Team work produces fastest gun in the west

[thedrifter]

Team work produces fastest gun in the west <br />
Submitted by: 1st Marine Division <br />
Story Identification #: 2004101455338 <br />
Story by Cpl. Jan Bender <br />
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CAMP FALLUJAH, Iraq (Oct.13, 2004) -- They have...

[thedrifter]

Iraqi National Guard graduates more than 200
Submitted by: 11th MEU
Story Identification #: 2004101374235
Story by - 11th MEU Public Affairs



AD DIWANIYAH, Iraq (Oct. 13, 2004) -- Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad al Allawi, along with other national and local dignitaries, attended the graduation ceremony of more than 200 Iraqi National Guard recruits here at the ING compound, today.

In addition, five ING soldiers from Ad Diwaniyah and five from An Najaf were recognized and awarded a pistol by the Prime Minister to honor their heroism in action during fighting in their respective cities in August.

The recruits, who just completed a five-week training course led by ING staff non-commissioned officers and Marines from the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, will join the ranks of the 404th ING Battalion, 50th Brigade, based here.

The ING soldiers will be responsible for helping to provide for the security and stability of the city and its outlying areas.

"You will defend this country against terrorism from outside your country, and against Ba'ath Party members from within who join terrorists intent on destroying our people," said Allawi. "But they cannot, because you, Iraq's heroes, have the important challenge of all Iraqi National Guard units-- to help build a new democracy in Iraq and protect the political process in the next election."

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/image1.nsf/Lookup/2004101375059/$file/041012-M-7719F-179%20low.jpg

The Iraqi Prime Minister inspects soldiers of the ING at the graduation ceremony of more than 200 ING recruits at the ING compound in Ad Diwaniyah, Oct. 12. The recruits, who just completed a five-week training course led by ING staff non-commissioned officers and Marines from the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, will join the ranks of the 404th ING Battalion, 50th Brigade, in Ad Diwaniyah. Photo by: Cpl. Daniel J. Fosco

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf/main5/E275790F62B4F1F885256F2C0040530B?opendocument

Ellie

[thedrifter]

HMH-361 phase maintenance crew keeps ‘Stallions’ airborne <br />
Submitted by: 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing <br />
Story Identification #: 20041012171039 <br />
Story by Cpl. Paul Leicht <br />
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AL ASAD, Iraq (Oct. 4,...

[thedrifter]

For marines on raids, an eerie silence

By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

HASWAH AND MUSAYYIB, IRAQ – In the shadow of night, on the edge of the volatile town of Haswah, a convoy of humvees silently pulls to a stop and disgorges its marines.
In the wake of daytime raids Wednesday, in which 200 US troops cordoned off the town and 100 Iraqi special forces arrested 17 men, the marines of Operation Phantom Fury, which began this week, expected resistance.

They had never been here, some 30 miles south of Baghdad, and not been engaged by insurgents. And they had never planned such deep penetration, striding behind storefronts to the narrow, dusty streets behind.

But instead of a firefight, they stepped into a surreal silence.

"I don't believe this - aren't there supposed to be people in the streets at 11 at night? Drinking tea?" asked one marine emerging from a side street in full combat gear, threatened by nothing more than clusters of wild dogs.

"I've never seen it before - not a soul," says 2nd Lt. Mark Nicholson, a platoon commander of the 1st Battalion 2nd Marines, from Wheeling, W.Va. Previous visits at even 2 a.m. found people on the street - and always an armed reaction.

"It's a good thing," says Lieutenant Nicholson. "But I'd like to see people in the streets, people who want us there, who greet us."

The apparently lifeless town, a chronic hotbed of insurgent activity, may typify what control can be achieved in Iraq with joint US-Iraqi forces. But as marines prepare to return to Haswah and other insurgent strongholds day after day, officers say the calm may be misleading, and tough to maintain.

"We can't be at every location, 24 hours a day," says Capt. Chris Ray, an intelligence officer. "[Insurgents] know they can just drop their AK-47s and blend into the crowd, if nobody points their finger at them."

"Our biggest problem right now is overcoming the intimidation that [insurgents] have working all the time," says Captain Ray, from Tolland, Conn. "They're here all the time, they know where everybody lives. In the past, [after an big arrest operation], for 24 hours it will calm down. Then they will actually pick up operations, to send the message: 'We control this town.' "

"We've seen it in every town," Ray says. "After we leave, there are more reports of people forcing shop owners to close, or stay off the streets. They're doing well with psychological operations."

Iraqi forces are meant increasingly to pick up the slack, and take permanent control of hotspots like Haswah. The arrests Wednesday, in fact, were prompted by Iraqi forces. "The Iraqi police called us, saying 'We got some people we know are bad, we're going to come get them," says Maj. Matt Sasse, chief of operations for the 1-2 Marines.

"We're perfectly willing to go out andkill these guys, but it's better if the Iraqi forces are going to deal with it on their own," says Major Sasse, from Midland, Mich. He notes that the 17 detainees were taken to the Iraqi jail at Hilla. "They're getting progressively better, and every time they have a successful operation, they get a bit more aggressive."

Down the road, Alpha Company was making less progress. The unit - with 48 people in eight vehicles - pulled into Musayyib, a grindingly poor Shiite town southwest of Haswah, to make an arrest. The target was a man who had sold a remote-detonated bomb - the kind that has taken a frequent toll on US and Iraqi forces - to an Iraqi "source" for $100.

Racing on foot past a street barrier, the marines found the building and burst through two doors - thinking the house was linked inside. They shot the chain off one door to gain entry, an irregular step the platoon leader later quizzed a marine about, saying it could have been removed without firepower.

Inside, a terrified family watched as they ransacked the rooms for evidence. During the raid, the man of the house was spreadeagled on the floor; the complaining but cooperative mother rushed to find her black shawl to cover her night clothes; children were led to a back room. Another boy was found with his head in his hands behind the bed.

After a short time, the marines realized the family was innocent. "Oh, this is the wrong one," groaned Nicholson.

They shook hands with the quivering children and apologized. "Tell the children not to play with this in the street," a marine told a translator, holding a toy assault rifle. "If they were holding this when we came in, we could have shot him."

The next door was the right one. Inside, marines found several women, a boy, an elderly man. The family said the target man had been gone for two days.

Disappointed, the marines finished by interrogating two suspects found in a grimy parking lot. One man turned out to be a guard, sleeping on post; the other was drunk and had stopped to sleep.

A loudspeaker blaring at 2:40 a.m. was taken by one marine as a call to arms from a mosque - not uncommon in such raids - until he was laughingly corrected: The sound was in fact a US psychological operations unit blasting pro-coalition messages.

The marines then turned the raid into an impromptu foot patrol, setting off down a street brightly lit with strings of bulbs, toward the town center. Two blasts from a whistle gave them pause.

The source was another security guard, this one awake. The marines didn't believe his story till they saw his ID card. "Who are his friends?" Nicholson asked the man through an interpreter. "Ask him: 'Who did he signal?' "

As time passed, bakers began their predawn work and vegetable sellers came to the muddy central market. Local allegiance was not in doubt: every wall seemed to have a poster of the anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Marines removed a few posters and took photos of others with longer messages. And, in a sign of new permanence, images of Mr. Sadr were spraypainted onto walls using a template, just as Hizbullah honored their revered clerics and martyrs in southern Lebanon.

http://search.csmonitor.com/search_content/1008/p06s02-woiq.html


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Franks: U.S. Should Have Hired Iraqis
Associated Press
October 13, 2004


NICEVILLE, Fla. - The United States should have quickly reformed the Iraqi army after most of its soldiers walked off the battlefield and got them "working for us," retired Gen. Tommy Franks said Tuesday.

Franks, who oversaw combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, told reporters it may have taken "a couple billion dollars," but that he would have liked to have put Iraqi troops "back on the payroll right quick."

"What we could have done better, should have done better, what I would have liked to have seen done better, once they were gone, is hire them back," the former Army general said before making his first Florida campaign appearance for President Bush.

Neither Bush nor Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld should be blamed because Congress never appropriated money for that purpose and no other country offered to pay for it, Franks said.

"I fault bureaucratic behavior in my own country and in the international community," he said.

Franks spoke with reporters before addressing a staunchly Republican, pro-Bush crowd of about 800 at Okaloosa-Walton College in this military town. Niceville is within earshot of warplanes landing and taking off at nearby Eglin Air Force Base.

Visiting the Florida Panhandle after appearing with Bush in Colorado, Franks also disputed statements attributed to him in "Intelligence Matters," a new book by Sen. Bob Graham.

The Florida Democrat wrote that Franks told him in February 2002, more than a year before the Iraq invasion, that his resources already were being shifted for that conflict.

Graham also contends Franks told him fighting terrorism in Afghanistan, Somalia and elsewhere should take priority over invading Iraq.

"Not at one point - ever - did I ever question the need to move into Iraq," Franks said.

Franks said Saddam Hussein already was harboring terrorists and that eight years of U.S. pilots getting shot at while enforcing sanctions against Iraq was enough and it was time to act.


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Soldiers in Iraq cracking down on illegal traders and their suppliers


By Juliana Gittler, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Tuesday, October 12, 2004



CONVOY SUPPORT CENTER SCANIA, Iraq — The big smiles don’t fool soldiers on perimeter security outside Camp Scania, a major convoy stopping point 150 miles south of Baghdad.

The soldiers say the smiling Iraqi children lingering outside the concertina wire separating them from convoy trucks might have hashish, whiskey or the prescription drug Viagra stashed in the shrubs as they wait for a possible sale.

“Whenever there are trucks along the wire, they’ll be working,” said Staff Sgt. Jeffrey King, part of the perimeter security force.

“You can have kids from, like, 4 years to 30-year-old men up on the wire.”

The sales and any contact with the makeshift wire fence by someone outside it are prohibited, and security details take the problem seriously.

They want to make sure the trickle of vendors does not become a flood of traders that could include potential terrorists.

As a result, at least every few days someone is caught selling to convoy drivers on the base side of the fence, King said.

“We pop them all the time,” said Lt. Col. James B. Sayers, commander of the 1st Battalion, 185th Armor Regiment of the California National Guard and the acting camp commander.

While any contact along the fence line is a concern, security officials believe the risk to U.S. forces, living a distance from the convoy waiting areas, is minimal. Most of the traders are poor locals from nearby homes.

“It’s common all over Iraq,” Sayers said. “These are petty criminals. They’re not real bad people, [they’re] just trying to make a buck.”

Though few in number, they are persistent.

“You can arrest one and come back five minutes later and there will be more out there,” King said.

Traders are turned over to the Iraqi police and then imprisoned briefly and fined. Their goods are taken away.

“You’d think that would be an incentive not to do this stuff,” Sayers adds.

To make sure there’s no ambiguity, large red signs in English and Arabic warn: “No Trading with Locals” at the base gates and the same message is spray-painted on concrete barriers.

Security is the key issue, but, Sayers adds, having drunk or stoned convoy drivers endangers soldiers who accompany them on the road.

Truck drivers caught buying goods have also been arrested and are turned over to their companies, who generally dismiss them, Sayers said.

The traders have an interesting array of goods, soldiers say, from the outright illegal, such as hashish, to the surprising, such as Viagra.

The most common is cigarettes, followed by anything from chickens to decorative knives.

Many of the traders are familiar faces. Soldiers know one so well he waves when he sees them in town and has started providing some intelligence to police.

Patrols have also arrested suppliers who provide the goods to the traders. Soldiers say a recent bust netted several trucks of Viagra.

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=24008&archive=true

Ellie

[thedrifter]

As Ramadan approaches, U.S. forces begin offensive


By Robert H. Reid
ASSOCIATED PRESS


BAGHDAD — U.S. troops went on the offensive from the gates of Baghdad to the Syrian border yesterday, pounding Sunni Muslim insurgent positions from the air and supporting Iraqi soldiers in raids on mosques suspected of harboring extremists.
American and Iraqi forces launched the operations ahead of Ramadan, expected to start at week's end, in an apparent attempt at preventing a repeat of the insurgent violence that took place at the start of last year's Muslim holy month.







Clashes broke out in a string of militant strongholds from Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, northward along the Euphrates Valley to the Syrian border town of Qaim — all major conflict areas.
Some of the sharpest exchanges took place in Hit, 90 miles northwest of Baghdad, where residents and hospital officials said U.S. aircraft attacked two sites, killing two persons and wounding five. The U.S. command had no comment.
U.S. helicopters fired on a mosque in Hit on Monday and set it ablaze after the military said insurgents opened fire on Marines from the sanctuary. Scattered clashes were reported overnight, killing at least two Iraqis and wounding 15, hospital officials said.
Insurgents attacked an Iraqi national guard outpost east of Qaim yesterday, the U.S. military said. The local hospital reported 15 to 20 people were killed.
Seventy miles west of Baghdad, Iraqi troops backed by U.S. soldiers and Marines raided seven mosques in the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, arresting a prominent member of a clerical association and three other persons. They also seized bomb-making materials and "insurgent propaganda" in the mosques, U.S. officials said.
Angry Ramadi residents accused the Americans of breaking down doors and violating the sanctity of mosques.
"This cowboy behavior cannot be accepted," said cleric Abdullah Abu Omar. "The Americans seem to have lost their senses and have gone out of control."
However, the raids followed a surge in insurgent attacks in Ramadi, and the U.S. command accused the militants of violating the sanctity of the mosques by using them for military purposes. Marine spokesman Maj. Francis Piccoli said U.S. troops provided backup for the Iraqi soldiers, but did not enter the mosques.
In Fallujah, the focal point for Sunni resistance, residents reported explosions and clashes on the eastern edge of the city yesterday afternoon. At least five persons were killed and four wounded in the blasts, according to Fallujah General Hospital. The victims were reportedly traveling on a highway outside the city when they came under fire.
The renewed activity around Fallujah followed a pair of pre-dawn air strikes, which the U.S. command said targeted hide-outs and meeting places of the Tawhid and Jihad terrorist group responsible for numerous kidnappings and beheadings.
One of the air strikes flattened a well-known Fallujah restaurant and the other destroyed a building in another part of the city. Five persons were killed and two were wounded in the two attacks, hospital officials reported.
Yesterday's air strikes in Fallujah were the first in four days and occurred as Iraqi officials were in talks with city representatives to restore government control, which disintegrated after the Marines ended a three-week siege in late April.
Since then, the city has fallen under the control of hard-line Islamist clerics and their armed followers, who defended Fallujah against the Marines. Both sides have said they were close to an agreement.
Yesterday, hundreds of Sheik al-Sadr's fighters from his Mahdi's Army lined up at police stations for the second consecutive day to hand in weapons in return for cash. Some of the weapons appeared to be old, and it seemed unlikely that the Mahdi's Army would surrender all its arms.

Associated Press correspondent Fisnik Abrashi contributed to this report from Qaim.

http://washingtontimes.com/world/20041012-101500-5336r.htm


Ellie

[thedrifter]

24th MEU takes bridge as part of operation <br />
October 12,2004 <br />
ERIC STEINKOPFF <br />
DAILY NEWS STAFF <br />
<br />
For the past two months, most of Camp Lejeune's 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit has worked to take...

[thedrifter]

Blasts Kill Five in Baghdad's Green Zone

By NADIA ABOU EL-MAGD, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Insurgents penetrated Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone and detonated explosives at a market and a popular cafe Thursday, killing five people, including four Americans, in the first bombings inside the compound housing the U.S. and Iraqi government headquarters.


A top Iraqi official said the attacks appeared to have been suicide bombings.


Witnesses said two men, each carrying a backpack but not required ID badges, entered the Green Zone Cafe full of Americans and other patrons at around lunchtime, drank tea and talked to each other for nearly half an hour — one of them appearing to reassure his more nervous colleague.


One of them then left and soon after an explosion was heard, then the man who remained in the cafe detonated his bomb moments later, ripping through the building, said an Iraqi vendor who was in the cafe at the time.


The attack was a bold assault on the heart of the U.S.-Iraqi leadership of the country and a serious setback to the Bush administration's campaign to pacify postwar Iraq (news - web sites).


Tawhid and Jihad, the militant group of Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility for the blasts, saying they were "martyrdom" or suicide attacks.


Also Thursday, two U.S. soldiers were killed in Baghdad, one in a roadside bombing in the morning and the second in a shooting in the afternoon, the military said. As of Wednesday, 1,081 U.S. servicemen had been killed in Iraq since March 2003, according to a Defense Department count.


The Green Zone, a district of former Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) palaces in a bend of the Tigris River, was set up under the U.S. occupation to house Americans involved in the administration. It came to resemble a suburban "Little America" in central Baghdad — with green lawns, restaurants, American television, U.S. area codes, even at least one swimming pool set up behind barricades and multiple checkpoints.


Since the June handover of sovereignty, the Iraqi government has set up its offices there, but hundreds of Americans remain as part of the U.S. Embassy. In the increasing violence of recent months, the American civilians rarely leave the Green Zone. Around 10,000 Iraqis also live within the four square-mile zone, residents of the apartment buildings that had to be included within the perimeter. They need IDs to move in and out of the area.


Thursday's attack raised fears over security in the compound and underscored militants' ability to strike in the capital even as U.S.-Iraqi forces are carrying out a new offensive to suppress them in other parts of the country ahead of January elections.


Insurgents have frequently fired mortar rounds at the compound, and there have been a number of deadly car bombings at its gates. But this was the first time a bomb was successfully brought in and detonated.


One bomb ripped through an outdoor bazaar that caters to Westerners, selling everything from mobile phone accessories to pornographic DVDs.


The second blast took place at the Green Zone Cafe. Witnesses said around 20 other patrons were in the cafe at the time, about half of them American. Last week, an improvised bomb was found and safely defused at the same cafe.


A U.S. military statement said the bombs were "hand-carried" into the zone and that five people were killed in the blasts and 20 people wounded, including one U.S. soldier, an American airman and two U.S. civilians, the statement said.


U.S. officials in Washington said the four Americans killed in the blasts were employees of the private U.S. security firm DynCorp. The officials said two State Department officials and another DynCorp employee were among the wounded.


Iraq's national security adviser Qassem Dawoud said "initial information" indicated the attacks were suicide bombings. "This cowardly act will not go unpunished," he told a news briefing at the Green Zone. "We will strike them wherever they are."


After the blasts, the U.S. Embassy "strongly encouraged" Americans in the Green Zone to avoid the bazaar and restaurants inside the compound, limit their movements, travel in groups and carry several means of communication.





An Iraqi vendor who was in the cafe at the time of the blast said the two men believed to be the bombers "walked into the restaurant carrying two large handbags."

One of the men appeared shaken and nervous and the other appeared to be "reassuring him to do something, but we could not hear what it was," said the Iraqi, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared it becoming known he works in the Green Zone.

He said he and another companion attempted to inquire about the two men when they started suspecting them. The waiter who took the men's orders said they spoke in a Jordanian accent.

One of the men left the building, took a taxi and a couple of minutes later "we heard a loud boom."

"It was then that the second bomber blew himself up," the witness said, struggling to hear the questions after the explosion had marred his hearing. "I fell on the floor, then quickly gathered myself and ran for my life."

Mohammed al-Obeidi, the owner of a nearby restaurant who was wounded by flying glass from the cafe blast, said security in the zone has weakened since Iraqi police took a greater role with the June handover of power.

"Before it was really safe. They (the Americans) passed it over to the Iraqis ... the Iraqi Police. When they see someone they know, it's just, 'Go on in.' They don't understand it's for our safety," al-Obeidi said.

The Tawhid and Jihad group, led by the Jordanian al-Zarqawi, has claimed a series of bloody bombings across the country as well as the kidnapping and beheading of a number of foreign hostages — including three Americans.

Another group, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army posted a video Thursday on the Web showing the beheading of a man identified as a Turkish driver.

More than 150 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq since the insurgency began.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have stepped up military operations in Sunni militant strongholds across a wide swathe of territory north and west of Baghdad on the eve of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which last year saw a surge in rebel attacks.

U.S. warplanes on Thursday struck at least three sites in the insurgent-held city of Fallujah that the command said were being used by followers of al-Zarqawi. At least five people were killed and 16 wounded in all, according to Fallujah General Hospital.


http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041014/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_041014144744


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Another Mass Grave Unearthed in Iraq

By Leslie Wetzel
Talon News
October 14, 2004

Hundreds of bodies, including those of pregnant women, children clutching toys, and men bound and blindfolded were exhumed at a mass grave site in Hatra, near Mosul. The dead are said to be Kurds shot by Iraqi forces in the late 1980s, during a campaign that included the chemical attack on the town of Halabia.

The evidence released Wednesday is expected to be used against Saddam and members of his regime at their trial next year. But the man heading the investigation, Greg Kehoe, an American human rights lawyer, said that searches for victims of other massacres in more than 40 sites in Iraq were being hampered because European experts were not joining in.

Mr. Kehoe, who had spent five years investigating war crimes in the Balkans alongside European colleagues, said that because of limited funds his team could only excavate one mass grave at a time.

But Europeans, vastly experienced in such inquiries, "don't want to help out because of the ramifications of the death penalty" Saddam and fellow defendants face if convicted. The twenty-five member states of the European Union have abolished capital punishment within its borders, and EU countries, including Britain, routinely refuse to extradite people to the U.S. and other nations unless they receive guarantees that the suspects will not be executed.

American officials also feel that some of the European experts are antagonistic to the U.S. position on Iraq, and there is also widespread concern about safety. The discovery, however, will help President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, both under fierce criticism over false claims of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. They can be expected to contend that this buttresses their argument that Iraq and the rest of the world is a better place without Saddam in power.

Saddam's regime has been accused by human rights organizations of being responsible for killing up to 300,000 Iraqi and Kurdish civilians, although the figures are disputed. The U.S. authorities and the Iraqi interim government claim that more than 40 mass graves have been identified so far.

The massacre site at Hatra, in Nineveh province, was found by U.S. forces a year ago. The victims, from the Dokan Lake area, near Sulaymaniyah, are said to have been killed during the Anfal (The Spoils of War) campaign launched by Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid between late 1987 and early 1988, in which there were large-scale summary executions, as well as the use of mustard gas and sarin on the population of 5,000 in Halabja in March 1988.

Excavation at Hatra began on 1 September, with the first details being disclosed now. Investigators found 300 bodies piled into two trenches. The women and children were killed by small arms fire. The men in the second trench -- many tied up and blindfolded -- appeared to have been killed with semi-automatic rifles. Among the bodies was that of a woman shot in the face. She was carrying a child, about two years old, who had been shot in the back of the head. A boy was clutching a red and white football when he died.

Mr. Kehoe said, "I've been doing gravesites for a long time, and I've never seen anything like it -- women and children executed for no reason."


Ellie

[thedrifter]

U.S. Warplanes Pound Iraq's Falluja

FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. warplanes launched fierce attacks on the rebel-held Iraqi town of Falluja on Thursday, witnesses said.



They said explosions could be heard in the attacks which came after interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi warned the town would face an offensive unless it handed over Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his followers. There was no immediate word on casualties.




Ellie

[thedrifter]

Shells From Syria Fired at Troops in Iraq

By FISNIK ABRASHI, Associated Press Writer

QAIM, Iraq - American troops stationed along Iraq (news - web sites)'s border with Syria are coming under increasing mortar attack from shells fired from Syrian territory, but it's unclear who's responsible, U.S. officers said Thursday.


The 82 mm mortar rounds have been fired at U.S. and Iraqi positions in and around Husaybah in the far west of Iraq's Anbar province, said Lt. Col. Chris Woodbridge, commander of the 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment.


"Who exactly is firing these mortars, we do not know. But what we do know is that the point of origin of these rounds is on the Syrian side of the border," said Woodbridge, 39, of Brooklyn.


There has been no evidence linking the Syrian military to the attacks, he said. However, the Syrian military has the capability to determine who is launching the mortars and act against them, Woodbridge said.


"Syrian authorities should be the ones to go after them, no question about it," he said.


The mortar attacks come at a time of increased U.S. pressure on Syria to stem cross-border infiltration and movement of militants into Iraq.


The number of cross-border mortar attacks has increased in recent weeks with the latest coming Tuesday night, Woodbridge said. In one night alone, five mortar rounds landed near U.S. troops in Husaybah, he said.


The mortar rounds have largely missed their target and there have been no U.S. casualties, U.S. officers said.


A high-level U.S. delegation visited Syria last month to ask the government to institute tighter controls on its side of the border and to stop militants and their money from entering Iraq.


Following those talks, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld called the Syrians "unhelpful" and accused them of "facilitating terrorists moving back and forth, money moving back and forth" to Iraq. Rumsfeld made the remarks during a speech at Council on Foreign Relations in New York.


While Syria has posted hundreds of extra troops along the frontier, its officials have said it is impossible to seal off such a large area.


Woodbridge maintains that the official Syrian presence at the border is scarce, consisting of a few patrols at the border crossing.


The U.S. Marines, who patrol a 250-mile stretch of mostly desert terrain between the two countries, say the Syrians have not been helpful in securing their side of the border.


"They should be more active in patrolling their side of the border, in searching vehicles, in detaining suspicious characters," Woodbridge said.




http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041014/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_syria


Ellie