Marines prepare ICDC for Iraqi control

[thedrifter]

Marines prepare ICDC for Iraqi control
Submitted by: 1st Marine Division
Story Identification #: 20045203626
Story by Sgt. Jose E. Guillen



ABU GHARIB, Iraq(May 17, 2004) -- Marines in the shadow of the city housing the prison by the same name are carrying out a quiet and essential mission to turn over Iraq's responsibility back to Iraqis.

Marines of Company C, 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment recently shifted their focus from destroying enemy holdouts to training Iraqi Civil Defense Corps soldiers for joint missions in presence patrols and locating enemy holdouts.

"Our mission now is patrols, searching out and finding the enemy," said 1st Lt. Matthew Custance, the executive officer of Company C, 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment. "Our focus is the major urban area just to our west, which is Nassir Wa Al Salaam."

Custance said the Marines were more concerned with actions in nearby Fallujah than the recent investigations into allegations of prisoner abuse at the nearby detention facility.

"When Fallujah flared up, it flared up here as well," Custance said. "It's not as dangerous anymore, but we can tell who likes us and who doesn't."

Custance said his Marines occasionally get rocks thrown at them by kids and adult's still display bitterness to U.S. presence.

"We have a full plate, but we're running permanent patrol bases out in town and in open areas with India Company," said Custance, of ICDC's Company I. "We do both foot patrols and vehicle mounts, and sometimes we'll combine them."

Regular joint-patrols provided positive results for the Marines. That's led to the success of the integration of Marines and Iraqi soldiers, said Capt. Will Dickens, the company's commanding officer from Murfreesboro, N.C.

"The ICDC has helped us pacify the local populace when we're out on these patrols," Dickens said. "We've been very successful."

Custance said Marines were forced to make some changes within the Iraqi company chain of command, prior to extending further Marine-ICDC integration.

"We replaced the Iraqi company commander and first sergeant because they conducted unethical and illegal acts," Custance explained.

Since the new change of command, though, 30 more Iraqi recruits were added to the roster, bringing the Iraqi company's number to about 160.

"We had 48 soldiers join us a few days ago and they're still here," said Staff Sgt. Willie J. Favrs, a 34-year-old from Whitesburg, Ga. "The word is passed through the city by the ICDC and then they just come in and get signed up."

The integration takes the Marines one step closer to the expected turnover of full sovereignty to Iraq June 30. Custance said the Marines will continue their focus until they return home.

"We've been here since March 15, and we intend to stay until the job's done," Custance said. "We're pushing the Marines hard, but we have to continue keeping the prison safe, and getting the enemy out of Nassir Wa Al Salaam until we leave."

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/image1.nsf/Lookup/20045203936/$file/support2lr.jpg

Marines of Company C, 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment wait in their vehicles to receive further instructions after conducting a patrol with Company I, Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, May 15. The Marines and the ICDC have been cnducting joint-patrols in the urban area of Nassir Wa Al Salaam.
(USMC photo by Sgt. Jose E. Guillen) Photo by: Sgt. Jose E. Guillen

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf/main5/454560F6B8F389A685256E9A00270ACA?opendocument


Ellie

[thedrifter]

May 19, 2004

U.S. gunship attacked wedding party, Iraqis say

By Scheherezade Faramarzi
Associated Press


BAGHDAD, Iraq — A U.S. helicopter fired on a wedding party Wednesday in western Iraq, killing more than 40 people, Iraqi officials said. The U.S. military said it could not confirm the report and was investigating.
Lt. Col Ziyad al-Jbouri, deputy police chief of Ramadi, said between 42 and 45 people were killed in the attack, which took place about 2:45 a.m. in a remote desert area near the border with Syria and Jordan. He said the dead included 15 children and 10 women.

Dr. Salah al-Ani, who works at a hospital in Ramadi, put the death toll at 45.

The Dubai-based Al Arabiya television reported that more than 20 were killed and 10 injured in the attack.

Associated Press Television News obtained videotape showing a truck containing bodies of people who were allegedly killed in the incident. Most of the bodies were wrapped in blankets and other cloths, but the footage showed at least eight uncovered, bloody bodies, several of them children. One of the children was headless.

Iraqis said partygoers were firing in the air in traditional wedding celebration. American troops have sometimes mistaken celebratory gunfire for hostile fire.

“I cannot comment on this because we have not received any reports from our units that this has happened nor that any were involved in such a tragedy,” Lt. Col. Dan Williams, a U.S. military spokesman wrote in an e-mail in response to a question about the incident from The Associated Press.

“We take all these requests seriously and we have forwarded this inquiry to the Joint Operations Center for further review and any other information that may be available,” Williams said.

APTN footage showed the truck of bodies and mourners with shovels digging graves over a wide, dusty area in Ramadi. A group of men crouched and wept around one coffin.

Al-Ani said people at the wedding were firing weapons in the air, and that American troops came to investigate and then left. However, he said, helicopters attacked the area at about 3 a.m.. Two houses were destroyed in the attack.

Ramadi is a stronghold of insurgents who are fighting the U.S.-led coalition.

In July 2002, Afghan officials said 48 civilians at a wedding party were killed and 117 wounded by a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan’s Uruzgan province. An investigative report released by the U.S. Central Command said the airstrike was justified because American planes had come under fire.


http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-2933269.php


Ellie

[thedrifter]

May 19, 2004

Cordesman: Iraq may be ‘no win situation’

By Rick Maze
Times staff writer


A leading defense analyst warned the Senate Foreign Relation Committee that the United States already has suffered defeat in Iraq, and the only question remaining is just how much damage will ensue.
Anthony Cordesman of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies was especially critical of President Bush’s advisors who had predicted regime change in Iraq would be a cakewalk. Instead, he said the current situation “is close to a no-win situation” for the United States.

“There was never a time when neoconservative fantasies about the Middle East were anything but dangerous illusions,” Cordesman said Wednesday. “Those fantasies have killed or wounded thousands of American and coalition allies, and now threaten the U.S. with a serious strategic defeat.

“It may not be possible to avoid some form of defeat, but the U.S. must make every effort to do so,” he said. “This means junking the neoconservatism within the Office of Secretary of Defense, the Vice President’s office and the [National Security Council] and coming firmly to grips with reality.”

In addition to his work for the CSIS think tank, Cordesman, a former aide to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is a professor of national security studies at Georgetown University in Washington and the author of several books about the military, including a six-volume analysis of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. He has held several government jobs over the years in the Pentagon and State Departments, and defense officials often have sought his advice in the past.

Cordesman said defeat in Iraq may not be apparent to people in the United States, but it is clear overseas.

The prolonged insurgencies in Fallujah and Najaf “are perceived in much of Iraq and the Arab world as a serious U.S. defeat,” he said. “This is not simply a matter of shattering an aura of U.S. military invincibility. It is a growing shift in political attitudes and prospects for political change in Iraq.”

Insurgents “do not have to win battles in a tactical sense,” he said. “They merely have to put up a determined ... resistance.”

A year into the “war after the war,” too many U.S. officials are “still in a state of denial as to the political realities in the Middle East,” Cordesman said. “They talk about success in aid programs measured in terms of contracts signed, fiscal obligations and gross measures of performance like megawatts, not about actual progress on the ground, the kind that can really win hearts and minds.”

America “lacks good options, although it probably never really had them,” he said.

Turning Iraq into a free-market democracy “was never practical” and creating an Iraqi political structure can be accomplished only if U.S. policy shifts from trying to maintain influence and leverage over Iraq to supporting the creation of a compromise government, he said.

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=0-292925-2933077.php


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Marines cool off on Sunday-Funday <br />
Submitted by: 1st Marine Division <br />
Story Identification #: 200452023826 <br />
Story by Sgt. Jose E. Guillen <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
CAMP FALLUJAH, Iraq(May 17, 2004) -- Marines and...

[thedrifter]

U.S. troops clash with Shiite militias south of Baghdad, explosions in the capital <br />
<br />
By: ROBERT H. REID - Associated Press Writer <br />
<br />
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- American soldiers clashed Wednesday with...

[thedrifter]

Devoted mom, sports bar patrons help supply Marines in Iraq
DallasNews.com/WFAA-TV



Some Marines in Iraq have new equipment, thanks to one determined mother and customers of a Mansfield sports bar.

When a unit of Marines in Fallujah needed more two-way radios, they didn't send a request up the supply chain - they sent an e-mail to mom.

"Hey Mom, I need a favor," read the e-mail from Lance Corporal Sam Richardson, 22, to his mother Kathy Parks. "The command I'm with in Iraq needs 250 of those Motorola Talkabout radios for the rest of the Marines in my company."

"Many times when they were under mortar fire they didn't have any way of knowing who was injured, who was hit, who needed help."

So where's a mother to turn when the marines need walkie-talkies? In this case, Radio Shack. The question for store manager Keith Boettger was where to find that many two-way radios.

"That was when we had to go to 3, 4, 5 different stores," Boettger said. "We cleaned out the warehouse."

Parks' luck got even better.

"They're normally $79.99, (but) we had them on sale for $49.99," Boettger said.

Parks said she couldn't afford to buy all the radios herself, so she put copies of her son's e-mail on tables in her restaurant, the Nut House Grill.

"From there, the response was just overwhelming," Parks said. "People started handing me money."

In only eight days, customers at the Nut House Grill contributed over $8,000, more than half of which came from just one man.

It was more than enough for the walkie talkies, so the Marines in Fallujah got an extra treat in the mail from Mansfield.

"I spent about $1,200 on baby wipes, granola bars, (and) bug spray," Parks said.

Parks said her son called Friday to say he got the radios, and to tell everyone "thank you."


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Bye-bye, Black Sheep: Marines on their way back to Iraq area

BY JAMES GILBERT
May 17, 2004

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After nearly a month of preparation, an unknown number of Marines from Harrier squadron VMA-214, were deployed on Sunday afternoon for an undisclosed location in the Middle East in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Many of those Marines, such as 1st Lt. Vivek Venkatesh, just got back from the area 10 months ago. Now they are packing up again.

"It's always harder on the families than it is on us because they are the ones back here worrying about us," said Venkatesh, whose daughter was born three weeks after he returned from his last deployment with the unit. "It's also fulfilling knowing that in some way we are making this world a better place."

Venkatesh, who didn't know or couldn't say where the Marines were heading, said he spent as much time as he could with his family in the days leading up to the deployment.

"I know that when I leave, I'm still holding her in my arms, and possibly when I come back, she may be running up to me at the plane," Venkatesh said about his daughter. "I wanted to spend as much time with them as possible, whether it's just coming home from work early or spending that extra hour playing with my daughter on a floor mat. I didn't want to let this get in the way."

VMA-214, otherwise known as the Black Sheep Squadron, deployed to Kuwait in February 2003 and returned home in July 2003. It is one of the four AV-8B Harrier II squadrons stationed at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma.

As usual, when Marines deploy there is a level of uncertainty as to when they will return. MCAS spokesman 2nd Lt. Kevin Schultz said he couldn't comment on how long the squadron will be gone, how many Marines are going or what their mission will be.

On March 19, 2003, the Black Sheep Squadron was the first Harrier squadron to employ ordnance in Operation Iraqi Freedom, base officials say.

In a moment shared by many of the families on Sunday, Sara Hoad fought back tears as she embraced her husband, Lance Cpl. Scott Hoad, in a long hug.

"It's been pretty rough on my wife. She's been crying a lot," said Hoad, who is being deployed for the first time. "It's kind of exciting at the same time."

With what is sure to be a long flight ahead of him, Scott Hoad admitted he will have a lot to think about.

"I'm wondering what it will be like on the ground over there," said Hoad, who is from Dallas. "What's tough is knowing my family is worried about me."

It was just another deployment for Lance Cpl. Jake Boback, who stood patiently in a base terminal with his weapon and gear, waiting to board the plane that would take him to the Middle East.

"It's no different. I'm going over to do a job," the Marine from Chicago said. "I've got aircraft to maintain."

In true Marine fashion, Venkatesh actually provided another reason for the squadron being deployed a second time in such a short span.

"I just figured it's because we are the best at what we do," he proudly proclaimed.

He added that this deployment is going to be much different. Last time they were trying to free Iraq, this time they are trying to rebuild it.

---
James Gilbert can be reached at jgilbert@yumasun.com or 539-6854.

http://yumasun.com/artman/uploads/2002art/0517-marines.jpg

Laura Hosford leans her head on the shoulder of her husband, Cpl. Jared Hosford, Sunday afternoon as he gets ready to head overseas. Sun photo by Charles Whitehouse.

http://yumasun.com/artman/publish/articles/story_11160.shtml


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Arabic language class may save lives
Submitted by: MCB Camp Lejeune
Story Identification #: 20045191415
Story by Pfc. Matthew K. Hacker



MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C.(May 12, 2004) -- Marines of II Marine Expeditionary Force are learning the Arabic language in a 20-day course at the Work Force Learning Center here, May 10.

The course teaches basic history and culture lessons so the students may better understand whom they may talk to in the future.

“They learn basic conversational Arabic augmented with military terms and language,” said Ed Paradysz, retired Marine Corps master sergeant, now instructor for the Defense Language Institute.

The students are not required, but instructors prefer, they take the Defense Language Aptitude Battery and score around 100 out of a maximum score of 160. The test is like the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery all service members take before they enter their branch of service, only it is strictly language-based.

“The DLAB gives us an idea of how well the student will be able to absorb the knowledge that is presented in class,” said Paradysz.
“From day one, it is a nonstop intense course.”

The course is a total of 160 hours consisting of 20 eight-hour days. The goal of this class is to get the students to a zero plus level of listening and speaking comprehension, which is survival level. The students are exposed to approximately 1,200 vocabulary items leaving the course with a working vocabulary of about 500-700 words, according to the course syllabus. They will learn basic grammar covering nouns, verbs, pronouns, sentence subject and object, prepositions, syntax and sentence structure.

The students will be able to count from zero to 10,000 and recognize written numbers. They will be able to tell time in Arabic and be familiar with basic fractions.

Planning for the Arabic Immersion Language Course started in the fall of 2001.

“The course was up and running in three months, partially because of the events of Sept. 11,” Paradysz said.

Three classes ran in 2002 and 2003. There are nine classes scheduled for this year. Paradysz has trained 119 Marines and only four of them would have failed the class if students could fail.

“The students are not failed or recycled, if they start they finish,” Paradysz stated.

“The instructor breaks down the material, which is helpful and a good method of teaching,” said LCpl. Sharon Arviv, radio operator, Headquarters Co., 8th Communication Battalion.

Marines who take this Arabic language course and get deployed to the Middle East will have the advantage of knowing more about the culture, history and will be able to interact with the indigenous people.

“Anyone who goes over to the Middle East needs to learn the basics of the Arabic language,” said Staff Sgt. Randall S. Schwandt, explosive ordnance disposal technician, Marine Wing Support Squadron 271, 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point.

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf/main5/08C2D8EB4C642B9D85256E990062FA09?opendocument


Ellie

[thedrifter]

May 20, 2004 <br />
<br />
Lawmaker: Generals belong with their troops — not in Washington <br />
<br />
By Rick Maze <br />
Times staff writer <br />
<br />
<br />
It is much more important for Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez to return to his...

[thedrifter]

May 19, 2004

Family of fallen soldier wants Marine brother reassigned

Associated Press


The family of a New Jersey soldier recently killed in action in Iraq wants military officials to reassign his Marine brother, who is also serving there, to noncombat duty.
Army Spc. Philip I. Spakosky, 25, of Browns Mills, N.J., died May 14, the day after being shot by a sniper in Karbala, the site of an uprising by a Shiite militia. He was a tank crewman in the 1st Armored Division.

His younger brother, Lance Cpl. Jeff Spakosky, has been with a Marine unit in the Fallujah area for several months, his mother, Lisa Good, said in a statement released to the media. The statement did not identify the Marine’s unit.

“Jeff has to be allowed to continue to serve in the Marine Corps, but not in Iraq and out of harm’s way,” the statement said. “The politicians have to resolve this conflict and bring everyone home alive. No more caskets for any family to bear.”

Good sought assistance from Rep. Jim Saxton, R-N.J., whose office has been helping her contact military officials. Pentagon rules permit transfers in such cases, but it was not known when a decision would be made.

“It is a request, not a guarantee. [Jeff] also has a say in where he goes,” said Jeff Sagnip Hollendonner, a Saxton spokesman.

Eugene Good, the brothers’ grandfather and an Army veteran, pleaded with officials to quickly move Jeff from Iraq.

“We don’t want him to go back to that hellhole,” Good said. “Their mother is all by herself out here.”

Jeff Spakosky was to accompany his brother’s body back to Germany, where the division is headquartered and where a memorial service was scheduled for this weekend, the family said.

Philip Spakosky was scheduled to return from Iraq this month, but family members said his tour of duty had been extended for at least three months because of the ongoing violence.

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-2933504.php


Ellie

[thedrifter]

GIs, Iraq Police Raid Home of Former Ally <br />
<br />
By SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI, Associated Press Writer <br />
<br />
BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. soldiers and Iraqi police raided the home of America's one-time ally Ahmad...

[thedrifter]

Issue Date: May 24, 2004

The art of war
Mural depicts Marines from Iraq Operation


Leathernecks from the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms, Calif., have a memorial wall to their role in Operation Iraqi Freedom — a 122-foot-wide mural depicting base units in combat.
The mural, one of about two dozen in the town, was painted on the back of a Radio Shack building by Murrieta, Calif., artist Don Gray, whose inspiration came from photographs taken by photojournalists on the scene.

“These [images] closely follow a lot of the combat photos, because the point of the mural was to not be making stuff up,” Gray said.

Gray said he is working with the committee that contracted him to do the mural to design a plaque noting the work’s original photographic sources, among which is a Marine Corps Times picture taken by staff photographer Jud McCrehin.

The mural, following the shape of the building, stands about 11 feet high in all but one section — where it is twice that — and is about 122 feet wide.

Gray said he began by making a 6-foot-wide drawing of the work. Projecting this image on the wall using transparencies, he was able to transfer it to scale. In two weeks, the project was complete.

Gray, 56, has been a professional painter for about 30 years. The Twentynine Palms mural was his second in the town and the second with a military theme. In the mid-1990s, around the time the community began contracting for murals, he painted Dr. Luckie and the World War I Veterans. Luckie was a physician who treated veterans who suffered from poison-gas injuries.

Gray does not know how long the mural will last. “That’s up to nature,” he said.

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=0-MARINEPAPER-2915796.php


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Marines, sailors pay visit to impoverished village to raise quality of life
Submitted by: 1st Force Service Support Group
Story Identification #: 2004519154358
Story by Lance Cpl. Samuel Bard Valliere



CAMP TAQADDUM, Iraq(May 19, 2004) -- Marines with 3rd Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment visited a local village May 15, 2004, in an effort to develop a positive relationship with the neighboring community and attempt to help its citizens obtain the tools they need to escape poverty.

Reserve infantrymen and Navy medical personnel from the battalion, as well as other 1st Force Service Support Group units, assessed the people's medical needs, delivered 2,000 gallons of fresh water and spoke with the community's leaders about their concerns.

The medical crew gave checkups to as many villagers as they could. For some locals, this was their first visit with a doctor in more than two years.

Problems encountered during the exams ranged from high blood pressure to poor vision. The doctors and corpsmen focused on assessing the villagers' medical needs, rather than treating them.

The purpose of conducting these types of checkups was not to administer humanitarian assistance to the Iraqis, said Lt. j.g. Noelle Griffith, a 31-year-old nurse with the Surgical/Shock Trauma Platoon here and a resident of San Diego. Rather, it gave the doctors an idea of what medical supplies the village needed, so they could try to pass the information on to organizations with the resources to help.

Meanwhile, outside, other Marines and corpsmen passed out candy and soccer balls and played with the children.

Among other things, the village's leadership expressed interest in building a school closer to them, since the nearest one is two kilometers away. According to Lt. Col. Milton L. Wick, 42, the battalion's commander, such a project would exceed 3/24's humanitarian assistance budget. Wick didn't deny the request, however. He offered to bring the sheik's concerns up the chain of command, which might be able to find funds to carry out such a plan.

The meeting came to an abrupt end when a firefight broke out within earshot of the village. The skirmish was originally thought to be an engagement between other Marines in the area and insurgents, but it was later found out to be Iraqi on Iraqi.

Capt. Adam T. Strickland, 32, a platoon commander with the battalion, said it was important for the Marines to leave the village when the fighting started.

"On this type of mission, [enemy] contact trumps the mission," said Strickland, a Richmond, Va., resident. "We don't want to bring fire into the village that we're working with because we're going to have innocents hurt, which kind of negates what we're trying to do out there in the first place."

While determining if American service members were involved in the battle, the Marines happened upon an old anti-aircraft gun not found during any of the previous trips into the area. It looked to be in the process of being fixed, said Strickland. The Marines confiscated the weapon on their way out of the village and added it to the number of weapons they had already captured.

Two days prior, 3/24 Marines on a routine patrol outside the village stumbled upon what is believed to be one of the largest weapons caches unearthed in the Al Anbar Province this year.

Hoping to improve the people's quality of life by ridding the area of numerous types of weapons systems and removing dangerous explosives, the battalion also hunts for and disposes of any ammunition found in the area.

The unit has visited several villages in the area to deliver school supplies, clothes and water.

Two companies from the battalion, based in Bridgeton and Springfield, Mo., also provide security for the camp. The other three companies are spread throughout the I Marine Expeditionary Force's area of operations.

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/image1.nsf/Lookup/2004516142811/$file/WickTranslatorNaeem040515_low.jpg

Speaking through an Iraqi interpreter, Lt. Col. Milton L. Wick, left, commander of 3rd Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment, talks with the sheikh of a village near Camp Taqaddum, Iraq, on May 15, 2004. Marines and Navy medical personnel from the battalion, as well as other 1st Force Service Support Group units, visited the village in order to deliver fresh water, assess the people's medical needs and speak with the community's leadership about their concerns. A firefight a few kilometers away forced the Marines to cut their visit short to prevent any harm coming to the village. Two days prior, Marines on a routine patrol outside the village stumbled upon what they believe to be the largest weapons cache unearthed in the Al Anbar Province this year. The reserve infantry battalion, based in Bridgeton, Mo., provides security to the camp. Wick is a 42-year-old resident of Gladstone, Mo. Photo by: Staff Sgt. Bill Lisbon

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf/main5/17DD2B5F1BE2E0E885256E99006C655E?opendocument


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Falluja Leaders Say City Is Now Safest in Iraq
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5/20/2004

FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) - A month after hundreds were killed in fierce clashes between U.S. Marines and guerrillas, Falluja's leaders said Thursday the city is the safest in Iraq and invited U.S. contractors back to rebuild it.

"Finally we have peace in Falluja. This city is today the safest and the calmest in Iraq," Mayor Mahmoud Ibraheem Al-Juraisi told reporters, under the watchful eyes of heavily armed U.S. Marines in Humvees mounted with machine guns.

At a news conference at which confiscated rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and AK-47s were displayed, the Iraqi general entrusted by U.S. forces to control Falluja said the time for fighting was over and Americans and Iraqis should work together.

"Everybody wants peace back," said Gen. Mohammed Latif, commander of the Falluja Brigade that includes soldiers from Saddam Hussein's old army.

"The most important thing is that Iraqis and Americans are working together and this is going to be an example for all Iraq," said Latif. "When reconstruction begins, American engineers are welcomed to come."

U.S. forces backed by warplanes and tanks launched a crackdown on the Sunni stronghold of 300,000 after a crowd killed and mutilated four American private contractors on March 31 and dragged their bodies through the streets.

Under a cease-fire agreement, Marines lifted their siege and pulled back to the outskirts, tasking the Falluja Brigade with restoring security.

The deal put an end to clashes, but U.S. commanders have expressed growing impatience at the brigade's slow pace in stripping guerrillas of heavy weapons and arresting the killers of the contractors.

In an apparent attempt to placate American impatience, Latif said guerrillas had "voluntarily" handed over the rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and AK-47s to his 1,800-strong brigade.

"The safer people feel, the more weapons are going to be turned over," he said.

Latif heaped praise on U.S. forces for "ridding Iraq of the worst dictator on earth" but said there were no foreign fighters left in Falluja, as the Americans say.

The killers of the contractors are still at large, but Al-Juraisi held in front of reporters what he said was a copy of a religious fatwa, or edict, issued by Falluja religious leaders condemning the killings.

Maj. Gen. James Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division, said the Falluja Brigade had still to prove itself.

U.S. Marines are massed outside Falluja and have not ruled out renewing their crackdown if the brigade fails to restore order and hunt weapons. Three Marines have been killed in action this week in the volatile province that includes Falluja.

"The Falluja Brigade has to demonstrate it has control," Mattis told reporters. "This is just the beginning of things. Not the end of things."

Asked if he would send U.S. military contractors into Falluja to help with reconstruction after the city was battered by U.S. airstrikes, Mattis said: "I have no need to send American contractors if you