding area since the fall of Saddam Hussein, who drove out Kurds and other non-Arabs and moved in Arabs to change the ethnic balance to one more likely to support his regime.
After Saddam's fall, Kurdish guerrillas moved into the town and Kurdish families began to return, in some cases displacing Arabs.
"Arabs feel that this is their city. Kurds also believe it is their city," said Rifaat Abdullah, the top Kurdish official in Kirkuk.
Shooting incidents have been common in the city, but the tensions exploded Saturday when Arabs and Kurds confronted each other near a marketplace. U.S. and Kurdish officials had only sketchy details of the fighting, and accounts from witnesses varied significantly.
Abdullah said 11 people were killed, including seven Kurds. U.S. soldiers say the number could be closer to 15.
Both seemed to agree that many of the attackers may have been Arabs from Hawijeh, a town of some 20,000 some 30 miles outside of Kirkuk.
Many Saddam loyalists fled to the town after the Kurds moved into Kirkuk. Officials from Saddam's Baath Party and members of his Saddam Fedayeen militia are believed to be active in the city.
On Sunday, a 400-man U.S. task force backed by tanks and attack helicopters headed out to Hawijeh, but was ambushed a few miles outside of the city by assailants with assault rifles and heavy machine guns.
"There was a lot of gunfire," said Maj. Rob Gowan of the 173rd Airborne Brigade. He said the shooting lasted about a half hour. One soldier manning a machine gun atop a jeep was shot in the side and injured, though not seriously, Gowan said.
On Tuesday, several hundred U.S. soldiers patrolled the town, some with their faces smeared with green camouflage paint.
"We've heard the Baath Party and Fedayeen Saddam are here, so we are here to show a presence," said Sgt. David Maurer of Curtis, Wis., as he led a 10-man patrol.
Nearby, armored personnel carriers rumbled through the dusty streets, cutting track marks into the soft asphalt. The town is in the middle of cotton and wheat fields, and cows wandered through the streets.
Soldiers said they were having little success in catching Saddam's loyalists.
"Everywhere we go, they just run away," said Capt. Jack Senneff of the 4th Infantry Division.
One soldier shouted to a group of men standing at the doorway of a cinderblock home, "Did you see any of the Fedayeen?"
"Yes, a man standing in a doorway shouted back, pointing left.
The soldiers ignored him and pressed forward.
"There are no Fedayeen here," said Kazim Ali Meri, a 31-year-old taxi driver. "The real problem is the Kurds." He said that Kurds came to the area last month killing four Arabs.
U.S. forces have been blocking Kurdish guerrillas from entering Arab areas, Gowan said. But the tensions remain, and Abdullah said the reconciliation meetings will not solve the core problems.
Abdullah, from a village outside of Kirkuk, was forced out in 1987. Like many Kurds, he wants the Arabs living in what was his home to give it back.
"I won't force them out with weapons," he said, "but they have to leave."
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-ethnic-tensions,0,4773143.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
Big Dig Official Oversees Iraq Contracts
From: spliffslips
--------------------
Big Dig Official Oversees Iraq Contracts
--------------------
By LARRY MARGASAK
Associated Press Writer
May 20, 2003, 3:12 PM EDT
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration official whose agency approves most of the Iraq rebuilding contracts previously tried to rein in costs for Massachusetts' "Big Dig," the expensive highway project that has become a symbol of government contracting run amok.
Under Andrew Natsios' leadership as administrator, the U.S. Agency for International Development has awarded the largest Iraq contract to Bechtel Corp., the company that helped manage the two-decade-old Boston project that has cost more than five times its original price tag.
While still a Massachusetts official, Natsios imposed severe financial controls on Bechtel after being asked by the governor to control the spiraling costs of the Big Dig project. Bechtel has co-managed the project with a New York firm, Parsons Brinckerhoff.
State and federal officials and taxpayers were stunned in early 2000 when the overseer of the project -- Natsios' predecessor as the head of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority -- announced it would cost $1.4 billion more than expected.
Natsios, then the state's finance chief, was sent to the Turnpike agency in April 2000 to take charge of the project, which is replacing an elevated section of Interstate 93 with an underground highway and connecting the Massachusetts Turnpike with Logan International Airport.
Natsios cut the fees of Bechtel/Parsons, increased the firms' liability for mismanagement and set standards for additional earnings so high the companies couldn't meet them. He also made everything about the project public, reversing the prior secrecy that enveloped the project and its costs.
Natsios declined to be interviewed for this story. But USAID said he played no part in choosing Bechtel for the Iraq contract, which could be worth $680 million. Under federal law, the USAID professional contract staff made the choice, the agency said.
USAID spokeswoman Ellen Yount said Bechtel's costs in Iraq will be closely monitored by at least seven government contracting experts in Iraq, and possibly nine additional staff members in the region who are available if needed.
Under Bechtel's contract, the company will need specific USAID approval to proceed with any work once it reaches 80 percent of the $680 million contract cap.
Bechtel, a San Francisco engineering giant, has strong Republican connections. Former Secretary of State George Shultz and ex-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger are two of the prominent Republicans who worked there, and Shultz remains a board member.
The cost escalation in the Big Dig, originally a $2.6 billion project, remains the subject of a furious debate -- which probably will go on after the estimated 2005 completion. Bechtel blames state officials for changes and errors, while state officials contend they were following Bechtel's advice. The current estimated cost: $14.6 billion.
Bechtel's Big Dig project manager, Matthew Wiley, said the company objects to the word "overrun" to describe higher costs.
"We don't have decision authority with the contract," Wiley said. "Do we make decisions in the field? Sure, we're not perfect. The majority of major cost decisions rest with the client (the state). We make recommendations, they make the decisions."
He said the company would pay back money in cases where the company was at fault for higher costs.
Natsios only dealt with the Big Dig for a year starting in late 1999, just before the $1.4 billion cost increase was revealed. At the time, he was finance director for then-GOP Gov. Paul Cellucci.
The Democratic state treasurer at the time, Shannon O'Brien, questions whether Natsios did everything possible to learn of the massive overrun before the Turnpike Authority chairman revealed it to the media.
"I was extremely frustrated that the Cellucci administration, including Natsios, was not more aggressive" in pressing then-turnpike Chairman Jim Kerasiotes to tell the truth, said O'Brien, a political rival of Natsios and the losing Democratic gubernatorial candidate in 2002.
But Paul Ladd, a current federal official who then was a top aide to Natsios, said his boss couldn't have tried harder to learn the truth.
In November 1999, Natsios held up a state bond issue when Turnpike Authority officials were late in providing financial data for a disclosure statement to potential bondholders.
On Dec. 23, 1999, Natsios became alarmed when the state overseers suddenly announced a thorough financial review of a project they previously described as on time and on budget.
Natsios instructed Ladd to inform bond rating agencies of the review, and to offer Turnpike officials state surplus funds to cover overruns -- if they only would come clean with the real costs, Ladd said.
In January 2000, O'Brien vowed to hold up the next state bond issue until the independent Turnpike Authority released the true costs. She said Natsios didn't join in her threat at the time.
Three months later, in April 2000, Cellucci rushed from a tense, private briefing with federal transportation officials, and demanded Kerasiotes' resignation. Natsios was appointed to resolve the problems.
A stinging federal audit accused the state's former overseers of "repeatedly and deliberately" failing to disclose exorbitant overruns, causing "one of the most flagrant breaches of the integrity of the federal-state partnership in the history of the nearly 85-year-old federal-aid highway program."
"We had been beating them up for months," Ladd said of Natsios' efforts. "For her (O'Brien) to say Andrew wasn't doing anything shows she didn't know what he was doing. He was insistent the truth had to be fully disclosed."
* _
On the Net:
Bechtel: http://www.bechtel.com
U.S. Agency for International Development: http://www.usaid.gov/iraq
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-big-dig-iraq,0,775326.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
--------------------
Big Dig Official Oversees Iraq Contracts
--------------------
By LARRY MARGASAK
Associated Press Writer
May 20, 2003, 3:12 PM EDT
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration official whose agency approves most of the Iraq rebuilding contracts previously tried to rein in costs for Massachusetts' "Big Dig," the expensive highway project that has become a symbol of government contracting run amok.
Under Andrew Natsios' leadership as administrator, the U.S. Agency for International Development has awarded the largest Iraq contract to Bechtel Corp., the company that helped manage the two-decade-old Boston project that has cost more than five times its original price tag.
While still a Massachusetts official, Natsios imposed severe financial controls on Bechtel after being asked by the governor to control the spiraling costs of the Big Dig project. Bechtel has co-managed the project with a New York firm, Parsons Brinckerhoff.
State and federal officials and taxpayers were stunned in early 2000 when the overseer of the project -- Natsios' predecessor as the head of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority -- announced it would cost $1.4 billion more than expected.
Natsios, then the state's finance chief, was sent to the Turnpike agency in April 2000 to take charge of the project, which is replacing an elevated section of Interstate 93 with an underground highway and connecting the Massachusetts Turnpike with Logan International Airport.
Natsios cut the fees of Bechtel/Parsons, increased the firms' liability for mismanagement and set standards for additional earnings so high the companies couldn't meet them. He also made everything about the project public, reversing the prior secrecy that enveloped the project and its costs.
Natsios declined to be interviewed for this story. But USAID said he played no part in choosing Bechtel for the Iraq contract, which could be worth $680 million. Under federal law, the USAID professional contract staff made the choice, the agency said.
USAID spokeswoman Ellen Yount said Bechtel's costs in Iraq will be closely monitored by at least seven government contracting experts in Iraq, and possibly nine additional staff members in the region who are available if needed.
Under Bechtel's contract, the company will need specific USAID approval to proceed with any work once it reaches 80 percent of the $680 million contract cap.
Bechtel, a San Francisco engineering giant, has strong Republican connections. Former Secretary of State George Shultz and ex-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger are two of the prominent Republicans who worked there, and Shultz remains a board member.
The cost escalation in the Big Dig, originally a $2.6 billion project, remains the subject of a furious debate -- which probably will go on after the estimated 2005 completion. Bechtel blames state officials for changes and errors, while state officials contend they were following Bechtel's advice. The current estimated cost: $14.6 billion.
Bechtel's Big Dig project manager, Matthew Wiley, said the company objects to the word "overrun" to describe higher costs.
"We don't have decision authority with the contract," Wiley said. "Do we make decisions in the field? Sure, we're not perfect. The majority of major cost decisions rest with the client (the state). We make recommendations, they make the decisions."
He said the company would pay back money in cases where the company was at fault for higher costs.
Natsios only dealt with the Big Dig for a year starting in late 1999, just before the $1.4 billion cost increase was revealed. At the time, he was finance director for then-GOP Gov. Paul Cellucci.
The Democratic state treasurer at the time, Shannon O'Brien, questions whether Natsios did everything possible to learn of the massive overrun before the Turnpike Authority chairman revealed it to the media.
"I was extremely frustrated that the Cellucci administration, including Natsios, was not more aggressive" in pressing then-turnpike Chairman Jim Kerasiotes to tell the truth, said O'Brien, a political rival of Natsios and the losing Democratic gubernatorial candidate in 2002.
But Paul Ladd, a current federal official who then was a top aide to Natsios, said his boss couldn't have tried harder to learn the truth.
In November 1999, Natsios held up a state bond issue when Turnpike Authority officials were late in providing financial data for a disclosure statement to potential bondholders.
On Dec. 23, 1999, Natsios became alarmed when the state overseers suddenly announced a thorough financial review of a project they previously described as on time and on budget.
Natsios instructed Ladd to inform bond rating agencies of the review, and to offer Turnpike officials state surplus funds to cover overruns -- if they only would come clean with the real costs, Ladd said.
In January 2000, O'Brien vowed to hold up the next state bond issue until the independent Turnpike Authority released the true costs. She said Natsios didn't join in her threat at the time.
Three months later, in April 2000, Cellucci rushed from a tense, private briefing with federal transportation officials, and demanded Kerasiotes' resignation. Natsios was appointed to resolve the problems.
A stinging federal audit accused the state's former overseers of "repeatedly and deliberately" failing to disclose exorbitant overruns, causing "one of the most flagrant breaches of the integrity of the federal-state partnership in the history of the nearly 85-year-old federal-aid highway program."
"We had been beating them up for months," Ladd said of Natsios' efforts. "For her (O'Brien) to say Andrew wasn't doing anything shows she didn't know what he was doing. He was insistent the truth had to be fully disclosed."
* _
On the Net:
Bechtel: http://www.bechtel.com
U.S. Agency for International Development: http://www.usaid.gov/iraq
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-big-dig-iraq,0,775326.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
U.S. Asks Experts to Survey Iraqi Labs
From: spliffslips
--------------------
U.S. Asks Experts to Survey Iraqi Labs
--------------------
By DAFNA LINZER
Associated Press Writer
May 20, 2003, 4:02 PM EDT
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The United States is inviting a group of international experts to inspect two mobile labs suspected of being used by Iraq as biological weapons facilities, a senior military commander involved in the weapons hunt told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
Although the laboratories do not represent proof that Iraq had biological weapons, American officials believe their only purpose was for making such weapons. Outside confirmation could help legitimize one of the Bush administration's main reasons for going to war.
"We're going to invite a special team, an international team of experts to take a look at the labs," said Col. Tim Madere, the chemical weapons specialist for the U.S. Army's V Corps, one of the main units occupying Baghdad.
Madere said the Pentagon would provide further details about the international team in coming days. The two labs already have been inspected by U.S. and British technical experts and a group of scientists from coalition countries, Madere said in an interview.
Earlier this month, Pentagon officials said the discovery of the first trailer -- seized at a checkpoint near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on April 19 -- could prove Iraq had active programs to produce weapons of mass destruction.
Troops from the Army's 101st Airborne Division found the second trailer on May 9 at al-Kindi, a former missile research facility in Iraq. The trailer is similar to another found last month in the same area that U.S. officials believe was a mobile germ-weapons workshop.
Some equipment from the latest trailer had been looted, and there were indications such as unfinished welding that the apparatus was incomplete.
Madere said soldiers needed to scrounge for tires to put on the trailer to drag it back to Baghdad's international airport -- headquarters for the U.S. military here -- for analysis.
Stephen Cambone, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, said in Washington earlier this month that he didn't know whether the discovery of the first lab represented a "smoking gun." But he said British and American technical experts had "concluded that the unit does not appear to perform any function beyond ... the production of biological agents."
Saddam Hussein's regime had insisted that Iraq had destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons in the early 1990s as required by U.N. resolutions imposing sanctions after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. U.N. weapons inspectors, who spent 3 1/2 months in Iraq just prior to the war, found no evidence to refute the Iraqi claims.
President Bush cited Saddam's failure to eliminate Iraq's biological and chemical weapons programs as one of his main reasons for launching the war, which ousted Saddam last month.
So far, U.S. weapons hunters also have not uncovered any chemical or biological weapons or conclusive evidence that such programs existed in recent years, despite visits to more than 100 suspected sites since the war began on March 20.
In a United Nations presentation before the war, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Iraq had built several mobile weapons laboratories to conceal production of biological and chemical weapons. Pentagon officials say both trailers found in northern Iraq appear to match the descriptions from Iraqi sources Powell quoted.
The Iraqis followed the presentation by presenting U.N. inspectors with about 40 photographs and four videos displaying mobile labs they said were used for food analysis for disease outbreaks, mobile field hospitals, a military field bakery, food and medicine refrigeration trucks, a mobile military morgue and mobile ice making trucks.
Inspectors visited a number of the labs at several sites but found no evidence of chemical or biological weapons activity, said Ewen Buchanan, spokesman for the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission.
"The outline and characteristics of these trucks that we inspected were all consistent with the declared purposes," Buchanan said. Extensive forensic sampling of the trucks' interiors and exteriors supported that conclusion, he said.
The United States chose to conduct its weapons hunt alone, without help from the U.N. inspection teams that had frustrated the Bush administration's attempts to prove Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the war.
France, Russia and other Security Council members who opposed the war have been pushing for UNMOVIC's, if only to verify any potential weapons finds. It wasn't clear whether those countries, currently embroiled in additional disputes with the United States over Iraq's future, would be satisfied with the findings of an international body picked by Washington.
Madere said he believed UNMOVIC would be invited back eventually. Buchanan said inspectors hadn't been approached about the idea by Washington, which hasn't been in contact with the U.N. group since the war began.
Madere has been working closely with the five different U.S. military Site Survey Teams that have taken part in the weapons search. A chemical specialist for the army for 26 years, Madere has been involved with target analysis, development and assignment for the teams. He also evaluates their findings.
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-weapons-hunt,0,4738612.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
--------------------
U.S. Asks Experts to Survey Iraqi Labs
--------------------
By DAFNA LINZER
Associated Press Writer
May 20, 2003, 4:02 PM EDT
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The United States is inviting a group of international experts to inspect two mobile labs suspected of being used by Iraq as biological weapons facilities, a senior military commander involved in the weapons hunt told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
Although the laboratories do not represent proof that Iraq had biological weapons, American officials believe their only purpose was for making such weapons. Outside confirmation could help legitimize one of the Bush administration's main reasons for going to war.
"We're going to invite a special team, an international team of experts to take a look at the labs," said Col. Tim Madere, the chemical weapons specialist for the U.S. Army's V Corps, one of the main units occupying Baghdad.
Madere said the Pentagon would provide further details about the international team in coming days. The two labs already have been inspected by U.S. and British technical experts and a group of scientists from coalition countries, Madere said in an interview.
Earlier this month, Pentagon officials said the discovery of the first trailer -- seized at a checkpoint near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on April 19 -- could prove Iraq had active programs to produce weapons of mass destruction.
Troops from the Army's 101st Airborne Division found the second trailer on May 9 at al-Kindi, a former missile research facility in Iraq. The trailer is similar to another found last month in the same area that U.S. officials believe was a mobile germ-weapons workshop.
Some equipment from the latest trailer had been looted, and there were indications such as unfinished welding that the apparatus was incomplete.
Madere said soldiers needed to scrounge for tires to put on the trailer to drag it back to Baghdad's international airport -- headquarters for the U.S. military here -- for analysis.
Stephen Cambone, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, said in Washington earlier this month that he didn't know whether the discovery of the first lab represented a "smoking gun." But he said British and American technical experts had "concluded that the unit does not appear to perform any function beyond ... the production of biological agents."
Saddam Hussein's regime had insisted that Iraq had destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons in the early 1990s as required by U.N. resolutions imposing sanctions after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. U.N. weapons inspectors, who spent 3 1/2 months in Iraq just prior to the war, found no evidence to refute the Iraqi claims.
President Bush cited Saddam's failure to eliminate Iraq's biological and chemical weapons programs as one of his main reasons for launching the war, which ousted Saddam last month.
So far, U.S. weapons hunters also have not uncovered any chemical or biological weapons or conclusive evidence that such programs existed in recent years, despite visits to more than 100 suspected sites since the war began on March 20.
In a United Nations presentation before the war, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Iraq had built several mobile weapons laboratories to conceal production of biological and chemical weapons. Pentagon officials say both trailers found in northern Iraq appear to match the descriptions from Iraqi sources Powell quoted.
The Iraqis followed the presentation by presenting U.N. inspectors with about 40 photographs and four videos displaying mobile labs they said were used for food analysis for disease outbreaks, mobile field hospitals, a military field bakery, food and medicine refrigeration trucks, a mobile military morgue and mobile ice making trucks.
Inspectors visited a number of the labs at several sites but found no evidence of chemical or biological weapons activity, said Ewen Buchanan, spokesman for the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission.
"The outline and characteristics of these trucks that we inspected were all consistent with the declared purposes," Buchanan said. Extensive forensic sampling of the trucks' interiors and exteriors supported that conclusion, he said.
The United States chose to conduct its weapons hunt alone, without help from the U.N. inspection teams that had frustrated the Bush administration's attempts to prove Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the war.
France, Russia and other Security Council members who opposed the war have been pushing for UNMOVIC's, if only to verify any potential weapons finds. It wasn't clear whether those countries, currently embroiled in additional disputes with the United States over Iraq's future, would be satisfied with the findings of an international body picked by Washington.
Madere said he believed UNMOVIC would be invited back eventually. Buchanan said inspectors hadn't been approached about the idea by Washington, which hasn't been in contact with the U.N. group since the war began.
Madere has been working closely with the five different U.S. military Site Survey Teams that have taken part in the weapons search. A chemical specialist for the army for 26 years, Madere has been involved with target analysis, development and assignment for the teams. He also evaluates their findings.
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-weapons-hunt,0,4738612.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
Iraqi Families Move Into Gov't Buildings
From: spliffslips
--------------------
Iraqi Families Move Into Gov't Buildings
--------------------
By ALEXANDRA ZAVIS
Associated Press Writer
May 20, 2003, 2:00 AM EDT
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The walls are charred. The floors are strewn with debris. But for hundreds of Iraqi families, it's home now -- and they are hoping it's going to stay that way.
When U.S. forces seized the capital, the elite of Saddam Hussein's regime bolted. Now, with no legal system left to stop them, Iraqi families are flooding into the buildings left behind, carving new homes out of abandoned residences, looted offices and bombed-out military bases.
"This is where we will build a future," said Hadi Ubid Jumha, who moved his wife and six children into the bombed remains of Saddam's Baghdad Air Command -- or, more specifically, three soot-blackened rooms at the back of a theater that was once part of an officers' social club.
"We want to celebrate our sons' weddings here," Jumha said, glancing proudly toward his two lanky teens.
Before the war, Jumha moved his family from place to place in a futile attempt to stay ahead of rent payments. His last home -- a single 10- by24-foot room -- took up all but 5,000 dinars ($2.50) of the 40,000 dinars ($20) he earned each month as a driving instructor.
Now, picking his way through broken bricks, twisted metal and shards of glass, Jumha organizes his future -- noting which walls need a coat of paint, where he plans to put in a door, where the toilets will be.
While Iraq was spared the refugee crisis many feared the war would cause, it is in the throes of a major housing crisis.
At the end of 2002, the housing ministry estimated that 800,000 new homes were needed in Baghdad and other urban areas to accommodate the country's growing population.
But while Saddam built one ostentatious palace after another for himself, giving his people shelter was one of his government's lowest priorities.
By the regime's end, public housing made up about 1 percent of new construction, said Saad al-Zubaidi, a long-serving Housing Ministry official and now its director-general. This in a country where incomes are so low it would take many people 150 years to pay off a mortgage. Complicated restrictions on who could buy and sell real estate in the capital only made matters worse.
None of that sat well with al-Zubaidi.
"Having a roof over one's head is a basic part of belonging to any country," al-Zubaidi said. "He who has no house has no nation."
Desperate Iraqis are finding novel ways to solve their housing problems.
Some families lost their homes when they ran afoul of the regime -- or when Saddam decided he needed a new building. Now, they have started reclaiming the properties by painting the walls with large Arabic letters: "Returned to the original owner."
Others are looting bomb sites for materials to build on any piece of land they can find.
Hassan Ibrahim Abed moved his 11-member family from a dank basement room into a sun-dappled, marble-floored guesthouse in a deserted government compound.
"You can't even compare this place to the last one," he said, standing in the garden. "It's the difference between heaven and hell."
When two other families moved in with them, they put a notice on the gate. "Full house," it said.
Now a political party wants to take over the premises, Abed said. First its representatives came with money; turned down, now they're making threats.
Neither side has a deed, but Abed says he's not giving up his new home.
"If they want to take this place, they will have to kill us first," he said.
Such disputes have already turned violent.
Landlords, forced by Saddam's government to house Palestinians for as little as 2,000 dinars ($1) a month, are now evicting these tenants at gunpoint or extorting huge rent increases, human rights groups say. Hundreds of Palestinians have fled to neighboring Jordan.
The tangle of housing claims and counterclaims is sure to be a major challenges for any new Iraqi government, though more immediate concerns like security and restoring basic services are occupying American administrators.
At some point, the government will need its buildings back. But Daniel Hitchings, the housing ministry's senior U.S. adviser, acknowledges that American and Iraqi officials haven't even begun to consider how to do that.
The new occupants cling to the hope they will be allowed to stay.
Najdi Hassan Ali, an Egyptian moneychanger, lost his home in 1994 after he quarreled with one of Saddam's nephews over a business deal. He was arrested on what he calls trumped-up charges and sentenced to hang.
He remained on death row until last October, when Saddam emptied jails across the country. But with no money left to pay rent, he had to leave his wife and children with relatives while he stayed with friends.
He finally brought his family together again by taking over a two-room apartment in a military barracks overlooking the Air Command's empty swimming pool. A faded carpet is spread on the floor, and a portrait of his two sons and daughters hangs on the wall.
"If the new government takes this place from the people who are living here," he said, "then they are no better than Saddam."
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-moving-in,0,4635136.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
--------------------
Iraqi Families Move Into Gov't Buildings
--------------------
By ALEXANDRA ZAVIS
Associated Press Writer
May 20, 2003, 2:00 AM EDT
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The walls are charred. The floors are strewn with debris. But for hundreds of Iraqi families, it's home now -- and they are hoping it's going to stay that way.
When U.S. forces seized the capital, the elite of Saddam Hussein's regime bolted. Now, with no legal system left to stop them, Iraqi families are flooding into the buildings left behind, carving new homes out of abandoned residences, looted offices and bombed-out military bases.
"This is where we will build a future," said Hadi Ubid Jumha, who moved his wife and six children into the bombed remains of Saddam's Baghdad Air Command -- or, more specifically, three soot-blackened rooms at the back of a theater that was once part of an officers' social club.
"We want to celebrate our sons' weddings here," Jumha said, glancing proudly toward his two lanky teens.
Before the war, Jumha moved his family from place to place in a futile attempt to stay ahead of rent payments. His last home -- a single 10- by24-foot room -- took up all but 5,000 dinars ($2.50) of the 40,000 dinars ($20) he earned each month as a driving instructor.
Now, picking his way through broken bricks, twisted metal and shards of glass, Jumha organizes his future -- noting which walls need a coat of paint, where he plans to put in a door, where the toilets will be.
While Iraq was spared the refugee crisis many feared the war would cause, it is in the throes of a major housing crisis.
At the end of 2002, the housing ministry estimated that 800,000 new homes were needed in Baghdad and other urban areas to accommodate the country's growing population.
But while Saddam built one ostentatious palace after another for himself, giving his people shelter was one of his government's lowest priorities.
By the regime's end, public housing made up about 1 percent of new construction, said Saad al-Zubaidi, a long-serving Housing Ministry official and now its director-general. This in a country where incomes are so low it would take many people 150 years to pay off a mortgage. Complicated restrictions on who could buy and sell real estate in the capital only made matters worse.
None of that sat well with al-Zubaidi.
"Having a roof over one's head is a basic part of belonging to any country," al-Zubaidi said. "He who has no house has no nation."
Desperate Iraqis are finding novel ways to solve their housing problems.
Some families lost their homes when they ran afoul of the regime -- or when Saddam decided he needed a new building. Now, they have started reclaiming the properties by painting the walls with large Arabic letters: "Returned to the original owner."
Others are looting bomb sites for materials to build on any piece of land they can find.
Hassan Ibrahim Abed moved his 11-member family from a dank basement room into a sun-dappled, marble-floored guesthouse in a deserted government compound.
"You can't even compare this place to the last one," he said, standing in the garden. "It's the difference between heaven and hell."
When two other families moved in with them, they put a notice on the gate. "Full house," it said.
Now a political party wants to take over the premises, Abed said. First its representatives came with money; turned down, now they're making threats.
Neither side has a deed, but Abed says he's not giving up his new home.
"If they want to take this place, they will have to kill us first," he said.
Such disputes have already turned violent.
Landlords, forced by Saddam's government to house Palestinians for as little as 2,000 dinars ($1) a month, are now evicting these tenants at gunpoint or extorting huge rent increases, human rights groups say. Hundreds of Palestinians have fled to neighboring Jordan.
The tangle of housing claims and counterclaims is sure to be a major challenges for any new Iraqi government, though more immediate concerns like security and restoring basic services are occupying American administrators.
At some point, the government will need its buildings back. But Daniel Hitchings, the housing ministry's senior U.S. adviser, acknowledges that American and Iraqi officials haven't even begun to consider how to do that.
The new occupants cling to the hope they will be allowed to stay.
Najdi Hassan Ali, an Egyptian moneychanger, lost his home in 1994 after he quarreled with one of Saddam's nephews over a business deal. He was arrested on what he calls trumped-up charges and sentenced to hang.
He remained on death row until last October, when Saddam emptied jails across the country. But with no money left to pay rent, he had to leave his wife and children with relatives while he stayed with friends.
He finally brought his family together again by taking over a two-room apartment in a military barracks overlooking the Air Command's empty swimming pool. A faded carpet is spread on the floor, and a portrait of his two sons and daughters hangs on the wall.
"If the new government takes this place from the people who are living here," he said, "then they are no better than Saddam."
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-moving-in,0,4635136.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
Security Top Worry for Iraqi Oil Industry
From: spliffslips
Military Care Packages War Updates
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Security Top Worry for Iraqi Oil Industry
--------------------
By BRUCE STANLEY
AP Business Writer
May 20, 2003, 2:07 AM EDT
BASRA, Iraq -- A revitalized oil industry is the only practical way Iraqis are going to be able to rebuild their country -- but those hopes are running smack into reality. A plague of looters is stripping Iraq's oil industry bare to the bone.
U.S. officials hope hundreds of freshly re-trained oil police will help Iraq gain the upper hand against the opportunists.
Before the war in Iraq, U.S. military planners had anticipated that Saddam Hussein's government would sabotage its own wells, and they were relieved when the threat proved a dud. American officials were surprised, however, by the scale and audacity of postwar looting.
Like marauding piranha, thieves have stripped vulnerable oil installations of sheet metal, computers, light fixtures and even copper wiring. In northern Iraq alone, they've stolen 300 oil company buses and 200 pieces of heavy equipment -- including cranes, which they've used to loot oil pumps and other unwieldy industrial prizes.
Some of the theft has cost lives. Four Iraqis died in an explosion near the southern city of Basra on May 8 when they used a welding torch to tap into a pipeline containing liquefied petroleum gas, a popular cooking fuel.
Until now, American and British troops have been the sole source of protection for Iraq's oil facilities.
"The military is stretched too thin. We've had facilities that we checked out one day, and we came back the next day and the place was just trashed," said Gary Loew, the senior civilian in charge of oil restoration in Iraq for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
So British instructors have been re-training about 240 former Iraqi oil police in southern Iraq. After completing their three-day course, the men will be issued with firearms and join the first contingent of 160 gun-toting police who last week began guarding oil installations in southern Iraq.
Hundreds of armed Iraqi police have also taken up duties near the northern oil center of Kirkuk.
Their first task is to stop the looting. As much as 80 percent of the damage to Iraq's oil infrastructure has occurred since the war, Loew said. In a few cases, saboteurs have even riddled oil pipelines with bursts from heavy, Russian-made machine guns.
"That has slowed us considerably," Loew said.
On Monday, Corps of Engineers commander Gen. Robert Flowers made his first inspection of Iraqi oil facilities since the war. After a briefing with British officers and Iraqi oil managers, he acknowledged that conditions were dire.
"Security is a very big issue," he said.
Although Iraq has the world's second-largest proven oil reserves, three wars and U.N. economic sanctions have gutted the economy.
With gradual improvements in security, Iraq's oil ministry should be better able to tackle the immediate challenges of ensuring reliable supplies of electricity and water to its refineries and other facilities. Easing bottlenecks in the production and internal distribution of refined products such as cooking gas is also a priority.
Iraq's second-largest refinery at Basra has suffered electricity outages of up to two hours during each of the last four days.
"It's in good condition except for the power problem," general manager Thaer Ebraheem said.
The facility escaped damage earlier thanks to loyal employees who used guns and a fire hose to fend off would-be looters. Although it's only operating at 50-percent capacity -- processing 70,000 barrels of crude a day -- Ebraheem hopes to bring it fully on line in a week.
At the refinery's entrance Monday, two Iraqi police guarded a checkpoint. One wore a green uniform, the other a pink shirt and dark slacks. Both clutched assault rifles.
"Last week there would have been Brits there," said Corps of Engineers spokesman Steve Wright.
For civilian contractors trying to repair damaged pipelines and well heads, each trip into the field is still dangerous. No crew sets out without an armed escort of coalition troops -- something Loew said planners did not anticipate before the war.
Some crews encounter the same thieves each time they visit a job site.
"We get on a first-name basis with the looters," said Doug Fletcher, the head of operations in Iraq for KBR, the Halliburton Co. subsidiary contracted to repair Iraq's damaged oil facilities.
He was only half-kidding.
"They wave at us," he said. "We do what we've got to do and leave, and they go back to work."
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-oil-looters,0,3704962.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
Military Care Packages War Updates
--------------------
Security Top Worry for Iraqi Oil Industry
--------------------
By BRUCE STANLEY
AP Business Writer
May 20, 2003, 2:07 AM EDT
BASRA, Iraq -- A revitalized oil industry is the only practical way Iraqis are going to be able to rebuild their country -- but those hopes are running smack into reality. A plague of looters is stripping Iraq's oil industry bare to the bone.
U.S. officials hope hundreds of freshly re-trained oil police will help Iraq gain the upper hand against the opportunists.
Before the war in Iraq, U.S. military planners had anticipated that Saddam Hussein's government would sabotage its own wells, and they were relieved when the threat proved a dud. American officials were surprised, however, by the scale and audacity of postwar looting.
Like marauding piranha, thieves have stripped vulnerable oil installations of sheet metal, computers, light fixtures and even copper wiring. In northern Iraq alone, they've stolen 300 oil company buses and 200 pieces of heavy equipment -- including cranes, which they've used to loot oil pumps and other unwieldy industrial prizes.
Some of the theft has cost lives. Four Iraqis died in an explosion near the southern city of Basra on May 8 when they used a welding torch to tap into a pipeline containing liquefied petroleum gas, a popular cooking fuel.
Until now, American and British troops have been the sole source of protection for Iraq's oil facilities.
"The military is stretched too thin. We've had facilities that we checked out one day, and we came back the next day and the place was just trashed," said Gary Loew, the senior civilian in charge of oil restoration in Iraq for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
So British instructors have been re-training about 240 former Iraqi oil police in southern Iraq. After completing their three-day course, the men will be issued with firearms and join the first contingent of 160 gun-toting police who last week began guarding oil installations in southern Iraq.
Hundreds of armed Iraqi police have also taken up duties near the northern oil center of Kirkuk.
Their first task is to stop the looting. As much as 80 percent of the damage to Iraq's oil infrastructure has occurred since the war, Loew said. In a few cases, saboteurs have even riddled oil pipelines with bursts from heavy, Russian-made machine guns.
"That has slowed us considerably," Loew said.
On Monday, Corps of Engineers commander Gen. Robert Flowers made his first inspection of Iraqi oil facilities since the war. After a briefing with British officers and Iraqi oil managers, he acknowledged that conditions were dire.
"Security is a very big issue," he said.
Although Iraq has the world's second-largest proven oil reserves, three wars and U.N. economic sanctions have gutted the economy.
With gradual improvements in security, Iraq's oil ministry should be better able to tackle the immediate challenges of ensuring reliable supplies of electricity and water to its refineries and other facilities. Easing bottlenecks in the production and internal distribution of refined products such as cooking gas is also a priority.
Iraq's second-largest refinery at Basra has suffered electricity outages of up to two hours during each of the last four days.
"It's in good condition except for the power problem," general manager Thaer Ebraheem said.
The facility escaped damage earlier thanks to loyal employees who used guns and a fire hose to fend off would-be looters. Although it's only operating at 50-percent capacity -- processing 70,000 barrels of crude a day -- Ebraheem hopes to bring it fully on line in a week.
At the refinery's entrance Monday, two Iraqi police guarded a checkpoint. One wore a green uniform, the other a pink shirt and dark slacks. Both clutched assault rifles.
"Last week there would have been Brits there," said Corps of Engineers spokesman Steve Wright.
For civilian contractors trying to repair damaged pipelines and well heads, each trip into the field is still dangerous. No crew sets out without an armed escort of coalition troops -- something Loew said planners did not anticipate before the war.
Some crews encounter the same thieves each time they visit a job site.
"We get on a first-name basis with the looters," said Doug Fletcher, the head of operations in Iraq for KBR, the Halliburton Co. subsidiary contracted to repair Iraq's damaged oil facilities.
He was only half-kidding.
"They wave at us," he said. "We do what we've got to do and leave, and they go back to work."
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-oil-looters,0,3704962.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
Key Developments Concerning Iraq
From: spliffslips
War Blog Updates
--------------------
Key Developments Concerning Iraq
--------------------
By The Associated Press
May 20, 2003, 9:52 AM EDT
Key developments concerning Iraq:
* A U.S. military helicopter crashed into a canal in central Iraq, killing four Marines on a resupply mission. A fifth drowned trying to save them.
* The U.S.-led administration began hauling away trash that has been piling up across Baghdad, trying to defuse criticism that it is not doing enough to restore basic public services.
* The United States pressed for a vote on lifting U.N. sanctions against Iraq, a measure the Security Council seems virtually certain to approve.
* Looters were stripping Iraq's vulnerable oil installations of sheet metal, computers, light fixtures, even copper wiring, undermining efforts to revive the all-important industry.
* Iraqi families poured into the buildings left behind by Saddam Hussein's regime, carving new homes out of abandoned residences, looted offices and bombed-out military bases.
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-developments,0,1256047.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
War Blog Updates
--------------------
Key Developments Concerning Iraq
--------------------
By The Associated Press
May 20, 2003, 9:52 AM EDT
Key developments concerning Iraq:
* A U.S. military helicopter crashed into a canal in central Iraq, killing four Marines on a resupply mission. A fifth drowned trying to save them.
* The U.S.-led administration began hauling away trash that has been piling up across Baghdad, trying to defuse criticism that it is not doing enough to restore basic public services.
* The United States pressed for a vote on lifting U.N. sanctions against Iraq, a measure the Security Council seems virtually certain to approve.
* Looters were stripping Iraq's vulnerable oil installations of sheet metal, computers, light fixtures, even copper wiring, undermining efforts to revive the all-important industry.
* Iraqi families poured into the buildings left behind by Saddam Hussein's regime, carving new homes out of abandoned residences, looted offices and bombed-out military bases.
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-developments,0,1256047.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
Key Developments Concerning Iraq
From: spliffslips
War Blog Updates
--------------------
Key Developments Concerning Iraq
--------------------
By The Associated Press
May 20, 2003, 9:52 AM EDT
Key developments concerning Iraq:
* A U.S. military helicopter crashed into a canal in central Iraq, killing four Marines on a resupply mission. A fifth drowned trying to save them.
* The U.S.-led administration began hauling away trash that has been piling up across Baghdad, trying to defuse criticism that it is not doing enough to restore basic public services.
* The United States pressed for a vote on lifting U.N. sanctions against Iraq, a measure the Security Council seems virtually certain to approve.
* Looters were stripping Iraq's vulnerable oil installations of sheet metal, computers, light fixtures, even copper wiring, undermining efforts to revive the all-important industry.
* Iraqi families poured into the buildings left behind by Saddam Hussein's regime, carving new homes out of abandoned residences, looted offices and bombed-out military bases.
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-developments,0,1256047.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
War Blog Updates
--------------------
Key Developments Concerning Iraq
--------------------
By The Associated Press
May 20, 2003, 9:52 AM EDT
Key developments concerning Iraq:
* A U.S. military helicopter crashed into a canal in central Iraq, killing four Marines on a resupply mission. A fifth drowned trying to save them.
* The U.S.-led administration began hauling away trash that has been piling up across Baghdad, trying to defuse criticism that it is not doing enough to restore basic public services.
* The United States pressed for a vote on lifting U.N. sanctions against Iraq, a measure the Security Council seems virtually certain to approve.
* Looters were stripping Iraq's vulnerable oil installations of sheet metal, computers, light fixtures, even copper wiring, undermining efforts to revive the all-important industry.
* Iraqi families poured into the buildings left behind by Saddam Hussein's regime, carving new homes out of abandoned residences, looted offices and bombed-out military bases.
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-developments,0,1256047.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
Monday, May 19, 2003
NYTimes.com Article: Slain Gay Soldier's Case Slows a General's Rise
This article from NYTimes.com
has been sent to you by spliffslips@aol.com.
/-------------------- advertisement -----------------------
Explore more of Starbucks at Starbucks.com.
http://www.starbucks.com/default.asp?ci=1015
\----------------------------------------------------------/
Slain Gay Soldier's Case Slows a General's Rise
May 18, 2003
BY THE NEW YORK TIMES
For the second time, a Senate committee has delayed a vote
on the promotion of an Army general who commanded a base
where a gay soldier was beaten to death.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/18/politics/18GENE.html?ex=1054259911&ei=1&en=80b5563c0b2338f6
---------------------------------
Get Home Delivery of The New York Times Newspaper. Imagine
reading The New York Times any time & anywhere you like!
Leisurely catch up on events & expand your horizons. Enjoy
now for 50% off Home Delivery! Click here:
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HOW TO ADVERTISE
---------------------------------
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or other creative advertising opportunities with The
New York Times on the Web, please contact
onlinesales@nytimes.com or visit our online media
kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo
For general information about NYTimes.com, write to
help@nytimes.com.
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
has been sent to you by spliffslips@aol.com.
/-------------------- advertisement -----------------------
Explore more of Starbucks at Starbucks.com.
http://www.starbucks.com/default.asp?ci=1015
\----------------------------------------------------------/
Slain Gay Soldier's Case Slows a General's Rise
May 18, 2003
BY THE NEW YORK TIMES
For the second time, a Senate committee has delayed a vote
on the promotion of an Army general who commanded a base
where a gay soldier was beaten to death.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/18/politics/18GENE.html?ex=1054259911&ei=1&en=80b5563c0b2338f6
---------------------------------
Get Home Delivery of The New York Times Newspaper. Imagine
reading The New York Times any time & anywhere you like!
Leisurely catch up on events & expand your horizons. Enjoy
now for 50% off Home Delivery! Click here:
http://www.nytimes.com/ads/nytcirc/index.html
HOW TO ADVERTISE
---------------------------------
For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters
or other creative advertising opportunities with The
New York Times on the Web, please contact
onlinesales@nytimes.com or visit our online media
kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo
For general information about NYTimes.com, write to
help@nytimes.com.
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
U.S. Officer Returns to Site of Battle
From: spliffslips
Military Care Packages Updates
--------------------
U.S. Officer Returns to Site of Battle
--------------------
By CHRIS TOMLINSON
Associated Press Writer
May 17, 2003, 3:41 PM EDT
HINDIYAH, Iraq -- The last time Capt. Chris Carter was on the bridge, he rescued a woman from the crossfire between U.S. and Iraqi fighters.
When he returned Saturday, he took snapshots of playful teenage boys jumping off the bridge into the cool, emerald waters of the Euphrates River.
The roar of machine-gun fire and the blasts of grenades had been replaced by the cacophony of truck horns, street vendors' shouts and the laughter of curious children crowding around the soldiers who stopped at the foot of the bridge.
"It's weird," said Carter, of Watkinsville, Ga., who was back in Hindiyah, outside Baghdad, to tell a military video team about his role in the Iraq war. "It's interesting to see it populated. It was deserted when we were here."
On March 31, Carter and his rifle company were ordered to drive into Hindiyah to capture the western side of the bridge. The operation was a feint to convince Iraqi forces that the 3rd Infantry Division was going to use the bridge and thereby draw Iraqi Republican Guard soldiers out of Karbala, where U.S. forces eventually sent troops to cross the river.
The infantrymen were battling Iraqi troops when -- through the smoke -- they saw an elderly woman. She had tried to race across the bridge when the Americans arrived, but was caught in the crossfire. Later, she would say she was shot by Iraqi troops.
At first, peering through their rifle scopes, the Americans thought she was dead. But during breaks in the gunfire that whizzed over her head, she sat up and waved for help.
Carter, 31, an Army Ranger who commands A Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, ordered his Bradley Fighting Vehicle to pull forward while he and two men ran behind it. He tossed a smoke grenade for more cover and approached the woman, who was crying and pointing toward her wounded hip.
When Carter gave the signal, medics raced forward, placed the woman on a stretcher and into an ambulance. Carter stood by, providing cover with his assault rifle. Then she was gone, and the battle for this town of 80,000, 50 miles south of Baghdad, raged on for several hours.
On Saturday, Carter and three of his men returned to the bridge to recount their experiences for a 3rd Infantry combat camera crew. The tapes will be used for training and archival purposes.
Iraqi civilians crowded the intersection at the bridgehead as Carter described the fighting. One man who approached the soldiers had been wounded in the crossfire and briefly detained by the American troops.
"I was shot by the Americans," said Mohammed Jasim, 24, pointing to wounds on his ankle. "The Baath Party people were shooting at the Americans and the Americans had to reply. I don't blame them. We are very happy the Americans came."
Jasim said most of the fighters on the bridge's western side were Baath Party militia loyal to overthrown Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. The eastern side of the bridge was defended by Republican Guard troops -- despised, Jasim said, by Hindiyah's predominantly Shiite Muslim population.
Carter posed for a photograph with Jasim, who was found by Carter's troops hiding in a pool hall next to the bridge.
"It definitely made me feel that what we were doing was appreciated by the people," Carter said after talking to Jasim.
Looking around the intersection, Carter said it seemed much larger than he remembered. He smiled as the boys jumped off the bridge while he took photos.
One of Carter's platoon leaders, 1st Lt. Jeff McFarland of Cincinnati, also felt strange being back where he saw the first combat of his career.
"It's eerie. It was surreal the first time -- everything was in slow motion," McFarland said. "Seeing people live here, having normal lives, and seeing that it's not a battleground is interesting. It was only a battleground for a few hours."
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-return-to-hindiyah,0,2669079.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
Military Care Packages Updates
--------------------
U.S. Officer Returns to Site of Battle
--------------------
By CHRIS TOMLINSON
Associated Press Writer
May 17, 2003, 3:41 PM EDT
HINDIYAH, Iraq -- The last time Capt. Chris Carter was on the bridge, he rescued a woman from the crossfire between U.S. and Iraqi fighters.
When he returned Saturday, he took snapshots of playful teenage boys jumping off the bridge into the cool, emerald waters of the Euphrates River.
The roar of machine-gun fire and the blasts of grenades had been replaced by the cacophony of truck horns, street vendors' shouts and the laughter of curious children crowding around the soldiers who stopped at the foot of the bridge.
"It's weird," said Carter, of Watkinsville, Ga., who was back in Hindiyah, outside Baghdad, to tell a military video team about his role in the Iraq war. "It's interesting to see it populated. It was deserted when we were here."
On March 31, Carter and his rifle company were ordered to drive into Hindiyah to capture the western side of the bridge. The operation was a feint to convince Iraqi forces that the 3rd Infantry Division was going to use the bridge and thereby draw Iraqi Republican Guard soldiers out of Karbala, where U.S. forces eventually sent troops to cross the river.
The infantrymen were battling Iraqi troops when -- through the smoke -- they saw an elderly woman. She had tried to race across the bridge when the Americans arrived, but was caught in the crossfire. Later, she would say she was shot by Iraqi troops.
At first, peering through their rifle scopes, the Americans thought she was dead. But during breaks in the gunfire that whizzed over her head, she sat up and waved for help.
Carter, 31, an Army Ranger who commands A Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, ordered his Bradley Fighting Vehicle to pull forward while he and two men ran behind it. He tossed a smoke grenade for more cover and approached the woman, who was crying and pointing toward her wounded hip.
When Carter gave the signal, medics raced forward, placed the woman on a stretcher and into an ambulance. Carter stood by, providing cover with his assault rifle. Then she was gone, and the battle for this town of 80,000, 50 miles south of Baghdad, raged on for several hours.
On Saturday, Carter and three of his men returned to the bridge to recount their experiences for a 3rd Infantry combat camera crew. The tapes will be used for training and archival purposes.
Iraqi civilians crowded the intersection at the bridgehead as Carter described the fighting. One man who approached the soldiers had been wounded in the crossfire and briefly detained by the American troops.
"I was shot by the Americans," said Mohammed Jasim, 24, pointing to wounds on his ankle. "The Baath Party people were shooting at the Americans and the Americans had to reply. I don't blame them. We are very happy the Americans came."
Jasim said most of the fighters on the bridge's western side were Baath Party militia loyal to overthrown Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. The eastern side of the bridge was defended by Republican Guard troops -- despised, Jasim said, by Hindiyah's predominantly Shiite Muslim population.
Carter posed for a photograph with Jasim, who was found by Carter's troops hiding in a pool hall next to the bridge.
"It definitely made me feel that what we were doing was appreciated by the people," Carter said after talking to Jasim.
Looking around the intersection, Carter said it seemed much larger than he remembered. He smiled as the boys jumped off the bridge while he took photos.
One of Carter's platoon leaders, 1st Lt. Jeff McFarland of Cincinnati, also felt strange being back where he saw the first combat of his career.
"It's eerie. It was surreal the first time -- everything was in slow motion," McFarland said. "Seeing people live here, having normal lives, and seeing that it's not a battleground is interesting. It was only a battleground for a few hours."
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-return-to-hindiyah,0,2669079.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
U.S.: Al-Qaida Out to Prove It's a Threat
From: spliffslips
Military Crae Packages War Updates
--------------------
U.S.: Al-Qaida Out to Prove It's a Threat
--------------------
By JOHN J. LUMPKIN
Associated Press Writer
May 17, 2003, 1:59 PM EDT
WASHINGTON -- Al-Qaida is out to prove it is still a force, U.S. counterterrorism officials said, suggesting the bombings in Saudi Arabia and terrorist threats in Africa and Asia are part of a coordinated effort to strike lightly defended targets.
At this point, those targets do not appear to include places within the United States, officials said Friday. While acknowledging the network is capable of U.S. strikes, they said intelligence points toward attacks overseas, where al-Qaida operatives are more numerous and security measures less effective.
"We have no credible, specific intelligence information that indicates similar attacks are planned to take place in this country," said Department of Homeland Security spokesman Brian Roehrkasse. "We will not raise the threat level at home at this time."
U.S. and British authorities have warned of threats in East Africa, particularly Kenya, and in southeast Asia, particularly Malaysia. And the group that conducted this week's attack in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, remains at large and could strike again.
U.S. officials also have received an unconfirmed report that a possible terrorist attack may occur in the western Saudi city of Jiddah.
The State Department said it could not judge the credibility of the threat, but diplomatic families living in Jiddah's Alhamra district were moving out, according to the warning report.
After Monday's attacks, U.S. officials said some intelligence warned of a series of strikes.
While deadly and well-coordinated, the Riyadh strike lacked some of al-Qaida's trademarks -- particularly its usual attempt to hit a well-defended or highly visible target in an attempt to create massive casualties.
This may reflect directives from Osama bin Laden and other senior al-Qaida leaders -- thought to be hiding in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran -- to conduct a successful strike to let the world know the network still exists, American officials said.
This would counter a growing perception al-Qaida has been largely dismantled, officials said.
President Bush, meanwhile, called Monday's suicide bombings "a wake-up call to many that the war on terror continues."
"No one should be complacent in the 21st century, the early stages of the 21st century, so long as al-Qaida moves," he said. "I've told the country that we've brought to justice about half of the al-Qaida network -- operatives, key operatives. And so the other half still lives. And we'll find them, one at a time."
The increase in terrorism threats in several countries at once suggests a coordinated effort, directed by senior leadership, officials said.
Al-Qaida had suffered some serious blows in recent months, particularly the capture of alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Two alleged senior planners of the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen were also captured.
Adel al-Jubeir, foreign policy adviser to Crown Prince Abdullah, told reporters Friday the Saudi government will undertake its own unilateral efforts to bring down al-Qaida and will share information with U.S. investigators "almost in real time."
"We're both in the crosshairs of this organization," al-Jubeir said. "We have never had as close or as strong a cooperative effort between our two countries as we have now. Have we failed? Yes. On Monday, we failed. We will learn from this mistake, we will ensure it never happens again."
An FBI assessment team has visited the bombing sites and is satisfied with the Saudi efforts to secure the crime scenes and recover and preserve evidence, said a senior law enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity.
The new warnings also extend to U.S. military personnel serving overseas. Pentagon officials say troops asking for leave to visit countries under a State Department travel warning are discouraged from doing so but are only banned if the military is under "threat condition Delta," its highest state of alert, in the area.
* __
On the Net:
State Department travel warnings: http://travel.state.gov/
Department of Homeland Security: http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-us-saudi-attacks,0,2656370.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
Military Crae Packages War Updates
--------------------
U.S.: Al-Qaida Out to Prove It's a Threat
--------------------
By JOHN J. LUMPKIN
Associated Press Writer
May 17, 2003, 1:59 PM EDT
WASHINGTON -- Al-Qaida is out to prove it is still a force, U.S. counterterrorism officials said, suggesting the bombings in Saudi Arabia and terrorist threats in Africa and Asia are part of a coordinated effort to strike lightly defended targets.
At this point, those targets do not appear to include places within the United States, officials said Friday. While acknowledging the network is capable of U.S. strikes, they said intelligence points toward attacks overseas, where al-Qaida operatives are more numerous and security measures less effective.
"We have no credible, specific intelligence information that indicates similar attacks are planned to take place in this country," said Department of Homeland Security spokesman Brian Roehrkasse. "We will not raise the threat level at home at this time."
U.S. and British authorities have warned of threats in East Africa, particularly Kenya, and in southeast Asia, particularly Malaysia. And the group that conducted this week's attack in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, remains at large and could strike again.
U.S. officials also have received an unconfirmed report that a possible terrorist attack may occur in the western Saudi city of Jiddah.
The State Department said it could not judge the credibility of the threat, but diplomatic families living in Jiddah's Alhamra district were moving out, according to the warning report.
After Monday's attacks, U.S. officials said some intelligence warned of a series of strikes.
While deadly and well-coordinated, the Riyadh strike lacked some of al-Qaida's trademarks -- particularly its usual attempt to hit a well-defended or highly visible target in an attempt to create massive casualties.
This may reflect directives from Osama bin Laden and other senior al-Qaida leaders -- thought to be hiding in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran -- to conduct a successful strike to let the world know the network still exists, American officials said.
This would counter a growing perception al-Qaida has been largely dismantled, officials said.
President Bush, meanwhile, called Monday's suicide bombings "a wake-up call to many that the war on terror continues."
"No one should be complacent in the 21st century, the early stages of the 21st century, so long as al-Qaida moves," he said. "I've told the country that we've brought to justice about half of the al-Qaida network -- operatives, key operatives. And so the other half still lives. And we'll find them, one at a time."
The increase in terrorism threats in several countries at once suggests a coordinated effort, directed by senior leadership, officials said.
Al-Qaida had suffered some serious blows in recent months, particularly the capture of alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Two alleged senior planners of the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen were also captured.
Adel al-Jubeir, foreign policy adviser to Crown Prince Abdullah, told reporters Friday the Saudi government will undertake its own unilateral efforts to bring down al-Qaida and will share information with U.S. investigators "almost in real time."
"We're both in the crosshairs of this organization," al-Jubeir said. "We have never had as close or as strong a cooperative effort between our two countries as we have now. Have we failed? Yes. On Monday, we failed. We will learn from this mistake, we will ensure it never happens again."
An FBI assessment team has visited the bombing sites and is satisfied with the Saudi efforts to secure the crime scenes and recover and preserve evidence, said a senior law enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity.
The new warnings also extend to U.S. military personnel serving overseas. Pentagon officials say troops asking for leave to visit countries under a State Department travel warning are discouraged from doing so but are only banned if the military is under "threat condition Delta," its highest state of alert, in the area.
* __
On the Net:
State Department travel warnings: http://travel.state.gov/
Department of Homeland Security: http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-us-saudi-attacks,0,2656370.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
Harvest in Middle of Kurdish-Arab Dispute
From: spliffslips
military care packages updates
--------------------
Harvest in Middle of Kurdish-Arab Dispute
--------------------
By LOUIS MEIXLER
Associated Press Writer
May 17, 2003, 2:40 PM EDT
MAKHMUR, Iraq -- It's harvest time in the rolling, golden hills of northern Iraq. And this year's expected bumper crop is aggravating a bitter dispute over who owns it -- Kurdish landowners expelled by Saddam Hussein, or the Arab farmers who replaced them.
Fields have been scorched, and farmers are reaping with assault rifles slung over their shoulders. The U.S. Army has brokered a profit-sharing agreement between the two sides, but even U.S. officers admit it is difficult to enforce and, in some cases, ignored.
"It's a complete mess," said Maj. Blain Reeves, an infantry officer with the Army's 101st Airborne Division. He spends much of his time in an office in a grain silo complex, mediating disputes.
The fields outside Makhmur are awash with barley to the horizon. Combines troll the land, slicing crops in half, then ejecting black barley kernels through a chute into a nearby dump truck. Bedouin shepherds follow the combine with their flocks, which eat the barley stalks left behind.
The dispute over the barley fields is one of the most explosive in northern Iraq, a zone of tension between Kurds and Arabs since the earliest days of Saddam's regime. Kurds estimate several hundred thousand of their brethren were expelled as part of Saddam's drive to break a Kurdish revolt. Arabs were shipped in to take their places.
With Saddam driven from power, Kurds are beginning to return home. Now, the Arabs are fleeing.
Saddam's campaign focused on areas like Kirkuk, a key oil-producing city in the north, and villages like Makhmur, 50 miles to the southwest in the heart of Iraq's breadbasket.
Jamil Arab Qadir, a Kurdish farmer, says Iraqi officials told him in 1995 that if he didn't give up his 87-acre barley farm in Makhmur to an Arab, his family would be trucked hundreds of miles south to an overwhelmingly Arab part of the country.
The 57-year-old farmer returned Tuesday with his wife and 13 children to harvest.
"I feel like I have been reborn," he said, walking through a field of dry stalks that crunched beneath his feet. He says he will not let the Arab farmers who planted the barley -- and fled during the fighting -- return.
"They were supported by Saddam Hussein. But since Saddam Hussein no longer exists, they can't stay," he said. "We won't let them."
U.S. officials worry about Arab-Kurdish clashes in the area. A week ago, they brokered an agreement between regional officials that would force both sides to split the harvest's profits. A separate agreement was reached Thursday for Kirkuk.
Both sides accepted it under U.S. pressure -- grudgingly.
"The Kurds have lost for so many years," said Khasro Goran, the deputy mayor of Mosul, who helped negotiate the deal. "Why can't an Arab lose for one year? "
As three Arab clan leaders wearing white robes with gold-trimmed black cloaks waited to discuss land complaints with Goran, he explained why he approved the agreement.
"What can we do, kill each other?" he asked. "The Americans wanted this. The Americans just don't want anyone to get mad."
Sheik Abdelaziz, the head of a leading Arab tribe in the area, was equally pessimistic. "Frankly, we didn't have any other choice," he said.
The agreement is so sensitive that Abdelaziz would only speak if his full name and the name of his tribe were not printed.
Under the U.S.-sponsored deal, Arabs and Kurds must split all profits from the grain sales, though the exact percentage depends on where the grain was harvested. The agreement can be enforced only if Arabs are there to claim their share.
Arabs made up two-thirds of Makhmur under Saddam, but many fled as the regime collapsed and Kurdish militiamen began moving south. Now that 101st Airborne troops control the area and guard the enormous grain silo that looms over the town, some Arabs are beginning to return.
"The Arabs see us here and they're saying 'Hey, the U.S. is here. Let's go back,'" Reeves said. "So the Arabs come back and they want a piece of the harvest."
That can be difficult, as Hamid Ali now knows. The 35-year-old farmer was at Reeves' office at the grain silo Wednesday, trying to get his share.
Ali said he returned last week to the farm where he once worked and found Kurds tilling the fields.
"We went to the land and told them about the agreement," he told Reeves. "They told us that we'd been using their land for the past 12 years and that we had no more rights."
Like some Arab farmers in the area, Ali is a sharecropper. He farmed land Saddam gave to other Arabs who have since rented out the property and moved to nearby cities.
Without ownership documents, Ali has little chance of recouping the time and money he invested in the crop. The dispute over nature's bounty continues, and the Americans stand in the middle, trying to figure out the complicated ethnic politics of Saddam's Iraq.
"I definitely feel for the farmers. They're the guys who did the work," Reeves said. "If these guys have any proof, I'll fight for them."
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-troubled-harvest,0,3560165.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
military care packages updates
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Harvest in Middle of Kurdish-Arab Dispute
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By LOUIS MEIXLER
Associated Press Writer
May 17, 2003, 2:40 PM EDT
MAKHMUR, Iraq -- It's harvest time in the rolling, golden hills of northern Iraq. And this year's expected bumper crop is aggravating a bitter dispute over who owns it -- Kurdish landowners expelled by Saddam Hussein, or the Arab farmers who replaced them.
Fields have been scorched, and farmers are reaping with assault rifles slung over their shoulders. The U.S. Army has brokered a profit-sharing agreement between the two sides, but even U.S. officers admit it is difficult to enforce and, in some cases, ignored.
"It's a complete mess," said Maj. Blain Reeves, an infantry officer with the Army's 101st Airborne Division. He spends much of his time in an office in a grain silo complex, mediating disputes.
The fields outside Makhmur are awash with barley to the horizon. Combines troll the land, slicing crops in half, then ejecting black barley kernels through a chute into a nearby dump truck. Bedouin shepherds follow the combine with their flocks, which eat the barley stalks left behind.
The dispute over the barley fields is one of the most explosive in northern Iraq, a zone of tension between Kurds and Arabs since the earliest days of Saddam's regime. Kurds estimate several hundred thousand of their brethren were expelled as part of Saddam's drive to break a Kurdish revolt. Arabs were shipped in to take their places.
With Saddam driven from power, Kurds are beginning to return home. Now, the Arabs are fleeing.
Saddam's campaign focused on areas like Kirkuk, a key oil-producing city in the north, and villages like Makhmur, 50 miles to the southwest in the heart of Iraq's breadbasket.
Jamil Arab Qadir, a Kurdish farmer, says Iraqi officials told him in 1995 that if he didn't give up his 87-acre barley farm in Makhmur to an Arab, his family would be trucked hundreds of miles south to an overwhelmingly Arab part of the country.
The 57-year-old farmer returned Tuesday with his wife and 13 children to harvest.
"I feel like I have been reborn," he said, walking through a field of dry stalks that crunched beneath his feet. He says he will not let the Arab farmers who planted the barley -- and fled during the fighting -- return.
"They were supported by Saddam Hussein. But since Saddam Hussein no longer exists, they can't stay," he said. "We won't let them."
U.S. officials worry about Arab-Kurdish clashes in the area. A week ago, they brokered an agreement between regional officials that would force both sides to split the harvest's profits. A separate agreement was reached Thursday for Kirkuk.
Both sides accepted it under U.S. pressure -- grudgingly.
"The Kurds have lost for so many years," said Khasro Goran, the deputy mayor of Mosul, who helped negotiate the deal. "Why can't an Arab lose for one year? "
As three Arab clan leaders wearing white robes with gold-trimmed black cloaks waited to discuss land complaints with Goran, he explained why he approved the agreement.
"What can we do, kill each other?" he asked. "The Americans wanted this. The Americans just don't want anyone to get mad."
Sheik Abdelaziz, the head of a leading Arab tribe in the area, was equally pessimistic. "Frankly, we didn't have any other choice," he said.
The agreement is so sensitive that Abdelaziz would only speak if his full name and the name of his tribe were not printed.
Under the U.S.-sponsored deal, Arabs and Kurds must split all profits from the grain sales, though the exact percentage depends on where the grain was harvested. The agreement can be enforced only if Arabs are there to claim their share.
Arabs made up two-thirds of Makhmur under Saddam, but many fled as the regime collapsed and Kurdish militiamen began moving south. Now that 101st Airborne troops control the area and guard the enormous grain silo that looms over the town, some Arabs are beginning to return.
"The Arabs see us here and they're saying 'Hey, the U.S. is here. Let's go back,'" Reeves said. "So the Arabs come back and they want a piece of the harvest."
That can be difficult, as Hamid Ali now knows. The 35-year-old farmer was at Reeves' office at the grain silo Wednesday, trying to get his share.
Ali said he returned last week to the farm where he once worked and found Kurds tilling the fields.
"We went to the land and told them about the agreement," he told Reeves. "They told us that we'd been using their land for the past 12 years and that we had no more rights."
Like some Arab farmers in the area, Ali is a sharecropper. He farmed land Saddam gave to other Arabs who have since rented out the property and moved to nearby cities.
Without ownership documents, Ali has little chance of recouping the time and money he invested in the crop. The dispute over nature's bounty continues, and the Americans stand in the middle, trying to figure out the complicated ethnic politics of Saddam's Iraq.
"I definitely feel for the farmers. They're the guys who did the work," Reeves said. "If these guys have any proof, I'll fight for them."
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-troubled-harvest,0,3560165.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
Questions Linger About Hillah Battle
From: spliffslips
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Questions Linger About Hillah Battle
--------------------
By CHARLES J. HANLEY
AP Special Correspondent
May 17, 2003, 1:45 PM EDT
HILLAH, Iraq -- The telltale evidence is everywhere: in the pattern of blast marks gouged in a schoolyard's concrete, in the yellow metal casings that once held small bombs, in the bomblets themselves.
"They're all over. They're even in people's bedrooms," said one bomb disposal specialist.
A month after U.S. cluster munitions fell in a deadly shower on Hillah's teeming slums as U.S. forces drove toward victory in Baghdad, 55 miles to the north, the most telling evidence may lie in the crowded, fly-infested wards of the city hospital, where the toll of dead and wounded still mounts.
At least 250 Iraqis were killed and more than 500 wounded during 17 days of fighting in the area, most of them civilians and many the victims of cluster munitions, according to hospital medical staff. Leftover bomblets still kill or maim hapless civilians daily, they said.
As the pieces of the story of what happened in Hillah in late March and early April begin to fall together, gaps and uncertainties remain, including the question of whether Iraqi troops were still in Nadr, Amira and other Hillah-area districts when they were attacked.
On April 3, Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks at U.S. Central Command indicated the matter was being investigated. The next day he added that U.S. targeting in such densely populated areas was "very precise."
A month later, the command's Lt. Herb Josey said, "It is correct to assume the investigation is still going on." The command has received no results yet, he said, without describing what the investigation consisted of.
While Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed last month that high-flying B-52s dropped cluster bombs during the push to Baghdad, the Pentagon has not acknowledged the use of cluster munitions around Hillah.
Such weapons -- delivered by rockets, howitzer shells and air-dropped bombs -- open up before impact to scatter many tiny bomblets over wide areas, sometimes the size of a football field. They're considered effective weapons for attacking massed soldiers and vehicles and for blocking troop movements.
They were first used in the Indochina War, when U.S. aircraft dropped them on enemy jungle camps and supply trails. Unexploded bomblets still pose a hazard to civilians there. Leftover duds also inflict casualties in Afghanistan, Angola, Chechnya, Bosnia and Kuwait.
The use of such weapons is not explicitly banned under international law, but human rights groups think it should be -- or at least prohibited in populated areas as too indiscriminate.
They also point to the weapons' high "dud rate" -- the percentage that don't explode on impact, leaving stray bomblets to kill the unsuspecting later. Military experts say artillery-fired cluster munitions have a dud rate of up to 5 percent, but New York-based Human Rights Watch claims the rates for some artillery types are three to four times higher.
Human Rights Watch on April 25 accused the Pentagon of a "whitewash," of minimizing in its public statements the deadly effect of cluster munitions on Iraqi civilians by discussing only aerial bombs and not artillery shells, which the group says caused most civilian casualties from cluster munitions in Iraq.
On March 31 and April 1, and apparently on later dates as well, cluster munitions fell among Iraqi peasants in and around their homes in Nadr, Amira, Kifl and other districts mostly on Hillah's southern edge.
Meeting with journalists in Washington recently, Lt. Gen. William Scott Wallace, who commanded the U.S. Army's V Corps during the war, specifically mentioned Hillah among several southern cities where the Iraqi military "was much more aggressive than what we expected him to be."
The U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division was pushing north through the green, irrigated countryside between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Its next objective was Hillah, a town said to have been built centuries ago with bricks from the nearby ruins of ancient Babylon.
First the paratroopers had to pass through the Nadr quarter, straddling Highway 8.
How the cluster munitions were delivered -- by air or by artillery -- is lost in confused Iraqi memories and in the U.S. military's silence on the subject. Wherever they came from, by April 1 hellish scenes were unfolding at Hillah Surgical Hospital. Foreign journalists, bused to Hillah by Saddam Hussein's Information Ministry, found dozens of dead and wounded civilians, many children, jammed into coffins and lying in hallways.
The besieged doctors reported 33 dead civilians and more than 300 wounded, many from Nadr.
Over 17 days, from all bombing and other fighting, the hospital's records indicate about 500 civilians were wounded, and the hospital's director, Dr. Adil al-Himiri, said about 250 people were killed, both military and civilian. The death records are not available, because they were taken to Baghdad subsequently by an Iraqi doctor, he said.
Weeks after the attacks, some victims were still hospitalized, including 13-year-old Faleh Hassan, who lost a hand and has needed several operations for severe foot wounds.
An uncle, Hadi Maraza, said five in Faleh's family were wounded. "I think it was artillery shells," Maraza said of the April 1 events. "Before landing they sent small bombs flying, like balls." He said no Iraqi soldiers were in the area. "It was random shelling."
With Saddam's regime toppled, the hospital staff felt freer to talk by late April. What they said tended to justify the U.S. attack.
"The old regime put military tanks in between the houses, and so they were bombed," said al-Himiri, the hospital director. "It's the truth. There were military targets."
Another doctor, surgeon Majid al-Khafaji, said he had heard similar stories from wounded people.
But the doctors acknowledged they hadn't gone to the bombed areas themselves. Civil defense workers who went to Nadr immediately said they saw no sign of the Iraqi military there.
That agrees with what Nadr residents consistently said: The Iraqi military had set up mortars or artillery in Nadr, apparently in a date-palm grove on the fringe of the slum, but had pulled out. Some believe they left days before the U.S. strike with cluster munitions; some think it was a day before.
Nadr is a place of tightly packed mud-brick homes, garbage-filled paths, herds of goats wandering along gullied tracks. A schoolyard -- a rare stretch of concrete -- is pocked with an almost regular pattern of blast marks that appear to have come from cluster bomblets. But there are none of the burned-out tanks, other military vehicles or destroyed weapons commonly seen in areas where U.S. forces struck Iraqi troops.
Salem Farhan, 33, a factory worker, said Iraqi artillery in Nadr fired at distant U.S. troops and then withdrew a day before the first cluster-bomb attacks. "They left a few soldiers behind, like neighborhood guards," he said. "Maybe the planes were attacking them."
Repeated U.S. shelling or bombing came as late as April 8, when Farhan's house was hit and a neighbor woman and child were killed as they took shelter in his yard. His two younger brothers were badly wounded. "There was no reason. There was no resistance here," Farhan said.
Deaths still come daily, as duds explode when picked up, kicked or otherwise disturbed. "I've dealt with 300 cluster bombs in one day," said Hillal Saadi, a civil defense explosives specialist, who destroys duds by piling them up and dynamiting them.
The Hillah area civil defense director, Hussein Jaber, said unexploded bomblets had been retrieved from schoolrooms and people's bedrooms.
A corner of his office's front lot is heaped with examples recovered from surrounding areas -- from dark gray, 3-inch-long bomblets to two bulbous, 6-foot-long, yellow-green shells that held hundreds of bomblets.
Saadi, whose ordnance-disposal experience stretches back to the 1991 Gulf War, said the Americans have adopted more advanced cluster munitions. For one thing, "there are more fragments," he said, and held up a shattered yellow metal shell stamped "Bomb, Frag, BLU-97A/B."
"Children were playing with this one when it exploded," he said. "Two were killed and six wounded. It happened three days before the fall of Baghdad" -- that is, on April 5.
The BLU-97 is one of the most sophisticated U.S. cluster weapons, capable of scattering 40 bomblets over a 4,800-square-yard area and deadly against tanks as well as soldiers in the open.
At the same time that Hillah residents were unearthing mass graves of victims of Saddam's bloody repression, hospital officials said they were recording as many as four deaths a day from exploding U.S. leftovers. Al-Himiri, the hospital director, was clearly troubled even though he believes U.S. forces had legitimate military targets to attack.
"From a military point of view, it's justified," he said. "But from a humanitarian point of view it's not justified."
* __
EDITOR'S NOTE -- Associated Press reporters Sameer N. Yacoub, who reported from Hillah after March 31-April 1 attacks, and Richard Pyle in New York contributed to this story.
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-cluster-bombs,0,206280.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
--------------------
Questions Linger About Hillah Battle
--------------------
By CHARLES J. HANLEY
AP Special Correspondent
May 17, 2003, 1:45 PM EDT
HILLAH, Iraq -- The telltale evidence is everywhere: in the pattern of blast marks gouged in a schoolyard's concrete, in the yellow metal casings that once held small bombs, in the bomblets themselves.
"They're all over. They're even in people's bedrooms," said one bomb disposal specialist.
A month after U.S. cluster munitions fell in a deadly shower on Hillah's teeming slums as U.S. forces drove toward victory in Baghdad, 55 miles to the north, the most telling evidence may lie in the crowded, fly-infested wards of the city hospital, where the toll of dead and wounded still mounts.
At least 250 Iraqis were killed and more than 500 wounded during 17 days of fighting in the area, most of them civilians and many the victims of cluster munitions, according to hospital medical staff. Leftover bomblets still kill or maim hapless civilians daily, they said.
As the pieces of the story of what happened in Hillah in late March and early April begin to fall together, gaps and uncertainties remain, including the question of whether Iraqi troops were still in Nadr, Amira and other Hillah-area districts when they were attacked.
On April 3, Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks at U.S. Central Command indicated the matter was being investigated. The next day he added that U.S. targeting in such densely populated areas was "very precise."
A month later, the command's Lt. Herb Josey said, "It is correct to assume the investigation is still going on." The command has received no results yet, he said, without describing what the investigation consisted of.
While Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed last month that high-flying B-52s dropped cluster bombs during the push to Baghdad, the Pentagon has not acknowledged the use of cluster munitions around Hillah.
Such weapons -- delivered by rockets, howitzer shells and air-dropped bombs -- open up before impact to scatter many tiny bomblets over wide areas, sometimes the size of a football field. They're considered effective weapons for attacking massed soldiers and vehicles and for blocking troop movements.
They were first used in the Indochina War, when U.S. aircraft dropped them on enemy jungle camps and supply trails. Unexploded bomblets still pose a hazard to civilians there. Leftover duds also inflict casualties in Afghanistan, Angola, Chechnya, Bosnia and Kuwait.
The use of such weapons is not explicitly banned under international law, but human rights groups think it should be -- or at least prohibited in populated areas as too indiscriminate.
They also point to the weapons' high "dud rate" -- the percentage that don't explode on impact, leaving stray bomblets to kill the unsuspecting later. Military experts say artillery-fired cluster munitions have a dud rate of up to 5 percent, but New York-based Human Rights Watch claims the rates for some artillery types are three to four times higher.
Human Rights Watch on April 25 accused the Pentagon of a "whitewash," of minimizing in its public statements the deadly effect of cluster munitions on Iraqi civilians by discussing only aerial bombs and not artillery shells, which the group says caused most civilian casualties from cluster munitions in Iraq.
On March 31 and April 1, and apparently on later dates as well, cluster munitions fell among Iraqi peasants in and around their homes in Nadr, Amira, Kifl and other districts mostly on Hillah's southern edge.
Meeting with journalists in Washington recently, Lt. Gen. William Scott Wallace, who commanded the U.S. Army's V Corps during the war, specifically mentioned Hillah among several southern cities where the Iraqi military "was much more aggressive than what we expected him to be."
The U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division was pushing north through the green, irrigated countryside between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Its next objective was Hillah, a town said to have been built centuries ago with bricks from the nearby ruins of ancient Babylon.
First the paratroopers had to pass through the Nadr quarter, straddling Highway 8.
How the cluster munitions were delivered -- by air or by artillery -- is lost in confused Iraqi memories and in the U.S. military's silence on the subject. Wherever they came from, by April 1 hellish scenes were unfolding at Hillah Surgical Hospital. Foreign journalists, bused to Hillah by Saddam Hussein's Information Ministry, found dozens of dead and wounded civilians, many children, jammed into coffins and lying in hallways.
The besieged doctors reported 33 dead civilians and more than 300 wounded, many from Nadr.
Over 17 days, from all bombing and other fighting, the hospital's records indicate about 500 civilians were wounded, and the hospital's director, Dr. Adil al-Himiri, said about 250 people were killed, both military and civilian. The death records are not available, because they were taken to Baghdad subsequently by an Iraqi doctor, he said.
Weeks after the attacks, some victims were still hospitalized, including 13-year-old Faleh Hassan, who lost a hand and has needed several operations for severe foot wounds.
An uncle, Hadi Maraza, said five in Faleh's family were wounded. "I think it was artillery shells," Maraza said of the April 1 events. "Before landing they sent small bombs flying, like balls." He said no Iraqi soldiers were in the area. "It was random shelling."
With Saddam's regime toppled, the hospital staff felt freer to talk by late April. What they said tended to justify the U.S. attack.
"The old regime put military tanks in between the houses, and so they were bombed," said al-Himiri, the hospital director. "It's the truth. There were military targets."
Another doctor, surgeon Majid al-Khafaji, said he had heard similar stories from wounded people.
But the doctors acknowledged they hadn't gone to the bombed areas themselves. Civil defense workers who went to Nadr immediately said they saw no sign of the Iraqi military there.
That agrees with what Nadr residents consistently said: The Iraqi military had set up mortars or artillery in Nadr, apparently in a date-palm grove on the fringe of the slum, but had pulled out. Some believe they left days before the U.S. strike with cluster munitions; some think it was a day before.
Nadr is a place of tightly packed mud-brick homes, garbage-filled paths, herds of goats wandering along gullied tracks. A schoolyard -- a rare stretch of concrete -- is pocked with an almost regular pattern of blast marks that appear to have come from cluster bomblets. But there are none of the burned-out tanks, other military vehicles or destroyed weapons commonly seen in areas where U.S. forces struck Iraqi troops.
Salem Farhan, 33, a factory worker, said Iraqi artillery in Nadr fired at distant U.S. troops and then withdrew a day before the first cluster-bomb attacks. "They left a few soldiers behind, like neighborhood guards," he said. "Maybe the planes were attacking them."
Repeated U.S. shelling or bombing came as late as April 8, when Farhan's house was hit and a neighbor woman and child were killed as they took shelter in his yard. His two younger brothers were badly wounded. "There was no reason. There was no resistance here," Farhan said.
Deaths still come daily, as duds explode when picked up, kicked or otherwise disturbed. "I've dealt with 300 cluster bombs in one day," said Hillal Saadi, a civil defense explosives specialist, who destroys duds by piling them up and dynamiting them.
The Hillah area civil defense director, Hussein Jaber, said unexploded bomblets had been retrieved from schoolrooms and people's bedrooms.
A corner of his office's front lot is heaped with examples recovered from surrounding areas -- from dark gray, 3-inch-long bomblets to two bulbous, 6-foot-long, yellow-green shells that held hundreds of bomblets.
Saadi, whose ordnance-disposal experience stretches back to the 1991 Gulf War, said the Americans have adopted more advanced cluster munitions. For one thing, "there are more fragments," he said, and held up a shattered yellow metal shell stamped "Bomb, Frag, BLU-97A/B."
"Children were playing with this one when it exploded," he said. "Two were killed and six wounded. It happened three days before the fall of Baghdad" -- that is, on April 5.
The BLU-97 is one of the most sophisticated U.S. cluster weapons, capable of scattering 40 bomblets over a 4,800-square-yard area and deadly against tanks as well as soldiers in the open.
At the same time that Hillah residents were unearthing mass graves of victims of Saddam's bloody repression, hospital officials said they were recording as many as four deaths a day from exploding U.S. leftovers. Al-Himiri, the hospital director, was clearly troubled even though he believes U.S. forces had legitimate military targets to attack.
"From a military point of view, it's justified," he said. "But from a humanitarian point of view it's not justified."
* __
EDITOR'S NOTE -- Associated Press reporters Sameer N. Yacoub, who reported from Hillah after March 31-April 1 attacks, and Richard Pyle in New York contributed to this story.
Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-cluster-bombs,0,206280.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
