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thedrifter
06-26-04, 05:01 AM
Reserve Marines stand vigil between Iraqi towns, Hussein's legacy
Submitted by: I Marine Expeditionary Force
Story Identification #: 2004625115218
Story by Sgt. Colin Wyers



ABU GHRAIB PRISON, Iraq -- "Come get your ice!" the sergeant of the guard yells.

Out of a stout, squared-off hole in the base of the wall emerges a Marine decked out in full body armor. He grabs two bags of ice from the cooler and heads back into the hole and up a thin, winding staircase through the darkness.

At the top, a plywood board gives way to the light.

The guard post, one of several dotting the walls of Abu Ghraib Prison, is reinforced with sandbags and covered in camouflaged netting for shade. General orders of a sentry and radio call signs are scribbled on cardboard with a black felt-tipped marker and hung on the walls. In the corner sits a short, stout cooler, where old water is dumped out over the side and the fresh bags of ice are dumped in.

The Marines of Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment have manned those towers, providing security for the prison nestled between two highways going from Baghdad to Fallujah since March.

"In the first couple of weeks, (anti-Iraqi forces) tried to push the envelope with us," said Maj. Luke Kratsky, the company's commanding officer. "They've realized that once we set the standard, we keep it. We've got nothing but good comments from the Army, all the way up to the general officer level, on the improvements here."

Lance Cpl. David West, a native of Scottsburg, Ind., mans the guard post overlooking the nearby village that has been nicknamed "Little Mogadishu," for its resemblance to the Somalian city where an Army UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter was shot down in 1993.

Unlike its namesake, Little Mog has caused few problems for the Marines on post.

"It's pretty quiet," he said.

Like his fellow Marines at the front gate, West is often visited by children from the village.

"We always throw them candy, hygiene gear, water -stuff we get shipped from home," he said. "Some guys are giving them shoes and skivvie shirts."

West said the children sometimes ask the Marines about the abuse committed by military policemen before the Marines' arrival.

"The kids that come up here ask what's going on. They've obviously seen the pictures. But they tell us 'America good, Saddam bad.'"

When the prison was still under the management of the former regime, many residents of the nearby village were held there.

"Some of their parents have been killed in this prison," said West. "A kid named 'Ice' says his dad was hung in here, by Saddam."

One of the buildings at Abu Ghraib was a place where many Iraqis, including possibly Ice's father, were executed. The gate to the courtyard surrounding it was locked up after coalition forces arrived.

Inside the heavy metal door, into the empty main room and down the hall to the left sits a single hallway of cells, with doors barely wide enough for a man to squeeze through. The top halves of the walls are haphazardly painted black, and long streaks dried of paint rund down over the aged white below like water running down a windshield.

At the other end of the building is a single room, with a ramp leading up to platform on the far wall. Two rusted steel trap doors are set into the floor, beneath two rebar loops set into the ceiling. Between them sits a box with two flat, thin white levers.

"They would throw a rope through there," said Staff Sgt. Tommy Weatherholtz, the platoon sergeant for Weapons Platoon, pointing to the ceiling, "make a noose, tie it right here - and whoosh, drop the floor."

Beneath the platform on the floor below, a single brown sandal sits, collecting dust.

Weatherholtz only knows that thousands of people were executed there. He doesn't know how many of them are buried nearby.

"Have you seen any grass growing around this place?" Weatherholtz asks. "A little bit, maybe?"

He leaves the building and steps out into the front courtyard, where occasional strands of green reach up to scrape ankles, and walks around to the back of the building.

Nearby, a bloodied piece of gauze is tied around a pipe protruding from the building's walls. The grass here is thick, taller than the children who gather around the guard post.

Outside the walls surrounding the execution chamber, Marines on the towers continue their vigil over the prison. Their future is uncertain. After June 30, when the coalition transfers sovereignty to the new Iraqi government, detainees will be turned over to Iraqi forces. Until then, their place is in the towers, and on the gates.

"(A representative of the Army Liason Team) said, 'Knowing that Marines have all the perimeter security lets us sleep better at night," said 1st Sgt. Brendan Fitzgerald, the company first sergeant.

Editor's note: This is the final story in a series about Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment at Abu Ghraib Prison.


http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/image1.nsf/Lookup/200462512313/$file/tower01lr.jpg

Lance Cpl. Michael Weiderman, an infantryman with Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment, from St. Louis, provides security at a look-out tower at Abu Ghraib Prison May 22, 2004. K Co. is the force protection for the base. Photo by: Cpl. Matthew J. Apprendi

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/image1.nsf/Lookup/2004625125356/$file/tower05lr.jpg

A Marine with Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment leaps out of a humvee May 22, 2004 after returning from force protection duty at Abu Ghraib Prison, Iraq. K Co, is responsible for the security of the base. Photo by: Cpl. Matthew J. Apprendi

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf/main5/A7D169EC68730FB885256EBE00572FE8?opendocument


Ellie

thedrifter
06-26-04, 05:02 AM
1st Marine Division helps Iraqi military make final steps toward sovereignty
Submitted by: 1st Marine Division
Story Identification #: 200462631642
Story by Cpl. Paula M. Fitzgerald



CAMP BLUE DIAMOND, Iraq(June 24, 2004) -- Officers from the Iraqi National Guard recently wrapped up a weeklong Civil Affairs training course taught by Marines supporting the 1st Marine Division Governate Support Team.

The ING, formerly known as the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, is responsible for securing peace, protecting important government property and helping civilians during humanitarian disasters.

With the June 30 transfer of authority date approaching, the Marines are making sure the ING is prepared to assume responsibility for Iraq's security.

The training course was developed by I Marine Expeditionary Force to stress to the ING the importance of sharing information about military operations to the citizens of Iraq.

"Our role during a crisis is to help civilians," explained Iraqi Maj. Ahmed Saad, executive officer for the ING's Headquarters Battalion. "Part of that is gathering together and sharing information with the public about what is going on."

During the course, the Marines passed on their knowledge of civil affairs, public affairs and information operations.

"The goal we had going into this was to have the ING officers connect with their American civil affairs counterparts so they could work side-by-side," said Lt. Col. Alan G. Burghard, GST Commander.

The Iraqi officers come from various military backgrounds including artillery and infantry, so this training was a first for all of them.

"During the old regime, the only officers who were trained in civil affairs were the generals," explained Iraqi Lt. Col. Raheem Hamoud Modehi, Headquarters Battalion Commander.

Modehi said he hoped to take what he's learned back to his unit to train his subordinate soldiers.

The Marines taught the Iraqis how to interact with civilian media, conduct civil-military operations and work with international organizations to provide humanitarian assistance. They also learned how to conduct "displaced citizens" operations.

According to Burghard, displaced citizens are those groups of people, who for economic, social or natural reasons, are forced to move from one location to another.

"The course addressed public health concerns during crises," Burghard added. "We also discussed the commanders' legal obligations to the civilian population during these crises."

Throughout the lectures, the Marines shared real-world examples of how and when to utilize information, but not all the examples were positive.

"We had very honest discussions," Burghard explained. "We talked about mistakes the American military has made in Iraq and how that affected how the world perceived us. One topic that came up was the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Gharib."

Saad said many Iraqis view the Coalition as "the enemy" because of the problems at Abu Gharib. After hearing the Marines discuss the scandal, he understood the importance of disseminating truthful information to the public.

"If we are able to let the people know what the military is doing," Saad said, "we can work together with them to coordinate efforts to help each other."

Although Saad and the other officers are interested in helping the people of Iraq, they put their lives in danger every time they work with Coalition Forces.

"Some Iraqis think that by working with the Marines we are traitors," Saad said. "The normal person does not understand how important it is for us to get this kind of training because they don't think it will benefit them.

"If I'm in danger for working with the Coalition, than so be it. I'm working for the people of Iraq," he added. "If I die, then I know I did it for an honorable purpose."

He said he's grateful for the Coalition-sponsored training.

"Everyone wants to see the Coalition leave the country eventually, so we have to get the Iraqi military ready to take over security," Saad added.


http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/image1.nsf/Lookup/200462631853/$file/CA1lr.jpg

Lt. Col. Alan G. Burghard, commander of the Governate Support Team, congratulates Iraqi Lt. Col. Raheem Hamoud Modehi after completing a weeklong Civil Affairs training course at Camp Blue Diamond, Iraq.
(USMC photo by Cpl. Paula M. Fitzgerald) Photo by: Cpl. Paula M. Fitzgerald

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf/main5/B070C63C5582652A85256EBF0027FB6F?opendocument


Ellie

thedrifter
06-26-04, 05:03 AM
Marines taking steps to counter combat stress in Iraq <br />
Submitted by: 1st Marine Division <br />
Story Identification #: 20046263550 <br />
Story by Cpl. Macario P. Mora Jr. <br />
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CAMP AL ASAD, Iraq(June 24,...

thedrifter
06-26-04, 05:04 AM
Posted on Fri, Jun. 25, 2004 <br />
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Marine reservist honored for leading efforts in Iraq <br />
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By ROBIN FITZGERALD

thedrifter
06-26-04, 05:05 AM
The Making of Modern Iraq
by Martin Walker

In the early spring of 2003, a quarter of the British army was based in Kuwait, advancing north into familiar territory. In 1916, these soldiers’ great-grandfathers had first advanced up the river Tigris, to defeat and humiliation at Turkish hands. The following year the British returned, advancing to Baghdad and beyond. With General Edmund Allenby’s forces thrusting north through Palestine, aided by an Arab uprising, the British toppled the Ottoman Empire. They stayed on for another 40 years, briefly interrupted by a pro-Nazi seizure of power in Baghdad in 1941. It was a period marked by considerable social and economic progress in Iraq—and by a tangled, painful, and often bloody series of political events that demand the attention of anybody contemplating the Iraqi future.


Modern Iraq was an invention of British military and administrative convenience in the wake of World War I. The British had held no coherent view of their war aims against the Ottoman Empire, simply wanting to defeat it. During the most desperate days of the struggle, the government’s Arab bureau in Cairo issued letters and proclamations promising independence under British protection to Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia (as Iraq was then called) if they would help defeat the Ottomans. British officials in India, who traditionally ran foreign policy east of Suez, were appalled, dreading the impact of such involvement in Islamic affairs.


When the war ended, the British found themselves faced with a number of facts on the ground. First, the Ottoman Empire had collapsed, and outside Turkey, the British army was in occupation. But so were the Arab allies who had fought alongside the legendary British officer T. E. Lawrence, already known to an admiring world as Lawrence of Arabia, and Lawrence encouraged them in the vision of an independent pan-Arab state, stretching from the Persian frontier to the Suez Canal. Second, the French wanted a share of the Ottoman spoils, Lebanon and Syria at a minimum, though President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points and his enormously popular principle of self-determination made the establishment of an outpost of empire highly problematic. Finally, the war had also demonstrated the importance of the internal-combustion engine, and thus the high strategic value of the oil supplies needed to fuel it.


The British had to contend with an Arab civil war between the Hashemite dynasty, the original custodians of the holy shrines of Mecca and Medina, and the house of ibn Saud, adherents of the puritanical Wahhabi sect of Islam. They bumbled their way to a solution of this crisis after the House of ibn Saud took over Arabia by force (in the process deliberately destroying as idolatrous many of Mecca’s shrines and graves of the Prophet’s family) and established Saudi Arabia. London compensated the Hashemites by giving Prince Abdullah the country now known as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and giving Syria to his brother, Prince Faisal, who had helped wrest it from the Turks during the Great War.


Then, in the summer of 1920, the tribes of Iraq rose in revolt against the British, who had not kept their wartime pledge to grant Iraq independence. “There has been a deplorable contrast between our profession and our practice,” the now-retired Lawrence wrote in a We said we went to Mesopotamia to defeat Turkey. We said we stayed to deliver the Arabs from the oppression of the Turkish Government, and to make available for the world its resources of corn and oil. We spent nearly a million men and nearly a thousand million of money to these ends. . . . Our government is worse than the old Turkish system. They kept fourteen thousand local conscripts embodied, and killed a yearly average of two hundred Arabs in maintaining peace. We keep ninety thousand men, with aeroplanes, armoured cars, gunboats, and armoured trains. We have killed about ten thousand Arabs in this rising this summer.”



The uprising, brutally contained by British troops and bombers, erased any remaining doubts in London: The cost of direct rule was too high. A superficially neat solution was found. Prince Faisal, since evicted from Syria by the French, was available to become the monarch of a pro-British Iraq, which would be governed by Britain at arm’s length under one of the new League of Nations mandates. In order to drape some sort of democratic form over Faisal’s rule, Sir Percy Cox, the new British high commissioner in Baghdad, had Faisal’s main rival deported—he was arrested while at a tea with Sir Percy and his wife—and arranged for a plebiscite of the adult male population. (Cox and his political adviser, Gertrude Bell, the indomitable explorer, archaeologist, and intelligence agent, also had instructions from London to require the king to acknowledge publicly the superior authority of the high commissioner; they ignored them.) Thus democratically endorsed (he won 96 percent of the vote), King Faisal took his throne, and one of Iraq’s happier periods began.


The country over which Faisal reigned was essentially a patchwork. Under the Ottomans, there had been for centuries three vilayets, or regions, in what was then called Mesopotamia. Each region was under the separate control of a governor and had little in common with the other two. The coastal province of al-Basrah included the port of Kuwait and the “marsh Arabs,” or Ma’dan, who dwelled in the wetlands of the great delta formed by the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. It was centered on the cosmopolitan culture of the trading city of Basra itself, with strong ties to lands throughout the Persian Gulf; most of this population were Shia Muslim Arabs. The central vilayet of Baghdad, proud but much-diminished heir to the Islamic caliphate that had crumbled centuries earlier, was home mainly to Sunni Muslims, and retained the strongest ties to the Ottoman capital of Constantinople (now Istanbul). It was also one of the main Jewish centers of the Middle East. The third vilayet, centered on Mosul in the north, was mountainous, remote, and predominantly Kurdish, with Assyrian and Turkoman pockets. It was only nominally subordinate to Ottoman rule and taxes.


Yet for all the many forms of identity available within Iraq, Faisal was still an outsider. To boost the Iraqi credentials he could not claim by birth, he brought in his train a number of the Iraqis who had fought with him against the Turks. Thanks to his role in the defeat of the Turks, and later his prominence at the Versailles Peace Conference, however, Faisal had unrivaled credentials as the symbol of a post-Ottoman, pan-Arab future. Arab intellectuals flocked to join him in Baghdad, including the Syrian-born Sati al-Hursi, who, from his post as education minister, propounded a sophisticated pan-Arab ideology that was to be enormously influential throughout the Arab world.


Under the treaty Cox negotiated with Faisal in 1922, Iraq was to be a constitutional monarchy with an elected parliament, loosely based on the British model. But British advisers were installed in the key ministries, and important posts in the police and army were staffed by British and Indian army officers on contract. Britain ran foreign and security policy. To the irritation of Iraqis, much of the old Ottoman bureaucracy was maintained, and many lower-level jobs were filled by Indians, although the British were careful to ensure that most were Muslims from Bengal.


The British mandate produced for Iraq many irrigation projects and public-health services—these, rather than education, were Gertrude Bell’s priorities—and consequently a population boom that nearly doubled the nation’s headcount between 1920 and 1932. Bell’s own archaeological studies into ancient Babylon and the medieval caliphate had convinced her that the region had once supported a far larger population with irrigation and flood control works that tamed the great rivers and put their waters to productive use. So the British built dams and restored canals that were by 1950 to triple the acreage of arable land. They also constructed railway lines, roads, and a telephone system. They inaugurated a reliable postal service (including air mail), a census, ports and customs, and a taxation system, along with commercial banks and public finances, using bonds to finance public works. They established a professional Iraqi police force and army, and training colleges for officers, engineers, and schoolteachers.


Baghdad boasted cinemas, a French café, and a racecourse. By 1925, Bell herself had founded the national museum, many of whose treasures were her own finds from the Babylonian era. Iraq between the wars was a relaxed society, in which the strict Islamic code of sharia was seldom observed. Bell records hosting a dinner party in November 1925 at which Faisal was the guest of honor: “The King was as gay as could be and the final touch at dinner was some prunes over-soaked in gin. After two of these H.M. became uproarious and insisted that we should all eat two likewise.”



But the signal achievements of the British era came with costs attached. Replacing the semidesert that was home to nomadic tribes with irrigated, arable land that needed a settled population to farm it required land reform and a social revolution that threatened the traditional power of tribal chiefs. To retain their loyalty, the sheikhs were invested with greater local administrative powers. A parallel social transformation was underway in the fast-growing cities. New rail and shipping systems and oil projects stimulated the emergence of engineering shops and a small but thriving industrial sector in Basra and Baghdad, along with an industrial work force, labor unions, and, to British dismay, an energetic local Communist party.


continued........

thedrifter
06-26-04, 05:06 AM
Under pressure from Arab nationalists and others, Britain several times modified the original treaty of 1922 in Iraq’s favor. Finally, in 1932, with the Great Depression underway and a new Labor government installed in London, the British gave up the League of Nations mandate. Iraq was welcomed into the ranks of the world’s sovereign states as a constitutional monarchy with an elected parliament, a recognized legal system, and its own armed forces (with strategically placed British officers). Still, a treaty gave Britain two large air bases in Iraq and the right to move troops across Iraqi territory; it also required “full and frank consultations between the two countries in all matters of foreign policy.” Another agreement gave Western oil companies access to Iraq’s oil fields, on very favorable terms.


The democratic credentials of the Iraqi parliament were limited. Its structure was approved in 1924 by a constituent assembly of 99 members, of whom 34 were tribal sheikhs. Following their traditional “divide and rule” practice, the British designed the system to balance the centralizing powers of the crown with the regional influence of tribal leaders, whether in Kurdish, Sunni, or Shia districts. King Faisal’s power base was essentially urban, composed largely of the ex-Ottoman army officers who had rallied to him, the pan-Arab intellectuals who had accompanied him from Syria, the remains of the old Ottoman bureaucracy, and the traditional Sunni elites of Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul. The British were able to deliver to Faisal a substantial rural vote by persuading the tribal sheikhs that their interests would be protected. Among other things, the sheikhs were favored with the pivotal right to collect taxes.


The constituent assembly gave the king significant powers. He could dismiss parliament, call for new elections, and appoint the prime minister—powers that others would use in future years to negate the results of elections. Moreover, the constituent assembly enacted only a limited franchise. Not until 1953 was every male adult given the right to vote; women gained the franchise in 1980.

King Faisal himself was no great admirer of democracy, or of his subjects. According to his friend Lawrence, in a 1917 report to the British high command titled “Faisal’s Table Talk,” Faisal claimed that the Iraqis were “unimaginable masses of human beings, devoid of any national consciousness or sense of unity, imbued with religious traditions and absurdities, receptive to evil, prone to anarchy, and always willing to rise against the government.”



The prevention of such risings was the main objective of the crown as it tried to deal with the deep divisions between Iraq’s Sunni and Shia Islamic communities and between its Kurds and Arabs. These divisions were further complicated by the presence of other minorities, including the Turkomans, who still looked to Istanbul, and the largely Christian Assyrians, who had been armed by the British as the most reliable local troops.


Although there were many Sunni tribes and nomads, in general the Sunni had accepted Ottoman rule, gravitated to the cities, and thus dominated Baghdad and the traditional Ottoman bureaucracy and officer corps. As a fellow Sunni, King Faisal leaned ever more heavily on their support. And although there were many wealthy Shia merchants, the Shia tended to be rural, poorer and less educated, and more resentful of rule from Baghdad. Faisal’s task was further complicated by the tussles for influence and government largesse between the sheikhs and landowners, between the army and the urban magnates (whose money subsidized a profusion of newspapers), and between the labor unions and the British-run oil corporation.


As the parliamentary system got under way and parties began to form, Faisal and his successors ran into a classic paradox: What promised to be the largest and most resilient party, the National Democratic Union, which should have been a force for stability, was critical of the monarchy both as an institution and for its dependence on the British. The majorities the crown could engineer in parliament seldom included parties with a popular base of support. But under the constitution, political parties could be banned at will, a power used ruthlessly in times of crisis to prevent parliament from falling into opposition hands. If parliament threatened to become difficult, the prime minister could be replaced, allowing new coalitions to form, or the whole parliament could be dismissed and new elections called.


The result was an inherent political instability. In the seven years after 1932, Iraq went through 12 different cabinets, and frustration with parliament’s weaknesses helped provoke a military coup in 1936. Yet the system also contributed to an extraordinary political fertility, as new parties, associations, and other political groupings emerged and faded, to be reborn under different names and with slightly different programs. Ironically, this attempt to control politics by banning parties made Iraq in general and Baghdad in particular the most energetic center of civil society and political-intellectual life in the Arab world. Parties could be banned, but not the political ferment. This meant that the real political energy of Iraqis was expressed increasingly in extra-parliamentary activities—through the army, student groups, labor unions, and the press, or in the streets.


King Faisal, while remaining committed to the dream of a pan-Arab state, wanted to keep Iraq on the course of progress and modernization begun by the British. Very often, however, his efforts backfired. In 1931, he repealed Ottoman-era laws that suppressed the Kurds, and made Kurdish an official language in schools and law courts in the Kurdish regions. These concessions were meant to compensate the Kurds for the imposition of new taxes and the rule of law from Baghdad. The Kurds revolted anyway, and were put down only with the help of British troops and Royal Air Force bombers.


In 1932, Faisal’s government enacted a land settlement law, which sought to safeguard the role of nomadic tribes, such as the Beni Lam, the edh-Dafir, and the Shammar, as irrigation and farms ate into their land. The law allowed all settled tribesmen who had been cultivating a piece of land without legal title for at least 15 years to claim ownership, under the condition that the land could never be sold outside the tribe. The goal was to safeguard tribal land, but the real beneficiaries were the tribal chiefs and wealthy city-dwellers (who could almost all claim some tribal connection), who used their political influence and wealth to obtain deeds. Many tribal people became landless peasants, while others remained on the land as sharecroppers for the new landowners, who were, like the Iraqi government ministers and officials, overwhelmingly Sunni. To the Shia of the south and the Kurds of the north, the nominally national Iraqi government in Baghdad looked increasingly like Sunni domination.


These resentments were growing fast when Faisal died in 1933, to be succeeded by his son, Ghazi, just 21. The new king was openly anti-British and a fervent believer in the pan-Arab cause, but he had little of his father’s authority over the tribal chiefs and couldn’t restrain their abuse of the land reform. Ghazi had to call upon the army to put down an uprising among dispossessed tribesmen in 1935, and he also used troops against the marsh Arabs in the south and Assyrian refugees from Syria in the north. The Iraqi army thus became less the symbol of national independence the British had hoped for and increasingly a tool of Baghdad’s repression of the regions.

One of the few things the government could do to gain wider popular support, particularly from the growing numbers of educated Iraqis, was to demand the pan-Arab state the British had promised in 1916. But because that promise had included a pledge to let France have Syria and Lebanon, a pan-Arab state was the one project the British could not accept. Britain seemed likely to keep another wartime commitment, the Balfour Declaration of 1917, and for that it paid dearly when the prospect of creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine stirred an Arab revolt in 1936 and gave yet another focus to the pan-Arab cause. The large Jewish population of Baghdad, which had been an important part of King Faisal’s support, began to feel a backlash. (Following the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, 120,000 Iraqi Jews would abandon Iraq, virtually en masse.)


By the mid-1930s, the British design of an Iraqi nation was faltering, as the Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish regions refused to coalesce. The political dream of pan-Arabism was spreading fast, and Iraq’s weak government was being further enfeebled by the Great Depression. In October 1936, Iraq experienced the first military coup in the Arab world, launched by General Banr Sidqi, a Kurd and an Iraqi nationalist. The following year, Sidqi was murdered by a group of pan-Arab and Sunni army officers. The army was now a central actor in a tangled political process that set Left against Right, the cities against the tribes, pan-Arabists against nationalists, Sunni against Shia and Kurd.

continued...

thedrifter
06-26-04, 05:07 AM
The monarch remained, however, and when King Ghazi died in an automobile crash in 1939, the British engineered a regency in the name of his infant son that left power in the hands of the regent and the pro-British prime minister, Nuri Said. Within a year, however, the Anglophobe Rashid Ali had seized power.


Nazi Germany’s military triumphs in Europe in 1940 had dramatic effects in the Middle East. The pan-Arab dream of full independence without British and French tutelage looked tantalizingly close. Along with four Iraqi generals, Rashid Ali launched a coup against the monarchy in 1941, forcing the regent and Nuri Said to flee to Jordan. Hitler’s Luftwaffe sent German warplanes to support Ali, openly sympathetic to the Axis, and hundreds were killed in anti-Jewish pogroms. But the British held out at their Habaniyah air base, and reinforcements from India retook Basra and Baghdad and went on to take Syria and Lebanon from Vichy France in the name of Free France. World War I had established British authority in Iraq, and World War II reaffirmed it, this time with the solid support of Britain’s wartime ally, the United States.


At war’s end, little seemed to have changed in the Middle East. Britain continued to run the Suez Canal. It based troops in, and exerted massive influence on, the nominally independent states of Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan. But within three years, the Middle East was transformed.


Britain’s own role was radically altered by the granting of Indian independence in 1947. British rule in the Middle East had begun with the need to safeguard the route to India, but now its presence was justified by the strategic importance of oil. The second new factor, the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, was central. For all its influence in Baghdad, Britain was not able to prevent Iraq from joining in the doomed Arab attack on Israel immediately after independence was declared. Third, the Middle East was becoming an important battleground in the new Cold War, which gave the United States a vital strategic interest in the region for the first time. Fourth, the United Nations looked to be a far more authoritative body than the old League, and one with a much more critical attitude toward colonialism. Finally, the pan-Arab cause was very much alive again, thanks in no small part to Britain’s pledge in May 1941, at one of its lowest points in the war, to support any proposal that would strengthen ties among the Arab states. This had led ultimately to the creation in 1945 of the Arab League, a body long on inflammatory pan-Arab rhetoric but with no institutional mechanism to make its words into deeds.


In 1948, Iraq was again swept by violence when Iraqis reacted against the Portsmouth Treaty, a new device through which the British sought to perpetuate their influence, in what came to be called the Watbah (uprising). Once again prime minister, Nuri Said felt obliged to repudiate the treaty he had negotiated, a sign of weakness that only strengthened the opposition to him and to the monarchy, now seen as little more than a tool of British interests. Nuri Said’s response was to tighten political repression, closing newspapers and banning political parties, publicly hanging leading Communists, and expanding the political police. Convinced that the Iraqi Communist Party was the spearhead of the Watbah, Britain and the United States supported Nuri Said. (They were much slower to see the rising influence of the secular and pan-Arabist Baathist movement.) Britain also agreed to renegotiate the system of oil royalties, swelling the Iraqi government’s coffers. Despite new urban uprisings in 1952, provoked by bad harvests and Nuri Said’s refusal to hold elections, the money was spent reasonably wisely, and to far better and more widespread effect than in other oil-rich countries.


In 1955, a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq by the U.S. intelligence community (no servile observer of Britain’s role in the region) reported: “Seventy percent of government annual direct oil revenue is earmarked for development programs. . . . This program is administered by the Iraq Development Board (IDB), which has a British and an American as well as Iraqi members. [But] eighty per cent of the population ekes out a meager livelihood in agricultural or nomadic pursuits.” A 1957 estimate expressed more enthusiasm: “Because of its stable government, its relatively effective development program and its assured oil income, Iraq will almost certainly make more progress than any other Arab country.” American approval was ensured when Nuri Said nailed his colors to the Anglo-American mast by joining the Baghdad Pact, a Cold War attempt to create a regional alliance along the lines of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.


By 1958, Iraq’s literacy rate was 15 percent, a pitiful figure but still one of the best in the Arab world. About a third of eligible Iraqi children were in elementary school, less than a tenth were in secondary school, and 8,500 students were enrolled in higher education. Under the independent monarchy, from 1932 to 1958, the population doubled to more than seven million, a third of this number dwelling in towns and cities, and Baghdad grew to more than a million inhabitants. Iraq had the lowest infant mortality rate and the highest life expectancy in the Arab world after Kuwait.


If Iraq was Britain’s showcase in the Middle East, the results were only moderately impressive. And they came at a stiff political price for Iraqis. The Nuri Said government was authoritarian and manipulative. Writing in The Atlantic Monthly in 1958, the celebrated American foreign correspondent William Polk cited police records suggesting that there were as many as 20,000 secret police agents in Baghdad alone. “Virtually every educated man had a police double,” he concluded. “Political opposition was a bar to professional advancement. At all levels, the younger and better educated people felt stifled under the minute observations of a paternalistic government. Political repression has been severe enough effectively to close to the opposition all peaceful means of change. Only one recent election was fairly free, and that resulted in a Parliament which Nuri dismissed after one day.”



“Paternalist” is a reasonable if kindly word to describe the British-influenced government of the Iraqi monarchy. By the regional standards of the day, it achieved impressive economic and social development that laid a strong foundation for the future. It was brought down by its political failings, and by its continued acceptance of British tutelage even after Britain’s humiliation during the Suez crisis in 1956.


Nuri Said assumed that a strong and repressive hand could control political unrest while development continued. But he was removed in a 1958 military coup by officers inspired by the Egyptian colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Free Officers Movement, which had staged a coup against the pro-British monarchy in Cairo five years earlier. The two leaders of the Iraqi coup soon fell out. Backed by the Baathists, one wanted to join the new (and destined to be short lived) pan-Arabist union between Egypt and Syria. Backed by the Communists, General Abd el-Karim Qasim believed in transforming Iraq first. Within the year, Qasim’s rival was under sentence of death.


Ironically, this power struggle may have saved Iraq from a far worse fate. It distracted the coup leaders from their shared objective of occupying Kuwait, which Iraqis had seen as a “lost province” of Iraq since Britain established the independent sheikhdom in 1920. The British and Americans were not just prepared to go to war to preserve oil-rich Kuwait; President Dwight D. Eisenhower was ready to use nuclear weapons. He ordered the Joint Chiefs of Staff to “be prepared to employ, subject to my approval, whatever means might be necessary to prevent any unfriendly forces from moving into Kuwait.”



Qasim’s rule was brief and turbulent. In 1959, he survived a coup attempt, and, six months later, he narrowly escaped assassination by a Baathist team, one of whose members was Saddam Hussein, then 23. In 1962, with Qasim’s army bogged down in a grueling and fruitless campaign to suppress a Kurdish revolt, the Baathists launched a general strike against the regime. In February 1963 Qasim fell after bloody street fighting in Baghdad, in a coup that enjoyed discreet support from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. The Baathists then launched a new terror against the Communists, and finally consolidated their power in 1968, thanks in part to the ruthless efficiency of the secret police chief, Saddam Hussein.


Through all of this, Iraq continued to make marked social progress. By the time Saddam Hussein became president in 1979, Iraq’s literacy rate was 50 percent, and with a million students in secondary education and another 120,000 in universities, the country could claim to be the most developed in the Arab world. The performance might have been even better had not Iraq’s rulers tripled the share of government revenues spent on the armed forces, from seven percent in 1958 to 20 percent by 1970. Beginning in the 1970s, soaring oil prices encouraged the increasingly wealthy Baathist regime to greater regional (and nuclear) ambitions; the war launched against Iran in 1980 by Saddam Hussein ground on for eight terrible years, with more than one million dead. Iran and Iraq were left impoverished.

continued....

thedrifter
06-26-04, 05:07 AM
There’s a clear set of lessons to be drawn from Iraq’s history of independence. (1) Social progress and development through wise deployment of oil wealth guarantee neither democracy nor stability. (2) Governments too closely identified with foreign influence, no matter how well intentioned the foreign power may be, will generate intense domestic opposition. (3) The Iraqi armed forces are both crucial and dangerous to any new government, and have hitherto been held in check only by the ruthless use of a secret police force, a remedy that has proved worse than the disease. (4) The Iraqi national identity that the British tried to foster from the 1920s remains at constant risk from the ethnic and religious tensions among the three dominant elements of Iraqi society: the Sunni, Shia, and Kurds. (5) The political stability of Iraq should never be considered in isolation but within a broader context of developments throughout the Arab world and in Iran.


It is now 85 years since the Ottoman Empire collapsed, and successive attempts by the French and British, by the Soviets and their communist allies, by the Americans with their democratic instincts, and by the Arabs themselves have all failed to generate stability in the region in general, and in Iraq in particular. The pan-Arab dream, secular and modernizing in intention, never managed to overcome the suspicions of tribes, mosques, and national governments, nor did it succeed in identifying itself with the lurking counterforce of pan-Islamism. The great schism between pan-Arabism and pan-Islamism had been implicit since the bitter struggle between the Hashemites and the Saudis to control Mecca at the end of World War I. The Saudis were Wahhabites, puritanical and suspicious of modern and Western ways and receptive to pan-Arabist dreams only insofar as they helped spread the Wahhabi creed through the Muslim world. The Hashemites in Jordan and Iraq, by contrast, believed in pan-Arabism as an ideal in itself, and as the mechanism that would enable the Arab world to modernize and develop and take its place in the great councils of the world, just as Faisal had done at Versailles in 1919.


Eighty years on, pan-Arabism has faltered, discredited by recurrent failures and authoritarian rule, and by the rivalries between the various Arab nations the British and French carved from the Ottoman corpse. Its most promising early exponent, King Faisal, initially saw pan-Arabism as a British gift rather than an Arab creation, and his monarchy was debilitated by its dependence on British support. Faisal’s conception of the cause, monarchic rather than democratic, vied with the rival communist, Nasserite, and, later, Baathist versions of pan-Arabism, each of them authoritarian in instinct and ruthlessly nationalist in practice. By contrast, pan-Islam has found a generous sponsor in Saudi oil wealth and a ferocious new spearhead in Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda.


Perhaps the final lesson of Iraq’s complex career since independence is that a secular and modernizing pan-Arabism has proved to be one of the sadder might-have-beens of history. Had the British been able to encourage it along more genuinely democratic lines it would certainly have been preferable to the succession of military coups and authoritarian rulers that marked Iraq’s course, and to the aggressive and uncompromising pan-Islamic forces that now grip much of the Muslim world. It was probably the only alternative vision that could have competed with the pan-Islamic fervor. And, in years to come, a secular and democratic pan-Arabism—if those terms are not inherently contradictory—may yet be able to play that role.


Having taken a direct hand in forging a stable and democratic post-Saddam Iraq, Americans could do worse than ponder two contrasting thoughts from Gertrude Bell, one of the foreigners who knew the Iraqi people best. The first was written in despair during the uprising of 1920: “The problem is the future. The tribes don’t want to form part of a unified state; the towns can’t do without it.” The second, far more optimistic observation came at the end of her career a half-dozen years later, when the British mandate was proceeding reasonably smoothly: “Iraq is the only country which pulls together with Great Britain and the reason is that we have honestly tried out here to do the task that we said we were going to do, i.e. create an independent Arab state.”



She may have thought so, but few Iraqis truly believed it. For all their good intentions and achievements, the British, under the strains of war, recession, and dependence on oil, were never quite able to surrender their remaining control over Iraq’s independence until they were forced to do so. And by maintaining that control, the British precluded the development of a political system that might have produced a non-authoritarian regime capable of governing the unstable, improbable country they had created. But as an alternative to pan-Arabism or pan-Islamism, that hope of building an Iraqi nation based on a constitution and representative government appears to be the political goal of the American and British armies of today, just as it was of Britain’s proconsuls 80 years ago.


http://wwics.si.edu/index.cfm?fuseaction=wq.essay&essay_id=32217


Ellie

thedrifter
06-26-04, 05:51 AM
U.S. military strikes suspected terrorist safehouse





Iraqi government warns of 'showdown' with insurgents, possible martial law
By Todd Pitman
ASSOCIATED PRESS
4:40 p.m. June 25, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq – U.S. jets targeted terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, pounding one of his suspected hideouts Friday in Fallujah in a strike U.S. officials said killed up to 25 people.

Iraqi leaders warned of more insurgent attacks after a wave of bloodshed blamed on al-Zarqawi, and said they were considering drastic measures to combat the violence – including declaring martial law or a state of emergency in some areas.

"It's the people who want us to take stronger measures," said interim Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan. "We have to be patient. Building democracy requires patience."

Some influential Muslim clerics who had been sharply critical of the American occupation spoke out Friday against the bloody attacks of the previous day, which killed more than 100 people, most of them Iraqis. Three American soldiers were among the dead.

"What sort of religion condones the killing of a Muslim by another Muslim?" asked Sheik Abdul-Ghafour al-Samarai, of the influential Sunni group the Association of Muslim Scholars, during a sermon in Baghdad's Umm al-Qura mosque. "We must unite and be heedful of those who want to drive a wedge among us under the cover of Islam."

Sheik Ahmed Hassan al-Taha said at Baghdad's al-Azimiya mosque, Iraq's foremost Sunni place of worship, that "it makes me sad to see that all the victims yesterday were Iraqis."

The Friday airstrike was the third against al-Zarqawi's network in Fallujah in a week, and it came as U.S. tanks exchanged fire with militants on the outskirts of the city, 40 miles west of Baghdad.

U.S. and Iraqi officials say al-Zarqawi's al-Qaeda-linked movement was behind highly coordinated assaults Thursday against police stations and other buildings in five cities. A claim of responsibility in al-Zarqawi's name was posted on an Islamic Web site.

"With God's help we will pursue these people and keep the Iraqi people safe," the defense minister, Shaalan, told reporters. "The time has come for a showdown."

U.S. and Iraqi authorities have long predicted that the insurgents would seek to derail the transfer of sovereignty, set for Wednesday.

Several strong explosions were heard early Saturday in central Baghdad but the origin was unclear. Friday night, six mortar shells exploded near the Green Zone headquarters district of the U.S. occupation, the military reported. There were no reports of casualties. A bomb also went off outside the home of an Iraqi deputy defense minister, though no one was hurt, the military said.

U.S. officials estimated 20 to 25 people were killed in Friday's strike in Fallujah. Omar Majeed, 40, who lives in the neighborhood that was attacked, said missiles struck a house that was vacated by the owners the day before.

Al-Jazeera television, in a report from Fallujah, said U.S. missiles struck a vacant house but the blast injured four people next door. The report could not be confirmed.

CNN cited a U.S. official saying al-Zarqawi may have been in the house and narrowly escaped the strike. The official said a man who may have been al-Zarqawi was thrown to the ground by the blast as he fled, then helped up by colleagues and driven away in a convoy.

In Washington, Pentagon officials with access to information about the airstrike said they could not confirm the CNN account.

Al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born militant, has also claimed responsibility for kidnapping and beheading American businessman Nicholas Berg and South Korean hostage Kim Sun-il.

But a senior administration official acknowledged that intelligence about al-Zarqawi's network was limited.

"I don't think we have, really, any idea how broad it is," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. He added that al-Zarqawi likely has "some kind of command and control" role.

Al-Zarqawi was known to have had a "small but very lethal network" but now may be working with other groups of fighters," the official said. "It's a little hard to know whether what's really happening is that you have networks that are being joined together."

Coalition officials believe Fallujah has become a center of the insurgency and Islamic extremism since the U.S. Marines abandoned their siege of the city in late April and handed over security to an Iraqi force, the Fallujah Brigade.

That security transfer is widely seen now as a failure, because control has fallen into the hands of hardline Muslim clerics and their fanatical followers.

U.S. commanders believe al-Zarqawi is planning a wave of car bombings in Baghdad, said Col. Michael Formica, commander of the 1st Cavalry Division's 2nd Brigade.

New U.S. military checkpoints have been set up around the city of 5 million people, and large numbers of Iraqi National Guard troops in combat fatigues and body armor were deployed into the streets and main squares Friday.

"We expect there will be more attacks," Interior Minister Falah Hassan al-Naqib said.

Violence across the country diminished Friday from the day before.

One Iraqi policeman was killed and another wounded by a roadside bomb that exploded in a Baghdad residential district. In the northern city of Mosul, fearful residents largely kept off the streets, after four devastating car bombs Thursday killed nearly 50 people.

No decision had been reached about imposing martial law, but Iraq's interim vice president warned it might be necessary, however undesirable.

"In normal situations, there is clearly no need for that," Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite and member of the Islamic Dawa Party, told The Associated Press. "But in cases of excess challenges, emergency laws have their place."

Any emergency laws would fall within a "democratic framework that respects the rights of Iraqis," he said.

It's not clear whether American officials support martial law. The U.S. military, with 130,000 troops in Iraq, has the primary security role even after the transfer of sovereignty, under a U.N. Security Council resolution approved this month.

Washington's eventual exit strategy from Iraq is predicated on strengthening Iraqi security forces – who so far appear ill-equipped to do the job.

In Thursday's attacks, outgunned Iraqi police failed to hold positions in Mosul and Baqouba after a wave of car bombs and attacks by black-masked gunmen brandishing rocket launchers.

American troops joined the battles with aircraft, tanks and helicopters and finally repelled the guerrillas, allowing Iraqi security forces to regain control.

Meanwhile, Shiite fighters loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr announced a cease-fire in Baghdad' Sadr City neighborhood, scene of frequent clashes with U.S. troops.


http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/iraq/20040625-1640-iraq.html


Ellie

thedrifter
06-26-04, 05:56 AM
Heat of battle was pierced by deadly snap of rifle fire




By Rick Rogers
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
June 25, 2004

FALLUJAH, Iraq – Camp Pendleton Marines battled insurgents throughout the day and into the night yesterday in the heaviest fighting here since U.S. forces ended a month-long siege of the Sunni Muslim city in April.

The morning attack took place at a checkpoint in the city. Marines at the checkpoint said they were surprised when insurgents stood and fought instead of using hit-and-run tactics as they have for the past month.

Insurgents hit the Marines with rockets, sniper fire and rounds from mortars and AK-47 rifles during fighting that lasted more than eight hours in temperatures reaching 115 degrees.

Rebel fighters also used a surface-to-air missile to bring down a Cobra helicopter gunship.

Eight Marines from the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, were wounded during the assault, three of them seriously.

U.S. warplanes responded by dropping 500-pound bombs, striking some enemy targets close to Marine positions. Estimates of insurgent casualties were not available.

The fighting stopped briefly when the mayor of Fallujah appeared at the checkpoint and offered the Marines a cease-fire deal.

Mahmoud Ibraham told Marine commanders that insurgents, whom he described as "foreign fighters" and not Iraqis, would stop attacking if the traffic checkpoint were reopened.

The lull was short-lived. The sound of mortars and bombs reverberated well into the evening, and a large Marine contingent was placed on alert.

For the Marines of Golf Company, part of the unit that arrived in Iraq days ago, this was not the way their day was supposed to go.

"We are expecting a quiet day," Lt. Robert Tart, 28, told his patrol yesterday as they boarded Humvees for the equivalent of a goodwill tour of the outskirts of Fallujah.

Then came word that a checkpoint in the eastern part of the city was being attacked and a Marine had been wounded.

"Let's hurry up and get out there," said Cpl. Danny Keller, 21. "And it's a great day in the neighborhood," he sang as the Marines sped off to the snaps of M-16s being locked and loaded.

The convoy drove against traffic to avoid roadside explosives and possible suicide bombers and got to the checkpoint in minutes.

Once there, Golf Company broke into small groups and a few Marines took positions around a heavy truck topped by a machine gun and surrounded by a dirt berm.

The truck's gunner was shot in the right leg, becoming the day's first casualty.

The troops hadn't even broken a sweat when they came under attack from three sides. The air was alive with the sound of incoming mortars, rockets and rocket-propelled grenades.

"Let's get them," one Marine yelled.

That proved easier said than done.

In front of the Marines lay a tangle of concrete buildings and narrow alleys. Marines occasionally saw a muzzle flash or an insurgent firing a rocket-propelled grenade or running with a rifle, but the targets were fleeting.

The insurgents, however, seemed to know exactly where the Marines were and started "walking in" mortar fire on them: Each blast came closer and closer with nothing between deadly shrapnel and the Marines except body armor that protects only part of their bodies.

A 60 mm mortar exploded less than 50 feet away from the truck, sending up a plume of black smoke.

A rocket-propelled grenade landed less than a foot away from Lance Cpl. Matthew Cunningham, 19, from Overland, Kan., who experienced some hearing loss in his left ear. He stayed in the fight.

Another mortar hit nearby, and then a rocket sailed less than 10 feet over the truck.

"They're getting better," said Lance Cpl. Eric Taylor, 22, from Daytona Beach, Fla. "It makes it more interesting."

"Will someone please kill that mortarman?" another Marine asked dryly.

"Look at the bright side, at least there are no flies," said a third.

AK-47 rounds make a whizzing sound when they are close and a snapping sound when they are very close. There was a lot of snapping yesterday.

"This is probably the most intense firefight since the siege in April," said Petty Officer James H. Finch III, 25, a corpsman from Fayetteville, N.C., who is stationed at Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego.

Marines spent three weeks in April trying to drive insurgents from Fallujah before a politically brokered deal called for them to pull back and let the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps and the Fallujah Brigade largely take over security in the city.

Asked why ICDC forces did not help the Marines yesterday, Ibraham, the Fallujah mayor, said through a translator: "The ICDC did not attack the foreign fighters because the foreign fighters are only here to kill Americans and not the ICDC."

By late morning, hot and weary Marines were low on water, ammunition and some of their guns weren't working. The sight of an AH-1W Cobra helicopter gunship boosted the Marines' spirits and a cheer broke out when it fired its missiles.

The cheers turned to disbelief as an insurgent's shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile knocked the Cobra from the sky.

"The (Cobra) got nailed," said Cpl. Luis Lopez, a Golf Company squad leader. "Did you see that?"

The Cobra's crew – a pilot and a co-pilot – were rescued unharmed.

After the copter went down, air support was left to fighter bombers. The use of the planes was a last resort.

"We are trying not to destroy the city," said Capt. Michael D. Martino, 30, a forward air controller from Irvine. "But we are trying to protect our Marines. I hope this does not turn into another April."



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Union-Tribune staff writer Rick Rogers and staff photographer Nelvin Cepeda are accompanying Camp Pendleton-based Marines in Iraq. They are with the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.


http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040625/images/2004-06-25marineaims.jpg

NELVIN CEPEDA / Union-Tribune
Lance Cpl. Mathew Cunningham, assigned to the Camp Pendleton-based 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, fired at insurgents in Fallujah.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040625/images/hillmarines.jpg

NELVIN CEPEDA / Union-Tribune
Lance Cpl. Greg Carlson (left) and Lance Cpl. Matthew Cunningham laid down covering fire while Cobra helicopter gunships made passes during the battle. Minutes later, one of the Cobras was shot down.


http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040625/images/marineruns.jpg

NELVIN CEPEDA / Union-Tribune
Lance Cpl. Eric Taylor sprinted toward his team, which was positioned near a 7-ton truck during the firefight.


http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/iraq/20040625-9999-1n25marines.html


Ellie



Marines battle in Fallujah Photos Click Link
http://www.signonsandiego.com/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=fallujah

thedrifter
06-26-04, 06:37 AM
Deploying Marines face rising violence in Iraq

By: DARRIN MORTENSON - Staff Writer

CAMP PENDLETON ---- Halfway through their seven-month mission to provide security and pave the way for Iraqis to govern themselves, local Marines again were heavily engaged in combat against insurgents west of Baghdad last week.

The renewed fighting ---- and warnings from U.S. military leaders that violence could increase during the next few months as insurgents try to derail the new Iraqi government ---- comes as several thousand Marines and sailors from Camp Pendleton and Miramar Marine Corps Air Station are on their way to reinforce the Marines' forces in the region. Thousands more are preparing to deploy in the fall.

The troops will replace most of the approximately 25,000 Marines and sailors of Pendleton's I Marine Expeditionary Force, which occupies a string of bases in the Al Anbar province. The province extends from just west of Baghdad west to the border with Jordan and Syria. Most of the fresh troops will be there through spring, military officials say.


They may face the same problem as their predecessors: a stubborn insurgency that has largely impeded the Marines' efforts to secure the region and keep the peace.

American officials say they do not expect the fighting to subside soon, even though the U.S. occupation authority hands the reins of power to the new Iraqi government this week. The hand-over is set for Wednesday.

Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita said the insurgency will continue after the turnover, and said militants may target the elections set for the end of the year, when some of the fresh Marine forces could still be acclimating to their new surroundings.

"The insurgents have been explicit in their objectives," DiRita said, according to the Defense Department's news service. "Their objectives are to derail Iraq's transition to self-government. We've seen threats against the new Iraqi government leaders including the prime minister (Ayad Allawi) himself. That's what we're going to have to expect."

To date, 848 U.S. service members and two Department of Defense employees have died in the war in Iraq.

At least 78 Marines from Camp Pendleton, Miramar and Twentynine Palms have died since the Marines deployed to Iraq this year.

On their way

Among the troops heading into the storm of violence are about 1,000 local infantrymen, combat engineers and Navy corpsmen ---- all part of the Pendleton-based 1st Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment ---- who are steaming to the Middle East aboard the USS Belleau Wood. They are the amphibious landing team of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit.

The expeditionary unit also includes nearly a thousand other local Marines, including helicopter crews, tank crews, maintenance and logistics personnel and artillerymen from Pendleton and Miramar.

The 1,000-some Marines and sailors of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, also from Pendleton, departed a week ago. They were bound for Kuwait to acclimate to the scorching desert heat before they push into Iraq to replace Pendleton's 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment. The unit was diverted from a deployment in Okinawa, Japan, in March to help support combat operations around Fallujah ---- another volatile Al Anbar city where fighting erupted this spring.

Military officials have not yet announced the units due to start deploying to Iraq in August and September, but have said the Marines "know who they are."

Capt. Dan McSweeney, a spokesman at the Marine Corps Headquarters in Virginia, said most of the new forces to be rotated into Iraq this fall will come from the I Marine Expeditionary Force, which has its headquarters at Camp Pendleton. The force controls all Marine units in Iraq and includes several thousand East Coast-based troops and reservists who were integrated with the West Coast troops for the mission in Iraq.

Local troops under fire

Several thousand of the fresh troops will replace Pendleton troops in Fallujah, some 30 miles west of the capital, and in Ramadi, another 30 miles west, where intense fighting was reported last week.

Ramadi was where four Marines were found dead on Monday, apparently after they were ambushed by rebels. The Marines were all members of Pendleton's 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, which has lost more than 30 troops since the Marines began operations in and around the city in March.

On Thursday, masked gunmen dressed in black attacked a Ramadi police station with rocket-propelled grenades and then blew it up, according to the Defense Department. The Associated Press reported that insurgents also attacked another police station and blasted the governor's residence with rocket-propelled grenades.

Officials from the local Health Ministry said at least 20 people were killed in the attack. There were no reports of Marine casualties.

The late-week violence in Ramadi appeared to be part of a rebel offensive that left more than 100 people dead in five cities across Iraq on Thursday. Rebels also exploded car bombs and attacked police stations and American-trained Iraqi forces in Baqouba, just north of Baghdad, and in the northern city of Mosul.

Fallujah still a hot spot

Followers of Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility for Thursday's attacks.

Pendleton Marines based near Fallujah have been battling Zarqawi supporters and other insurgents since they arrived there in March, and have often supported missions of an Army special operations and intelligence task force leading the hunt for Zarqawi.

On Thursday, they again fought guerrillas in Fallujah's streets. According to the Reuters news agency, guerrillas fired AK-47 rifles and rocket-propelled grenades at the Marines, who pushed into the outskirts of the embattled city in armored vehicles and attacked rebel positions with helicopter gunships.

A Marine Super Cobra helicopter supporting the ground forces was shot down near Fallujah, but the crew escaped unhurt, the Reuters reports said. Officials would not say where the pilots were based, but most of the Marine helicopter crews operating in Iraq are from Camp Pendleton and Miramar and are based at two air bases northwest of Fallujah.

Fighting breaks long calm

While military officials in the United States and Baghdad would not say exactly which Marine units were fighting in Fallujah, it has been widely reported that Camp Pendleton's 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, and 1st Battalion, 5th Regiment patrol that region.

Both battalions besieged Fallujah for more than three weeks in April after insurgents killed four armed American security contractors there. The fierce fighting left hundreds dead and reduced patches of the city to rubble.

Renewed fighting last week came nearly two months after the Marines pulled out of the city to the surrounding countryside. In early May, Marines handed responsibility for security to an Iraqi brigade that includes many soldiers who served under former President Saddam Hussein and, according to some reports, insurgents who had fought the Marines.

At least three Marines have been killed and many more wounded by roadside bombs and accidents in the area since then, but the fighting last week was the first outbreak of heavy combat reported there in months.

According to Reuters, Fallujah Mayor Mahmoud Ibrahim al-Juraisi announced a cease-fire late last week and the Marines pulled back to their bases just outside the city.

The fighting in Fallujah closely trailed several U.S. air strikes in the last week targeting what American officials said were hideouts for Zarqawi's followers. Military officials say as many as 20 foreign fighters were killed in one of the strikes on Tuesday, and that another 25 were killed in a strike on Friday.

Officials would not say if Marines were involved in those operations.

No fighting reported at border

The one Marine-controlled region of Iraq that seemed to escape violence last week was the western border region, where Marines from Camp Pendleton and Twentynine Palms patrol a vast swath of desert along the border with Syria and Jordan. Their mission: to stand in the way of foreign fighters trying to infiltrate Iraq and join guerrillas in other regions of the country.

That region, mainly around Al Qaim, was the site of intense battles in late April involving the 2nd and 3rd Battalions, 7th Marine Regiment, the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, the 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion ---- all from Twentynine Palms.

At least a dozen Marines have been killed during operations near Iraq's western borders, according to reports posted on the Defense Department's Web site.

Although officials have said both battalions are expected to be among those to be replaced in the fall, they would not say which units would replace them.

The headquarters elements of both the I Marine Expeditionary Force and the Pendleton-based 1st Marine Division will likely remain in Iraq through the spring, McSweeney said.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report. Contact staff writer Darrin Mortenson at (760) 740-5442 or dmortenson@nctimes.com.

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2004/06/26/military/22_41_526_25_04.txt


Ellie

thedrifter
06-26-04, 11:39 PM
1st chemical attack
by terrorists in Iraq
Sources report mustard gas
inside Baghdad's Green Zone




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted: June 26, 2004
11:28 a.m. Eastern

Editor's note: Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin is an online, subscription intelligence news service from the creator of WorldNetDaily.com – a journalist who has been developing sources around the world for the last 25 years.


© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

A day after the head of the CIA weapons inspection team warned that terrorists in Iraq are trying to get their hands on the Saddam Hussein regime's chemical weapons of mass destruction, Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin reports the first attack with these weapons of mass destruction has been launched inside Baghdad's Green Zone.

Few details are available, including any casualties associated with the attack using mustard gas.

The sources say the munitions were old, but still potentially lethal.

"I think it's safe to say our little friends know where the cache is now," said one source sardonically.

The Green Zone is the area of Baghdad where the U.S.-led coalition authority established its headquarters in the immediate aftermath of the invasion in April last year.

On Thursday, Charles Duelfer, the head of the CIA weapons inspection team, said terrorists in Iraq are seeking chemical arms and expertise left over from the Hussein regime for possible use against U.S. and allied troops. He added that his team has so far found as many as a dozen chemical-filled bombs – far more than previously reported.

"What we are finding is that there are some networks that are seeking to tap into ... this expertise, and try to use it against the United States," Duelfer told Fox News Channel's Brit Hume. "And we are very concerned about that. That is a problem."

Duelfer said that investigations into arms laboratories in Iraq and interviews with former Iraqi arms specialists revealed that "former experts in the country's weapons of mass destruction program are being recruited by anti-coalition groups."

"They are being paid by anti-coalition groups," he said. "We're seeing interest in developing chemical munitions."

Asked whether anything suggests that insurgents actually are getting the expertise or may be ready to use it, Duelfer said: "We want to follow that very, very closely."

Duelfer expressed special concern that al-Qaida associate Abu Musab Zarqawi will acquire and use chemical weapons. Zarqawi, he said, "is one bad actor, and if he gets his hands on it, he'll use it."

The Jordanian-born Islamist, believed to be the leader of the foreign insurgents in Iraq, is known to be a specialist in bomb making. U.S. officials believe al-Zarqawi was behind the coordinated attacks earlier this week that killed at least 100 people and wounded about 320.

Duelfer said his inspection team has uncovered bombs filled with blistering mustard gas or the nerve agent sarin.

"We're not sure how many more are out there that haven't been found, but we've found 10 or 12 sarin and mustard rounds," he said. "I'm reluctant to judge what that means at this point, but there's other aspects of the program which we still have to flush out."

In May, U.S. military officials found a bomb containing chemicals to form sarin gas and another with a mustard agent – weapons Saddam was required to destroy under U.S. sanctions and terms of the cease-fire from the 1990-91 Gulf war.

The Washington Times reports military officials have uncovered about 8,700 weapons depots and continue to find new ones. They estimate the weapons depots in Iraq contain between 650,000 and 1 million tons of arms, which are believed to be a source for anti-coalition forces.



Ellie

thedrifter
06-27-04, 12:07 AM
Three Turks Held in Iraq; Blast Kills 19


By FISNIK ABRASHI, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Militants loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said Saturday they have kidnapped three Turkish workers and threatened to behead them in 72 hours, heightening tensions as President Bush (news - web sites) visited Turkey.


In new violence, an explosion possibly from a car bomb ripped through downtown Hillah, a largely Shiite Muslim city south of Baghdad, killing 19 people and wounding around 60, a senior Iraqi police official said. The official described the blast as a vicious attack on Iraqi civilians.


The bloodshed and the abduction — the latest claimed by al-Zarqawi's movement, which beheaded two previous hostages, an American and a South Korean — threatened to cast a shadow over a NATO (news - web sites) summit opening in Istanbul Monday, where Bush is seeking the alliance's help in stabilizing Iraq (news - web sites).


The kidnappers demanded the Turks (news - web sites) hold demonstrations protesting the visit by the "criminal" Bush and that Turkish companies stop working in Iraq, or else the hostages would be killed.


Iraq's interim prime minister warned that if security does not improve, it may become necessary to delay national elections set for January — a key landmark in the path to democracy that the United States has tried to enshrine before handing power to the Iraqis on Wednesday.


The Jan. 31 deadline for elections laid out in Iraq's interim constitution is "not absolute yet ... But we hope, and all of us will work toward that objective," Allawi told CBS News in an interview.


"However, security will be (the) main feature of whether we will be able to do it in January, February or March," he said.


In central Baghdad, insurgents killed a U.S. soldier in an attack on a patrol Saturday, the military said.


Gunmen launched new attacks in the city of Baqouba, northeast of the capital, sparking battles that killed six insurgents and three civilians. The city was the scene of fierce fighting in a surprise offensive launched by al-Zarqawi on Thursday.


The Arab television station Al-Jazeera aired a video issued by the kidnappers, showing the three Turks kneeling on the ground in front of two black-clothed gunmen and a black banner emblazoned "Tawhid and Jihad," the name of al-Zarqawi's organization. The men held up Turkish passports.


In a written statement, the group demanded Turkish companies stop doing business with American forces in Iraq and called for "large demonstrations" in Turkey against the visit of "Bush the criminal."


It said that if Turkey refused their demands the hostages "will receive the just punishment of being beheaded."


Al-Jazeera received the tape Saturday, an employee at the station told The Associated Press. The statement did not say when or where the three were abducted. It appeared the deadline was Tuesday, but the message did not specify what time it runs out.


The three men disappeared two days ago, said a Turkish consular official in Baghdad who asked to be identified only by his surname, Gungor. He said he had no further information.


The abductions are likely to stoke anti-war sentiment in Turkey, where Bush is already extremely unpopular. Hours ahead of his arrival in Ankara, police battled scores of protesters Saturday, eventually firing tear gas to disperse them.


News of the latest abduction came as the body of Kim Sun-Il, a South Korean worker decapitated by al-Zarqawi's followers last week, was brought back to his hometown, Busan.


His slaying has prompted nightly vigils in the Korean capital, Seoul, urging the government to call off its plans to send 3,000 troops to Iraq beginning in August.





Last month, al-Zarqawi's group also claimed responsibility for the beheading of American businessman Nicholas Berg. And on Thursday, fighters loyal to al-Zarqawi launched a wave of coordinated attacks in five cities in Iraq, battling with U.S. troops who eventually regained control but only after some 100 people, including three Americans were killed.

The explosion in Hillah, 60 miles south of Baghdad, came Saturday evening outside the former Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) mosque in a shopping area where residents traditionally while away hours in the cool of the evening, said police Brig. Gen. Qais Hamza Aboud, the commander of police in surrounding Babylon province.

Aboud told The Associated Press that the blast was caused by a booby-trapped car. He said it was a clear attack on civilians — men, women and children — because there were no police or coalition soldiers in the area. He said nine other cars were set ablaze and that many of the injured suffered severe burns.

Elsewhere, a car bomb exploded in the Kurdish stronghold of Irbil in northern Iraq, killing one person and injuring 18 people, including the culture minister of the pro-American Kurdistan Democratic Party.

In Baqouba, gunmen attacked the offices of two political parties and other buildings.

Insurgents hit the offices of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq — one of the country's biggest Shiite parties — with shoulder-fired grenade-launchers, said party member Maitham Ibrahim. Three party members died and two were injured, hospital officials said.

Gunmen overran the offices of Allawi's political party, the Iraq National Accord, setting off an explosion that sent smoke and flames leaping from the building's third-story windows, witnesses said. No one was hurt.

U.S. Maj. Neal O'Brien, spokesman of the 1st Infantry Division, said four guerrillas — one wearing an explosives-packed vest — also attacked Baqouba's blue-domed government building. Guards fired back, killing the four, he said. Two other insurgents died in an attack on a police station, O'Brien said.

In Mahmoudiyah, 20 miles south of Baghdad, insurgents killed two Iraqi National Guardsmen in an ambush. Another police officer was killed in a separate attack there, said the director of the Mahmoudiyah general hospital, Dawoud al-Taei.

In the capital, gunmen attacked a police station in the New Baghdad area but officers fought back in a rare show of force. The attackers fled, and police arrested three Iraqis, an Interior Ministry official said.

Meanwhile, repair crews patched up the larger of two southern crude oil pipelines damaged by saboteurs and resumed pumping to offshore terminals, an official with the South Oil Company said Saturday.

Hours after the pumping resumed, attackers blasted another small crude oil pipeline that feeds into domestic storage tanks, near the town of Latifiyah, about 30 miles south of Baghdad, said 1st Lt. Alaa Hussein.

In the wave of violence ahead of Wednesday's transfer of sovereignty, most attacks have been directed at the ill-equipped Iraqi security forces — the foundation of the new government's power.

The United States recently issued about 55,000 armored flak jackets to Iraqi forces, a senior U.S. commander said, speaking on condition of anonymity.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040627/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq&cid=540&ncid=716

Ellie