One of Ours

Media outlets have ignored an announcement, issued few days ago by a group calling itself the Battalions of Thu al-Fiqar, which has attacked the al-Mahdi army militias. Yesterday they attacked several places in Kufa where supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr were stationed. Meanwhile, Abu Hasan al-Amiri, a leading figure in the military wing of Badr Brigades of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), said it was useless to confront the Americans. An unnamed supporter of al-Sadr admitted there was a danger of clashes breaking out between the Mahdi army and the Badr organization if hostility between them increased. The supporter described this hostility as an ancient conflict between the Arabs and Persians, which is a reference to SCIRI's alleged dependence on Iran. Clashes broke out late yesterday between Sadr's militiamen and a new group called "Young Believers Group in Najaf", which has similar aims as Thu al-Fiqar battalion.

A Pentagon intelligence report has concluded that many bombings against Americans and their allies in Iraq, and the more sophisticated of the guerrilla attacks in Falluja, are organized and often carried out by members of Saddam Hussein's secret service, who planned for the insurgency even before the fall of Baghdad.

The report states that Iraqi officers of the "Special Operations and Antiterrorism Branch," known within Mr. Hussein's government as M-14, are responsible for planning roadway improvised explosive devices and some of the larger car bombs that have killed Iraqis, Americans and other foreigners. The attacks have sown chaos and fear across Iraq.

In addition, suicide bombers have worn explosives-laden vests made before the war under the direction of of M-14 officers, according to the report, prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency. The report also cites evidence that one such suicide attack last April, which killed three Americans, was carried out by a pregnant woman who was an M-14 colonel.

Its findings were based on interrogations with high-ranking M-14 members who are now in American custody, as well as on documents uncovered and translated by the Iraq Survey Group...

...I have spoken to a lot [of Marines] who have been engaged in some of these firefights. In fact, I was in one of the combat surgical rooms where they were working on a couple of these guys.

Two of them had been ambushed, not where the main fight is going on tonight, but their unit had been ambushed east of Fallujah. And seven people rolled in. There were two that had gunshot wounds. And they pulled a huge slug, a bullet, out of the leg of one of the Marines. And another one had a bullet wound right through the back.

And, amazingly, they were trying to convince their commanders that they were ready to go and go back out. I have been really surprised at ... the high degree of morale that these Marines have shown. Remember, they have only been here for a month and a half. Many of these units that are here now engaged in the initial invasion last year and were in Iraq for several months.

Now they're back. But they seem to be engaged. They're taking casualties. But it's really surprising. You don't see much head-dragging or anything like that. I mean, you know, what you see is kind of more encouragement for these guys.

And, for example, the one who had the gravest -- the bullet in and out through his back -- was trying to convince his commander that he'd be back. And his commander actually promised him that his spot was still going to be there. Another [Marine] who was injured in that huge firefight yesterday who I spoke to earlier this morning, he wanted to get back out there. But the only problem was, was that half his shoulder was missing around his firing arm.

But he was convinced he would be able to sit there on a roof and not have to run anywhere and he could contribute that way. So it's been surprising. But ... the Marines that are here certainly appear to be geared up for whatever the future holds...

ABC News's "Nightline" will devote its entire broadcast on Friday to reading the names of the more than 500 U.S. servicemen and servicewomen who have been killed in action in Iraq...

...a cheap, content-free stunt designed to tug at our heartstrings and bag a big number on the second night of the May ratings race.

Koppel, also in the announcement, acknowledged that Memorial Day might have been "the most logical occasion" to do the program. Ya think?

"But we felt that the impact would actually be greater on a day when the entire nation is not focused on war dead," he said.

Ah yes, and, of course, Memorial Day falls outside the May sweeps, when viewer levels are used by the networks to set advertising rates. Memorial Day is also traditionally a day of very low television viewing...

... nobody at ABC News stopped to think that telecasting this thing on the second night of the May sweeps might appear like an unseemly sweeps ratings grab.

Who'd have thought that the only people in broadcast TV with no awareness of ratings sweeps periods all work at ABC News? I mean, what are the odds, really?

"Honestly, we did not know that's when the sweeps begins," Sievers told The TV Column. "We don't pay a lot of attention to that."...

How you feel about the indefinite military detentions of Yaser Esam Hamdi and Jose Padilla will turn largely on what you think life will look like when it starts. By "it," I mean the moment at which fundamental liberties are curtailed by well-meaning governments and the legal system becomes unable to offer relief. Never having seen "it" happen in my lifetime, I'm hardly an expert. German Jews who survived the Holocaust will tell you that it's hard to know at exactly which instant you've crossed the line into "it." Fred Korematsu, a Japanese American detained during World War II, knows what "it" looks like, and he says it looks a bit like this. Professor Jennifer Martinez, Padilla's oral advocate at the Supreme Court this morning, says we are at the line separating "it" from "not it" right now, today—as the court stands poised to decide whether "the government can take citizens off the street and lock them up in jail forever."

The crucial issue for both Hamdi and Padilla is whether the courts will hand the president the power to detain alleged "enemy combatants" indefinitely, without charges or access to counsel...

...a criminal statute, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 4001(a)—which bars the detention of citizens without express congressional authority—means "the President does not have the power ... to detain as an enemy combatant an American citizen seized on American soil."...

...Ginsburg asks whether the government has any justification for trying certain defendants (John Walker Lindh, Zacarias Moussaoui, James Ujaama) and locking up others. Clement replies that those terrorists had "no intelligence value," so it was fine to put them into the judicial system. (The notion that the government will learn more from interrogating Hamdi, a Taliban foot soldier, than Moussaoui, a man who ate ice cream with ranking al-Qaida members, is so preposterous that it cannot just be left on this page to die.)...

...Clement adds that Hamdi may not have had a full military proceeding, but he was subject to two thorough military screenings, one on the battlefield and another in Guantanamo, which would have screened him out were his claims of innocence true. He adds (I swear), "The interrogation process also provides an opportunity for him to say this has all been a mistake." When Ginsburg asks, "Doesn't he have a right to tell some tribunal, in his own words ..." Clement concedes he "does have a right to say, in his own words. ..." And Souter, drier than a dirty martini, asks: "When? During interrogation?"

O'Connor speaks, it seems, for much of the court when she points out that this "war" we are in may last forever. "We've never had a situation where this war could last for 25 years of 50 years."...

...Congress, after all, gave the president carte blanche to conduct this endless war as he sees fit. And according to the president, the courts can do nothing now but get out of his way...

In Iraq, the The U.S. Army and Marines both found that more frequent and aggressive use of snipers made for more successful combat operations. Each army brigade now has about three dozen trained snipers, and most brigades have encouraged the selection and training of more snipers within infantry companies. The ability to take down enemy troops with single shots is a major combat advantage, but can only be done if you have better trained troops and much better reconnaissance and observation on the battlefield.

The army has a five week sniper school, and the marines have a ten week course that is considered one of the best in the world. These schools turn out professional snipers who know how to operate independently in two man teams. Marine regiments (about the same size as army brigades) have about three times as many snipers per battalion as do army units. But both the army and the marines are taking advantage of the greater number of veteran troops in their combat units, and the fact that just about every soldier has a rifle with a scope, and has a lot of target practice behind them. Infantry commanders are encouraged to find and designate about ten percent of their men as “sharpshooters” (sort of “sniper lite”) and make use of these guys to take out enemy troops at a distance, and with single shots. This is a trend that has been growing for over a decade, but has now become a major feature of American infantry tactics.

The marines won’t release any numbers of sniper kills (except that the top scoring sniper in Fallujah had 24 kills as of late April), but it is known from emails coming back that the marines use snipers, and sniping tactics (for non-snipers), extensively. Part of this is to comply with the Rules of Engagement (ROE) that call for minimizing civilian casualties. Most often, the marines only use a lot of fire power when they are ambushed (there is no better way to deal with an ambush than to blast your way out of it). But most of the Iraqi gunmen are killed by single shots, usually by the trained snipers, after the snipers and their commanders had carefully set up sniper firing positions that covered areas they knew Iraqis liked to travel through. UAVs and lots of scouting, plus questioning of prisoners, reveals the Iraqi routes and makes them deadly to use. This has terrorized the Iraqis, which is exactly what it is intended to do. The army and marine snipers particularly like to work at night, when their night vision and thermal imaging equipment enables them to shoot accurately in the darkness. This further reduces the chance of civilian losses, and increases the terror...

The Iraqi holy city of Najaf is the Shia version of the Vatican. The shrine of Imam Ali, the main religious seminaries and the biggest Shia cemetery are all there, and it has always been the residence of the grand ayatollahs. But unlike the Vatican, gold in Najaf can be found publicly only in two places - the dome of the shrine and the teeth of the old merchants selling religious objects to the Iranian pilgrims. The houses roundabout are crumbling, the streets filthy with rubbish and dust.

Also unlike the Vatican, the Shia have many popes at one time. The grandest is Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who is in his 70s and has not left his house for 20 years...

...I can't understand the blessing in having an old cleric dictating the political process of my country...

...I spent almost a week in Najaf, attended Friday prayers, talked to about a million clerics, watched the Mahdi army fighting and imposing their new-found authority on the people of Najaf and on the old man.

One of the clerics was a friend of mine who I first met in April last year when he was still thrilled about the liberation. Now he has different ideas and has become one of Moqtada's lieutenants...He is a pleasant young man in his early 30s with a charming smile and an impressive beard. He speaks some English but his main talent, apart from smuggling weapons into the shrine, is computer graphics...

...The "revolutionaries" are men mainly from the Baghdad slums and the poor south. They wear plastic sandals and carry pictures of Moqtada on their chests. They are armed with grenades strapped to their waists and a whole package of conspiracy theories.

There is a disturbing similarity between what these people are doing and saying and what the Ba'athists used to do and say. Since Moqtada's troops took over they have been acting thuggishly, in harmony with our great despotic traditions. I think there is something in the air that makes us yearn for a dictator to mess us around...

So the great holy fighters are manning checkpoints, detaining people and even have their own secret police. A cleric can order any of his thugs to take you to the religious court, where only Allah and Moqtada can release you.

When clashes erupted on the outskirts of the city, the new mojahedin, carrying RPG rockets without launchers and weapons looted from the Iraqi police, driving looted Iraqi police pick-up trucks and chanting "Moqtada", all rushed to the fighting. Ten minutes later, with the same war cries, they were running back. According to a senior fighter, what I was seeing was a "tactical withdrawal".

After Moqtada's Friday prayers, I went looking for my phone (phones are not allowed in the mosque for security reasons). I was waiting outside an office when I saw through a window four of the cleric's bodyguards dressing up another who was as chubby as the "leader" with a black turban and a black robe just like Moqtada's. Then they opened the door and ran outside with one guy shouting, "Long live Moqtada." While the crowd surrounded them, the real Moqtada slipped out of the mosque.

It's reassuring to see the traditions of my country still thriving: one man is given the holy right to lead the nation, while young kids with RPGs terrorise everyone.

...any one with a simple mind and some reason and live here can see and touch much difference between Iraq before March 2003 and now. And for the better of course.

Any one who doesn’t see and feel that difference, then its because he doesn’t want to, or he was so comfortable and satisfied with the ext regime…….May be many Iraqis are not satisfied with the security situation here in Baghdad, and when I am saying Baghdad, that’s because there is much difference between security situation in Baghdad and the other cities of Iraq. And it’s much better in the rest of Iraq. That’s what our friends and relatives in those cities are telling us.

And I am sure that the security situation in Iraq in general is better that many European and American cities,…… its just the people in Iraq are not familiar with such situation...

...When I read the speech of Mr. Bremer on the 23rd of April 2004, I can’t find in it but true intentions to make thing better for us and with logical methods, easy to be substituted in Iraqi society...when I hear about the new contracts, some of them about rebuilding Faluja and when I see every day in my way to work many Iraqis on their way to work, schools, and many construction sites, and markets full of imported goods with many ordinary people doing shopping, and imported cars in car markets more than the customers who are trying to buy cars, and when I feel the people of Faluja happy to get red of the terrorists in their city and many others are forgetting about the rebels in Najaf and thinking of them just a bunch of twisted minds, then I know that we are on the right path.

I am sure that these days many Iraqis know that the coalition is in war situation, but not with Iraqis but with terrorism on the land of Iraq. So all we have to do is to help the good guys to win this war fast, at least by staying safe and away of the hot areas. May be many of us are trying to say it’s not our war why should we bear so much….. Well the war against the terrorism is responsibility of the entire world, and now we are playing our part in it.

Veteran GOP Sen. Arlen Specter narrowly won a shot at a fifth term, after a close primary battle with Rep. Pat Toomey, who argued to Pennsylvanians that Specter simply wasn't conservative enough.

With 97 percent of the precincts reporting early Wednesday, Specter, a leading Republican moderate, had 513,041 votes, or 51 percent, to Toomey's 496,567 votes, or 49 percent...

...U.S. administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, announced that he will create a commission to provide monetary compensation for Iraqis who were imprisoned or lost their jobs under the Baath Party government that ruled Iraq for 35 years until a U.S.-led invasion deposed president Saddam Hussein last April.

The commission will be staffed and run by Iraqis and draw from a "substantial" amount of initial funding...

The United States is preparing to significantly raise its estimate of the number of nuclear weapons held by North Korea, from "possibly two" to at least eight, according to U.S. officials involved in the preparation of the report.

The report, expected to be completed within a month, would reflect a new intelligence consensus on North Korea's nuclear capabilities after that country's decision last year to restart a nuclear reactor and plutonium-reprocessing facility that had been frozen under a 1994 agreement. Among the evidence used in making the assessment is a detailed analysis of plutonium byproducts found on clothing worn by members of an unofficial U.S. delegation that was allowed to visit North Korean nuclear facilities several months ago...

...Intelligence officials also have broadly concluded that a separate North Korean uranium-enrichment program will be operational by 2007, producing enough material for as many as six additional weapons a year, one U.S. official said...

...Bush administration officials believe the new estimate will help pressure North Korea's neighbors to back the U.S. position that Pyongyang's weapons programs must be dismantled without concessions. During a tour of Asia two weeks ago, Vice President Cheney warned that time is running out for diplomacy as an increasingly cash-strapped North Korea might seek to peddle its nuclear technology or fissile material -- including, Cheney said, to terrorist groups...