April 20, 2006
Late word out of Iraq has Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafaari ending his bid for re-election to the position, paving the way for a national unity government that would signal stability to the Iraqi people: Under intense domestic and American pressure, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari dropped his bid to retain his job on Thursday, removing a major obstacle to forming a new government during a time of rising sectarian violence. Leaders from each of Iraq's main factions — Sunni Arab, Shiite and Kurd — called the decision a breakthrough. "I believe that we will succeed in forming the national unity government the people are waiting for," Adnan Pachachi, the acting speaker of Parliament, said at a news conference at the Convention Center inside the fortified Green Zone. But while Mr. Jaafari's capitulation after two months of resistance could indeed resolve the stalemate, daunting political challenges lie ahead. Leaders are battling over...
April 22, 2006
The Iraqi National Assembly has wasted no time after the Shi'ite compromise on Ibrahim al-Jafaari's withdrawal and has begun forming the national-unity executive for which America has pressed since the December elections. The division of power among the top slots remains as it did before, with the Kurds holding the presidency and the Sunnis and Shi'a taking the two vice-presidential positions: After months of political deadlock, Iraq's parliament convened Saturday to select top leadership posts, launching the process of putting together a new government aimed at pulling the country out of its sectarian strife. Before the session, Shiite lawmaker Ridha Jawad Taqi said all sides agreed on a package deal for the top spots: Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, would remain as president for a second term, with Sunni Arab Tariq al-Hashimi and Shiite Adil Abdul-Mahdi holding the two vice-president spots. In its first vote, lawmakers elected Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, a Sunni,...
April 25, 2006
While Europe ponders its problems with large and isolated Muslim communities in their midst, suffering from unemployment and refusing to assimilate, its citizens have begun looking towards the ummah for solutions to their own economic woes. Der Spiegel reports on the newest ethnic restaurant in Irbil: Now, finally, just in time for the World Cup, Iraqis have the opportunity to savour German cuisine and culture following last week's opening of the country's first German restaurant, in the northern city of Arbil. The "Deutscher Hof Arbil" was set up by Gunter Völker, a former German soldier who already runs a German restaurant in the Afghan capital of Kabul. The restaurant will stage parties to mark highlights in the German calendar such as the Oktoberfest beer festival and carnival. Its musical offerings will range from Oompah band classics to local Kurdish tunes. For Völker, the prospect of unemployment at home in Germany...
April 28, 2006
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi appeared on video earlier this week, exhorting Iraqi Sunnis to join the insurgency and defeat the United States. Today the Iraqis gave an answer to one of his lieutenants, only the message will not get hand-delivered, thanks to the Iraqi security forces: Iraqi commando forces acting on a tip raided a house where Hamid al-Takhi and the two other insurgents were hiding in Samarra, a city 60 miles north of Baghdad, said police Capt. Laith Mohammed. All three were killed in a gunbattle. Mohammed said al-Takhi had been responsible for many insurgent attacks against coalition forces and civilians in the area. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq — the country's most feared insurgent group — appeared in a video earlier this week trying to rally Sunni Arabs to fight Iraq's new government and denouncing Sunnis who cooperate with it as "agents" of the Americans....
April 29, 2006
British investigators have finally started checking into MP George Galloway and his role in the Oil for Food scandal at the United Nations. The London Times reports that their diplomats have approached Tariq Aziz, the former deputy prime minister under Saddam Hussein, to see if he will talk about Galloway's relationship with the Hussein regime: BRITISH diplomats in Baghdad have asked Tariq Aziz, Iraq’s former deputy prime minister, to help an investigation into allegations that George Galloway was given cash by Saddam Hussein under the Oil-for-Food programme. The diplomats made the secret approach through Mr Aziz’s lawyer this week on behalf of Parliament’s so-called “sleaze buster”. The lawyer, Badie Izzat Arief, claimed that they offered to try and secure Mr Aziz immunity from prosecution on any charges arising from the Oil-for-Food scandal. Embassy officials want to meet Mr Aziz, 70, in the US-run detention centre where he is held with...
April 30, 2006
Iran sent troops across the Iraqi border three miles towards Haj Oman nine days ago, where Kurdish opposition bases itself for its efforts to unseat the mullahcracy in Teheran: Teheran has attacked an anti-Iranian Kurdish group based in Iraq, it emerged yesterday, raising fears that instability there could spill over into the rest of the region. Iraq's defence ministry said more than 180 artillery shells were fired and Iranian troops crossed three miles into Iraqi territory before withdrawing. The incursion, which occurred on April 21, came after Iranian claims that a number of attacks had been conducted against Iranian army and Revolutionary Guard posts in recent weeks. They are accused of operating from bases around Haj Oman, which was the centre of the Iranian attack. Four peopile were said to have been wounded. Interesting. Apparently Iran does not want to make friends with Iraq as much as they want to...
May 4, 2006
First the Italians paid millions to get its hostages out of Iraq, and now Germany appears to have done the same, despite professing strong support for refusing to negotiate with terrorists. The Guardian (UK) and Der Spiegel both report that the German government paid "a large amount of money" for the recent release of two Germans held hostage by terrorists: Two German hostages kidnapped in Iraq arrived home yesterday as Iraq's ambassador to Germany claimed a "load of money" had been paid to secure their release. Alaa al-Hashimi, said the German government had handed over a "large amount" to the kidnappers of René Bräunlich and Thomas Nitzschke, who were freed on Tuesday after 99 days in captivity. "Regarding the payment of ransom, I don't know. But I assume it was a large amount of money," the ambassador told Germany's ARD public television station. The Iraqi government had no part in...
Well, this video has to be the funniest development in the war on terror -- not that there have been a lot of events competing for that honor. Al-Qaeda leader and terrorist mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi apparently cannot master the weapons he brandishes for chilling effect on his video statements: The U.S. military command Thursday released previously unseen images of a video purportedly posted by Al Qaeda in Iraq's leader, showing him decked out in American tennis shoes and unable to operate his machine gun. ... The video, discovered in a series of raids in April on purported Al Qaeda in Iraq safe houses in the Youssifiyah area, 12 miles southwest of Baghdad, gave a view of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi that the Jordanian-born militant chose not to show the world, said Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, spokesman for the U.S. command. Al-Zarqawi is "very proud of the fact that he can...
May 8, 2006
Please see Update III below -- the identification in the London Times was incorrect. The London Times reports on the final days of Atwar Bahjat, an Iraqi woman viciously murdered by terrorists of one type or another for her courage in reporting on events in her native Samarra. Bahjat, a television reporter for al-Arabiya television, had built a following for her work in covering the violence in Iraq until kidnappers abducted her while a group of Samarrans did nothing to assist her. Bahjat's body was found later along with those of her cameraman and sound man, and the presumption was that she had been shot to death. Not so. In fact, Bhajat experienced the worst of the terrorist depravity in he final moments, made clear when a video recording of her execution was sent to her family: First she was stripped to the waist, a humiliation for any woman but...
CENTCOM announced today that they had captured al-Qaeda correspondence in Iraq that discusses the state of the insurgency, especially around Baghdad but also around the entire country. Far from optimistic, the documents captured in an April 16th raid reveal frustration and desperation, as the terrorists acknowledge the superior position of American and free Iraqi forces and their ability to quickly adapt to new tactics. In these passages, the AQ terrorist author -- described as a person "of significance" due to the extensive analysis applied -- often refers to the elected Iraqi government as the "Shi'ites": A glance at the reality of Baghdad in light of the latest events (sectarian turmoil) 1. It has been proven that the Shiites have a power and influence in Baghdad that cannot be taken lightly, particularly when the power of the Ministries of Interior and Defense is given to them, compared with the power of...
May 10, 2006
The Iraqi News Agency reported last week that the military captured a high-ranking member of the al-Qaeda network in Karbala. The description given of this former Saddam Hussein army commander sounds familiar: High-ranking leader of terrorist organization Al Qaeda was detained today in Iraqi province of Karbala during military operation, Iraqi news agency INA reports. Abdel Fatih Isa, a.k.a. Abu Aisha, was arrested in a private home where he had been hiding for a long time. The arrest was made after a few houses in the town had been searched through. The terrorist is among the chief organizers of terrorist acts in capital Baghdad. According to military sources Abu Aisha was an officer from the Iraqi army during Saddam Hussein’s rule, the agency notes. I thought that the description of an AQ commander spending most of his time hiding sounded familiar. In the captured AQ document that Centcom released this...
May 11, 2006
The new Iraqi government has decided to remove the confusion of having various security forces for different ministries operating in the greater Baghdad area and consolidate all such units into one cohesive force. The concern over confusion between actual government forces and the sectarian militias has crescendoed with the recent violence in the capital, and a unified command would resolve those issues immediately: Senior Iraqi leaders are preparing a major restructuring of the capital's security brigades that would place all police officers and paramilitary soldiers under a single commander and in one uniform, in hopes of curtailing the sectarian chaos that is ravaging the city. The reorganization calls for a substantially reduced presence of American soldiers on the capital's streets, although not necessarily in their numbers nationwide. The plan, disclosed Wednesday in interviews with senior Iraqi leaders, would substantially alter Baghdad's landscape, now permeated by tens of thousands of police...
May 20, 2006
Iraq officially launched its first popularly elected government this morning after its National Assembly swore in the ministers of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Cabinet. Two key security posts remain unfilled while negotiations continue, but the governance of Iraq has now passed to a permanent set of democratic institutions for the first time: Iraq's new government of national unity was sworn in before a special session of parliament on Saturday, three years after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The new ministers took the oath of office after parliament approved the Cabinet presented by incoming Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. ... The session began more than two hours late because of last-minute haggling, finally opening with readings from the Quran. The 37-member Cabinet is made up of members from all of Iraq's religious, sectarian and ethnic groups. It took months of negotiations to form after the Dec. 15 elections and is Iraq's first...
May 23, 2006
The British newspaper The Guardian reports that Tony Blair and George Bush will shortly announce a schedule for an expedited troop withdrawal from Iraq. The coalition leaders plan to hand over entire provinces to the newly-installed Iraqi government and their security forces, perhaps in as many as 16 of the 18 provinces comprising Iraq: George Bush and Tony Blair are to discuss in Washington this week a programme of troop withdrawals from Iraq that will be much faster and more ambitious than originally planned. In a phased pullout in which the two countries will act in tandem, Britain is to begin with a handover to Iraqi security forces in Muthanna province in July and the Americans will follow suit in Najaf, the Shia holy city. Other withdrawals will quickly follow over the remainder of the year. Officials in both administrations hope that Britain's 8,000 forces in Iraq can be down...
May 30, 2006
CBS correspondent Kimberly Dozier received severe wounds and two of her crew died yesterday in a car bombing in Baghdad. The Washington Post reports that Dozier is expected to live: A car bomb explosion in central Baghdad Monday killed two CBS News crew members, an Iraqi interpreter and a U.S. soldier, and severely wounded the news team's correspondent, in one of a string of attacks that killed dozens of people in Iraq over the course of the day. Paul Douglas, a cameraman, and James Brolan, a sound man, died in the blast, CBS News said in a statement. Both men were British citizens based in London. Kimberly Dozier, an American correspondent who has covered the war in Iraq for nearly three years, was taken to a Baghdad hospital for surgery. The network said she was listed in critical condition and that doctors were "cautiously optimistic" about her prognosis. Critics of...
May 31, 2006
The Haditha investigation started earlier than previously thought after a Marine Corps investigator noticed key discrepancies between the physical evidence and the reports from the Marines involved. The New York Times reveals that the Pentagon had already referred the matter to criminal investigators weeks before Time Magazine reported the alleged atrocities at the end of March, from a presentation of the allegations by the magazine: A military investigator uncovered evidence in February and March that contradicted repeated claims by marines that Iraqi civilians killed in Haditha last November were victims of a roadside bomb, according to a senior military official in Iraq. Among the pieces of evidence that conflicted with the marines' story were death certificates that showed all the Iraqi victims had gunshot wounds, mostly to the head and chest, the official said. ... When Colonel Watt described the findings to Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the senior ground commander...
June 15, 2006
If al-Qaeda in Iraq reads Western news sources, and their media-savvy but tactically insane recent communications suggest they do, they may soon decide that their operation has blown its cover completely. After an AQ associate dropped a dime on Zarqawi, they now have a much larger security breach than they knew: Iraq's national security adviser said Thursday a "huge treasure" of documents and computer records was seized after the raid on terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's hideout, giving the Iraqi government the upper hand in its fight against al-Qaida in Iraq. National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie also said he believed the security situation in the country would improve enough to allow a large number of U.S.-led forces to leave Iraq by the end of this year, and a majority to depart by the end of next year. "And maybe the last soldier will leave Iraq by mid-2008," he said. Al-Rubaie...
Once dominoes start to fall, it becomes increasingly difficult to stop their momentum. The terrorists who pledged allegiance to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi until he attained room temperature have discovered this, much to their dismay. CENTCOM spokesman General William Caldwell gives us the scorecard on the Zarqawi mission, and it looks like a rout: American and Iraqi forces have carried out 452 raids since last week's killing of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and 104 insurgents were killed during those actions, the U.S. military said Thursday. Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said the raids were carried out nationwide and led to the discovery of 28 significant arms caches. He said 255 of the raids were joint operations, while 143 were carried out by Iraqi forces alone. The raids also resulted in the captures of 759 "anti-Iraqi elements." That result should impress even the deepest cynics. 452...
Iraqi officials released a document found in the run-up to the Zarqawi mission that discussed al-Qaeda in Iraq tactics and strategy, accompanied by a gloomy prognosis for the AQI network. In the memo, the author acknowledges that the momentum had shifted to the Americans and that AQI would quickly run out of time and recruits, and proposed starting another war with America as a distraction -- preferably with Iran: A blueprint for trying to start a war between the United States and Iran was among a "huge treasure" of documents found in the hideout of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Iraqi officials said Thursday. ... While the coalition was continuing to suffer human losses, "time is now beginning to be of service to the American forces and harmful to the resistance," the document said. The document said the insurgency was being hurt by, among other things, the U.S. military's program...
June 20, 2006
Today the Senate will start debate on a non-binding resolution that will demand an end to the American presence in Iraq except for those troops engaged in training Iraqi security forces. This new proposal contains much of the same language as the amendment offered by John Kerry to the defense authorization bill that got soundly thumped last week 93-6 when offered by the GOP separately for debate, but as the newly appointed Iraqi National Security Advisor writes today in the Washington Post, the effort is completely unnecessary. First, let's take a look at the latest Democratic effort to shut down the American effort in Iraq, a silly and nonspecific proposal that inspired Senator Mitch McConnell to call it a "cut and jog": Trying to bridge party divisions on the eve of a Senate debate, leading Democrats called Monday for American troops to begin pulling out of Iraq this year. They...
The Iraqi government has found the bodies of two American soldiers reportedly captured by terrorists in Iraq last week, and the bodies show signs of torture according to the preliminary reports: The bodies of two U.S. soldiers who had been reported kidnapped have been found near the checkpoint where the men disappeared after an attack, a senior Iraqi military official said Tuesday. The U.S. military said two bodies had been found but had not yet been identified. Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, of Houston and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, 25, of Madras, Ore., went missing Friday near the town of Youssifiyah, south of Baghdad. Spc. David J. Babineau, 25, of Springfield, Mass., was killed in the attack. ... Ahmed Khalaf Falah, a farmer who said he witnessed the attack Friday, said three Humvees were manning a checkpoint when they came under fire from many directions. Two Humvees went after the assailants,...
CENTCOM announced minutes ago that one of the men expected to take the place of the now-room temperature Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has also reached thermal equilibrium near Baghdad. The spokesman for the military briefed reporters on the death of Sheikh Mansur, displaying before and after mug shots of the dead terrorist and explained his significance to the insurgent network in Iraq. So far, none of the wire services have picked up the story; I will fill in the details as they become available. UPDATE: The BBC has an addendum to the story on the discovery of the two bodies that reports up to 15 insurgents killed while hunting a "senior member of al-Qaeda in Iraq," but does not identify Sheikh Mansur despite the specifics in the briefing. UPDATE II: The Commissar asks if I may have mistranscribed the name from al-Masri or al-Mohajer. I took the name from the placard...
June 21, 2006
Yesterday I reported a breaking news item that the US had killed a Top 5 leadership figure from al-Qaeda in Iraq based on a televised briefing. Today the AP gives more background on Mansour Suleiman Mansour Khalifi al-Mashhadani: A key Al Qaeda in Iraq leader described as the group's "religious emir" was killed in a U.S. airstrike hours before two American soldiers went missing and in the same area, the military said Tuesday. Mansour Suleiman Mansour Khalifi al-Mashhadani, or Sheik Mansour, and two foreign fighters were killed as they tried to flee in a vehicle near the town of Youssifiyah, in the so-called Sunni "Triangle of Death." U.S. coalition forces had been tracking al-Mashhadani for some time, American military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said in announcing his death. He said al-Mashhadani was an Iraqi, 35 to 37 years old, and that one of the men killed with him was...
A new release from CENTCOM confirms that the US military captured a second high-value target three days after killing "Sheikh Mansour". Two days after the death of Mansour Suleiman Mansour Khalifi al-Mashhadani and the capture of two American servicemen later brutally butchered, American forces captured an as-yet unidentified AQI leader and three of his lieutenants: In another operation June 19 southwest of Baqouba, Coalition forces detained a senior al-Qaida in Iraq network member and three suspected terrorists during coordinated raids. The terrorist is reportedly a senior al-Qaida cell leader throughout central Iraq, north of Baghdad. He’s known to be involved in facilitating foreign terrorists throughout central Iraq, and is suspected of having ties to previous attacks on Coalition and Iraqi forces. Coalition forces secured multiple buildings and detained the known terrorist plus three suspected terrorists without incident. Troops found an AK-47 with several magazines of ammunition and destroyed them all...
Negroponte letter can be viewed in PDF format here. According to numerous sources but not yet on the wires, Senator Rick Santorum announced a few minutes ago that the US has found 500 chemical-weapons shells in Iraq. Hot Air has the hot link for what little data exists thus far. Apparently, some of the shells contained sarin and others mustard gas. No word has come yet on when and where the US found these munitions. I will update this as more information becomes available. UPDATE: Nothing on the wires yet at 5:10 pm CT, but let's think through what this discovery -- if it is new -- means. We have found a handful of such shells already in Iraq; I reported such a find here in November 2004. The shells had come from around the time of the first Gulf War and the contents had likely been rendered inert by...
June 22, 2006
The Iraqi police, who have come under criticism from some American politicians as ineffective, today staged a successful raid that freed 17 hostages. Insurgents had kidnapped them a day earlier, part of 85 hostages taken at an Iraqi factory: Iraqi police stormed a farm north of Baghdad early Thursday and freed at least 17 people who were snatched a day earlier in a mass kidnapping of about 85 workers and family members at the end of a factory shift. ... A National Security Ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters, told The Associated Press that several insurgents holding the kidnap victims were captured during the Thursday morning raid on the farm in the Mishada area, about 20 miles north of the capital. Police operations were continuing in the area, the official said, in a bid to locate the rest of...
While the rest of Iraq continues to show marked progress towards self-reliance and security, even in the Sunni Triangle, one portion of Iraq has already transformed itself into a remarkable area of freedom and stability. The Kurdish areas of the north have blossomed since the end of the Saddam Hussein regime, expanding their cities and rapidly modernizing through significant capital investment and reliable security. The left-wing British newspaper The Independent reports on how the Kurds have delivered on the promise of liberation: The struggle of the Iraqi Kurds for self-determination has been longer and bloodier than that of any nationalist movement outside Vietnam. It began under the British in the 1920s when "Bomber" Harris, later the commander of the air offensive against Germany, practised his art against Kurdish villages. Setting the tone for Baghdad's treatment of the Kurds over the rest of the century, he wrote with approval in 1924:...
In a development that underscores the cluelessness of the Senate debate the past two days, the Iraqi government has built an ultimatum and offer to native insurgents in Iraq that will offer amnesty for most of their actions and an American withdrawal if all insurgencies surrender themselves. The US government has helped craft the offer, which both Iraq and the US hopes will allow Iraq to reach stability quickly: THE Iraqi Government will announce a sweeping peace plan as early as Sunday in a last-ditch effort to end the Sunni insurgency that has taken the country to the brink of civil war. The 28-point package for national reconciliation will offer Iraqi resistance groups inclusion in the political process and an amnesty for their prisoners if they renounce violence and lay down their arms, The Times can reveal. The Government will promise a finite, UN-approved timeline for the withdrawal of all...
June 24, 2006
After a day of debate over the idea of granting amnesty to native insurgents that have killed American troops, the insurgents themselves rendered the point moot. According to the Times of London, which broke the story on the Iraqi peace offer, key insurgent groups have already stated their opposition to the plan (via Newsbeat1): IRAQ’S main insurgent groups intend to reject a peace plan that Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, will present today in an attempt to halt the country’s spiral of violence. Maliki is expected to go before parliament with a 28- point plan for national reconciliation aimed at defusing the Sunni insurgency and sectarian conflict in which thousands of people have died. ... Representatives of 11 Iraqi insurgent groups told The Sunday Times yesterday that they would reject the peace offer because they did not recognise the legitimacy of the government. A senior commander authorised to speak on...
June 26, 2006
For those who keep insisting that al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein had no operational ties, the work of Ray Robison has provided explicit evidence in rebuttal. Fox News reports on the latest efforts of Robison in translating the documents captured by US forces but never translated by the CIA or Pentagon. His recent translation of a series of documents shows that AQ jihadists had negotiated with the Iraqi Intelligence Services for training facilities in Tajikistan or in Baghdad: Newly declassified documents captured by U.S. forces indicate that Saddam Hussein's inner circle not only actively reached out to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan and terror-based jihadists in the region, but also hosted discussions with a known Al Qaeda operative about creating jihad training "centers," possibly in Baghdad. Ray Robison, a former member of the CIA-directed Iraq Survey Group (ISG), supervised a group of linguists to analyze, archive and exploit the hundreds of...
June 27, 2006
The European Court of Human Rights has taken it upon themselves to debate whether Iraq has any sovereignty. At least, that is the implication of their agreement to deliberate whether the Coalition should allow Iraq to try former Saddam Hussein regime figures, starting with Tariq Aziz: A lawyer for former Iraqi deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz, in US custody in Baghdad, said the European Court of Human Rights had conditionally agreed to hear a plea over fears Aziz might be handed over to the Iraqi government. Italian lawyer Giovanni Di Stefano said the court had first said it wanted to know to whom it was that Aziz had surrendered in April 2003, shortly after the fall of the former regime, by whom and where had he been held since then and at what date they proposed transferring custody. Di Stefano and fellow Italian lawyer Domenico Marinelli said in a statement...
June 28, 2006
The amnesty plan offered by Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki and President Jalal al-Talibani appears to have broken a standoff with native insurgents in Iraq. The groups have replied by demanding a commitment to a two-year withdrawal plan of foreign forces from Iraq as a condition of their surrender: Insurgents are demanding the withdrawal of all U.S. and British forces from Iraq within two years as a condition for joining reconciliation talks, a senior Iraqi government official said Wednesday. ... Iraqi government officials involved with the contacts with insurgents told The Associated Press that several militant groups sent delegates from their regions and tribes to speak on their behalf. One of the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of demands for secrecy in the talks, said the insurgents have so far rejected face-to-face talks, saying they fear being targeted by Shiite militias, Iraqi security forces and the Americans. The...
June 30, 2006
Guess what the Iraqis and Americans found when they captured a number of Shi'ite militia fighters in Baquba? Iraqi and U.S. troops battled Shi'ite militiamen in a village northeast of Baghdad on Thursday, and witnesses and police said U.S. helicopters bombed orchards to flush out gunmen hiding there. Iraqi security officials said Iranian fighters had been captured in the fighting, in which a sniper shot dead the commander of an Iraqi quick reaction force and two of his men. They did not say how the Iranians had been identified. ... "We captured a number of militants and were surprised to see that some of them were Iranian fighters," the police intelligence captain said. An Interior Ministry official, who did not want to be named, also said Iranian gunmen had been captured. Baquba lies 90 km (60 miles) from the Iranian border. The United States and Britain have accused Shi'ite Iran...
July 2, 2006
Apparently the new Iraqi government has received enough intel on insurgent financing to trace some of it back to the wife and daughter of Saddam Hussein. At a press conference, the Iraqi national security advisor unveiled their new most-wanted list, and the two women occupy slots 16 and 17: Saddam Hussein's wife and eldest daughter are among 41 people on the Iraqi government's most wanted list, along with the new leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, a top official announced Sunday. ... Al-Rubaie told reporters the government was releasing the most wanted list "so that our people can know their enemies." Saddam's wife, Sajida Khairallah Tulfah, was No. 17, just behind the ousted leader's eldest daughter, Raghad. Sajida is believed to be in Qatar, and Raghad lives in Jordan, where she was given refuge by King Abdullah II. The Jordanians deny that Raghad has participated in any actions supporting terrorists or...
July 3, 2006
One of the key physical devices for active intel in any terrorist takedown is the cellphone. The data we recover off of these leads us to a number of other active terrorist cells, as well as point the NSA to new potential nodes in the AQ network. CNN reports that the cell phone recovered from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's corpse gave us plenty of intel, some of it leading to key members of the new Iraqi government: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had the phone numbers of senior Iraqi officials stored in his cell phone, according to an Iraqi legislator. Waiel Abdul-Latif, a member of former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's party, said Monday that authorities found the numbers after al-Zarqawi, leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, was killed in a U.S. air strike on June 7. Abdul-Latif did not give names of the officials. But he said they included ministry employees and members...
I have written several times about the issue of the mobile laboratories in Iraq and the subsequent conventional wisdom that they served as hydrogen generators for weather balloons instead of WMD production facilities. In April, I pointed out that the hydrogen theory came as a minority opinion within the CIA/DIA teams that reviewed the two labs captured by the Coalition. One month later, Joseph Shahda translated a key memo showing that the Iraqis spent $33 million on the mobile labs in September 2002, while America decided to take military action against the Iraqis, and that the same agency that controlled Iraq's WMD programs (the Military Industrialization Committee) arranged to purchase these facilities. One key point (besides the memo) that undermines the argument for a civil hydrogen production facility is the ease in which the Iraqis could already produce and store hydrogen. Oil refining creates hydrogen in fairly large quantities as...
Continue reading "Mobile Labs Could Not Have Produced Hydrogen As Described, Prologue" »
July 4, 2006
In Part I of ChemicalConsultant's analysis of the mobile weapons laboratories, he calls into question the CIA's calculations of the production capability of the facilities described. In his calculations, he posits that these mobile facilities could not have produced the hydrogen necessary for the mission the CIA claims. 1. The reaction to produce hydrogen gas from aluminum, sodium hydroxide is: 2Al(s) +2NaOH (aq) +6H2O-> 2Na+ (aq) + 2[Al(OH)4]- +3H2 (g) This means that it takes 80 grams of NaOH (molecular weight about 40) to make 6 grams of H2 (molecular weight about 2) and uses 54 grams of Al (atomic weight about 27) in the process. On a kilogram basis, 1 kg NaOH makes 6/80 = 0.075 kg or 75 g H2 and uses 54/80 = 0.675 kg or 675 g Al. My reference is www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/text/Al/chem.html. 2. According to the Fast Facts link on the website of a major hydrogen...
The Iraqi government will consider a request by the native insurgents negotiating for a national reconciliation to take up arms against the al-Qaeda network in Iraq. The eleven groups want the Iraqis to outfit them with weapons, claiming that they have the intel to wipe out the foreign terrorists: Iraq's government is studying a request from some local insurgent leaders to supply them with weapons so they can turn on the heavily armed foreign fighters who were once their allies, according to two Iraqi lawmakers. Leaders claiming to represent about 11 insurgent groups asked for weapons to fight foreign al-Qaeda elements in Iraq, said Haider al-Ibadi, a Shiite lawmaker and member of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa Party. "They want to take part in the war against terrorists," said al-Ibadi, who supports the proposal. "They claim they could wipe out the terrorists and work with the government." AQI seems to...