U.S. Marines prepare Falluja assault

[thedrifter]

U.S. marines prepare Falluja assault

By Michael Georgy

NEAR FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. marines are preparing for an assault on rebels in the Iraqi cities of Falluja and Ramadi, a senior
commander says.

"We are gearing up for a major operation," Brigadier General Denis Hajlik told reporters at a base near Falluja on Friday. "If we do so, it will
be decisive and we will whack them."

Hajlik, deputy commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said the expected operation would include the insurgent-held cities of
Falluja and Ramadi, west of Baghdad, and would also involve Iraqi forces.

The U.S. military has been pounding targets in Falluja to try to crush insurgents and root out foreign militants led by America's top enemy in
Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It says the Jordanian militant has bases in the Sunni Muslim city.

Marine intelligence officer Major James West said guerrilla violence could continue in Iraq even if Zarqawi was eliminated.

"Even if we get Zarqawi, that doesn't necessarily mean it's over," he told reporters.

West said Falluja's population had dropped to 50,000 or 60,000 from 350,000 because many families had fled for safety.

Residents in Falluja said the city was generally quiet on Friday after some overnight shelling in an eastern district. No casualties were
reported.

Iraq's U.S.-backed interim government has told Falluja leaders they must surrender Zarqawi and allow Iraqi security forces to regain control
of the city or face military action.

Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi urged the people of Falluja on Thursday to seize what he said could be the "last chance" for a peaceful
solution, but set no deadline.


Reuters


http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/Swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5304826

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Marines Revamp The Supply Chain That Serves Troops Oct. 28, 2004

The branch is rolling out Oracle's enterprise apps to streamline its supply and logistics operations.
By Elena Malykhina



A modern military needs more than high-tech weaponry. It needs an IT-driven supply chain that delivers the right information and the right supplies exactly when troops need them. To that end, the U.S. Marine Corps is overhauling its supply chain, which serves soldiers in Iraq and around the world, with new business processes and Oracle's enterprise applications.
The Marine Corps this week said it has selected Oracle's E-Business Suite, including supply-chain planning, procurement, logistics, and other apps, to sustain its Global Combat Support System-Marine Corps/Logistics Chain Management program launched in July. Oracle's software is replacing decades-old legacy systems and will be rolled out to more than 7,500 troops and support staff by 2007 and eventually to the entire Marine Corps.

The supply-chain overhaul was prompted by a number of logistics problems. The Marine Corps is still using batch-processing supply and maintenance legacy systems from the 1970s, which don't interoperate well and can tangle communications between different units, headquarters, and suppliers. Because these are mainframe and client/server apps, they can't easily be used on the battlefield. "The legacy systems were built to enable old processes," says Randy Delarm, program manager for global combat support systems and information systems and infrastructure at the Marine Corps Systems Command. "Not only are our IT systems built on old technology and architecture, they no longer support the vision of where we're going with logistics modernization in the Marine Corps."

The inadequate systems have meant that the Marine Corps hasn't been able to, for example, locate surplus supplies in one unit that could be transferred to another, Delarm says. The logistics problems have even led to supply delays and shortages in the Iraqi war. In March, Brigadier General Edward G. Usher, director of logistics plans, policies, and strategic mobility for the corps, testified before Congress that the "lack of asset visibility on unit stocks and in-transit visibility on ordered items made it difficult to identify actual shortages, to locate needed items within stocks for reallocation, and to direct and track the movement of ordered items to requesting units."

The reengineering project should make it easier to find supplies as well as assess and share logistics information, such as the arrival time of a certain supply. The increased visibility and data sharing should cut excess and "just-in-case" inventory, Delarm says.

Oracle's E-Business Suite, which was selected from among several other vendors' software, will run on the Marine Corps' supply and maintenance system and electronically link Marine units in the field with supporting units. Troops will be able to check on maintenance and supply requests via a single Web-portal interface. The Web architecture makes it easier to deploy in the field, and the software will automate many of the supply, maintenance, and logistics functions. For example, when a specific supply runs low, the software can automatically place an order to replenish it, Delarm says.

In addition, the Oracle suite complies with the Marine's Logistics Enterprise Architecture and can interoperate with supply and logistics systems at other Department of Defense branches as well as commercial partners. That means the U.S. Army, Navy, and the Air Force could access Marine Corps supply chain and logistics information if they're engaged with a Marine unit, Delarm says. The Marine Corps already uses Oracle Database and Oracle Application Server. Now it's in the process of selecting a systems integrator that will "integrate the Oracle solution with the rest of the Marine Corps' infrastructure and systems," Delarm says. The entire supply chain and logistics re-engineering project is expected to wrap up by 2007. "We're trying to take better care of our war fighters and see that they get the supplies that they need in order to succeed on the battlefield. We're striving for greater combat effectiveness for our Marines and that's the bottom line."

http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=51201324

Ellie

[thedrifter]

'Significant number' of Beaufort Marines will deploy to Iraq in early 2005

By Jennifer Moore
Carolina Morning News

About 14,000 East-coast based Marines and sailors will deploy to Iraq in early 2005, including units from the Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort.

The second Marine Expeditionary Force (II MEF) headquartered in Camp Lejeune, N.C., will have a phased deployment beginning in January. The Marines and sailors deployed will help relieve the West-coast based I Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF).

Capt. Don Caetano, public affairs officer for Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, said the deployment will affect a "significant number" of Marines and sailors based at the air station.

But, he said, they are ready for their task - conducting stability and security operations in western Iraq.

"We're trained for what we have to do over there, and we're looking forward to serving," Caetano said.

http://www.lowcountrynow.com/stories/102804/LOCmarines.shtml

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Marines of 11th MEU do have leisure
Submitted by: 11th MEU
Story by: Computed Name: Cpl. Matthew S. Richards
Story Identification #: 2004102952050




CAMP FORWARD OPERATING BASE DUKE, Iraq (Oct. 29, 2004) -- The sun is fierce here and long hours of patrolling in the dust filled town of An Najaf, Iraq, leave the Marine encased by a transparent layer of powder. A sweat-drenched flak jacket and helmet drop to the floor with two numbing thuds, sending more dust particles shooting through the surrounding air. Another Marine finally rests inside a wind beaten green tent -- one graciously filled with the cool respite of air conditioning.

The day was long, like many others, but there are more to come. Lance Cpl. William E. Hartman, operations clerk, Command Element, 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable), returns from another arduous day providing security out in town. This one, like many others, the day began as the sun came up and ended long after the sky slowly bruised from warm orange to deep blue.

After shedding his gear, Hartman jumps in a cleansing shower and then goes to swallow a hot meal. His feet hurt and his body is tired. He knows it's all going to happen again tomorrow while he crawls in the rack, slips on his headphones and closes his mind to everything but the band The Grateful Dead now playing in his ears. This is an almost daily practice for him, and he uses it to get by.

It's just his way of winding down from a strenuous day and preparing for the next. Many other Marines of the MEU have their own unique means of relaxation and fun after work.

"They (The Grateful Dead) help me get to sleep at night, and most of their songs are happy. So, if I listen to them at night when I go to sleep I'll be thinking of a song in the morning and that makes the day better," Hartman said.

Most Marines use their leisure time to escape -- to catch a momentary break from their work. But they don’t do anything that gets in the way of their job. For most, it's just a way to keep from getting burnt out on the stress that can accompany one on a deployment.

Corporal Dave R. Ford, network administrator, Command Element, claims that he "definitely" spends more than half his spare time glued to a video game of some kind. He owns two different game systems out here, borrows another occasionally from the MEU Chaplain's office, and even has more games on his personal computer.

"It helps time pass easily and it helps me get through the deployment," Ford said.
However, he doesn't hoard the game play to himself. He'll drop his game to let in another player at any time. So, the environment around his rack can be solemn with his quiet concentration or filled with yells of jubilation where one Marine conquers another in one of the many games. He plays most types, everything from first person shooter, role-playing, strategic and different sports games.

"He'll play anything he can get his hands on," said Cpl. Sylvester McKinney, network administrator, Command Element, as he stepped in front of Ford's screen to see what he was playing.

Ford also points out that the games do more than just pass the time for him. He says they help cope with his helter skelter work schedule that often causes him to get sleep at infrequent intervals.

"The schedule I work doesn't allow me to keep a consistent sleep schedule. So, if you stay up and pass the time playing and go to sleep when you're tired it helps to keep a consistent schedule," Ford said.

Video games aren't for everyone though. Just across the tent from where Ford was busily punching his controller, Cpl. Matt Herring, network administrator, Command Element, was silently focused on one of the many books he has read during this deployment. He was reading under a warm, incandescent glow complementary to the cool blue emitted by Ford's screen.
"If I can find a good book, I'll read it," Herring said. He estimates that he's read more than 10 during this deployment.

Mostly, the books come from a floating library that circulates the MEU in a hand-me-down system.

"Once I read them, then it makes no sense to let them sit around. I give them to other people who want to read them," Herring said. "It doesn't really matter to me where they go once I've read them."

Ford added that he acquires many of the video games he plays the same way. But a central location for this swapping of entertainment comes from the MEU Chaplain's office where many hovering books, movies and games rest momentarily before landing in the hands of another person seeking their refuge.

Lance Cpl. Sinclair L. Harrell, administrative clerk, Command Element, finds sanctuary in the plethora of movies surprisingly available to the Marines and sailors deployed with the MEU.
"It kind of helps escape the day and enjoy someplace else for a while," he said.

His time off is divided between resting on his rack watching movies with his six-inch screen personal DVD player on his chest and many hours in the gym. He works out almost 10 hours a week, but it's just to be in better shape by the time he gets home. It's not to look better for his wife who, nonetheless, is "still going to make me take out the garbage."

The asylum he seeks from the monotony of a daily routine is mostly speckled with dreams of spending time with his daughter, who was born while he was in boot camp. And he jokes that he's been gone so much that she won't be able to recognize him.

Instead of the more obvious thoughts of home, one of the peculiar aspects of the Marine Corps and deployments are the unordinary hours one might work. For instance guard duty is most oftentimes different from the normal hours a civilian works during daylight.

The Noncommissioned Officers of 81mm Mortar Platoon, Battalion Landing Team 1st Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, 11th MEU (SOC), are standing guard here and are "lucky if we get a day a week off," said Sgt. Justin D. Sperry, squad leader, 81mm Plt. Their weekly schedule consists of a 24-hour shift as sergeant of the guard, another 24 hours on the quick reaction force, then eight hours at the FOB's entry control point and then usually three days where they have two four-hour shifts on a guard tower. That means eighty-hour workweeks are a normal occurrence.

"See this dent in my rack?" rhetorically asked Cpl. Joseph M. Pervsich, mortarman, 81mm Plt., referring to how he spends his time off.

But they still have their entertainment as well. They even pooled together money to buy a TV for their tent from the soldiers the MEU relieved. Incredibly, one TV among the tent full of men doesn't create any problems with deciding what to watch. They trickle in at such individual and infrequent rates that no one is hardly in the tent together at any one time.

"Whoever is standing here just puts something in and we just walk in at sometime and watch," said Cpl. Michael S. Bachicha, mortarman, 81mm Plt. "It's on all the time with everybody in and out all the time."

The tent is dark but for the glow of a comedian creating chuckles around the few Marines in the tent that are actually awake. When they're not watching movies or comedians, the Marines play a lot of football video games together.

"Except for people like me that don't touch the thing because I can't play," Sperry said making fun of the fact that he always seems to lose when he plays.

Although, not everybody can win, there's one place on the FOB that everyone seems to be able to handle. Recently, the Marines of the MEU constructed an Internet Café. Within days of it opening Marines wait anxiously in line for a chance to talk to friends and loved ones around the world on Web Cameras, and they sigh reluctantly when their number is called and their turn is up.

Marines spend their half hour on the Internet to catch up on current events or just to find out what's going on back home.

"Since it's getting close to the holidays people feel obligated to contact home," said Lance Cpl. Fermin Treto, supply clerk, Command Element, on his way out the door when his shift was up.

Sergeant Luis D. Almaguer, police sergeant, Command Element, spent a lot of time helping to put the Internet Café up and -- as if he can't get away -- was surfing the web there himself. He estimates that more than 150 Marines and sailors use the 20 different computers a day.

"It's like your own little bubble. In that 30 minutes you feel like you're not at work anymore," Almaguer said.

All the Marines of the MEU don't spend their spare time glued to a chair and fixated on a screen of some kind. Intelligence Marines of the Command Element are just one unit that band together to compete in various sports tournaments around the FOB.

"It helps us take our minds off the daily schedule and it builds camaraderie and teamwork," said 1st Lt. Daniel R. Myers, reconnaissance and surveillance coordinator, Command Element.

Fifteen or so Marines from Intel were up late in the evening one night for a volleyball tournament and are ready and signed up for a flag football tournament coming soon.

"It gives the Marines a chance to do something that isn't so serious. It ultimately refreshes them so they can focus even better on their work," Myers said.

Groups of Marines and sailors can be seen scattered all over the FOB playing football, frisbee, soccer, basketball, volleyball or just running together. Organized tournaments, however, are the product of one man on base. Chief William C. Hammond, religious programs specialist, Command Element, arranges a gamut of different tournaments just to lift everyone's spirits.

"I like to bring some kind of enjoyment to them," Hammond said.

He has all kinds of tournaments planned. Everything from horseshoes, spades to a strongest man and woman competition.

The volleyball tournament was the first experiment of such kinds of organized revelry.

"It really paid off. There are around 50 people out there most of the night," Hammond said.

Myers mentioned how he heard his Marines talking about it for days afterward saying "it was one of the more fun things they've done out here."

It's Hammond's own drive to provide fun to Marines and sailors of the MEU that motivates him to pack a schedule full of interesting events.

"It makes me feel better to give them something to do. Boredom can sometimes make people complacent," he said.

The chapel is also stockpiled with ways for Marines to "vent without venting too much," he added.

With more than a thousand books, movies and CD's that anybody can check out, the chapel is a common ground for Marines to come searching for reprieve. That's not even counting the abundance of board games and the estimated 2,000 pounds of care packages handed out.

So, it's a difficult task to find a Marine or sailor strolling around the FOB without anything to occupy him or herself. It's definitely harder to find than anything to do.


http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/image1.nsf/Lookup/2004102953139/$file/041020-M-2306K-040%20low.jpg

First Lt. Daniel R. Myers, reconnaissance and surveillance coordinator, Command Element, 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable), spikes the ball during a volleyball tournament here, Oct. 19. The MEU commanding officer's Personal Security Detail took first place, the Army's 153rd Engineers took second and the MEU S-4 team took third. Photo by: Gunnery Sgt. Chago Zapata

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf/0/5EA75EC1F95261D285256F3C003358D9?opendocument


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Armed Group Claims to Have Iraq Explosives

Thu Oct 28, 7:55 AM ET

BAGHDAD, Iraq - An armed group claimed in a video Thursday to have obtained a large amount of explosives missing from a munitions depot facility in Iraq (news - web sites) and threatened to use them against foreign troops.


A group calling itself Al-Islam's Army Brigades, Al-Karar Brigade, said it had coordinated with officers and soldiers of "the American intelligence" to obtain a "huge amount of the explosives that were in the al-Qaqaa facility."


The claim couldn't be independently verified. The speaker was surrounded by masked, armed men standing in front of a black banner with the group's name on it in the tape obtained by Associated Press Television News.


"We promise God and the Iraqi people that we will use it against the occupation forces and those who cooperate with them in the event of these forces threatening any Iraqi city," the man added.


Nearly 400 tons of conventional explosives have disappeared from the al-Qaqaa facility south of Baghdad, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.


The U.N. agency's chief Mohamed ElBaradei, reported the disappearance to the U.N. Security Council on Monday, two weeks after Iraqi officials told the nuclear agency that 377 tons of explosives had vanished as a result of "theft and looting ... due to lack of security."


The disappearance of the explosives has become a huge campaign issue in the U.S. presidential election.


Meanwhile, Iraqi extremists in videotape aired Thursday by Al-Jazeera television showed what they said was a Polish woman hostage held in Iraq and demanded that Poland remove all its troops from Iraq.


The group, which called itself the Abu Bakr al-Siddiq Fundamentalist Brigades, said the woman, who was not identified, works with U.S. troops in Iraq. They also demanded the release of all Iraqi female prisoners.


Interior Ministry spokesman Col. Adnan Abdul Rahman said the woman was a longtime Iraq resident with Iraqi citizenship and was believed to have been abducted Wednesday night from her home in Baghdad. Abdul Rahman did not release her name.


A middle-aged woman with gray hair and dressed in a pink polka-dotted blouse sat in front of two masked gunmen, one of whom was pointing a pistol at her head. Her voice was not audible on the tape.


Al-Jazeera said the woman called on Polish troops to leave the country and for U.S. and Iraqi authorities to release all female detainees from the Abu Ghraib prison. The announcer said she had been "working in Iraq for a long time."


In Warsaw, a Polish Defense Ministry official said she apparently did not belong to any of the Polish military units. Polish television TVN24 reported that all Polish journalists in Iraq have been accounted for.


Ahmed al-Sheikh, Al-Jazeera's editor-in-chief, said the kidnappers did not mention a specific threat on the tape nor did they give a deadline for their demands to be met. He would not say when or how the station obtained the tape.


Poland commands some 6,000 troops from 15 nations — including some 2,400 from Poland — in the Babil, Karbala and Wasit provinces.


The armed group had also claimed responsibility in the September kidnapping of 10 Turkish hostages, who were released this month.


Late Wednesday, Al-Jazeera aired a video showing British aid worker Margaret Hassan, who again pleaded with Britain to withdraw its forces from Iraq even as some 800 British troops began deploying toward the Baghdad area. They were expected to relieve U.S. troops in the capital who are being preparing for a major assault on insurgent areas west and north of the capital.





Hassan, 59, who ran CARE International's operations in Iraq, has been the most high-profile of foreign hostages abducted in Iraq. No group has claimed responsibility in her abduction.

She also asked for the release of female Iraqi detainees and the closure of CARE's operations in Iraq.

A day earlier, a militant Web site ran a claim by the al-Qaida-linked group led by Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi vowing to kill a 24-year-old Japanese hostage within 48 hours unless Japan withdrew its 500 troops from the country.

Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi swiftly refused the demand, saying he wouldn't give in to terrorists.

Meanwhile, fighting continued on several fronts.

_ U.S. aircraft bombed a suspected rebel safehouse Thursday in the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, killing two people, the U.S. military and witnesses said.

_ A car bomb exploded Thursday in southern Baghdad, killing a U.S. soldier and at least one Iraqi civilian, the U.S. military said.

_ Insurgents clashed with U.S. forces Thursday in the restive central Iraq town of Ramadi, leaving two people dead, according to the U.S. military and hospital officials.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&e=11&u=/ap/20041028/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_explosives_claim


Ellie

[thedrifter]

November 01, 2004

DoD aims to build database of prints
Program targets possible terrorists

By Jason Sherman
Times staff writer


The Pentagon has launched a pilot program to collect the fingerprints of potential enemies in its war on terrorism.
The program eventually aims to enable U.S. officials to recognize terrorists by building databases of DNA samples, palm prints, voice sounds and iris patterns.

Troops on the front line are already collecting fingerprints to feed a new military database that will be modeled on — and linked to — the FBI’s fingerprint library. The FBI’s library contains prints and criminal histories of 47 million people and is the world’s largest biometric collection.

Those being fingerprinted will include detainees, enemy prisoners of war, civilian internees and foreigners under U.S. government control who are perceived as national security threats and deemed to require further background checks.

“In the global war on terrorism, the Defense Department and the U.S. government cannot trust the names and documents that are presented to authorities in order to establish true identity,” John Woodward, director of the Defense Department’s Biometric Management Office that is overseeing the effort, said in an e-mail response to questions. “We must develop a method for linking an individual to their past alias identities and activities, particularly criminal and terrorist activities.”

Fingerprints are the first step in building what proponents hope will eventually be a comprehensive system that uses a number of biometric factors to identify an individual.

Lockheed Martin Information Systems of Seabrook, Md., which built the FBI’s fingerprint system, was awarded $5 million by the Pentagon on Sept. 10 for the first year of a five-year contract to begin building the military’s fingerprint system.

Company officials declined requests for an interview through a spokesman because of the “sensitivity of the project.”

Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s technology and liberty program, said the Pentagon’s biometric efforts are worthwhile — as long as they focus outward.

“What would worry me about this is that systems used by the Defense Department off American soil are going to find themselves migrating back to the U.S. … and turned on American residents,” he said.

In February, the Pentagon’s chief information officer issued a new policy requiring all military units that collect electronic fingerprints from “red forces,” a military term for established or potential enemies, to comply with internationally accepted fingerprint standards.

That set the stage for Paul McHale, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense, in July to let the military try to match fingerprint data it collects in Iraq, Afghanistan and anywhere else overseas against the FBI’s fingerprint database.

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=0-MARINEPAPER-460946.php


Ellie

[thedrifter]

SILVER STAR EARNED BY USMC GUNNER <br />
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <br />
MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (Oct. 28, 2004) -- He's credited with...

[thedrifter]

Bomb Attack Injures 3 American Soldiers
Associated Press
October 27, 2004

KABUL, Afghanistan - A bomb hit a U.S. military convoy in southeastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, injuring three American troops and an Afghan soldier, the military said.

The bomb exploded near the injured soldiers' Humvee near Qalat, the capital of Zabul province, a U.S. military statement said.

Two of the U.S. soldiers were evacuated to the American base at Kandahar for treatment. One had shrapnel injuries and one had a possible concussion. Both were in stable condition, the statement said.

The third American and a soldier from the Afghan National Army were treated at the scene for cuts.

The United States has some 17,000 troops in Afghanistan hunting remnants of the Taliban regime ousted three years ago as well as al-Qaida militants and followers of renegade warlords.

The soldiers come under regular attack in areas including Zabul, a lawless province on the Pakistani border, where U.S. forces say they have killed scores of militants this year.

http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,FL_attack_102704,00.html

Ellie

[thedrifter]

British Military Begins Iraq Deployment
Associated Press
October 27, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Some 800 British forces, accompanied by U.S. Marines, began making their way toward Baghdad on Wednesday as part of a redeployment ahead of an expected coalition offensive against insurgent strongholds.

The deployment came hours after Iraq's most feared militant group released a video threatening to behead a Japanese captive within 48 hours unless Japan withdraws its troops from Iraq.

British Lt. Col. James Cowan said British troops left the southern city of Basra to head for a base in Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad. Forty U.S. Marines were with them, he said.

"British forces have just started moving this morning into the north of Hillah. They will deploy in that area and will receive their jobs in maintaining security there," he said.

Associated Press Television News footage showed large flatbed trucks carrying armored British vehicles up a road through Iraq's southern desert.

Nearly 800 Scottish soldiers of the First Battalion, Black Watch are to replace U.S. forces who are expected to take part in offensives against insurgent strongholds west and north of the capital in an attempt to bring order to Iraq before elections in January.

The video was posted on a militant Web site Tuesday, saying the man was kidnapped by Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group and vowing to kill him within 48 hours unless the demands were met.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi rejected the demands.

"The Self-Defense Forces will not withdraw," Koizumi told reporters in western Japan. "I cannot allow terrorism and cannot bow to terrorism."

The captive, who had long hair and wore a white T-shirt, was identified only as someone connected to the Japanese armed forces. He spoke briefly in halting English and Japanese, addressing himself to Koizumi.


"They asked me why Japanese government broke the law and sent troops to Iraq," the man said in English. "They want Japanese government and Koizumi prime minister, they want to withdraw the Japanese troops from Iraq or cut my head."

He then paused, sighed and switched into Japanese.

"Mr. Koizumi. They seek the withdrawal of Japanese Self-Defense Forces... (and say they) will take my head off," the captive said. "I'm sorry. I want to return to Japan again."

The video's authenticity could not be independently confirmed, but the Japanese government later identified the captive as 24-year-old Shosei Koda.

Tokyo has dispatched some 500 troops to the southern Iraqi city of Samawah on a humanitarian mission to purify water and rebuild schools in support of U.S.-led reconstruction efforts.

Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura urged the hostage-takers to immediately release Koda, saying that he had nothing to do with Japan's deployment in Iraq.

"Mr. Koda is a private individual who is not related to the Self-Defense Forces or the government of Japan," Machimura said.

When the captive finished speaking, the video showed him kneeling before three masked militants. One of them read a statement calling the man "an element attached to the Japanese armed forces."

"We give the Japanese government 48 hours to withdraw its troops from Iraq, otherwise his fate will be the same as that of his predecessors, Berg and Bigley and other infidels," the man said, referring to the beheadings of British engineer Kenneth Bigley and U.S. businessman Nicholas Berg.

The man's head was bowed to the floor as the militant spoke, and another of the militants grabbed him by the hair to face the camera.

The militant said the Japanese man had entered Iraq through Israel and Jordan. "The documents that prove this will be displayed when his family and the Japanese government identify him," he said.

The video, which lasted just under three minutes, bore the logo of al-Qaida in Iraq, the new name for al-Zarqawi's group, which was previously known as Tawhid and Jihad and has allied itself with Osama bin Laden. The group has claimed responsibility for the beheadings of Bigley, two American co-workers and Berg, as well as numerous car bombings and other attacks.

The United States has offered a $25 million bounty for the capture or killing of al-Zarqawi, who is believed to be hiding in the militant stronghold of Fallujah.

The American military wants the British to assume security responsibility in areas close to Baghdad, so U.S. Marines and soldiers can be shifted to insurgency strongholds west of the capital, including Fallujah.

Prime Minister Tony Blair's decision to agree to the U.S. request for redeployment is a politically sensitive one for the British leader, whose popularity has plummeted because of his support for the Iraq war.

Britain's 8,500 troops are based around the southern port city of Basra in a relatively peaceful area of Iraq. Sixty-eight British soldiers have been killed in Iraq, compared with more than 1,000 U.S. troops.

The political pressure mounted with last week's kidnapping of British aid worker Margaret Hassan, who heads CARE International's operations in Iraq. Hassan, 59, who also holds Iraqi and Irish citizenship, was kidnapped on her way to work in Baghdad. No group has claimed responsibility.

Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said Tuesday that more extremists are massing in Fallujah and warned of increasing terrorist attacks to come. On Saturday, insurgents ambushed and executed about 50 unarmed Iraqi soldiers as they were heading home from a U.S. military training camp northeast of Baghdad.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Pentagon Seeks to Account for Explosives

By JOHN J. LUMPKIN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - An Army unit removed 250 tons of ammunition from the Al-Qaqaa weapons depot in April 2003 and later destroyed it, the company's former commander said Friday. A Pentagon (news - web sites) spokesman said some was of the same type as the missing explosives that have become a major issue in the presidential campaign


But those 250 tons were not located under the seal of the International Atomic Energy Agency — as the missing high-grade explosives had been — and Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita could not definitely say whether they were part of the missing 377 tons.


Maj. Austin Pearson, speaking at a press conference at the Pentagon, said his team removed 250 tons of TNT, plastic explosives, detonation cords, and white phosporous rounds on April 13, 2003 — 10 days after U.S. forces first reached the Al Qaqaa site.


"I did not see any IAEA seals at any of the locations we went into. I was not looking for that," Pearson said.


Di Rita sought to point to Pearson's comments as evidence that some RDX, one of the high-energy explosives, might have been removed from the site. RDX is also known as plastic explosive.


But Di Rita acknowledged: "I can't say RDX that was on the list of IAEA is what the major pulled out. ... We believe that some of the things they were pulling out of there were RDX."


Further study was needed, Di Rita said.


Whether Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s forces removed the explosives before U.S. forces arrived on April 3, 2003, or whether they fell into the hands of looters and insurgents afterward — because the site was not guarded by U.S. troops — has become a key issue in the campaign.


Pearson's comments raise further questions about the chain of events surrounding these explosives, the disappearance of which has been repeatedly cited by Democrat John Kerry (news - web sites) as evidence of the Bush administration's poor handling of the war in Iraq (news - web sites).


Still, 377 tons of explosives amount to a tiny fraction of the weaponry in Iraq. U.S. forces have already destroyed, or have slated to destroyed, more than 400,000 tons of all manner of Iraqi weapons and ammunition. But at least another 250,000 tons from Saddam's regime remain unaccounted for, and some has undoubtedly fallen into the hands of insurgents.


The window in which the explosives were most likely removed from Al-Qaqaa begins on March 15, 2003 — five days before the war started — and ends in late May, when a U.S. weapons inspection team declared the depot stripped and looted.


Two weeks ago, Iraqi officials told the United Nations (news - web sites)' International Atomic Energy Agency that the explosives vanished as a result of "theft and looting ... due to lack of security."


The explosives were known to be housed in storage bunkers at the sprawling Al-Qaqaa complex and nearby structures. U.N. nuclear inspectors placed fresh seals over the bunker doors in January 2003. The inspectors visited Al-Qaqaa for the last time that March 15 and reported that the seals were not broken; concluding the weapons were still inside at the time.


A U.S. military reconaissance image, taken of Al Qaqaa on March 17, shows two vehicles, presumably Iraqi, outside a bunker at Al-Qaqaa. But Di Rita said that bunker was not known to contain any of the 377 tons, and that the image only shows that there was activity at the depot after U.N. inspectors left.


Elements of the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division arrived in the area on April 3 en route to Baghdad. They fought a battle with Iraqi forces inside Al Qaqaa and moved on, leaving a battalion behind to clear out enemy fighters in the area. Troops found other weapons, including artillery shells, on the base, he said. They didn't specifically search for the 377 tons of high explosives that are missing. On April 6, the battalion left for Baghdad.


Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others have advanced the theory that the materials were removed before U.S. forces arrived, saying looting that much material would be impossible by small-scale thieves, and that a large-scale theft would have involved lots of trucks and would have been detected.


About four days later, another large unit, the 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division, moved into the area. That unit did not search Al-Qaqaa. A unit spokesman said there was heavy looting in the area at the time.





On April 13, Pearson's ordnance-disposal team arrived and took the 250 tons out in a day. That materiel was later destroyed by U.S. forces. His comments may suggest that some of it was still there when U.S. forces arrived.

On April 18, a Minnesota television crew traveling with the 101st Airborne shot a videotape of troops as they first opened the bunkers at the Al-Qaqaa that shows what appeared to be high explosives still in barrels and bearing the markings of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

U.S. weapons hunters did not give the area a thorough search until May, when they visited on three occasions, starting May 8. They searched every building on the compound over the course of those three visits, but did not find any material or explosives that had been marked by the IAEA.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=2&u=/ap/20041029/ap_on_re_mi_ea/us_iraq_weapons_23


Ellie

[thedrifter]

November 01, 2004

Fallujah 101
As new siege looms, leaders study lessons learned from first attack

By Christian Lowe
Times staff writer


If he had to do it all over again, Maj. Kevin Norton wouldn’t change much of anything.
Norton, who was the operations officer for 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines, during the April siege of Fallujah, Iraq, knows what it takes to seize and hold ground in an urban battlefield. Key to success: armor, infantry and a stack of aircraft on hand to deliver precision close-air support at a moment’s notice.

To root out the terrorists and insurgents holding the Iraqi town, Norton used time-tested methods to clear the city block-by-block. That is, until he was told to stand fast in a defensive cordon, leaving the job undone.

“They did not want to accept the price, for obvious reasons, of crushing Fallujah,” Norton said Oct. 13. “From what we saw … there was going to be a lot of destruction, including civilian deaths.

“Ultimately, as the month [went] on, what you had was a pseudo cease-fire.”

Since that cease-fire in mid-April, the notion that the Marines might have handed the insurgents a victory by withdrawing has weighed heavily in the ranks. Only recently have senior Marine commanders admitted that they would have preferred waiting to take on the city rather than immediately reacting to the March 31 slaying of four civilian security contractors, or continued with the assault once it began.

And now, Marine units that recently arrived in Iraq stand poised once again to assault the city. The pressure on U.S. and Iraqi forces to pacify the city is mounting as the clock ticks down for Iraq’s first democratic election in January. On Oct. 1, newly trained Iraqi National Guard and special forces teamed up with their U.S. counterparts in an assault on Samarra — a similarly overrun town, which many deemed a success.

That operation followed a weeks-long assault in August on the militia forces of rebel cleric Muqtada al Sadr in the Shiite holy city of Najaf. His Mahdi Army was rooted out of its stronghold at the Imam Ali mosque in the city center by Army and Marine forces and has been slowly in retreat ever since.

With Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s Oct. 13 ultimatum to the tribal leaders of Fallujah that they hand over foreign fighters and terrorist leader Abu Mussab al Zarqawi, and the gradual pressure being applied by Marine forces on the ground and bombing from the air since, it looks as if Round 2 in Fallujah is just around the corner.

Another chance at success

At a Sept. 10 seminar sponsored by the war gaming division of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab at Quantico, Va., Norton and his counterpart from 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, joined dozens of Army, Marine and government veterans of Fallujah to discuss lessons learned from the assault and propose ways to make a second battle there more successful.

Reports indicate that the Iraqi force sent in to secure the town after the Marine pullback — the Fallujah Brigade — collapsed soon after it formed. In some cases, the reports note, the force may have gone so far as to aid the insurgents and terrorists who now run the city. The U.S. military in Iraq had dubbed Fallujah a “no-go zone” for its troops, a situation Marine units now flanking the city will have to rectify soon if elections are to go forward successfully.

Both Norton and his counterpart from 1/5, Maj. Pete Farnum, said the most important element for success in Fallujah is incorporating an effective and credible Iraqi army force into the assault. The Fallujah Brigade was a good try back in April, they said, but a better trained and led Iraqi force will be needed to help identify insurgents, deal with civilians who may find themselves in the middle of the assault, and secure objectives after Marine forces move on.

“Marines and Iraqis side-by-side [should] secure the city of Fallujah,” Farnum said Oct. 14. “The Iraqis have the capability of interfacing with the local populace. They know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. They give you a lot of capabilities there.”

Insurgents increasingly use mosques for refuge, knowing that U.S. forces won’t follow them for fear of offending the local population. Iraqi forces, however, can be used to expel enemy forces from holy sites without seeming sacrilegious, Farnum noted.

The mix of infantry, armor and air power used during the first Fallujah assault will be needed for Round 2, they said.

Tanks, covered by infantry, can obliterate tenacious enemy positions. Snipers should be used as spotters for company commanders to identify enemy positions and to take out key enemy personnel, and special operations forces and Marine reconnaissance units can be used as an “interdiction force” to nab insurgent leaders or terrorists as they flee.

Air power, such as the fearsome AC-130 Spectre gunship, with its night vision capability and precision firepower, will prove pivotal, as will laser-guided bombs designed to burrow deep into a building, destroying enemy bunkers while minimizing collateral damage.

The Fallujah veterans stressed that any assault would have to be preceded by psychological operations forces warning the city’s residents to get out or hunker down before Marines and Iraqi soldiers move in. Christian Lowe covers the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab. He can be reached at (703) 750-8613 or clowe@marinecorpstimes.com.


http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=0-MARINEPAPER-463332.php


Ellie

[thedrifter]

October 29, 2004

Assault ship Belleau Wood home from gulf

By Gidget Fuentes
Times staff writer


SAN DIEGO — With its well and hangar decks bare of Marines and their combat equipment, the assault ship Belleau Wood returned home Oct. 24 after a five-month deployment to the Persian Gulf.
The ship, nicknamed “Big Dog,” left in May, one month early, to take some 2,200 Marines to expected combat in Iraq. The assault ship led a seven-vessel Expeditionary Strike Group 3 and 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit from Camp Pendleton, Calif., during combat operations and maritime security missions in the northern Persian Gulf this summer.

In round-the-clock operations, the ship’s flight deck supported 2,500 sorties and 140 combat missions, including Marines’ AV-8B Harrier jets and Navy HH-60 Seahawk helicopters.

“The whole time out there, we were ready. We leaned forward the whole time,” said Capt. Earl L. Gay, who commanded Belleau Wood on the deployment. “The entire training cycle matched up perfectly with what we saw on deployment,” he added. Gay turned over command to Capt. Robert L. Ford on Oct. 28.

Amphibious Squadron 5 and dock landing ship Comstock also returned to San Diego Naval Station on Oct. 24. The transport dock ship Denver, sidelined with a problem boiler, arrived two days later.

ESG-3, led by Marine Brig. Gen. Joseph V. Medina, on June 30 took over command of Task Force 58, which oversees maritime security operations in the northern gulf that includes protection of al-Basra and Khawr al-Amaya oil terminals off Iraq’s coast.

On Sept. 9, Medina and the strike group cross-decked from Belleau Wood to the assault ship Essex, which arrived from Japan with its ready group and the 31st MEU. Belleau Wood headed for home. “We had done our mission,” Gay said. “We’re still in a surge-ready capacity,” and will leave if ordered to redeploy, he added.

ESG-3’s destroyers Preble and Hopper and guided-missile cruiser Mobile Bay, which took on the responsibilities for maritime security operations, remain in the gulf region.

Denver, commissioned in 1968, has had its share of problems in recent years. Prior to a 2000 deployment, the ship struggled with boiler and generator troubles during two training exercises. And returning home six months later, it collided with the replenishment ship Yukon west of Hawaii. A temporary patch on a 40-foot gaping hole in the bow enabled the ship to reach San Diego.

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=0-292925-478261.php

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Up-Armored Vehicle Effort Progressing Full Steam Ahead
By Donna Miles
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Oct. 29, 2004 — The assembly lines are moving 24/7 to keep up with the demand for up-armored vehicles in Iraq and for conversion kits to add extra protection to vehicles already there.

Gary Motsek, director of support operations for the U.S. Army Materiel Command, said the effort to provide increased vehicle protection against grenades, improvised explosive devices and small-arms fire is progressing fast and furiously as demand continues to increase.

Nearly 5,100 up-armored Humvees have been delivered to Army and Marine Corps units in Iraq, with another 724 on ships bound for the theater, Motsek said.

There, the up-armored Humvees are being issued to units based on their missions — regardless whether they're Army or Marine Corps, or active or reserve component, Motsek emphasized. "These factors have no bearing whatsoever on who's getting them," he said. "It's all based on the missions, and who has the greatest need for them," he said.

U.S. Central Command's current requirement for up-armored Humvees, one that has continued to increase, is for 8,105 up-armored Humvees in Iraq.

It's a number Motsek said was once considered almost unthinkable. At the beginning of the Iraqi war, the Army had only about 500 up-armored Humvees, called "UAHs," in its inventory. These were primarily used by military police units in their rear-protection role, he said.

No longer. Because they're easy to maneuver and just the right size for many of the missions being conducted in Iraq, Humvees have become "the platform of choice," Motsek said.

"If anyone would have told me a Humvee would be the platform of choice in a war, I would have told them they're crazy," he said.

Motsek said AM General, the company that builds the up-armored Humvees, has gone into around-the-clock production to churn out the vehicles as quickly as possible, but still is able to produce only several hundred a month.

"There's a perception that all you need to do is cut some carbon steel and slap it on the side of a vehicle," Motsek said. "That's simply not the case."

In addition to increased armor protection, up-armored Humvees feature more rugged suspension systems able to handle the added weight and ballistic- resistant glass. They also include air conditioners that enable crews to operate with the windows up, even in stifling temperatures.

Unwilling to leave deployed troops vulnerable while the production lines struggled to keep up with the demand, the Army came up with a second solution: add-on armor kits.

Not confident that commercial contractors could respond to the need quickly enough, Motsek said the Army ultimately designed and designed its own add-on armor kits in record time.

Engineers at the Army Research Laboratory in Adelphi, Md., went to the drawing board to design the kits "over a weekend," he said. The Army field-tested them at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Md., to ensure they met strict ballistics protection standards.

Even as the field tests were taking place, the Army started ordering the special steel and bullet-resistant glass needed to build the vehicles, he said.

That calculation proved to be decisive in moving the effort forward with unprecedented speed. Within six weeks of putting pen to paper to come up with a design, Motsek said the Army had the first kits in hand, ready for shipment to Iraq.

In contrast, the normal procurement process takes five to seven years.

The Army also field tested prototype add-on armor kits from several contractors, Motsek said, ultimately settling on one produced by O'Gara-Hess &

Eisenhardt.

Today, Army employees at four depots, two arsenals and an ammunition plant are working three shifts a day, producing the Army-designed kits to keep up with demand. Motsek said they've produced 8,800 add-on-armor kits, 8,700 of which have already been installed in vehicles in Iraq. O'Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt has provided 289 more kits, he said.

Yet despite the progress, Motsek said employees at production facilities keep their eye on the demand for more kits. The current requirement is for 13,872 kits.

During a recent visit to Letterkenny Army Depot, Pa., one facility producing the kits, Motsek said he was particularly impressed with the motivation of the workers he saw. One worker, who operated a laser-cutting machine that cuts the steel used in the kits, hadn't taken a single day off — not weekends, not holidays – since starting the job seven months earlier.

"No sir, I have a mission to do" was the employee's response, Motsek said.

In addition to Letterkenny, other Army facilities producing the kits are Anniston Army Depot, Ala.; Red River Army Depot, Texas; Sierra Army Depot, Calif.; Watervliet Arsenal, N.Y.; Rock Island Arsenal, Ill.; and Crane Ammunition Activity, Ind.

Fueling the motivation of workers at these facilities, Motsek said, are the testimonials they regularly receive from Iraq from troops who credit the kits with saving their lives. "That's a real motivator, when you hear soldiers telling stories about how they were able to survive because of their up-armored equipment," he said.

While the military moves double-time to up-armor its Humvees, it's also producing add-on armor kits for other vehicles in Iraq.

Motsek said the Army began anticipating this requirement even before U.S. Central Command passed it down, and laying the groundwork for a quick response.

So far, the Army has installed armor add-on kits on almost 400 Heavy Expanded Mobile Tactical Trucks, or HEMTTs, about 35 Palletized Load System tactical trucks and 450 vehicles from the Army's Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles, he said.

In addition, Motsek said the Army is in the process of buying the new Armored Support Vehicle, which he describes as a "mini Stryker vehicle" that's larger and has more armor protection than even the up-armored or enhanced Humvees.

The Army currently has 70 Armored Support Vehicles, all en route to Iraq, where they will support convoy movement, he said.

"For us, the bottom line is getting this equipment to the theater as quickly as possible," Motsek summarized. "When you're putting people in harm's way, you want to ensure that they have everything they need to protect them as they carry out their missions."

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Troops Turn Out In Droves To Vote
Associated Press
October 29, 2004

TOKYO - From the flight deck of the USS Kitty Hawk to the barracks of Camp Zama, next week's U.S. presidential election has a special resonance for America's troops abroad. With a war raging and the race just days away, the turnout in Japan, a major military outpost, is expected to be heavy.

"This is something that is on a lot of sailors' minds, definitely," said Lt. Brooke Dewalt, a public affairs officer on the Kitty Hawk, the only aircraft carrier in the U.S. Navy that has its home port outside of the United States. "Making sure they can vote is a very high priority for us."

Along with electing a president, next Tuesday's vote will also decide whether President George W. Bush or challenger John Kerry assumes the title of commander in chief.

In Japan, one of the largest stations away from home for U.S. troops not in combat, the results will directly impact tens of thousands of troops and their families.

Nearly 50,000 troops, including the largest contingent of Marines based abroad and a major air base on the southern island of Okinawa, are in Japan under a mutual security pact. Japan is also home to the U.S. 7th Fleet, the largest in the Navy. Some 20,000 sailors and Marines are assigned to the 21-ship fleet, though they are away from port roughly six months out of the year.

Military personnel assigned overseas are treated much like other absentee voters. They must register in advance with their hometowns in the United States, and then await their ballot in the mail.

Dewalt said officers aboard the Kitty Hawk began a drive to register voters several months ago, while the aircraft carrier was still at sea. It is now back in port in Yokosuka, just south of Tokyo.


"We have constant reminders onboard about voting - don't forget to register, don't forget to vote," he said. "We've had exceptional participation, registering more than 2,000 sailors."

Dewalt noted that for many of the sailors - who average 19-20 years of age - this will be their first presidential election. The carrier has roughly 5,000 sailors aboard.

"Everyone has access to the news," he said. "We're inundated with it. It's something a lot of sailors are talking about."

Registration was also high among soldiers at the U.S. Army's Japan headquarters.

"I would say interest in this election is very high," said Sgt. Nathan Maxfield, a voter assistance representative at Camp Zama, a small base southwest of Tokyo. "Hardly any of us are able to be home for the elections, so we've got a whole system set up to help people register."

Maxfield said the process has been smooth.

"Most people have already gotten their ballots," Maxfield said. "I already sent mine back."

To help soldiers figure out the voting process, assistance officers are assigned to each unit to answer questions and provide write-in ballots for anyone whose regular ballot doesn't arrive in time. Maxfield said he was unaware of any problems in meeting the demand for such ballots so far.

"Some people were panicking that they might not get their absentee ballots in time," Maxfield said. "But that doesn't seem to be a problem."

He said that although encouraged to register and vote, the actual decision is a private matter left up to each soldier.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Fate of Missing Iraq Weapons Unresolved

By JOHN J. LUMPKIN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The fate of up to 377 tons of high-grade explosives missing from an Iraqi depot remained unresolved a week after it became a hot issue in the presidential election. The Pentagon (news - web sites) offered piecemeal information about operations at the base but was unable to say where the weapons went.


Some analysts are questioning the relevance of the debate, noting 377 tons is a pittance compared to the unclaimed arsenal left behind after Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s regime fell. Bush administration officials have repeatedly said some 400,000 tons of munitions and explosives have been either destroyed or are slated to be destroyed. They do not mention that, by military estimates, a minimum of 250,000 more tons remains unaccounted for.


On Friday, an Army major said his company had recovered and destroyed some of the munitions left at the Al-Qaqaa depot south of Baghdad after the invasion. A Pentagon spokesman asserted some of that was of the same type as the missing explosives that have become a major issue in the campaign.


Maj. Austin Pearson said his team removed the 250 tons of plastic explosives and other munitions on April 13, 2003 — 10 days after U.S. forces first reached the Al-Qaqaa site.


But those munitions were not located under the seal of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency — as the missing high-grade explosives had been. And Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita could not definitely say whether they were part of the missing 377 tons.


Di Rita sought to point to Pearson's comments as evidence that some RDX, one of the high-energy explosives, might have been removed from the site. RDX is also known as plastic explosive.


Whether Saddam's forces removed the explosives before U.S. forces arrived on April 3, 2003, or whether they fell into the hands of looters and insurgents afterward — because the site was not guarded by U.S. troops — has become a key issue.


The window in which the explosives were most likely removed from Al-Qaqaa opens on March 15, 2003 — five days before the war started — and closes in late May, when a U.S. weapons inspection team declared the depot stripped and looted.


Two weeks ago, Iraqi officials told the United Nations (news - web sites)' International Atomic Energy Agency that the explosives vanished as a result of "theft and looting ... due to lack of security" and said this took place after the invasion.


The explosives were known to be housed in storage bunkers at the sprawling Al-Qaqaa complex and nearby structures. U.N. nuclear inspectors placed fresh seals over the bunker doors in January 2003. The inspectors visited Al-Qaqaa for the last time that March 15 and reported that the seals were not broken, concluding the weapons were still inside at the time.


A U.S. military reconnaissance image, taken on March 17, shows two vehicles, presumably Iraqi, outside a bunker at Al-Qaqaa. But Di Rita said that bunker was not known to contain any of the 377 tons and that the image only shows that there was activity at the depot after U.N. inspectors left.


Troops from the 3rd Infantry Division first arrived on April 3 en route to Baghdad. They fought a battle with Iraqi forces inside Al-Qaqaa and moved on, leaving a battalion behind. That unit didn't specifically search for the 377 tons of missing high explosives but did find some munitions on the base. On April 6, the battalion left for Baghdad.


Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others have advanced the theory that the materials were removed before U.S. forces arrived, saying looting that much material would be impossible by small-scale thieves and that a large-scale theft would have involved many trucks and would have been detected.


About four days later, elements of the 101st Airborne Division moved into the area but did not search Al-Qaqaa.


On Friday, Lt. Col. Fred Wellman, a 101st spokesman, said "several thousand" soldiers from the division — primarily aviation elements — moved into the area when the 2nd Brigade left, and operated there for several weeks before moving into northern Iraq (news - web sites).


Wellman said no one he has talked to can confirm seeing the IAEA sealed weapons.


"We went in there and looked for chemical weapons to make sure there was not a risk to our soldiers, and then we actually tried to leave the bunkers and storage facilities alone," Wellman said. "We weren't trained to go through there so we tried to stay out of there as much as possible."





Wellman said there was looting in the area, but they were able to prevent looting in the section where the division was operating.

On April 13, Pearson's ordnance-disposal team arrived and took 250 tons of munitions out and later destroyed them.

On April 18, a Minnesota television crew traveling with the 101st Airborne shot a videotape of troops as they first opened the bunkers at Al-Qaqaa, which shows what appeared to be high explosives still in barrels and bearing the markings of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

U.S. weapons hunters did not give the area a thorough search until May, when they searched every building on the compound over the course of those three visits, but they did not find any material or explosives marked by the IAEA.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041030/ap_on_re_mi_ea/us_iraq_weapons&cid=540&ncid=716

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Porous Border Helps Iranian Smugglers

By YAHYA BARAZANJI, Associated Press Writer

HERGEINA, Iraq - Kurdish Iranians in poor border towns are taking advantage of the porous boundary with Iraq (news - web sites) to sneak into the country for coveted items — like alcohol — to sell back home.


For the past three years, Farshid Karimi has earned his living smuggling goods — and dodging border guards.


The 23-year-old was drinking a cold beer at an Iraqi bar on a recent evening, taking a short break before carrying 60 bottles of whisky into Iran. With his baggy, Kurdish-style pants tucked inside his socks so he wouldn't trip while climbing the region's mountains, Karimi had already carried his load two hours.


Karimi is one of the "night men" who hide on the Iranian side of the border, waiting for the right moment to make the crossing under cover of darkness.


"I am afraid of encountering Iranian soldiers who would chase me and might shoot at me for carrying liquor," he said as he sipped his beer. "Or I might wander on the road and end up stepping on a land mine" left over from the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.


Karimi, who is from the Iranian border town of Marivan, admits that what he's doing is dangerous, but for him, the risk is worth it. He must provide for his family of five.


Alcohol is illegal and considered sinful under Iran's strict Islamic laws. Lashing is the usual punishment for drinking in Iran and traffickers can end up in prison.


Last year, Iranian soldiers caught Karimi in a border ambush. He was jailed for one year and given 80 lashes in public. His back was covered in blood and he could not sleep on it for a month, he said.


"I did not mind the physical pain. What hurt most was my pride and dignity that was shattered by being beaten in front of everyone," he said.


Despite efforts to tighten border security, Iranian smugglers remains so active that a few taverns have opened in the Iraqi frontier towns to serve the clandestine transporters hot meals, beer and whisky. Some also sell feed for the mules and donkeys that smugglers often use.


Residents on both sides of the border in this area are Kurdish. They speak the same language, dress alike, have the same traditions and many intermarry.


After crossing the border, smugglers gather in the Iraqi town of Bashmagh, where they fight among themselves to purchase whatever Iraqi goods are available.


Iraqi trader Mohammed Ibrahimi, who sells china, says he offers 100 packages for sale every day but often has up to 500 smugglers clamoring to buy.


"It becomes a fierce fight where survival is for the fittest," he said.


The Bashmagh crossing point has two routes — one used by trucks transferring legal goods and another used by smugglers carrying items that are illegal to sell in Iran, like liquor. The smugglers, who sometimes have to bribe the Iranian soldiers to let them in and out of the country, also carry foodstuffs not available in Iranian border towns, like tea, sugar and rice.


It's not only young men who embark on the smuggling journey. The elderly, children and women also take a chance.


Sirwa Ahmady, a 31-year-old Iranian widow with eight children, says she crosses the border into Iraq three times a day to buy plates and cups to sell back home.





"This is my everyday routine so that my children won't go hungry," she said. "The worst thing for me is to return home empty handed."


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&e=13&u=/ap/20041029/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_smuggling

Ellie

[marinemom]

Marines Await Orders to Attack Fallujah <br />
Interim Iraqi Government to Give Green Light; Allawi 'Losing Patience' With Talks <br />
<br />
By Jackie Spinner <br />
Washington Post Staff Writer <br />
Saturday, October 30,...

[thedrifter]

Gearing Up For Fallujah Showdown
Associated Press
October 30, 2004

NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq - American forces are gearing up for a major operation in the insurgent bastion of Fallujah, where up to 5,000 Islamic militants, Saddam Hussein loyalists and common criminals are hunkered down, U.S. officers said Friday.

U.S. planners believe many of Fallujah's 300,000 residents have already fled the city, which has become the symbol of Iraqi resistance and where militants last spring ambushed and killed four American contractors, mutilated their bodies and hung them from a bridge.

U.S. and Iraqi authorities want to curb the increasingly violent Sunni Muslim insurgency in order to hold nationwide elections by Jan. 31.

American officials stress that the final order to launch a big operation would come from Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, who has warned Fallujah to hand over followers of terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or face attack.

Allawi has issued no such order, but preparations are clearly under way, including the movement of British soldiers into areas close to Baghdad so that American forces can be redeployed for the showdown in Fallujah.

"We're gearing up to do an operation and when were told to go we'll go," Brig. Gen. Dennis Hejlik, deputy commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said at a camp near Fallujah. "When we do go, we'll whack them."

Meanwhile, Marines have been hitting Fallujah with frequent airstrikes, targeting buildings believed used by al-Zarqawi's followers. Marines have also launched probing attacks into Fallujah's outskirts to test insurgent defenses, Marine Col. Mike Shupp said.

A U.S. warplane fired at a house in the eastern Askari district of Fallujah around sundown Friday, witnesses said. Firefighter Salam Hameed said five bodies were pulled from under the rubble. Another four people were injured.

Residents also reported hearing explosions Friday night near the industrial zone in the southeast part of the city.

Iraqi public outrage over reports of civilian casualties pressured the Marines into calling off their siege of Fallujah last April - a move which strengthened the insurgents' hold on the Sunni city 40 miles west of Baghdad and likely contributed to the dramatic deterioration of security in the capital itself.


The April siege came after the killing of the four U.S. contractors.

On Friday, a Sunni cleric in Baghdad, Sheik Mahdi al-Sumaidaei, warned the Americans and Iraqis against launching a full-scale attack on Fallujah. If they do, he said Sunni clerics in the capital will issue a fatwa, or a binding religious decree, ordering Muslims to launch street protests and a campaign of civil disobedience.

"Everybody knows that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is another lie like the WMD," he told The Associated Press, referring to Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction. Hardline clerics who rule Fallujah insist al-Zarqawi is not in the city - a claim disputed by U.S. and Iraqi officials.

U.S. forces plan to use U.S.-trained Iraqi forces - especially around Fallujah's many mosques - to avoid allegations that the attack is nothing more than a bid by the Americans to crush a city widely known in Iraq for religious piety.

"The difference this time is it's driven by the" interim Iraqi government, Hejlik said. "They're calling the shots."

As a sign that preparations are under way, the first wave of troops from the Black Watch regiment arrived at the base near Baghdad, the British Defense Ministry said in London. The Americans asked the British to send troops to the area to free up U.S. forces for an assault on Sunni insurgents.

The rest of the 850-strong battle group from the Black Watch regiment were to arrive over the weekend, the ministry said. The base is 20 miles west of Mahmoudiya, a town that has seen frequent insurgent attacks, according to the report.

The United States has offered a $25 million reward for the capture of al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian extremist who announced his allegiance to al-Qaida on the Internet this month. Al-Zarqawi's movement is responsible for numerous car bombings and beheadings of foreign hostages, including three Americans.

However, U.S. officials acknowledge that even if they kill or capture al-Zarqawi, the insurgency is likely to continue.

"Just if you chop off the head, Zarqawi, it won't stop the insurgency," said Maj. James West, a Marine intelligence officer.

Nevertheless, re-establishing control in Fallujah would cut vital links among insurgent groups and impact their ability to plan and carry out attacks, particularly in Baghdad.

"Baghdad is the heart of Iraq and this is the throat to Baghdad," West said.

He estimated that between 50,000 and 60,000 civilians remain in Fallujah, which had an estimated population between 250,000 and 300,0000.

Fallujah residents confirm that up to half the population left at the start of Ramadan this month although some have returned.

Shupp, the Marine colonel, said insurgents are fortifying positions and are blocking roads with cement barriers and cars. Some Arab reporters who visited Fallujah in recent weeks say many neighborhoods on the edge of the city have been abandoned with only fighters remaining.

In other developments:

- Kidnappers released a 7-year-old Lebanese boy a week after they grabbed him as he was walking home from school.

- Two car bombs exploded in the northern city of Mosul, killing an Iraqi civilian and slightly wounding five U.S. soldiers, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.

- U.S. troops detained a Croat truck driver in Iraq. The U.S. Embassy in Croatia said Damir Mikulic was being held at Camp Bucca, near Umm Qasr in southern Iraq, for filming U.S. military bases and training exercises. His video camera allegedly held more than eight hours of sensitive footage.

- Aqil Hamid al-Adili, an assistant to the governor of Diyala province, was killed by gunmen as he was sitting in a friend's office, police said. Al-Adili had warned of insurgent infiltration in Iraqi forces after 50 U.S.-trained Iraqi soldiers were killed last weekend.

- An American contract worker from Columbus, Ga., was killed Wednesday in a car bomb attack, the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer reported. Travis Schnoor, 39, died when his vehicle flipped over after hitting an explosive device, the report said.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

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Wounded Survive, But Cost Is High
Chicago Tribune
October 30, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The injured never stop coming, and their wounds tell the story of the war.

A surge in head injuries attests to an increase in roadside bombs, which spray shrapnel under the lips of Kevlar helmets. Severe burns reveal insurgents are frosting homemade bombs with jelly gasoline. An Army helicopter filled with wounded Marines is a sign car bombs, which pack a bigger explosive punch, are rising.

The staff of the Army's 31st Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad watches the war through its streams of patients. Its three intensive-care units and 70 beds often overflow. The luckier soldiers suffer dime-sized shrapnel wounds. Many have lost limbs or eyes. Others need skulls reconstructed, their brains so bruised they do not recognize their spouses.

"It's been non-stop," said Maj. Patrick McAndrew, evening nurse supervisor. "The things I've seen here I've never seen before. ... It's more lethal now than it's ever been."

Since the war started in March 2003, more than 8,000 U.S. troops have been wounded - roughly seven for every death. And about half of the wounds have occurred in the last six months.

The 31st Combat Support Hospital is in the former Ibn Sina Hospital, a private hospital built by Saddam Hussein for the exclusive use of his family and closest friends. It is located inside the heavily fortified Green Zone and admits about 10 patients a day, though that number changes according to insurgent activity, officials said.

Many of the staff of 200 have worked at military hospitals in the United States, treating car wreck victims or heart attack patients, and are making their combat debut. Besides adjusting to the harsher wounds caused by rocket-propelled grenades and land mines, staffers have to live and work through the steady stream of mortars and rockets lobbed at them in the Green Zone.

"It's tough," said Maj. Patricia Born, a clinical staff nurse. "When people go to the hospital and they're at the end of their lives and they're dying, that's one thing. But seeing all these young people dying is a lot different."

The No. 1 cause of injuries to U.S. troops in Iraq is roadside bombs, known as "improvised explosive devices," or IEDs, hospital officials said. The homemade contraptions consist of a variety of shrapnel - including nails and 155 mm mortar shells - and are detonated either remotely with a cellular phone or by a triggerman at the end of a wire.

The roadside bombs shred and shatter the arms and legs of troops, said Capt. Maxwell Hernandez, a critical care nurse at the hospital. The upward projectile also fires chunks of shrapnel under Kevlar helmets, causing head wounds, he said.

The force of the bombs also cause unusual blunt trauma, he said. Two weeks ago, the shock wave from an IED caused a lung concussion in a soldier, making the lungs bleed and preventing oxygen from properly entering the bloodstream, Hernandez said. The soldier died a week later.

"First time I've ever seen that," said Hernandez, who works as a nurse at the Beaumont Army Medical Center in El Paso, Texas.

Severely injured troops are treated in the emergency room, then moved to one of three intensive-care units, where they are stabilized and airlifted to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany for further treatment and eventually returned to the United States.

On a recent afternoon, Kevin Worth, a critical-care nurse in one of the ICUs, enjoyed the quiet of a near-empty ward, following a frantic 80-hour week, he said.


On one of those days, a Black Hawk helicopter deposited eight wounded Marines whose Baghdad checkpoint had been hit by a car bomb, he said. One was dead on arrival, two others died in the emergency room, and one walked in with brain matter leaking from his left eye, he said.

"It was like a scene out of a horror movie," Worth said. "They just kept coming out of the back of the helicopter. ... Stuff like that really sticks with you."

After the Marines were stabilized or sent to the morgue, the talk among the staff was not about the injuries but of the Marines' glazed expressions.

"They all had the same look in their eyes: this far-off stare," Worth said. "I'd never seen it before."

One of the few people occupying an ICU bed in Worth's ward that recent afternoon was Cpl. Donny Daughenbaugh, a 23-year-old Marine with Echo Company of the 2nd Battalion, 24th Marines based in Mahmoudiya, Iraq. Daughenbaugh was on a night foot patrol through Mahmoudiya on Oct. 12 with his platoon when a car sped past, screeched to a stop and opened fire with an AK-47, he said.

A bullet hit him in the face.

"I felt my face get hot," Daughenbaugh said through clenched teeth, his jaw wired shut. "There was so much blood. I knew I was shot. I'm trying to radio in, tell them I'm hit. But I can't hear myself. It doesn't sound like me at all. So I just raised my hand."

The bullet had barreled in through his left cheekbone and lodged between his skull base and his top vertebra, fracturing the jawbone and missing vital nerves and the brain by millimeters, hospital officials said. A metal plate repaired his jaw, but the bullet was left in place, too close to the brain stem to move. He will recover, officials said.

Daughenbaugh, a union carpenter from Des Moines, Iowa, kept pictures of his wife, Sarah, and 17-month-old daughter, Gabriele, in a plastic bag on his bed as he recovered from surgery and waited for his flight to Landstuhl. He said he looked forward to reuniting with his family but would prefer going back to Mahmoudiya.

"It's just bad people trying to stop us from doing our job," he said.

Downstairs in the physical therapy room, another Marine from Daughenbaugh's unit did painful leg lifts, lunges and other exercises, stretching and strengthening muscles surrounding shrapnel wounds.

Staff Sgt. Michael Connolly, 26, a platoon sergeant with Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 24th Marines, said his platoon was on a recent foot patrol in Latifiyah, Iraq, a rural village near Mahmoudiya known to harbor insurgents. He had just climbed onto a roof to join some Marines when a mortar whistled in and landed on the roof, about 15 feet from him, he said. He covered his face in the split second before the mortar exploded, he said. Shrapnel sprayed his thighs, wrists and shoulders.

"I know I'm extremely lucky," Connolly said. "None of my wounds are permanent. I just want to heal up and get back out there."

Hospital officials said they use information from the wounds of troops to learn more about the enemy. Injury information is logged and shared regularly with military research centers in the United States, such as the Institute of Surgical Research at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, and Program Executive Officer Soldier in Fort Benning, Ga., to improve equipment and armor according to enemy tactics, officials said.

But as the U.S. military tries to outpace the enemy, insurgents also are quickly adapting to U.S. initiatives and altering their modes of attacks, hospital officials said.

In March and April, when battles flared in insurgent hotbeds such as Najaf, Iraq, most of the wounds were from gunfire, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, officials said. But as rebels learned U.S. body armor and helmets protected soldiers from those attacks, they stepped up IED attacks, they said. When the military up-armored their Humvees, insurgents used more car bombs, officials said.

Lately, hospital officials have noticed a sharp increase in attacks on lower extremities and head wounds, indicating more roadside bombs. There also has been an increase in severely burned victims, pointing to roadside bombs laced with jelly gasoline, said Col. Jack Chiles, chief of physicians.

"They're getting very good," Chiles said. "It's like a virus. They're very sneaky, very clever."

For the first time since the Vietnam War, hospital workers are treating more head wounds than chest and abdomen injuries, a trend attributed to enhanced body armor and an enemy using more roadside bombs, officials said.

Answering the trend, the 31st hospital is the area's only center that has a neurological team able to take CT scans and perform head surgeries on the premises. The team of eight - two neurosurgeons, two neurologists, two scrub technicians, a circulating nurse and anesthesiologist - is headed by Lt. Col. Jeff Poffenbarger, a former Green Beret and chief of neurosurgery at the Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston.

The team performs about one emergency craniotomy a day, though they once performed six in 24 hours, Poffenbarger said. The procedure peels back the scalp and exposes the brain to stem the bleeding and bring down the swelling. The skull, sometimes shattered, is reconstructed, often using Titanium plates and screws, he said.

Unlike in the U.S., where the survival rate from emergency craniotomies is about 5 percent, Poffenbarger's team is saving about 33 percent of its patients, though all of them incur some form of brain damage, including slurred speech and blindness, he said.

Though encouraged by his team's survival rate, Poffenbarger said the extent of the injuries he deals with daily affects him. Sometimes he has to pull baseball-sized shrapnel from the eye sockets of soldiers, he said, or reconstruct a skull that has been shattered like an eggshell.

"This is raw, dirty, gut-checking business," said Poffenbarger after a recent shift, his brown Army boots streaked with blood. "These are 19- and 20-year-old Americans. And they're really badly injured. It's something that really stays with you."

McAndrew, the evening nurse supervisor, said he also gets rattled by the injuries he sees coming through the trauma center. To combat the stress, he tries to work out each day at the hospital gym and stays away from violent movies, preferring Chris Farley comedies.

"I chuckle when I hear on the news that it's going to get worse: How much worse can it get?" he said. "It's frustrating to see guys come in, day in, day out, with those injuries. You ask, `Jeez, what are we doing?'"

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Hunt For Sniper In Iraqi Danger Zone
Agence France-Presse
October 29, 2004

The young U.S. soldiers in the badlands of Iraq cram into the back of the armoured troop carrier, cradle their M-16s given names like Pauline, Diamond and Snake.

It is 3:20 am in the once quiet eastern district of the western town of Ramadi, called Five Kilo. The U.S. Army's second battalion-17th artillery regiment is hunting for a sniper who has been running the roofs and alleyways of eastern Ramadi for the last month.

So far, the sniper -- thought to be an Iraqi military veteran or a foreign fighter -- has killed two soldiers from the battalion and wounded a third in the neck.

Since its arrival in eastern Ramadi at the start of September the battalion has watched four of its men die, where its predecessors had only one soldier killed in action during 12 months of patrols.

Once tranquil, Ramadi's eastern neighborhoods of Tamim and Five Kilo have become increasingly violent.

Some officers blame it on a surge in rebel attacks during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Others think fighters are fleeing the neighbouring city of Fallujah, ringed by about 1,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops, for Ramadi or believe the coming January elections in Iraq has triggered greater unrest.

As day breaks, mosque loudspeakers blare the muezzin's call to prayer and generators hum as the soldiers hope to find the sniper who killed their comrades on Michigan Avenue -- the military's name for the street running just outside their base.


At 4 am, two green armoured troop transport carriers pull to a halt outside a stone house and a cluster of soldiers stand on each side of its walls. They bust inside the doors, almost tumbling over each other, into a home already awash in light as the family prepares its pre-dawn Ramadan meal before fasting the entire day.

Four men are led outside and handcuffed, while the soldiers search the rooms, turning over a red mattress, walking past pots of wild rice, fried potatoes and eggplant cooked up for the early morning Ramadan feast.

A man, unshaven, explains he has been outside during the daytime and has no idea about the sniper. But one of the chief U.S. Army interrogators decides to take all four males. He says the detainees always have some information to offer. Probably, they'll be let go within two weeks.

One of the men asks to pee and the soldiers unlock the four men's handcuffs. They drink tea and smoke cigarettes before the soldiers bind their hands again and walk them away from their house's window where the women, in pink and green headscarves watch them.

The chief interrogator says: "Maybe it was a feud. A family or tribal dispute where someone had a score to settle so they called the coalition."

Still, he hopes the detainees will give him a new lead. The sniper is still on the loose and Ramadi is growing deadlier by the day.


Ellie

[thedrifter]

October 26, 2004, 1:11 p.m.
Algeria Warned Us
On our present problems in Iraq.

In 1978, the British historian Sir Alistair Horne published a book on the Algerian war called A Savage War of Peace. At a single event, later that year, both Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and John Kenneth Galbraith pronounced it the best book, in their estimation, published during the year. And quite recently, an observer noted that Israel’s General Sharon keeps a copy of it for bedside reading. Indeed, the observer heard the general say that if he had been Charles de Gaulle, he’d have ripped the FLN — the Algerian nationalist force — apart.

That book is hideously relevant to our present problems in Iraq. Bear in mind that Algeria was a French province, far and away removed from any relationship, sanguinary or cultural or traditional, between the United States and Iraqi Muslims. Moreover, there were one million French who had lived in Algeria for three generations (they were called the pieds noirs). Their commitment to continuing to live in French territory was total, and a lot of them paid for their zeal with slit throats and confiscated farms.

What happened was that in 1962, President de Gaulle, having been summoned by France to superintend the mess in Algeria, surveyed that mess and — unconditionally surrendered. He gave to the striking nativists everything they wanted, and they wanted a great deal, including all the rich oil properties that had been developed.

But this didn’t turn out to be a neat & clean solution, like giving all of Vietnam to Hanoi. In Indochina, the Communist government took over and ran things; in Algeria, there was split after schismatic split generating internecine Algerian warfare with a couple of spangles of a terrorist stamp, as when one group planned to hijack an Air France passenger plane on Christmas Eve and crash it into the Eiffel Tower.

By the year 1961, an estimated 1.5 million Algerians had been killed, including Catholic nuns ambushed on their way to Mass. What the French had come upon, in Algeria, was the Algerian wing of the phenomenon we have come upon in Iraq. It is a factional-nationalist movement using terrorism as a means of expressing contempt and hatred for modern forms. The single blessed development of recent months is the collapse of the Qaddafi movement next door in Libya. Qaddafi coolly appraised the scene and took measures to avoid head-on collisions with the West, once led by the United States.

That’s good news on the western littoral of Africa, but not decisive enough to overshadow the mounting fury of the Iraqis, whose strength appears to increase every day. The remarkable ambush staged over the weekend, resulting in the ritualized assassination of 49 Iraqis newly brought into the security forces, tells the story in very sharp tones. Just as in Algeria, where any native who worked for the police or for the French security forces was singled out for special treatment, the design by the insurrectionists in Iraq is obvious: associate yourself in any way with the new national government and you will be slaughtered as soon as we can get around to it.

Which was very soon for the freshly inducted recruits.

Just what would General Sharon have done, if he had been in power in France in 1960, to arrest the FLN movement? Indeed, to ask a more interesting question, what would General Sharon do in Iraq today if he exercised plenipotentiary power? Turn Iraq over to the insurrectionists, in exchange for forty or fifty new Jewish settlements?

The unspoken thought is: What de Gaulle would have needed to do in Algeria in order to quell the uprising, he could not do, as a French Catholic bound by certain limits in exercisable warfare.

What Bush could do in Iraq he simply — wouldn’t do, indeed would not be forgiven if he were to try to do it. This is not an easy one, on the order of dropping an atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Where would an atom bomb fall, in Iraq, in a way that would turn the insurrectionists away from their daily delights in slashing throats and car-bombing schoolchildren?

Well, nothing can be done in the next week. And whether the next step will be taken by President Bush or President Kerry, one thing is predictable. It is that the insurrectionists can’t be defeated by any means we would consent to use.


Ellie

[thedrifter]

October 29, 2004
Biker girls help raise money to help injured service members



by Sgt. Melvin Lopez Jr.
Henderson Hall News


Nothing makes service members smile more than having beautiful women all around them.

That was the situation Saturday evening when the U.S. Angels, a local female biker organization, stopped by Hotel Charles in Hughesville, Md. to entertain them as well as to raise money for the Fisher House in Washington.

The Fisher House provides housing to families of wounded service members returning from Iraq or Afghanistan. These homes enable family members to be close to a loved one at the most stressful time - during the hospitalization process.

The goal of the Fisher House is to create a "home away from home" that allows guest families the opportunity to address any challenge they must face during a time of crisis with dignity, and to give them a sense that there are people who care about them in their time of need.

There are currently three Fisher Homes in Washington that support Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Although the Fisher House supports the military, they do not receive any financial support from the military nor the government. They rely strictly on donations from the community.

Dawn Glencer, founder of U.S. Angels has been helping the local charity for over a year.

"We don't just raise money," said Glencer, "we also raise awareness."

She wants everyone to know that there are many military charities that people can donate to such as the Pentagon Memorial Fund and others

The event didn't start until 8 p.m. but the pub was already full of patrons waiting for the wounded service members to come in.

The U.S. Angels came in early and got a head start on the fundraising. When the girls came in, they became the talk of the town. The Angels immediately spoke to the visitors in hopes of getting donations for the worthwhile cause.

While there, they sold T-shirts and jello shots, and other items. They also signed 2005 U.S. Angels calendars..

At approximately 9 p.m., a local rock band, The Great Train Robbery, entertained the guests and helped liven up the crowd to their music.

Immediately after, the service members came in. Fun out in public was long overdue for them. They sat and relaxed while the Angels accompanied them. They enjoyed music and drinks as well as a good view of the ladies all around them.

Although the Angels raised over $2,500 so far, they still have not reached a final tally.

"I still got more calls over the weekend from other businesses that couldn't make it down but want to donate," said Glencer.

They also asked for a $5 donation at the door. All proceeds went to benefit the Fisher House.

Twin sisters Melissa and Tessie Foreman, who had only been with the U.S. Angels since May, enjoyed their work and had a lot of fun at the event.

"I think it was great," said Tessie Foreman. "I hope to go to more charities like this to help out."

Look for them here at Henderson Hall January 15, 2005 when they will be holding a Fitness Marathon. All are encouraged to attend.

For more information on the U.S. Angels, visit www. usangels2005.com.

http://www.dcmilitary.com/marines/hendersonhall/9_42/features/31868-1.html
'
Ellie

[thedrifter]

14,000 Marines to deploy early next year

Associated Press


CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. - About 14,000 Marines and sailors based in North Carolina will head to western Iraq beginning in January, Camp Lejeune announced Wednesday.

The troops of the II Marine Expeditionary Force should be in control of its assigned area by late March, according to a statement from the Marines.

The group will include air and ground troops and support units. It's referred to as II MEF (Forward) because it is smaller than a full Marine Expeditionary Force and larger than a Marine Expeditionary Brigade.

"We have watched with excitement and anticipation the great work being done in western Iraq by I MEF and its subordinate units, and II MEF (Forward) is ready and fully capable of continuing that fine effort," said Maj. Gen. Stephen T. Johnson, who will command the force in Iraq.

Most of the personnel involved will be from units based in North Carolina, though other Navy and Marine troops - including aviation units from Beaufort, S.C., and reservists - will be involved.

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/local/10030593.htm

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Iraq-deployed Marines donate DVDs for recovering troops
Submitted by: 1st Force Service Support Group
Story by: Computed Name: Sgt. Luis R. Agostini and Sgt. Enrique S. Diaz
Story Identification #: 2004102793555




CAMP FALLUJAH, Iraq(Oct. 27, 2004) -- There's only so many times you can watch the same movie over and over again, especially when you're laid up at Camp Fallujah's Bravo Surgical Company, recovering from wounds sustained in battle.

Like old buddies dropping off movies for a sick friend, Marines stationed at Camp Fallujah, Iraq, are donating DVDs to the Bravo Surgical Co.'s recovery ward.

"Our wounded Marines are often in limited mobility, and could use a little entertainment," said Sgt. Maj. Carlos Rios, sergeant major for I Marine Expeditionary Force Headquarters Group.

Before the donation drive officially began Oct. 18, 2004, the patients had only three DVDs to pass around amongst each other. After a base-wide e-mail from the base sergeant major soliciting donations for their injured brethren, the recovering servicemembers now have more than 20 selections to choose from.

A platoon comedian, Lance Cpl. Matthew J. Oliver, a communications wireman with 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, uses the recovery time to hone his craft.

"I watch the movies and try to pick up new material," said Oliver, a 20-year-old native of Tampa, Fla., who was injured during a mortar attack.

Stacked on the top shelf of a bookcase in a dimly lit room, with five green cots on each side, action and comedy seems to be favored genres of the wounded Marines.

Their ever-growing collection includes "Hulk," "Austin Powers: Goldmember," "Braveheart," and "The Simpsons," which the Marines agree is their favorite. Some of the DVDs have been purchased at the base Marine Corps Exchange, a convenience store here. Others have been sacrificed from Marines' personal collections.

Unfortunately, there's one piece of the puzzle missing for the Marines - a DVD remote control.

"Since I'm the closest (to the TV), I usually had to get up and take out and put in the DVDs," said Lance Cpl. Jeffrey B. Owens, 21, a supply clerk with 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment. "Sometimes we just call for the nurse."

Owens, a native of Harlan, Ky., is recovering from a wound sustained during a rocket attack here.

With limited mobility, and still physically and mentally recovering from the attacks, the movies help the wounded warriors take their minds off of the pain.

"We watch these movies all day long, just so we don't think about what happened," said Owens. "We usually stop watching around midnight."

Although the recovering Marines would much rather pop in a DVD in their own rooms, tents, or better yet - homes in the states, morale boosters like these are very appreciated.

"At first, I thought that there would be lot of boredom in recovery, but there's been a lot of support from the Marines here," said Cpl. Luciano Macias, a vehicle commander with 2nd Amphibious Assault Vehicle Battalion, who was hit in the chest with shrapnel during a Fallujah firefight. "It makes me feel good that they (Marines) are taking time out to check up on us, see how we're doing."


http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/image1.nsf/Lookup/20041027101210/$file/DVDscloseportrait041020_low.jpg

Lance Cpl. Jeffrey B. Owens, 21, a supply clerk with 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, is one of several Marines currently recovering from shrapnel wounds at Bravo Surgical Company in Camp Fallujah, Iraq. Camp Fallujah-based Marines recently began donating DVDs for servicemembers recovering at Bravo Surgical Company. Before the donations poured in, they had only three DVDs to watch. They now have more than 20 selections to choose from. Owens is a native of Harlan, Ky. Photo by: Sgt. Luis R. Agostini

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf/0/A9452444A549643285256F3A004AB365?opendocument

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Scottsdale H.S. Students Give Marines ‘Early Halloween’

A group of U.S. Marines in one of the most dangerous areas in Iraq have a smile on their faces today thanks to students and teachers at Cheyenne Traditional School in Scottsdale.

The school sent letters and more than three dozen boxes of goodies to Lance Cpl. Bryan Speed, who is the son of a friend of Cheyenne parent Erin Reed. The school’s student government adopted Speed and collected items and letters to send to him. Teacher Elisa Garcia led the effort.

“Holy moly. It all arrived, and boy was everybody happy,” Speed wrote to the Cheyenne students. “Early Halloween they were calling it. Our sweet tooths are satisfied for a long time. You guys are amazing. People here really appreciated and are getting together for a huge thank you. We are all blown away. Tell everybody you see thank you in advance, you really picked up the morale out here. Awesome!!!!!”
The boxes included food and other items, including a necklace from second grade teacher Mariellena Politis that Speed said he keeps “in my breast pocket for luck and protection.”

Speed is scheduled to return home in March, and Cheyenne students are hoping he can visit the school after reporting to Camp Pendleton in California.

Speed is not alone in praising Cheyenne students for Boosting morale among the Marines. “How wonderful,” Reed said. “What great teachers and kids we have.

Scottsdale Unified School District is Arizona’s most Excelling school district, with 18 schools earning the state’s highest rating, Excelling. All Scottsdale schools are rated as Performing, Highly Performing or Excelling by the Arizona Department of Education. For more information about Scottsdale schools, please visit www.susd.org.

http://www.kpho.com/Global/story.asp?S=2467555&nav=23KuSIfa

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Car Bomb Near Fallujah Kills 8 Marines

By EDWARD HARRIS, Associated Press Writer

NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq - A car bomb killed eight U.S. Marines outside Fallujah on Saturday, the deadliest attack against the U.S. military in nearly six months. Marines pounded guerrilla positions on the outskirts of Fallujah, where American forces are gearing up for a major assault on the insurgent stronghold


In Baghdad, another car bomb exploded outside an Arabic television network's offices, killing seven people and injuring 19 in the biggest attack against a news organization since the occupation began last year.


It was a day in which at least 30 people died in politically motivated violence across the country — stark evidence of a security situation threatening to spiral out of control.


Late Saturday, the decapitated body of a young Asian male was found in an insurgent-infested neighborhood of Baghdad, and hospital officials believed it was that of Japanese hostage Shosei Koda, 24, although his identity was not confirmed.


An al-Qaida-linked group led by Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi threatened to behead the Japanese backpacker unless Tokyo withdrew its soldiers from Iraq (news - web sites). Japan has rejected that demand.


South of Baghdad, witnesses said a U.S. convoy came under attack, prompting Iraqi forces to open fire randomly and throw hand grenades, hitting three minibuses and three vans. At least 14 people were killed, hospital officials said.


The Marine deaths came when a car bomb went off next to a truck southwest of Baghdad, said Maj. Clark Watson of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. Nine other Marines were wounded in the attack in western Anbar province, which includes Fallujah and other insurgent strongholds, the military said.


It was the biggest number of American military deaths in a single day since May 2, when nine U.S. troops were killed in separate mortar attacks and roadside bombings in Baghdad, Ramadi and Kirkuk.


American forces are preparing for a major assault on Fallujah in an effort to restore control to a swath of Sunni Muslim towns north and west of the capital ahead of crucial national elections due by Jan. 31.


On Saturday, insurgents fired mortars at Marine positions outside Fallujah. U.S. troops responded with "the strongest artillery barrage in recent weeks," said Marine spokesman 1st Lt. Lyle Gilbert.


Later, a Marine Harrier jet bombed a guerrilla mortar position inside Fallujah, then strafed it with machine-gun fire, Gilbert said. He had no reports of insurgent casualties.


Crowds of Iraqis peered skyward as two warplanes circled over the rebel-held city, where large explosions rumbled Saturday afternoon. Insurgents fired rockets and mortars toward U.S. Marine positions.


"This is very painful for Fallujah. I think they're destroying the town and killing families there," said Saadoun Mohamed, a 35-year-old driver near Fallujah.


"It's very complicated. I don't know how to solve this problem," he said through an Iraqi Marine translator.


Clashes between U.S. troops and insurgents also started Saturday in Ramadi, west of Fallujah. Two policemen were killed and four Iraqis injured in the crossfire, said Dr. Saleh al-Duleimi of the Ramadi General Hospital.


In Baghdad, the car bomb exploded outside the office of the Al-Arabiya television network, a satellite broadcaster based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Seven people were killed and 19 injured, police and hospital officials said.


Three bodies, including one of a woman, were mangled beyond recognition, said Al-Arabiya correspondent Najwa Qassem. It could not be determined whether any of those bodies were of Al-Arabiya employees. However, she confirmed that one guard and one administration worker were among the dead.





The blast collapsed the first floor of the building, where staffers were meeting, said Saad al-Husseini, a correspondent of MBC, a sister channel of Al-Arabiya based in the same building.

Employees "were trapped between fire and the shattering shards of glass," he said. That "led to the high number of casualties. We were all there."

Al-Arabiya's managing editor, Abdulrahman al-Rashed, said seven people remained missing.

A militant group calling itself the "1920 Brigades" claimed responsibility for the attack, blasting Al-Arabiya as "Americanized spies speaking in Arabic tongue" in a statement posted on a Web site. The station is owned by Saudi investors.

"We have threatened them to no avail that they are the mouthpiece of the American occupation in Iraq," the statement said, warning of more attacks against this "treacherous network." It was impossible to verify the claim's authenticity.

Al-Rashed, an outspoken critic of Islamic militants and terror attacks, said the station will continue to operate from Iraq.

"This is our job and we won't succumb to pressure," he said from Dubai.

The Iraqi police shooting south of Baghdad came after an American convoy was attacked early Saturday with roadside bombs, witnesses said. After the Americans pulled out, Iraqi police and National Guards arrived on the scene and began firing wildly, the witnesses said. The U.S. military had no immediate comment.

Three minibuses and three vans were hit on the street near Haswa, 25 miles south of Baghdad, witnesses said.

Abdul Razzaq al-Janabi, director of Iskandariyah General Hospital, said 14 people were killed and 10 others injured. More wounded were taken to other hospitals. Reporters saw bloody bodies riddled with bullet holes inside the buses.

In Baghdad, Mohammed Bashar al-Faydhi, a spokesman for the influential Association of Muslim Scholars, demanded a government investigation into "this massacre" because "Iraqi policemen are carrying out such crimes."

Al-Faydhi also said a bid to mediate a peaceful solution to the Fallujah standoff failed because the government demanded that the city hand over extremists, including al-Zarqawi. Hardline clerics who run the city said al-Zarqawi is not there.

"There is no good news on the horizon in finding a solution," al-Faydhi said. "There is a belief among the Fallujah people that the Americans will invade the city even if the Arab fighters leave."

Marines mounted a three-week siege of Fallujah in April but called off the offensive after a public outcry over civilian casualties. The siege was launched after militants ambushed and killed four American contractors, mutilated their bodies and hung them from a bridge.

This time, U.S. officials insist that the final order for an all-out attack will come from Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, and Iraqi forces will join the fight. American officials estimate up to 5,000 Islamic militants, Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) loyalists and common criminals are holed up in Fallujah.

Allawi met Saturday in Baghdad with tribal leaders from the area and told them "the door remained open" for a peaceful settlement in Fallujah, the prime minister's press office said.

But Allawi added that the government "owed it to the Iraqi people" not to let terrorists use Fallujah as a base of operations.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041030/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq&cid=540&ncid=716


Ellie