Early Bird 9/23/07

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C U R R E N T N E W S E A R L Y B I R D

September 23, 2007

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IRAQ -- BLACKWATER
1. Security Firm Faces Criminal Charges In Iraq
(New York Times)...James Glanz and Sabrina Tavernise
The Iraqi government said Saturday that it expects to refer criminal charges to its courts within days in connection with a shooting here by a private American security company, and the Interior Ministry gave new details of six other episodes it is investigating involving the company.
2. U.S. Repeatedly Rebuffed Iraq On Blackwater Complaints
(Washington Post)...Sudarsan Raghavan and Steve Fainaru
...Kamal indicated that Iraqi investigators had a videotape apparently showing Blackwater guards firing at civilians, but he declined to provide further details. On Friday, Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, the chief Interior Ministry spokesman, said the ministry would refer its findings to a court for possible criminal prosecution.
3. The Deadly Game Of Private Security
(New York Times)...John F. Burns
ON a stifling summer’s day in Baghdad a couple of years ago, a senior American officer bound for a visit to troops in the Iraqi hinterland was preparing to board an army Black Hawk at the helicopter landing zone in Baghdad’s Green Zone command compound.
IRAQ
4. Convoy Traverses A Perilous Route
(Baltimore Sun)...Matthew Dolan
A team of guardsmen carefully negotiates an Iraqi desert road where bombs could lie hidden at every turn.
5. Iraqi Militia Leader's Death Shatters Truce
(Los Angeles Times)...Ned Parker
The Mahdi Army commander was hated by Shiites and Sunnis alike. Nonetheless, his assassination reignites sectarian killings.
6. 25 Held In Slaying Of Iraqi Sunni Chief
(Washington Post)...Associated Press
The U.S. military on Saturday confirmed the arrests of 25 suspects in the assassination of a tribal leader who had allied himself with the United States and unified Sunni groups against the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq.
7. U.S. Releases 260 Iraqi Detainees
(Washington Post)...Walter Pincus and Megan Greenwell
In the first week of a special program during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the U.S. military released 260 Iraqi detainees from U.S. prisons, the military said Wednesday, compelling each to take a pledge before an Iraqi judge not to engage in misconduct and requiring a family member or a friend to act as a guarantor who would face sanctions if the pledge is broken.
8. Al Qaeda Executes 5 Abducted Iraqi Soldiers On Videotape
(New York Daily News)...Elizabeth Hays
...Al Qaeda-backed insurgents fired off a deadly warning to Iraqis working with U.S. forces yesterday with a chilling video of five abducted Iraqi soldiers forced to their knees and shot execution-style by a hooded gunman.
9. U.N. Rise In Staff Will Be 'Modest'
(Washington Times)...Betsy Pisik
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon maintained the organization would only boost its Iraq staff by a "modest" number, despite assurances by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that his country is a safer place thanks to Iraqi police and foreign troops. The two co-chaired a meeting of foreign ministers yesterday afternoon to brainstorm about what the Iraqis need to do to bring stability and security to the country, and how their governments can help.
10. Kurd Capital A Respite From Horrors
(Philadelphia Inquirer)...Christopher Torchia, Associated Press
For anyone who has spent time in Baghdad, the most startling thing about a visit to Kurdistan's capital is that it resembles a city at peace, at least by Iraqi standards.
DEFENSE DEPARTMENT
11. $50 Billion For Military Is Added To Budget
(New York Times)...Helene Cooper
The Bush administration plans to increase its 2008 financing request for military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere by almost $50 billion, with about a quarter of the additional money going toward armored trucks built to withstand roadside bombs, Pentagon officials said Saturday.
AIR FORCE
12. The Saga Of A Bent Spear
(Washington Post)...Joby Warrick and Walter Pincus
Six nuclear missiles were flown across America. It took 36 hours for anyone to notice. How could it have happened?
13. Air Force Issues Review Of Crash
(Washington Times)...Unattributed
An F-15 fighter jet pilot was disoriented during an Oregon Air National Guard combat-training exercise when he crashed into the Pacific Ocean in June, according to an Air Force review.
14. Virus Hits Dozens At Lackland
(San Antonio Express-News)...Sig Christenson
Nine recruits were hospitalized with pneumonia last month and 150 were ordered to bed as a new wave of "boot camp flu" struck Lackland AFB.
ARMY
15. Military Says Investigating Claims In Atheist's Suit But Can't Find Officer Named As Defendant
(Arizona Daily Star (Tucson))...Associated Press
Military officials are investigating an Army specialist's allegations that he was harassed for being an atheist but said Saturday they have found no trace of the officer listed as a defendant in the soldier's lawsuit.
MARINE CORPS
16. Senior Marines May Face Blame For Haditha Deaths
(Mideast Stars and Stripes)...Jeff Schogol
Since April, charges have been dropped against half of the Marines facing legal proceedings in connection with the deaths of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha.
NAVY
17. Sailors Rewarded For Vows To Quit Smoking
(Miami Herald)...Carol Rosenberg
...As Rear Adm. Kenneth Moritsugu, the acting surgeon general, toured the USNS Comfort in this southern Caribbean capital, he found himself autographing sailors' cigarette packs as keepsakes -- with a hitch. In exchange, the nation's top doctor made them pledge, on the spot, to kick the habit.
MIDEAST
18. Mideast Talks To Include Syria
(Washington Times)...Wafa Amr, Reuters News Agency
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has told Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that Washington plans to invite six Arab states, including Syria, to a Middle East peace conference, Mr. Abbas' aides said.
19. Iran Exhibits Homemade Weapons In Show Of Force
(Los Angeles Times)...Ramin Mostaghim and Borzou Daragahi
The annual display of self-sufficiency comes ahead of Ahmadinejad's U.N. speech and a planned controversial visit to Columbia University.
ASIA/PACIFIC
20. Pakistan Backs Off Al Qaeda Pursuit
(Los Angeles Times)...Greg Miller
Political turmoil and a spate of brazen attacks by Taliban fighters are forcing Pakistan's president to scale back his government's pursuit of Al Qaeda, according to U.S. intelligence officials who fear that the terrorist network will be able to accelerate its efforts to rebuild and plot new attacks.
21. Police Arrest Musharraf Critics
(Washington Post)...Griff Witte
With President Pervez Musharraf facing an election in just two weeks, police on Saturday night arrested key opposition leaders who had vowed to try to block the general's plans for winning a new term.
22. Fukuda To Be PM
(Arizona Daily Star (Tucson))...Unattributed
Veteran politician Yasuo Fukuda easily won election as president of Japan's struggling ruling party today, assuring his selection as the new prime minister in a parliamentary vote later this week.
EUROPE
23. Extradition Denied In Kidnap Case
(Atlanta Journal-Constitution)...Unattributed
U.S. authorities have told Germany they will not extradite 13 suspected CIA agents in the alleged kidnapping of Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent who says he was abducted in 2003 and flown by the CIA to a detention center in Afghanistan, where he was abused.
24. US, NATO Warned On Freeing Kosovo
(Boston Globe)...Reuters
Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica warned the United States, NATO, and Kosovo Albanians yesterday that they would be responsible for disastrous consequences if they "snatch" Kosovo and declare it independent.
AMERICAS
25. Mexico May Be Unable To Stop Bombings
(Houston Chronicle)...Dudley Althaus
Security force has been slashed, and the rebels are sophisticated.
VETERANS
26. Generals Opposing Iraq War Break With Military Tradition
(San Diego Union-Tribune)...Mark Sauer
...In op-ed pieces, interviews and TV ads, more than 20 retired U.S. generals have broken ranks with the culture of salute and keep it in the family. Instead, they are criticizing the commander in chief and other top civilian leaders who led the nation into what the generals believe is a misbegotten and tragic war.
27. Former Top U.S. Commander In Iraq Criticizes 'Partisanship'
(Washington Post)...Unattributed
Retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who spent a tumultuous year as the U.S. commander in Iraq, said that "the corrosive partisanship of American politics" is preventing agreement on a strategy that would help the United States take on the threat of Islamic extremism.
TERRORISM
28. Importance Of Internet Growing In War On Terror
(Arizona Daily Star (Tucson))...McClatchy Newspapers
...From "Jihad University" to "Terrorists 007" to 5,000 or more other sites, terrorists are using the Internet to spread propaganda, recruit members, raise money, offer training and instruction and plan operations.
PROTESTS/RALLIES
29. Stanford Students, Faculty Protest Rumsfeld's Hoover Appointment
(San Francisco Chronicle)...Justin Berton
More than 2,600 faculty and students at Stanford University have signed an online petition to protest the appointment of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as a distinguished fellow to the university's Hoover Institution, the latest in a string of campus controversies that involve high-profile names and questions about ethics, free speech and political partisanship.
TELEVISION
30. 'The War': Young Soldiers Die, They Don't Just Fade Away
(Washington Post)...Rick Atkinson
Toward the end of Ken Burns's seven-part, 15-hour extravaganza about World War II, the camera lingers for a full 40 seconds on the image of a dead U.S. Marine on Iwo Jima. Face up, arms splayed, teeth bared, he is as grotesque as a man forever young can be.
OPINION
31. Marines In Search Of A Mission
(Washington Post)...George F. Will
Here at "the crossroads of the Marine Corps," some officers are uneasily pondering a paradox: No service was better prepared than the Marines for the challenges of post-invasion Iraq, yet no service has found its mission there more unsettling to its sense of itself.
32. Pakistan Quicksand?
(Washington Times)...Richard Halloran
As if it were not enough that the United States is seemingly mired in Iraq and Afghanistan, and may be confronted with an Iran armed with nuclear weapons, now Pakistan has emerged as the latest site of quicksand in Southwest Asia.
33. Iraq's 'Dirty Harrys'
(Los Angeles Times)...David DeVoss
The swagger and tactics of private security guards are doing more harm than good.
34. Bush Fulfills Mencken's Prophecy
(Miami Herald)...Joseph L. Galloway
...Having made one good move, attacking and toppling the Taliban and running al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden out of Afghanistan in retaliation for 9/11, the president and his crowd then turned away. Half-finished with Job One, he decided to 'preemptively invade' Iraq, which had precisely nothing to do with the attacks on America. In one stroke of Bush's pen, America went from being a nation that distrusted foreign entanglements and fought wars only when grossly provoked to a nation that attacked first and without credible reason.
35. When The CIA Got It Right
(Washington Post)...David Ignatius
...Sometimes, as in most of its Iraq reporting, the CIA has gotten it dead right. And when we assess the CIA, we should understand that many of its supposed failures really have another address -- the White House.
36. The Candidates' World Of Myopia
(Washington Post)...Jim Hoagland
...Neither the politicians nor the media are doing enough to look around the corner at crises in the making. They risk being overtaken by events. But there is a greater danger in the positioning of the world around the errors, hubris and covert skulduggery of the Bush administration in Iraq, as undeniably important as the conflict there is. It is that the next administration will repeat one of the earliest and worst mistakes of the Bush presidency -- to throw out everything the preceding administration has done in foreign policy and pretend the world has been born anew on Inauguration Day 2009.
37. Syria's Move
(Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)...Jack Kelly
Assad is under competing pressures to either attack Israel or make peace.
38. War And Terror Inc.
(Washington Post)...Douglas Farah
Immediately after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush declared that the rest of the world had to decide whether it was with us or against us. But it turns out that in the new world order, you can be both -- and make a boatload of money in the process.

New York Times
September 23, 2007
Pg. 1
Security Firm Faces Criminal Charges In Iraq
By James Glanz and Sabrina Tavernise
BAGHDAD, Sept. 22 — The Iraqi government said Saturday that it expects to refer criminal charges to its courts within days in connection with a shooting here by a private American security company, and the Interior Ministry gave new details of six other episodes it is investigating involving the company.
The state minister for national security affairs, Shirwan al-Waili, said the government had received little information from the American side in the early days of a joint investigation of the shooting, which involved the company Blackwater USA and left at least eight Iraqis dead. But he said that the Iraqi investigation was largely completed and that he believed the findings were definitive. “The shots fired on the Iraqis were unjustifiable,” he said. “It was harsh and horrible.”
Although Mr. Waili did not spell out what the investigative committee would recommend to the criminal court, a preliminary report of findings by the Interior Ministry, the National Security Ministry and the Defense Ministry stated that “the murder of citizens in cold blood in the Nisour area by Blackwater is considered a terrorist action against civilians just like any other terrorist operation.”
“The criminals will be referred to the Iraqi court system,” it said.
The spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Maj. Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf, also laid out previous episodes involving Blackwater this year in which he said a total of 10 Iraqis had been killed and 15 wounded. The company would not comment on those incidents on Saturday.
The details came as Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was at the United Nations to meet with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other officials to discuss Iraqi security and other issues. The Iraqi government has already demanded that Blackwater, which handles security for diplomatic personnel, be banned from working in Iraq, and the broadening investigation is sure to pull the Iraqis and their American supporters even further apart.
Blackwater may also face investigation on another front: The News and Observer newspaper in Raleigh, N.C., reported that United States federal investigators were looking into whether the company shipped unlicensed automatic weapons and military goods to Iraq. The Department of Justice would not confirm whether an investigation was under way; Blackwater, in a statement issued Saturday, said it had not done anything wrong.
The main shooting under investigation began near midday last Sunday when Blackwater guards fired at Iraqi civilians for reasons that neither the company nor the United States government, which is also investigating, have fully explained.
Some witnesses have said Iraqi soldiers nearby also began firing at some point, greatly complicating efforts to understand what happened and raising the question, at least among American officials, of whether the Blackwater guards believed they were under attack and acted properly.
Blackwater, in its only statement on the shooting, has said its employees were responding to an ambush.
Iraqi officials indicated that they were weighing the earlier shootings involving Blackwater in their consideration of what the practical consequences of the Nisour Square shooting should be. “The American Blackwater company has made for the seventh time the same mistake against the Iraqis and in different places in Baghdad,” according to a preliminary report from the Iraqi investigation obtained by The New York Times.
According to General Khalaf, the other events under investigation are a Feb. 4 shooting that killed an Iraqi journalist near the Foreign Ministry; a Feb. 7 shooting in which three guards at the Iraqi state television station were killed; a Feb. 14 episode in which Blackwater employees are accused of smashing windshields; a shooting in May that killed one person near the Interior Ministry; a Sept. 9 shooting that killed five people near a Baghdad city government building; and a Sept. 12 shooting that wounded five people in eastern Baghdad.
No results of the American inquiry have been made public. For that reason, American officials have privately cautioned against drawing early conclusions.
In addition, a United States Embassy official said Saturday that investigators did not want to present incorrect results that would have to be revised, and so would let the investigation take its course before commenting. And the official said that cooperation between the two sides in the investigation was beginning and that information would begin flowing more freely.
But the official also said that embassy activities had been slowed because convoys protected by Blackwater guards had been temporarily stopped as a result of the shooting.
“Our own movements, as you know, were severely restricted and remain restricted,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “So ever since the incident took place, we have not been moving around Baghdad as we did before.”
Although the official declined to comment directly on how those restrictions may have had an impact on the American investigation, United States military personnel, who can move with their own security details, have been seen interviewing Iraqis at the scene of the shooting in recent days. If American civilian officials who are leading the investigation from the embassy are unable to move through the city, that restriction could clearly slow the work of gathering information from the scene and from witnesses.
The embassy official said he had not heard that the Iraqi government was preparing to forward the Blackwater case to the Iraqi justice system. “In all honesty I’m not aware of that,” the official said. “I don’t think they’ve communicated that to us government-to-government.”
Even if murder charges were referred to Iraqi courts, it is unclear what real legal peril would be faced by Blackwater or any of its employees. A provision originally called Order 17, signed by L. Paul Bremer III in 2004, while he was the top American administrator in Iraq, was later enshrined into Iraqi law, effectively giving security companies working for the United States immunity from prosecution here.
Perhaps for that reason, no Western contractors of any kind are known to have been convicted of any crimes in Iraq.
In the possible weapons smuggling case, evidence of a federal investigation came to light earlier this week, when the Democratic chairman of a House committee mentioned it in a letter complaining about the actions of the State Department’s inspector general.
In a Sept. 18 letter to Howard J. Krongard, the inspector general, Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said a federal prosecutor had asked State Department investigators for help in looking into whether “a large private security contractor working for the State Department was illegally smuggling weapons into Iraq.”
In its statement Saturday from its headquarters in Moyock, N.C., Blackwater said it had uncovered thefts by two employees who were then fired. The company said that it notified the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and that the two former employees have been convicted in court.
The statement added that the “issue is completely unrelated to Blackwater U.S. government programs in Iraq.” It said “the company has no knowledge of any employee improperly exporting weapons.”
In Iraq on Saturday, President Jalal Talabani expressed anger at the arrest of a man he said was an Iranian diplomat, Agai Mahummdi Firhadi, who was detained by the American military on Thursday in northern Iraq. A statement from the president’s office said he had “sent a message of anger,” to the American ambassador, Ryan C. Crocker, and the American military commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus, because the Iranian had been on a diplomatic delegation.
The American military said in a statement at the time that he had been involved in transporting bombs into Iraq, and in training militants.
Mr. Talabani told the Americans that the Iranian government had threatened to close its borders with the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq if the official was not released.
As the Blackwater case moved forward, violence continued elsewhere in Iraq. A Sunni insurgent group, the Islamic State in Iraq, released a video to Islamic Web sites Saturday showing the execution of five men said to be captured Iraqi Army soldiers.
In the video, apparently intended to terrify Iraqi Army soldiers, men wearing army uniforms and blindfolds, their hands tied behind their backs, knelt in a dusty clearing between eucalyptus trees while a hooded man shot them from behind with a pistol. Also visible in the video is another hooded man apparently also videotaping the executions, though from a different angle.
Also on Saturday, the Iraqi authorities arrested 11 suspects in the car bomb assassination of Abdul-Sattar Abu Reesha, the leader of the American-supported Sunni tribal uprising against extremist Islamic insurgents. Hurra television quoted Mr. Abu Reesha’s brother, Ahmed Abu Reesha, as saying that the suspects were members of the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which took credit for the slaying.
In Baghdad, Mr. Waili, the security minister, indicated that despite announcements that Iraqi and American investigators would be working together, Iraqi investigators had received little or no information from their American counterparts and had gotten no access to the Blackwater guards at the center of the events.
Mr. Waili said that there were effectively three separate investigations: an Iraqi one, an American one, and a joint effort that had gotten nowhere.
But the embassy official said cooperation between the two sides was taking place.
“From our point of view there are not three investigations,” he said. “There is only the joint investigation that we have with the Iraqis.”
He said that the United States had received cooperation from Iraqi officials and that the first joint meetings were just starting.
The push against foreign security companies, some Western officials have suggested, may be motivated by more than the quest for justice. There could also be a financial motivation, particularly if, as some Iraqi officials say, the episode could result in new rules that would cut down on the number of foreign companies operating here.
Fewer foreign companies would mean more space for Iraqi companies, and Iraqi officials in charge of licenses for the private security industry have become slower at issuing them to foreigners for more than a year, according to one security industry official formerly in Baghdad.
In 2006, rules for registration changed dramatically, the official said, with two new steps, including consulting with Mr. Waili’s ministry, added to the already complicated process.
What is obvious, though, is the emotional push for change created by the Nisour shooting.
“It was really painful,” Mr. Waili said. “We are losing Iraqis every day, but this was a really painful incident. They were innocent people.”
Karim Hilmi and Andrew E. Kramer contributed reporting from Baghdad, and James Risen from Washington.

Washington Post
September 23, 2007
Pg. 18
U.S. Repeatedly Rebuffed Iraq On Blackwater Complaints
By Sudarsan Raghavan and Steve Fainaru, Washington Post Foreign Service
BAGHDAD, Sept. 22 -- Senior Iraqi officials repeatedly complained to U.S. officials about Blackwater USA's alleged involvement in the deaths of numerous Iraqis, but the Americans took little action to regulate the private security firm until 11 Iraqis were shot dead last Sunday, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials.
Before that episode, U.S. officials were made aware in high-level meetings and formal memorandums of Blackwater's alleged transgressions. They included six violent incidents this year allegedly involving the North Carolina firm that left a total of 10 Iraqis dead, the officials said.
"There were no concrete results," Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamal, the deputy interior minister who oversees the private security industry on behalf of the Iraqi government, said in an interview Saturday.
The lack of a U.S. response underscores the powerlessness of Iraqi officials to control the tens of thousands of security contractors who operate under U.S.-drafted Iraqi regulations that shield them from Iraqi laws. It also raises questions about how seriously the United States will seek to regulate Blackwater, now the subject of at least three investigations by Iraqi and U.S. authorities. Blackwater, which operates under State Department authority, protects nearly all senior U.S. politicians and civilian officials here.
U.S. Embassy officials did not respond to several requests to describe what action, if any, was taken in response to the six incidents involving Blackwater. Mirembe Nantongo, a U.S. Embassy spokeswoman, said the embassy always looks into anything "outside of normal operation procedures."
In the United States, Blackwater is facing a possible federal investigation over allegations that it illegally smuggled weapons into Iraq that later might have been sold on the black market. The accusation first appeared in the Raleigh News & Observer. The company on Saturday denied the allegations, calling them "baseless."
"The company has no knowledge of any employee improperly exporting weapons," Anne Tyrell, a Blackwater spokeswoman, said in a statement.
In its probe, Iraq's Interior Ministry concluded that Blackwater fired without provocation into cars about noon last Sunday in Nisoor Square in the Mansour neighborhood of western Baghdad, killing 11 and injuring 12. Blackwater has said that extremists ambushed guards protecting a State Department convoy and that they had to defend themselves.
Kamal indicated that Iraqi investigators had a videotape apparently showing Blackwater guards firing at civilians, but he declined to provide further details. On Friday, Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, the chief Interior Ministry spokesman, said the ministry would refer its findings to a court for possible criminal prosecution.
"It confirms there was no justification. Blackwater started shooting," Kamal said about the probe's conclusions. "This is a crime, which under Iraqi law, and even under American law, should be punished."
U.S. investigators have not publicly released any findings. U.S. Embassy officials have declined to comment on the probe and cautioned not to draw premature conclusions.
Matthew Degn, who served as a senior adviser to the Interior Ministry's intelligence directorate until his tour in Iraq ended last month, said Kamal and other ministry officials became increasingly frustrated by their inability to persuade U.S. officials to regulate Blackwater as allegations against the company mounted.
Degn said Kamal sent a flurry of memos to company and U.S. officials in an effort to bring Blackwater into compliance. The Iraqis were concerned that the firm had refused to obtain a license to operate legally in Iraq, a process that required companies to provide sensitive personnel data and submit to weapons inspections. Blackwater also refused to answer any questions about the reported incidents.
Degn said the Iraqis were consistently rebuffed in their requests.
"Kamal went to State several times; he's the one who's been paying the price for this," Degn said. "We had numerous discussions over his frustrations with Blackwater, but every time he contacted the [U.S.] government, it went nowhere."
Degn said he became a close friend of Kamal's and shared the deputy minister's frustrations, even as he recognized the complexity of reconciling Blackwater's relationship with the Iraqis while trying to protect the State Department. Degn said Blackwater's reluctance to cooperate was understandable, given that the Iraqi Interior Ministry had been infiltrated by sectarian militia members.
Kamal said addressing Blackwater's alleged actions was also a matter of preserving Iraq's dignity and honor. Seated in his spacious office, he recalled an incident two months ago when Blackwater guards threw a water bottle at a traffic policeman. The officer was so furious that he submitted his resignation, but his superiors turned it down, Kamal said.
"This is a flagrant violation of the law," Kamal said. "This guy is an officer with a rank of a brigadier general. He was standing in the street doing his job, regulating traffic. He represents the state and the law, and yet this happened."
The topic of Blackwater's impunity was discussed during high-level meetings involving American and Iraqi officials, including Kamal, national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie and senior officials from the U.S. military and the U.S. Embassy, according to sources familiar with the discussions.
Tensions escalated over a series of incidents beginning last Dec. 24, when a Blackwater employee allegedly shot and killed a bodyguard for Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi inside Baghdad's Green Zone. It remains unclear how the Blackwater employee was able to leave Iraq after the incident, which triggered a Justice Department investigation. No charges have been filed.
On May 24, a Blackwater team shot and killed an Iraqi driver outside the Interior Ministry gate. The incident triggered an armed standoff between Interior Ministry commandos and the Blackwater guards, who later told U.S. Embassy officials that the driver had veered too close to their convoy. Blackwater refused to give the guards' names or details of the incident to the Iraqis. The State Department said it planned to conduct an investigation, but no results have been announced.
It is unclear whether Blackwater could be criminally prosecuted in Iraq. A U.S. regulation called Order 17 enacted after the invasion by Iraq's U.S. administrators provides immunity from prosecution for private security contractors.
Kamal, a lawyer by training, suggested that Iraq's government could file lawsuits against Blackwater in U.S. courts to seek compensation for the victims.
"If Order 17 provides them with immunity from being questioned or the right to be tried under Iraqi law, it does not prevent the Iraqi government from filing suit in an American court," he said.
Fainaru reported from El Cerrito, Calif.

New York Times
September 23, 2007
The Deadly Game Of Private Security
By John F. Burns
CAMBRIDGE, England--ON a stifling summer’s day in Baghdad a couple of years ago, a senior American officer bound for a visit to troops in the Iraqi hinterland was preparing to board an army Black Hawk at the helicopter landing zone in Baghdad’s Green Zone command compound.
With undisguised disdain, he fixed his gaze across the concrete toward two smaller helicopters taking off from a hangar operated by Blackwater USA — the private security company whose men, while guarding an American diplomatic convoy, were involved last week in a Baghdad shootout that killed at least eight people and, according to an Iraqi government report, as many as 20.
In a style now familiar to many living beneath Baghdad’s skies, a Blackwater sharpshooter in khaki pants, with matching T-shirt and flak jacket, sat sideways on the right side of each chopper, leaning well outside the craft. With their automatic weapons gripped for battle, their feet planted on the helicopter’s metal skids, and only a slim strap securing them to the craft, the men looked as if they were self-consciously re-creating the movies of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jean-Claude Van Damme.
Blackwater defends its low-flying, ready-to-shoot posture as a powerful deterrent to attacks on American officials being moved through the capital’s streets. But that posture has become, to the company’s critics, a hallmark of its muscle-bound showiness.
As the Blackwater machines cleared the landing zone’s fence that day, the American officer leaned toward a companion and, over the thwump-thwump of the Black Hawk’s rotors, voiced his contempt. “If I’ve got one ambition left here,” he said, “it’s to see one of those showboats fall out.”
From the moment Blackwater arrived in Iraq in 2003, on the heels of the American invasion, much about its operations has seemed tinged with an aggressive machismo that has led its critics, including many in the American military, to dismiss its operatives — and counterparts from at least 25 other private security companies, with a combined manpower estimated between 20,000 and 30,000 — as “cowboys,” “hired guns,” and other, still harsher, terms.
Partly, the disparagement stems from the contempt with which professional military men have traditionally viewed mercenaries — especially those who earn, like some contractors in Baghdad, as much as $1,000 a day for skills and risks that bring about the lowest-paid American soldier a tenth of that. Not even four-star generals earn as much.
The security contractors’ advocates counter by pointing to the guards’ expertise. The highest-paid learned their skills in units like the Navy Seals, the Army’s Delta Force, and equivalent units in the British, Australian, South African and other militaries.
With rare exceptions, the men look and sound the part, with tattooed forearms, close-cropped hair or shaven heads, and a taciturn manner that discourages any but the most cryptic exchanges with outsiders. The value of their skills, their proponents say, is indicated by the Pentagon’s willingness to pay Special Forces’ re-enlistment bonuses of as much as $150,000. But that much and more can be a single year’s salary with companies like Blackwater.
There is no avoiding the fact that these bodyguards do work that is both extremely hazardous, and indispensable. Blackwater’s involves a State Department contract to protect American officials, including the ambassador.
Such officials are among the most endangered individuals in Iraq; nevertheless, no senior American officials have been assassinated, while the murder of senior Iraqi officials has become almost commonplace.
Together with other security contractors — notably the American companies DynCorp International and Triple Canopy, and the British-run Aegis Security and Erinys International — Blackwater operates in a nightmarish landscape.
No trip outside the Green Zone is remotely safe. The enemy lurks everywhere among the population. Attackers show no mercy for innocent bystanders, who commonly outnumber intended targets. Each mission carries the threat of roadside bombs, suicide attacks by explosives-packed cars and trucks, and ambushes by insurgents.
Reliable figures are elusive, but figures quoted by security industry insiders suggest that more than 100 contractors in Iraq have been killed, and scores of others wounded.
Against this, critics point to a pattern of recklessness in the use of deadly force, of a kind that the Iraqi government, and some Iraqi witnesses, have alleged — and Blackwater has denied — in the episode last Sunday in Baghdad’s Nisour Square. While Blackwater armored vehicles accompanying diplomats were sent to close off traffic into the square, a car entering it failed to heed an Iraqi policeman’s signal to stop, and it came under fire that killed the driver, a passenger and a baby in her arms. There is dispute over the ensuing gunfight, and whether Blackwater personnel, insurgents or nearby Iraqi troops caused the deaths.
An Iraqi government probe later found Blackwater “100 percent guilty” in the killings, and government leaders demanded an end to Blackwater activities. Blackwater responded that its contractors fired in self-defense. After a four-day suspension, a compromise on Friday allowed Blackwater to resume “essential missions” while an Iraqi-American commission investigates.
To those who have watched the private security companies’ operations for the past four years, the only real surprise was that the crisis was so long in coming. The seeds were sown in the first year of the American occupation, when a decree by the American administrator L. Paul Bremer III exempted security companies and their employees from accountability under Iraqi law for deaths and injuries caused in the execution of their duties. Although Congress in 2005 instructed the Pentagon to bring contractors under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, no action has been taken, leaving the contractors in a legal no-man’s land — in effect, at liberty to treat all Iraq as a free-fire zone.
No official records have been made public of how many innocent Iraqi civilians have been killed by contractors. But a glimpse at the scale was offered by one American general who kept his own tally, Brig. Gen. Karl R. Horst of the Third Infantry Division; he told The Washington Post in 2005 that he had tracked at least a dozen shootings of civilians in Baghdad between May and July that year, with six Iraqis killed.
“These guys run loose in this country and do stupid stuff,” the paper quoted the general as saying. “There’s no authority over them.”
But critics say the heart of the problem lies in an attitude that the security contractors share with the American military, one that elevates “force protection” to something approaching an absolute. This, the critics say, has the effect of valuing the saving of American lives above avoiding risk to innocent Iraqis. The attitude has its origins in Vietnam, where the appalling American combat losses left succeeding generations of American commanders with an instinct to apply rapid increments of firepower — what the military calls “escalation of force” — with the goal of sparing American casualties.
After some of the most damaging incidents in Iraq, especially the killing by marines of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha in November 2005, the American command ordered new restraints on force escalation that had the effect of sharply cutting incidents in which troops opened fire on civilians.
But the change appeared to have scant impact on security contractors, whose attitudes, unconstrained by concern at being held accountable under law, continued to cast a pall of fear and resentment among Iraqis.
This has had the effect — as officers like General Horst have said — of undermining Iraqi trust in the American forces, and in the wider American enterprise in Iraq, since many Iraqis who survive or witness negligent shootings make no distinction between an American in uniform and one in the paramilitary guise of a contractor.
Contractors say the high profile of their armored convoys, coupled with the covert nature of the insurgents, places a premium on high mobility and rapid response — driving at high speed and in a bullying manner through city traffic and driving on the wrong side of boulevards and expressways, always ready to resort instantly, at the first hint of threat, to heavy firepower.
It is a formula fraught with potential for error. To be overtaken on Baghdad’s airport road by a private security convoy driving at 120 miles an hour, with contractors leaning out of windows or part-opened doors with leveled weapons, waving their fists in a frantic pantomime, is a heart-stopping experience even for other Westerners in armored cars with guards of their own. For ordinary Iraqis, with no weapons and no armoring, it can be pure terror.
At their worst, some contractors have made Iraq into a grim playground for acting out tendencies that have gone beyond bullying. In a Virginia civil court case against Triple Canopy last month, two former employees claimed that their supervisor — like his accusers, a veteran of the United States military — shot randomly into two Iraqi civilian vehicles on the airport road in Baghdad last year, after telling them that he wanted to “kill somebody” before leaving the country on vacation. The supervisor denied it.
Just why some contractors resort to such extremes is a study in war and the ways in which it plumbs the darker sides of human nature. In the military units where they acquired their weapons and tactical skills, the men who cause mayhem on the streets and highways of Iraq were subject to tight constraints — as one former soldier who does security work in Iraq and did not want to be identified expressed it in a private note to this reporter:
“Being motivated, and also somehow restrained, by the trappings of history, and by being part of something large, collective, and, one hopes, right,” this man wrote. “But being a security contractor strips much of this sociological and political upholstery away, and replaces it with cash.”

Baltimore Sun
September 23, 2007
Pg. 1
Convoy Traverses A Perilous Route
A team of guardsmen carefully negotiates an Iraqi desert road where bombs could lie hidden at every turn
By Matthew Dolan, Sun reporter
FORWARD OPERATING BASE Q-WEST, Iraq--Along a desolate stretch of two-lane road crossing a sun-bleached desert, the team in Staff Sgt. Michael Thompson's scout vehicle spots the problem first.
To the untrained eye, freshly packed asphalt filling a large pothole would be nothing unusual. But the Maryland National Guard team knows the hole was empty two days before, so the road repair signals trouble.
Five hours later, Thompson and the rest of his convoy security team discover what lies buried below: a propane tank filled with 50 pounds of explosives attached to a remote detonator.
Looking for telltale signs of hidden roadside bombs makes daily convoys from this remote American military base in northern Iraq numbingly long and frustratingly slow. Every pile of suspect garbage, every eerily emptied-out town, every square foot of new asphalt without a military engineer's "safe" mark, saddles them with risky delays.
This day's mission is supposed to be completed in 12 hours. It will take 36.
After notifying home base about the suspicious road repair, the Maryland Guard's first move is to maneuver their gun trucks on perfect cue to protect the supply convoy from attack. Then members of 2nd Platoon, Bravo Company of the 1st Battalion, 175th Infantry Regiment confront the most pressing questions.
If there is a hidden bomb, where is the trigger man? Is there a single bomb or a clutch of them? For the guardsmen laboring to reach a military base 37 miles away, no one has enough answers to move on.
The grueling convoy mission offers a glimpse of the threats faced by Maryland guardsmen - ordinary folks including a Starbucks manager, a bricklayer and a slew of college students. It has been two months since the group of more than 100 guardsmen assigned to Bravo set foot in Iraq, and they have become accustomed to the war zone's tension and danger. Still, getting a mission "outside the wire" makes them feel like the combat infantrymen they spent years training to be.
The first of the day's briefings begins at 5 a.m. with Lt. Vincenzo Dray Taylor. In civilian life, the 24-year-old from Columbia is a cook at the Bertucci's restaurant on Snowden River Parkway. He's known to break into song for no reason and think up word games to keep his crew from falling asleep on long trips. He has an easy smile and a quick laugh. But today he is a platoon leader of more than 20 men, and he is about to leave on his sixth mission.
In the predawn darkness, Taylor sketches out the route to Forward Operating Base Sykes. They'll only take a handful of roads - the exact routes are classified - but little attention is paid to the small towns and villages along the way. Experienced soldiers instead look for landmarks, Iraqi army checkpoints and road conditions to check for any changes that might spell trouble.
Taylor describes the order of his platoon's trucks - Humvees, tow trucks and armored security vehicles, v-shaped hulled trucks that look like tanks on wheels - assigned to guard the shipment of fuel, water and other goods.
He warns his soldiers of the dangers ahead. The sight of children waving from the side of the road usually means a reduced chance of attack from an improvised explosive device, or IED. But "if we don't see anyone out," Taylor warned, "we've got a problem."
He relays a description of a suspected al-Qaida in Iraq leader, believed to be in the Mosul area. But the description is so generic - brown hair, short mustache and not much more - that his platoon lets out a little laugh when Taylor tells them to "be on the lookout."
Taylor also positions each of the trucks' crews to stand in their order in the convoy. The lieutenant tosses out scenarios - a break in the convoy, a vehicle coming under fire - and the soldiers walk into flanking positions as if they were driving their gun trucks.
A half-hour later, soldiers join military contract truck drivers in a large hangar, where they sit in three sections of bleachers for a final briefing. Every soldier's and trucker's name is called. Their responses are both efficient and a grim reminder of the risks that lie ahead: the last four digits of their Social Security numbers followed by their blood types. But the true wake-up call comes moments later when briefers play a video from Baghdad.
An escorted convoy is seen on the screen snaking down a road when a dump truck suddenly pulls alongside the lead military vehicle. Seconds later, the truck explodes, and the entire screen is engulfed by a giant cloud.
"I just want you to be mindful of that kind of danger - suicide trucks filled with explosives," the briefer says as Bravo soldiers gasp at the sight.
One stretch of their route is considered a "Tier 1 IED site" - likely laden with buried bombs.
As the briefing concludes, soldiers load up on their own fuel: handfuls of energy bars, highly caffeinated power drinks, sugary cereals, bottles of water and Gatorade.
The weather report calls for a high of 108 degrees. Military gun trucks are air-conditioned, but that hardly matters in a Humvee with a hole cut in the roof for the gunner. Required gear - Kevlar helmet, chest armor with shoulder protection and side ceramic plates, ballistic glasses, kneepads and fire-resistant Nomex gloves - only increases the discomfort from the heat and cramped spaces as the day grows long.
They set out just after 8 a.m., and for a while the journey is routine. Taylor's Humvee jostles a bit to find its place in the convoy. The gunners "go red," releasing the safeties on their weapons as they roll out of the gate. Sgt. Stephen Szabo, a 25-year-old student from Brentwood, jokes from another vehicle that his truck is not only "red" but "nuclear."
Soon, two trucks filled with Iraqi police officers appear in the distance, and their arrival is radioed down the line of military vehicles. The license plates of the pickups are checked against one from a recently stolen vehicle in Mosul.
At 9:33, the first real problem appears. Lead scouts notice the pothole newly filled with asphalt, directly across from two piles of rocks in a culvert.
"Do you see any tracks?" Taylor asks, referring to signs of vehicles.
His scouts aren't sure, so they look further.
In a half-hour, a decision is made. The site will be blocked off, a senior commander at Forwarding Operating Base Q-West notified and a call placed for help from the Army's explosive ordnance detachment (EOD).
The wait begins. An hour passes.
"EOD is on the way," Taylor tells his platoon. "No ETA."
Another hour passes.
The soldiers don't get out of their vehicles except to relieve themselves on the pavement. Helicopters swoop overhead, making whooshing sounds as they pass low and fast. An acrid whiff of diesel fuel fills the Humvee. Temperatures exceed 100 degrees. Nobody takes off his body armor. Uniforms become so soaked with sweat that they will stiffen like cardboard when they dry. The radio grows quiet.
Taylor's gunner, Sgt. Robert Feliz, 27, of Silver Spring, says he is losing feeling in his left foot and stamps it on the Humvee floor below him. The former Marine - and current Montgomery College student - has been baking under the desert sun, standing in the open-air turret; his only relief comes from sitting in a small sling with no back support.
Taylor takes out a list of Arabic terms and begins to study. His driver, Spc. Mike Connolly, a college student at Salisbury University who has served his last two deployments in Iraq with his father, scribbles himself reminder messages on the windshield with an erasable pen: write letters, scrap metal, Mass on Sunday.
At 12:25 p.m., a new report blinks on the lieutenant's mobile computer messaging system. The long-expected arrival of the explosives team will be delayed further: They are still 10 minutes from leaving Q-West.
Forty-five minutes later, two Army helicopters providing air cover for the convoy radio the lieutenant to check in.
"Did you search this guy out here with the sheep?" one of the helicopter's crew asks Taylor.
"Nah, we just had eyes on him," Taylor said.
"Well, he's in a pretty good lineup position for a detonator."
Someone chimes in to ask if Bravo brought an X-ray machine to examine the hole. They did not. With the shepherd the only person visible for miles, two scout trucks break out of the convoy and, with helicopters circling overhead, close in on the Iraqi tending to his sheep. The report back isn't encouraging.
"He said he don't have anything on him," one sergeant calls back, reporting that soldiers failed to find a detonating device. "We're going to check the path he came to see if he dropped anything."
Three armored vehicles from the explosives teams finally arrive. Soldiers expect to wait for these teams because of the high demand for their services.
Using a remote-control robot, they place charges around the suspected IED site and prepare for a detonation. But the first attempt at 2:17 p.m. goes off with a dull thud. Twenty-five minutes later, they try again.
Again, a thud, but this time the asphalt has been peeled away, exposing the bomb below.
A third try at 2:54 hits the IED. The jolting explosion sends a giant column of brownish smoke into the sky. Soldiers take out their digital cameras to videotape the sight.
"Wow, what a propane tank," Taylor said, who sings some lyrics from the Green Day song "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)."
"You sing Green Day, sir, but it's like Frank Sinatra," teases Feliz, his gunner.
"Sergeant Feliz, do you need a straw?" Taylor joshes back. "I mean, you're really suckling up now."
Seven hours outside their home base but no more than 10 miles down the road, the Humvee crew hoots with laughter.
Finally, the convoy can move on, crossing from open desert where sheepherders have tiny shacks to small villages of mud homes with satellite dishes. The small number of villagers worries Taylor, who says, "There are not a lot of people out."
"Yeah, not at all," Feliz responds.
Connolly chimes in: "Well, it's Friday."
"Yeah, like a church day for them," Feliz says.
"Plus it is close to happy hour," Taylor deadpans.
But the next town brings out more people and traffic along the road increases - families packed into four-door sedans, uniformed Iraqi soldiers riding on the back of an open, 5-ton truck, Iraqi police standing in the bed of a Toyota pickup, oil security guards dressed completely in black, masking their faces with scarves and clutching AK-47s.
An hour later, the landscape becomes more urban. Houses are larger, boasting columns and walled courtyards. The convoy stutter-steps its way along the route, with only brief stops compared with the morning's five-hour standstill.
Almost at its destination, a truck in the convoy breaks down and needs to be towed into the Sykes base. The delay almost forces the guardsmen to miss dinner, but the dining hall stays open late for them. Ravenous, they eat just before 9 p.m. Most will even get a mattress and air-conditioned room to crash in until morning.
But Bravo Company Capt. Matthew DiNenna, a Baltimore County resident, is visibly frustrated with the day. He pulls Taylor aside before bed and relates some of his displeasure, wondering why better information for higher command could not have been collected about the location and description of the IED found by the convoy.
Often standing apart from his men, DiNenna has a manner that is blunt and, at times, gruff. He has two priorities: completing the mission and keeping his soldiers safe. Those who don't perform up to standard will hear about it. "I'll be satisfied only when Iraq is at my back," he says, referring to the end of the deployment next year.
Later, the 37-year-old captain says he thought the communication led by Taylor during the convoy ride was much improved but felt he needed to push his young lieutenant to reach new heights.
Taylor, looking exhausted but still smiling, elects to sleep in his Humvee. It's so he'll never be far from the radio he has listened to for the past 12 hours.
The weather is changed by 7 a.m., with wind whipping up sand that coats every exposed body part. Gunners wrap clothes around the lower parts of their faces, looking like old-time bank robbers. All of them wear goggles, but they squint and wince when the gusts smack too hard.
The convoy is supposed to pull out at 10:30 a.m., giving drivers enough time to get their new loads of fuel, water and other supplies for Q-West. But conditions are now Category Red, meaning limited visibility on a route prone to insurgent attack.
Medic helicopters are unable to fly because of the weather. Without such air support, the convoy's departure is delayed. Connolly, familiar with such stops and starts after two tours in Iraq, pulls out a well-worn copy of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart."
Good news arrives at 11:30: The helicopters can now fly. By noon, the convoy is rolling from the gates of Sykes toward Q-West.
But trouble crops up 90 minutes later with a report about an IED attack against one of the private truck drivers. Sgt. Stephen Engelmann, a 22-year-old college junior from Hagerstown, sees the explosion's plume of smoke and relays it through the rest of the military gun trucks. But the guardsmen have difficulty pinpointing the attack's time and location because private truck drivers not working for an American contractor do not have radios to communicate with the military during convoys.
Quickly, the convoy is stopped, and the damaged supply truck inspected. The cab has relatively minor damage, and the driver is unhurt. Taylor gets out of his Humvee to verify the hit but is unable to establish firmly an exact location and time of the attack.
The rest of the trip flows smoothly until just a few miles from the gate. The Humvee checks out a carload of Iraqi civilians and a man standing near a cell phone tower. Nothing suspicious is found after a search of the men, and a call for reinforcements from Q-West to investigate further is denied, essentially ending the day's mission.
In a swirling sandstorm back at Q-West, the men decamp from their vehicles as the sun sets, huddling up for a quick recap of the day. Following military tradition, leaders describe the highs and lows of the mission; then everybody can add his two cents.
"Good eyes on the scout," Taylor says of Thompson's vehicle and the crew's spotting of the first IED. "The triggerman could have been out there."
He also compliments the tactics during the return trip that secured passage around a blown-out overpass that had been bombed.
DiNenna addresses the group at the end, publicly praising its officers and sergeants for improving their communication and praising their soldiers' watchful eyes.
The briefing wraps up after 8 p.m., but the day is not done for Bravo. Exhausted but safe, they return to company headquarters for another three hours to check over their vehicles and weapons for problems. It is after 11 before most of them hit their beds to sleep, almost 40 hours after they first reported for duty.

Los Angeles Times
September 23, 2007
Iraqi Militia Leader's Death Shatters Truce
The Mahdi Army commander was hated by Shiites and Sunnis alike. Nonetheless, his assassination reignites sectarian killings.
By Ned Parker, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
BAGHDAD —Mahdi Army commander Hamoudi Naji and his men paraded past the grocery stores, car repair shops and brick homes in the Ugaidat neighborhood, the one section of Washash not under his control. It was a reminder to everyone watching that even if he couldn't touch this one area, the entire district belonged to him.
It had been five months since the Shiite militia leader had hammered out the truce with Abu Yasser, a senior member of the Sunni clan that Ugaidat was named after. The tribe had been able to fend him off, and Naji, a vegetable seller and car thief with a love of violence, had finally agreed to leave the Ugaidat clan alone.
On Thursday night, Naji watched Sunni and Shiite men sipping tea by their front gates and children playing games for Ramadan, the Muslim holy month that has just begun. Up the street, Abu Yasser spotted him.
Abu Yasser remembered when the two men announced the truce and celebrated with a meal in a tent in the middle of the district. The terms were: no killing, no displacement and a return to calm. He had hoped it would spread through all Washash, but it did not.
Naji continued to walk. From the date palms, gunmen watched him and opened fire. The Mahdi Army leader collapsed, mortally wounded, and with him went the truce that had prevailed in the neighborhood.
"His men thought that the fire came from us. They started shooting," Abu Yasser said. "We were astonished and ran to our houses and brought our weapons to defend ourselves."
Sectarian war had descended once more on Washash. The irony was that it had exploded over a man who was hated by Shiites and Sunnis alike.
Within the hour, small gangs from the Mahdi Army hunted down Sunnis across the district. Anywhere from five to 20 people were killed, and by Friday afternoon, at least 30 Sunni families had fled Washash.
Violence continued Saturday as a Sunni man was pulled out of a car and shot to death.
Naji, a man viewed by many as a criminal, had ignited another chapter in Iraq's civil war.
Communal resentments were so entrenched that once blood was spilled, many Sunnis decided they were better off leaving the district despite assurances from the U.S. military that it was increasing its patrols and adding Iraqi troops. Sunnis accused the Badr Organization, another Shiite militia, of assassinating Naji, and Shiites pointed the finger at Abu Yasser's tribe.
In Baghdad's war, the fighting often has less to do with communal differences than with the ruthlessness of men such as Naji, who drape themselves in the banner of a party to rule the streets.
According to interviews with Washash residents, Naji had climbed his way from being a vegetable seller to a commander in the Mahdi Army. When he joined the militia, he had a gang of 20 to 25 men; they had dabbled in kidnapping and car theft.
His gang even included some Sunnis. When he was gunned down, Naji counted at least three Sunnis in his gang. He made room for anyone who pledged loyalty to him and was willing to follow his commands. Through the militia, he evicted Sunni families from their homes so he could rent them and make some extra cash. He charged shop owners a monthly protection fee, they paid him for extra generators, and he continued to carry out kidnappings.
A Mahdi militiaman Saturday applauded his death. "We are much better off with Naji dead," the fighter said. "We feel safer. Hamoudi Naji did so many bad things."
Such sentiments mattered little for those such as Abu Yasser, who no longer felt comfortable in Washash, where he has lived for more than 50 years. On Friday, he spoke to the U.S. military and then Iraqi army officers about whether he should flee his home.
Abu Yasser said one Iraqi officer told him: "What are you still doing in the middle of this Shiite area? Why haven't you left already? You are bringing us all troubles."
He agreed and joined a caravan of cars escorted by the Iraqi army. "We left our houses. We only took the important small things and some clothes," he said. "I don't think we will ever go back to our houses, especially after what happened."
The U.S. military commander for Washash, Lt. Col. Ed Chesney, watched as the Sunnis started to flee, despite the promises of an increased military presence. "They are making a decision based on their experiences over the past few years," he said.
Some of Abu Yasser's relatives left their homes with Shiite friends who promised to look after them.
"My neighbor, who is a Shiite, is not content with what the Mahdi Army is doing in Washash," said a displaced man, Sabah Ali. "I wish I could go back home, and I know somehow that I will. One day it will get better and I'll return."
Still, speaking by phone from his new home in west Baghdad, Ali marveled at the brutality of the last few days and those Shiites in the neighborhood who fought them.
"Their hearts have no mercy anymore," he said. "A sniper killed a woman in the street who was carrying her baby. A shot in the head -- what kind of human being would do that?"
But in death, Naji's faults were forgotten for some militia members, who rallied to his memory. They praised him for his truce in Ugaidat and recounted his betrayal in a Sunni neighborhood. "He was a great man and from the good elements of the Mahdi Army," said a fighter in west Baghdad.
In other violence Saturday, a tribal leader from the Anbar Awakening Council, a Sunni group, said more than 25 suspects related to the organization Al Qaeda in Iraq had been detained in connection with the killing this month of Sheik Abdul Sattar Rishawi, who had led the western province of Anbar in revolt against Sunni extremists. The police in the provincial capital, Ramadi, reported that the chief of Rishawi's security detail had been detained.
Also Saturday, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani demanded that the United States release an Iranian official, arrested in an early morning raid in the northern Iraqi region of Kurdistan last week, whom the U.S. military accused of transporting explosives and training terrorists on behalf of Iran's Revolutionary Guard.
"We express our resentment over this arrest without coordination with the local government," Talabani, who is Kurdish, said in a letter to U.S. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker.
U.S. soldiers raided a hotel Thursday in Sulaymaniya, a city in northern Iraq, and arrested Aghawi Farhadi, who was visiting Iraq as part of an official trade delegation.
Separately, seven Iraqis were killed during a U.S.-led raid in Musayyib, south of Baghdad, Iraqi security officials and the U.S. military confirmed.
In other developments, the Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella organization of extremist groups that includes Al Qaeda in Iraq, released a video in which five Iraqi soldiers, identified as having been captured in Diyala province, are executed after pleading for their colleagues to desert the army and police.
Times special correspondents in Baghdad contributed to this report.

Washington Post
September 23, 2007
Pg. 21
25 Held In Slaying Of Iraqi Sunni Chief
Suspects Include Head of Security Detail
By Associated Press
BAGHDAD, Sept. 22 -- The U.S. military on Saturday confirmed the arrests of 25 suspects in the assassination of a tribal leader who had allied himself with the United States and unified Sunni groups against the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq.
The suspects were detained by the Iraqi police and include the head of the security detail that was supposed to protect Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, who was killed in a bombing Sept. 13, according to Lt. Col. Jubeir Rashid, an Iraqi police officer in Anbar province.
The killing of Abu Risha, just 10 days after he met with President Bush, dealt a blow to one of the few success stories in U.S. efforts to stabilize Iraq. The tribal leader was credited with bringing together sheiks in the western province of Anbar into an alliance against extremists, after years of U.S. failures to tame flash points such as Ramadi and Fallujah.
Rashid said Friday that Abu Risha's security chief, Capt. Karim al-Barghothi, confessed that al-Qaeda in Iraq had offered him $1.5 million for the slaying but that he was arrested before he could collect the money.
Two other bodyguards as well as some of Abu Risha's neighbors were also detained, Iraqi police said. The arrests took place two days after the bombing. The Islamic State of Iraq, a group believed to have been formed by al-Qaeda in Iraq, asserted responsibility for the assassination.
Abu Risha, who organized 25 Sunni Arab clans into an alliance, died along with two bodyguards and a driver when a bomb exploded near his walled compound just outside Ramadi, 60 miles west of Baghdad.
Marine Maj. Jeff Pool, a U.S. military spokesman for western Iraq, praised the Iraqi investigation into the attack.
The U.S. military earlier had announced that Fallah Khalifa Hiyas Fayyas al-Jumayli, an Iraqi also known as Abu Khamis and connected to Abu Risha's death and a plot to kill other tribal leaders, had been arrested during a raid north of Baghdad. Pool said Jumayli was arrested with two other people.
Abu Risha's death raised concerns that without his powerful presence in the Sunni alliance, Anbar could slide back into violence, but tribesmen in Anbar province have vowed not to be deterred in fighting their Sunni rivals.

Washington Post
September 23, 2007
Pg. 20
U.S. Releases 260 Iraqi Detainees
Action Coincides With Muslim Holy Month of Ramadan
By Walter Pincus and Megan Greenwell, Washington Post Staff Writers
In the first week of a special program during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the U.S. military released 260 Iraqi detainees from U.S. prisons, the military said Wednesday, compelling each to take a pledge before an Iraqi judge not to engage in misconduct and requiring a family member or a friend to act as a guarantor who would face sanctions if the pledge is broken.
The initiative "is designed to deter detainees from engaging in misconduct after their release," said a military statement released Sept. 13, at the start of the program.
The released detainees "are tracked, and if they act outside the law, they are turned over to the Iraqi judicial system," Rear Adm. Mark I. Fox, a U.S. military spokesman, told reporters in Baghdad last week.
The Ramadan program is part of a joint U.S.-Iraqi venture called Lion's Paw, and it is intended to step up the normally slow pace of detainee releases, to between 50 and 80 Iraqis per day, until the holy month ends Oct. 13, according to the military announcement.
Marine Maj. Gen. Douglas Stone, commander of U.S. detainee operations in Iraq, told bloggers in a roundtable Tuesday that the United States currently holds 25,000 Iraqis in detention facilities in Iraq, and as the U.S. counteroffensive strategy continues, an additional 15,000 could be brought in. He said more than 80 percent of the detainees are Sunnis, although the number of Shiites is rising "because of the major push here in the Shia parts of Baghdad." Stone also said that "we're seeing about 25 percent [of the detainees] right now that probably are okay to be released."
Stone said earlier this month that the selection of detainees for release will be open to all who qualify. "This will be a completely non-sectarian, non-political process," he said.
Stone emphasized that the program was developed in conjunction with Iraq's Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi. Stone said Hashimi has attended some of the daily "pledging guarantor ceremonies" and has given speeches to those being released.
In describing the impact of the release program, Stone told the bloggers that during Monday's ceremony, "we had a mother so overjoyed she fainted." Detainees offered release, he added, became "just over-ecstatic that they get to make a choice" of which gate to use to depart.
The Ramadan release initiative is one of many programs that Stone has instituted since he took over control of the detainee system. He has introduced moderate Islamic clerics to teach "religious enlightenment" and has launched other education programs for the detainees, some of whom are as young as 11. He describes it as part of waging war in "the battlefield of the mind" in Iraq.
Stone told the bloggers that since he took over, he has released very few detainees up to now, and he believes that has been a factor in restraining Sunni violence. "I'm not out here, you know, for social work. . . . We're out here because war is an act of force, and we're going to compel this enemy to do our will."
As for religious extremists, who appear to be at the root of Sunni and Shiite opposition to the U.S. presence, Stone said: "Our will is that the moderates are going to win out. And so everybody that's in my detention is either going to go out doing that, because that's what our will is, or they're not going out."
Greenwell reported from Baghdad.

New York Daily News
September 23, 2007
Al Qaeda Executes 5 Abducted Iraqi Soldiers On Videotape
By Elizabeth Hays, Daily News Staff Writer
The message was as loud and clear as it was barbaric.
Al Qaeda-backed insurgents fired off a deadly warning to Iraqis working with U.S. forces yesterday with a chilling video of five abducted Iraqi soldiers forced to their knees and shot execution-style by a hooded gunman.
The self-proclaimed Islamic State in Iraq, a front for Al Qaeda, took credit for the brutal video that was posted on several Islamic Web sites.
"I advise the police and army to quit this job," one of the officers said while seated in front of a camera before the killings.
The video shows a black-clad gunman blasting each uniformed officer in the back of the head at close range with a pistol as he crouches blindfolded with his hands bound behind him in a desolate area.
"This is a message to [President] Bush to wake up from his dreams," a voice proclaims in the short video called "Execution of a Divine Judgment."
The officers said they were captured in Baquba, capital of Diyala Province, by "fighters" with the Islamic State in Iraq.
U.S. forces recently carried out an operation in the area against Al Qaeda and Sunni militants, but the video does not provide a location or time.
The group claimed the video shows that U.S. forces and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki are losing the war in Iraq.
"The al-Maliki government thought its army could achieve what was not achieved by the strongest army in the world," says a voice on the video.
--With News Wire Services

Washington Times
September 23, 2007
Pg. 6
U.N. Rise In Staff Will Be 'Modest'
By Betsy Pisik, Washington Times
NEW YORK — U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon maintained the organization would only boost its Iraq staff by a "modest" number, despite assurances by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that his country is a safer place thanks to Iraqi police and foreign troops.
The two co-chaired a meeting of foreign ministers yesterday afternoon to brainstorm about what the Iraqis need to do to bring stability and security to the country, and how their governments can help.
The meeting was attended by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her counterparts from Syria and Iran — possibly the countries with the most significant effect on security now — as well as foreign ministers from Iraq's other neighbors, donors, Security Council members and representatives of other Muslim and European nations.
"The overall situation in Iraq, which I tried to express to delegations, is that at the present time, with the multinational forces, we have improved the situation," Mr. al-Maliki told the press last night after the two-hour meeting.
"There are still pockets of tension and terrorist militias working in the shadows," he acknowledged. "But they are all pursued by Iraqi forces."
Shortly after a private session with Mr. Ban earlier in the day, Mr. al-Maliki said the security situation "has begun to develop tremendously."
The Iraqi prime minister brushed off criticism from the White House and Congress, maintaining that it is "normal" for lawmakers to be impatient.
Despite Mr. al-Maliki's relatively upbeat picture, Mr. Ban said the organization would not be returning to Iraq in the same numbers it deployed before and directly after the U.S.-led 2003 invasion.
"I am seriously considering how to increase our presence and our role," Mr. Ban said in a joint press conference with Mr. al-Maliki. "Security is improving, but I think much more has to be done. Our activities have been largely constrained by the situation on the ground."
Nonetheless, he added, "the United Nations has a competitive advantage in political facilitation and national reconciliation."
He said he soon will authorize the U.N. international staff in Baghdad by a "modest increase ... as soon as integrated facilities are ready for the safety and security of our staff."
Mr. al-Maliki refused to confirm the existence of an Iraqi videotape reportedly showing Blackwater private security guards firing unprovoked into a crowd, killing at least 11.

Philadelphia Inquirer
September 23, 2007
Kurd Capital A Respite From Horrors
You'd likely survive a night stroll in Irbil. The stability little resembles the rest of Iraq.
By Christopher Torchia, Associated Press
IRBIL, Iraq - For anyone who has spent time in Baghdad, the most startling thing about a visit to Kurdistan's capital is that it resembles a city at peace, at least by Iraqi standards. The last bomb hit Irbil on May 9, when 14 people died in a suicide attack on a government building.
Planes flying into Baghdad execute a rapid spiral toward the runway to reduce the chances of getting hit by ground fire. U.S. and Iraqi military vehicles ply the highway leading into the city from the airport. Traffic crawls through heavily defended checkpoints.
But the biggest hassle for a visitor arriving in Irbil by plane is mundane: a long wait in line at immigration.
The next cultural shock is the relative lack of guns on the streets of Irbil, an ancient city near the site of a battlefield victory of the Macedonian king Alexander the Great over forces of the Persian empire. A little more than a decade ago, the city was the scene of fighting among Kurdish factions, one of them backed by Saddam Hussein's military.
Soldiers, some in uniforms of American-made desert camouflage, carry automatic weapons outside key government buildings. Some armed guards, visibly relaxed, stroll down avenues or lounge outside banks, fuel depots and other installations. They don't wear helmets or bulletproof vests.
More secure
Security is tighter around a compound in the Ainkawa neighborhood of Irbil, where foreign contractors and U.S. diplomatic staff live. Even here, though, the concrete blast walls are fewer and lower than those found at similar installations in Baghdad. Ainkawa is a Christian district in a Kurdish city, which is as safe as it gets for Westerners in Iraq.
Kurds are a non-Arab, Sunni Muslim people distantly related to the Iranians, and they are about 15 percent of Iraq's population of 27 million. Neighboring Iran, Syria and Turkey also have Kurdish minorities that have come into conflict with governments seeking to curb their separatist movements.
Iraqi Kurds rebelled against Hussein after the Persian Gulf War in 1991. U.S.-led forces created a safe haven for the Kurds, who eventually established a stable, self-governing territory that had little in common with the chaos elsewhere in Iraq.
They rejoined the central government after Hussein was ousted in 2003, although they maintain a big say in their own affairs.
As U.S. allies, the Kurds are targets of insurgents, and the area under their control lies close to such troubled cities as Mosul and Kirkuk. But bombings in the Kurds' semiautonomous zone are considered unusual, partly a result of rigorous policing that keeps attackers from crossing the "Green Line" that divides Kurdistan from the rest of Iraq.
An official of the Kurdistan Regional Government invited an American journalist for ice cream and a walk through the downtown late one night to show that Irbil was safe. Such an excursion in Baghdad - for a foreigner or an Iraqi - would be extremely unwise. And unlike the Iraqi capital, Irbil does not impose curfews.
Bustling nights
Tea shops were packed, and smoke billowed from a barbecue restaurant. Iskan Street, a shopping thoroughfare, was hopping, even though it was quieter than usual because Islam's holy month of Ramadan was under way. The official urged the journalist to walk around at night by himself.
The U.S. military presence in Kurdistan is minimal. More than 1,000 South Korean troops in the area provide medical care at a hospital on their base and other humanitarian projects. It is easy to reach their compound entrance; just get waved through two lackluster Kurdish checkpoints without a car or ID check.
Owners of private cars in Irbil don't seem to have any qualms about driving around in big, white SUVs. Such vehicles are frequently attacked in Baghdad and other more dangerous parts of Iraq because they are favored by foreign contractors.
The largely homogenous civilian population in Kurdistan, eager to stay away from the sectarian and factional bloodshed among Sunni and Shiite Arabs farther south, keeps in close contact with their trusted security forces.
If a suspicious person loiters too long near a government building, someone will contact the authorities. If someone rents an apartment, the owner will likely demand proof of identity and clearance from security officials. Checkpoint guards want to know where travelers came from, where they are going, and whom they are going to see.
Falah Mustafa Bakir, head of Kurdistan's foreign relations department, said the Kurds had appealed in vain to American forces to provide surveillance cameras, equipment that detects explosives, and other high-tech security gear. But he said he felt comfortable without bodyguards.
"I drive alone," Bakir said. "I go the market. I go to restaurants."

New York Times
September 23, 2007
Pg. 14
$50 Billion For Military Is Added To Budget
By Helene Cooper
WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 — The Bush administration plans to increase its 2008 financing request for military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere by almost $50 billion, with about a quarter of the additional money going toward armored trucks built to withstand roadside bombs, Pentagon officials said Saturday.
The increase would bring the amount the administration is seeking to finance the war effort through 2008 to almost $200 billion. Much of that money will go to refurbishment of military equipment and to the purchase of new protective equipment for troops, officials said, an indication of the toll that years of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken on military vehicles, aircraft, weapons and other items.
Defense officials said earlier this year that the Pentagon would need a war budget of $141 billion in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. The additional request for nearly $50 billion, which was first reported in The Los Angeles Times on Saturday, will be presented by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Wednesday, the Pentagon said. Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte and senior military officials are also expected to attend the hearing.
Mr. Gates is to testify two weeks after Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, went before Congress to warn against a rapid reduction of troops in Iraq, and a week after a Democratic effort to limit troop rotations stumbled in the Senate. The financing request may serve to further sharpen partisan divisions over the Iraq war in general, and its soaring cost in particular.
About a quarter of the new money would go to build additional mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles, or MRAPs, Pentagon officials said. “We’d put in an original request for 7,000 MRAPS, but we’re going to double that number,” said a senior Defense Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly on the issue.
Members of Congress have criticized the Defense Department, saying it has been too slow to buy enough of the vehicles for troops in Iraq.
The vehicles, which cost around $1 million each, have a raised chassis and V-shaped underside that deflects explosions better than the flat underbelly on Humvees, which are used by most combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Bush administration originally sought $2.6 billion for fiscal 2007 to buy additional MRAPs, but Congress increased the total by $1.2 billion. Acquiring MRAPs has become one of the Pentagon’s biggest budget priorities.
Senator Joesph R. Biden Jr., of Delaware, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, reintroduced legislation last week to increase financing for the mine-resistant vehicles by $23.6 billion.
“We have no higher obligation than to protect those we send to the front lines,” Mr. Biden said in a statement on Wednesday. “So when our commanders in the field tell us that MRAPs will reduce casualties by 67 to 80 percent, it is our responsibility to provide them.”
Defense officials, conceding that increasing production of MRAPs so steeply could lead to bottlenecks, have said the Defense Department’s leadership now agrees that the risk is acceptable in order to provide vehicles that can better withstand roadsid