One of Ours

...I found it particularly interesting that while Al-Jazeera displayed most of the tape, it did not display the part where the masked men held knives to the neck of the wailing Japanese woman while screaming "Allahu Akbar!". What? too hard for Arab feelings?...

...hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Shi'ites have already started marching to Karbala on foot. Under the present circumstances and with the absence of IP and security forces in the city, I fail to see how a major terrorist attack is going to be prevented this time, another large scale attack against the Shi'ite pilgrims will probably inflame the already deteriorating situation even further...

...a friend of mine told me today that he had been in contact with some clients who were members of Al-Mahdi Army, he said that they all received salaries from Sadr's offices throughout Iraq in US dollars. I asked him where he thought the money came from, he gave me a wry smile and said what do you think? "Iran?" I offered, and he nodded back in silence.

What troubles me is that the whole situation has so many parallels with the uprising against the British in 1920 (Thawrat Al-Ishrin)...Shi'ite Ayatollahs and Sunni Imams called for Jihad and several cities in the south were 'liberated'. It lasted for a few months and resulted in 2000 British killed and thousands more Iraqis dead. After the revolt was crushed, and King Faisal installed as monarch of Iraq, there were supposed to be elections for a National Assembly (sounds familiar?) to write a constitution. Of course, the Hawza issued fatwas for Iraqis to boycott the polls. Abdul Mohsen Al-Sa'dun, prime minister at the time, responded by arresting all the Ayatollahs and exiling them to Iran on the grounds that they were Iranian citizens and had no right to interfere with Iraqi matters (Iraqis were tough back then). Public outrage followed this in most Iraqi cities but the government stood firm against it, so in the end Iraqis went about their business. After a few months, the exiled Ayatollahs pleaded the Iraqi government to return to Iraq (because they were not up to the competition with the other Ayatollahs in Iran) and that they would keep out of politics from now on, the Iraqi government welcomed them back, and that was that...

A hush fell over the city as George W. Bush today became the first president of the United States ever to be removed from office by impeachment. Meeting late into the night, the Senate unanimously voted to convict Bush following a trial on his bill of impeachment from the House.

Moments after being sworn in as the 44th president, Dick Cheney said that disgraced former national security adviser Condoleezza Rice would be turned over to the Hague for trial in the International Court of Justice as a war criminal. Cheney said Washington would "firmly resist" international demands that Bush be extradited for prosecution as well.

On August 7, 2001, Bush had ordered the United States military to stage an all-out attack on alleged terrorist camps in Afghanistan. Thousands of U.S. special forces units parachuted into this neutral country, while air strikes targeted the Afghan government and its supporting military. Pentagon units seized abandoned Soviet air bases throughout Afghanistan, while establishing support bases in nearby nations such as Uzbekistan. Simultaneously, FBI agents throughout the United States staged raids in which dozens of men accused of terrorism were taken prisoner.

Reaction was swift and furious. Florida Senator Bob Graham said Bush had "brought shame to the United States with his paranoid delusions about so-called terror networks." British Prime Minister Tony Blair accused the United States of "an inexcusable act of conquest in plain violation of international law." ...

When dozens of U.S. soldiers were slain in gun battles with fighters in the Afghan mountains, public opinion polls showed the nation overwhelmingly opposed to Bush's action. Political leaders of both parties called on Bush to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan immediately...

When an off-target U.S. bomb killed scores of Afghan civilians who had taken refuge in a mosque, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Aznar announced a global boycott of American products. The United Nations General Assembly voted to condemn the United States, and Washington was forced into the humiliating position of vetoing a Security Council resolution declaring America guilty of "criminal acts of aggression."

Bush justified his attack on Afghanistan, and the detention of 19 men of Arab descent who had entered the country legally, on grounds of intelligence reports suggesting an imminent, devastating attack on the United States. But no such attack ever occurred, leading to widespread ridicule of Bush's claims. Speaking before a special commission created by Congress to investigate Bush's anti-terrorism actions, former national security adviser Rice shocked and horrified listeners when she admitted, "We had no actionable warnings of any specific threat, just good reason to believe something really bad was about to happen."

The president fired Rice immediately after her admission, but this did little to quell public anger regarding the war in Afghanistan. When it was revealed that U.S. special forces were also carrying out attacks against suspected terrorist bases in Indonesia and Pakistan, fury against the United States became universal...

Speaking briefly to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House before a helicopter carried him out of Washington as the first-ever president removed by impeachment, Bush seemed bitter. "I was given bad advice," he insisted. "My advisers told me that unless we took decisive action, thousands of innocent Americans might die. Obviously I should not have listened."

Announcing his candidacy for the 2004 Republican presidential nomination, Senator John McCain said today that "George W. Bush was very foolish and naïve; he didn't realize he was being pushed into this needless conflict by oil interests that wanted to seize Afghanistan to run a pipeline across it." McCain spoke at a campaign rally at the World Trade Center in New York City.

Gen Mark Kimmitt:

Mosul - calm and stable
Tikrit, surrounding area - light uptake in attacks - former regime elements taking advantage; risk has not increased
Fallujah area - suspension of fighting to get chance to reduce violence. if discussions breakdown, offensive ops begin again.
Ramadi - Sheik gave up name of 11 insurgents, they were captured.
Baghdad - where al Sadr has been operatin;. minor disturbances, some casualties. coalition has firm control inside Sadr City, govt buildings, etc .are in Iraqi hands.
Karbala - presence in Karbala , Iraq police also, there are militia present, but forces are remaining passive because of religious holiday, 1.2 million pilgrims there.
Najaf - Sadr predominant force inside city, coalition bases outside and on edge of city - protection status.
Kut - Sadr tried to take over Kut - some Baghdad forces were moved into Najaf on the 5th, on the 7th they moved into Kut and initiated an attack. Took bridges, CPA area and are now operating inside Kut. by tomorrow there will be firm coalition control of facilities in Kut.
Basra area - very quiet.
Nasaryia - Italian forces fought Sadr forces, conducted ops, moved across bridges and are in the process of taking control - minor resistance there.

Arab television Al Jazeera showed the three Japanese, kneeling with their eyes bound with white cloth and surrounded by masked men holding rifles and also sitting on the floor without their bindings and talking to their captors. The walls of the room were riddled with bullets.

It said they had been taken hostage by a hitherto unknown Iraqi group called Saraya al-Mujahideen (Mujahideen Brigades).

"We tell you that three of your children have fallen prisoner in our hands and we give you two options — withdraw your forces from our country and go home or we will burn them alive and feed them to the fighters.", the group said.

Al-Anbari: All of the people in the area have started to move, men and women. I didn’t think that the people in this area were so heroic. The mothers are even pushing their children into the fight.
Kamal: Whatever God wants! Blessed be the Almighty!

Al-Anbari: Imagine: I encountered a boy who was not even 15 years old who was carrying a weapon, but without ammunition (…). When I saw this heroic impetuousness, I pulled my magazine out and gave it to him.

Kamal: Oh God! God is great!

Al-Anbari: I also saw a young guy who bravely stood up to the Americans and threw things at them, and they just couldn’t react to it, even though they were so many.

Kamal: Such news strengthen ones pride.

What would you say was the BBC's job in Europe? To provide Britons with accurate stories from Brussels?

Wrong. According to a senior BBC producer, the BBC's role in Europe is to provide counter-balance to what he describes as Britain's Euro-sceptic press...

Here is Jonathan Chapman, BBC, "Senior World News Reporter" (previously "Senior Europe Producer" in Brussels) in a speech to a media seminar at the Malta Press Club in March 2004. :
"The UK media approach is broadly sceptical. We try in Brussels to break that cycle of scepticism. The BBC's job is to reflect the European perspective .. And make news less sceptical. That is why the BBC has such a big bureau in Brussels."

...the purpose of the BBC, as one would normally understand it, is not to provide balance, but to provide accurate coverage.

Non-UK readers might need to be reminded that the Beeb's EU counter-propaganda machine is funded by British taxpayers.

...A few feet away, Debra Burlingame saw it differently. Her brother Charles F. Burlingame III was the pilot of the plane that was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon. On her lapel was pinned his picture and the same heart pin worn by the widow of passenger Dillard.

"The fact is, it wasn't our government who killed my brother and 3,000 people," she said. It was 19 hijackers and their sponsors. . . . We have new enemies we face. Those are the guys I want to get in the name of my brother." Her eyes began to tear up.

Burlingame changed her attitude about the responsibility of the government for Sept. 11 -- but well before Rice's testimony. Burlingame was one of those who protested Bush's reluctance to appoint the Sept. 11 commission in the first place. She joined a vigil outside the White House, carrying a big sign that said, "My Brother's Murderers Were Listed in the San Diego Phone Book" -- as one of the hijackers was.

Then she read the thick report of the congressional inquiry into the attacks, and she began to believe that preventing them was a complicated business. The government did the best it could, given pre-Sept. 11 assumptions, she now believes.

Burlingame thought Rice performed well. "She explained . . . it was a structural problem that it took September 11 to [shock people to] solve."

She wasn't looking for an apology either: "I felt that Dick Clarke's apology was theatrical and false. Nevertheless, it brought tears to my eyes. The fact that it brought tears to my eyes made me even more contemptuous of him."...

At first, their gruesome deaths seemed the work of yet another random ambush in Iraq, this one made unforgettable by images of incensed Iraqis celebrating the sight of charred corpses swinging from a bridge over the Euphrates River.

But now it appears that the four private security contractors killed, burned and mutilated in Falluja last week were in fact lured into a carefully planned ambush by men they believed to be friendly members of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps...

..."The truth is, we got led into this ambush," Mr. Toohey, vice president for government relations at Blackwater, said in an interview, offering the company's first detailed account of the attack.

"We were set up," he said...

Mr. Toohey said his company's investigation of the incident, which included interviews with convoy drivers who survived the ambush, had not yet determined whether the Blackwater employees were led into Falluja by active members of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, or whether they were led into the city by imposters wearing defense corps uniforms. But the convoy, on a mission to pick up kitchen equipment, had little cause for suspicion: the Iraqi escort had been arranged and met with the convoy as planned at an intersection just east of Falluja.

"They said, `We'll escort you, show you a short way through Falluja,' " Mr. Toohey said...