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 The Pentagon Early Bird - Easter Edition Use of these news items does not reflect official endorsement. Reproduction for private use or gain is subject to original copyright restrictions. Item numbers indicate order of appearance only. This is the single print version. Use the PRINT command in your browser to print the entire Early Bird as one document. (NOTE: This single file format is a long document and can use 50 or more pages of paper.) Please scroll down to read Headlines, then further scroll down to read the Entire News Headline Articles. Url's will not link out in this format. IRAQ
New York Times March 23, 2008 Pg. 8 4 Americans Killed In Iraq; U.S. Attack Kills 6 By Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Anwar J. Ali BAGHDAD — Four American soldiers were killed near the capital in the past two days, the military said Saturday, and north of Baghdad an American attack helicopter killed six people who the Iraqi police said were pro-American Sunni militia fighters. Three soldiers were killed when militants attacked their patrol with a roadside bomb northwest of the capital on Saturday, the military command in Baghdad reported. Two Iraqi civilians also died. The fourth American soldier was killed south of the capital on Friday by indirect fire, which normally refers to mortar shells or rockets. Four other soldiers were wounded in the attack, according to a military statement, which did not provide any more details. Violence in Iraq dropped sharply late last year, especially in Baghdad and Anbar Province, but the decline in casualties has halted. Since the beginning of the year, Sunni guerrillas and Shiite militants have been killing an average of about one American service member per day. Civilian deaths have also begun to rise in recent weeks. But casualty tallies still remain well below those of a year ago. Many of the security gains have been attributed to the decision by Sunnis, many of whom were guerrilla fighters, to become American-backed neighborhood militia guards, paid about $300 a month by the military. More than 90,000 militiamen, most of them Sunnis, are now on the American payroll. But it is not clear how many had previously fought American forces. But as the program has expanded, some militia groups have been infiltrated by Sunni militants still at war with American forces. And in some cases American troops have had trouble distinguishing the former insurgents working for the Americans from active fighters who are not. Details were sharply disputed regarding the attack early Saturday near Samarra that an Iraqi police official said left the six pro-American Sunni militia guards dead. One Sunni militia leader in the area said the men who were killed had been staffing a legitimate checkpoint. But the American military command for northern Iraq said the Apache helicopter fired on men who had appeared to be trying to bury a roadside bomb. “American forces said that the people they killed were gunmen, but they were my men, and they were even wearing Awakening uniforms,” said Abu Farouk, a leader of pro-American Awakening militia forces near Samarra. American military officials acknowledged that six people were killed by an Apache helicopter, but they rejected the account provided by the Iraqi police official and Abu Farouk. The military said it could not confirm whether or not the six men had been part of a pro-American militia. But the military said the helicopter had attacked “suspected I.E.D. emplacers” after they were spotted “conducting suspicious terrorist activity in an area historically known for improvised explosive device emplacement.” “I.E.D.,” or improvised explosive device, is military jargon for roadside bombs, often made from old artillery shells or other explosives, that can destroy Humvees and other vehicles. The American statement also denied that the men who were killed had been at a militia checkpoint, and instead described the area as being “near a recent I.E.D. site.” Just south of Samarra on Saturday, in the town of al-Mutasim, a suicide bomber blew up a car near the house of the mayor, Sheik Hussein al-Shatob. The explosion killed three Iraqi police officers guarding the house, but the mayor was unharmed. An Iraqi employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Samarra. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080323589437.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_2134052_AKf OjkQAAKUeR%2Bai9AOVDR4tfDs&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080323aaindex_concat.html&cred=hVCbJ.FTB4c8_C Ol7CoSzCgzxBAau1k6rm4t8e2pRhpciDz3bWtl40ghrpUDke#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Los Angeles Times March 23, 2008 Iraq Bomb Kills 3 U.S. Soldiers The American death toll in the 5-year-old war nears 4,000. By Ned Parker and Hameed Rasheed, Special to The Times BAGHDAD — The number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq edged closer Saturday to the milestone figure of 4,000 as a roadside bomb claimed the lives of three soldiers. The bomb blew up the U.S. soldiers' vehicle and killed two Iraqis in northwest Baghdad, the military said in a news release. The military also reported that indirect fire, either a rocket or mortar shell, killed a U.S. soldier and injured four others Friday south of Baghdad. The loss of life raised the number of U.S. troops who have died in Iraq since 2003 to 3,996, according to the website icasualties.org. The bloodshed came three days after President Bush marked the anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion by declaring that the United States must win in Iraq. So far, 23 U.S. service members have died this month, making it one of the quieter periods for U.S. casualties since the war began. North of Baghdad, a U.S. military helicopter opened fire Saturday near Samarra, killing six Iraqis who were believed to have worked for the so-called Sons of Iraq, the American-funded neighborhood security groups that include many former Sunni insurgents. An Iraqi army commander and one of the paramilitary group's leaders said the men were stationed at a checkpoint when they came under fire. The U.S. military asserted that the men appeared to be engaged in suspicious activity at the site, where militants have previously planted roadside bombs. In a statement, the U.S. Army said that it was not clear whether the men belonged to the U.S.-backed citizens' units. The Sons of Iraq movement, formerly called the Awakening Councils, began in western Anbar province with Sunni tribes rebelling against Al Qaeda in Iraq. It has led to a major shift as many former Sunni insurgents have decided to join forces with the U.S. military nationwide in battling radicals. Maj. Majeed Abbas, one of the leaders of the Sunni fighters in Samarra, said he had alerted the Americans that his men were policing checkpoints in the region around Tharthar Lake, which is a popular route for insurgents moving between Anbar and Salahuddin province to the northeast. "I contacted the [American] man in charge of the helicopters. . . . I told him to stop the helicopters and that these were our forces and that they were on duty," Abbas said. He said that U.S. officers later asked him to pick up the bodies. The Iraqi army commander in the area, Lt. Col. Dhia Mahmoud Ahmed, said he had told the Americans that the Iraqi military had been aware of the checkpoint, but the U.S. officers said they had not been alerted to its presence. "God have mercy on the martyrs' souls," Ahmed said. There has been a string of controversial "friendly fire" incidents in which U.S. forces have called in airstrikes mistakenly on their new Sunni allies. There are more than 80,000 Sons of Iraq members across the country. The groups have chafed at the Iraqi government's slowness in hiring them for police forces and the army. In other violence, two people were killed in roadside bombings in Baghdad and the northern city of Kirkuk. Times staff writer Parker reported from Baghdad and special correspondent Rasheed from Samarra. Times staff writers Said Rifai, Raheem Salman and Saif Rasheed contributed to this report. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080323589407.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_2134052_AKf OjkQAAKUeR%2Bai9AOVDR4tfDs&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080323aaindex_concat.html&cred=hVCbJ.FTB4c8_C Ol7CoSzCgzxBAau1k6rm4t8e2pRhpciDz3bWtl40ghrpUDke#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Washington Post March 23, 2008 Pg. 14 U.S. Strike Kills 6 Iraqi Sunni Volunteers Military Says Attack Is Under Investigation; Former Insurgents Express Frustration By Sholnn Freeman, Washington Post Foreign Service BAGHDAD, March 22 -- American-backed Sunni volunteer forces had set up two checkpoints at a small bridge near the insurgent stronghold city of Samarra, taking precautions not to be mistaken for enemy fighters. They had spent the night before with their U.S. allies, marking areas where their men were stationed, and said they were told everything was fine. "Our men wore special uniforms with the translucent markings so that they would be recognized by the American planes and were deployed at two points north and south of Ishaki bridge," said Abu Farouk, a leader of the predominantly Sunni "Awakening" forces, which the U.S. military refers to as the Sons of Iraq or Concerned Local Citizens. At 4 a.m. Saturday, an Apache helicopter opened fire, killing six men and wounding two. The military said in a statement that the men were suspected of planting improvised explosive devices. Citing initial reports, the military acknowledged that Farouk's group was friendly to U.S. forces and said the attack was under investigation. "We were afraid that something like this would happen, and it did," Farouk said. Members of the Awakening forces have been increasingly frustrated with the U.S. military and the Iraqi government over what they see as insufficient U.S. support and a lack of recognition of their growing political clout. Their participation in the war on the U.S. side is one of the three pillars of the U.S.-Iraqi strategy for stabilizing the security situation in Iraq. In a measure of the drop in violence, 92 U.S. soldiers have been killed this year, compared with 245 in the first three months of last year, according to icasualties.org. The deaths this year included three American soldiers killed Saturday when their Humvee struck a roadside bomb during a patrol in northwestern Baghdad. The Ishaki bridge is nine miles south of Samarra, which is about 85 miles north of Baghdad. The American assault on the bridge checkpoints was the sixth incident in which U.S. forces have attacked Awakening forces. On Feb. 14, Issa Muhsin al-Jubouri, a leader of Awakening forces in the village of Zaab, west of Kirkuk, accused the military of killing six of his relatives and of trying to beat him into confessing that he supported terrorists. The next day, U.S. soldiers killed three Awakening fighters in the southern town of Jurf al-Sakr. U.S. commanders said that the men had fired on the soldiers, who reacted in self-defense. After the deaths, 1,000 fighters walked away from their posts. Suhail Najem, 35, an Awakening member, said fighters in Samarra are angry and disturbed about the attacks. "We hear of apologies and material compensation, as if the Iraqi man has become no more than an apology and an amount of dollars," he said. "When we volunteered, we did not want to help the Americans out of the Iraqi quagmire but to rebuild our town and safeguard what is left of it." The Awakening forces are made up mostly of former insurgents who turned against extremists because of their harsh tactics and radical interpretation of Islam. Farouk, 50, was a leader of the Islamic Army, one of the largest insurgent groups, which has been blamed for killing hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans. Farouk said his Awakening group received orders to set up checkpoints at the Ishaki bridge. Insurgents frequently use the area to stage kidnappings and killings, he said. The group took several security measures, including blocking secondary roads and setting up barricades to control the main intersections. In its statement, the U.S. military said the six men who were killed were "spotted conducting suspicious terrorist activity in an area historically known for improvised explosive device emplacement." "Initial reports suggested the attack may have been against a Sons of Iraq checkpoint," the statement said. Special correspondents Zaid Sabah and K.I. Ibrahim in Baghdad and other Washington Post staff in Iraq contributed to this report. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080323589443.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_2134052_AKf OjkQAAKUeR%2Bai9AOVDR4tfDs&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080323aaindex_concat.html&cred=hVCbJ.FTB4c8_C Ol7CoSzCgzxBAau1k6rm4t8e2pRhpciDz3bWtl40ghrpUDke#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Boston Globe March 23, 2008 Green Zone Hit By Barrage Of Artillery Roadside bomb kills 3 US troops north of Baghdad By Robert H. Reid, Associated Press BAGHDAD - The heavily fortified Green Zone was hit by a sustained barrage of rocket or mortar fire early this morning, one day after a roadside bomb killed three American soldiers north of the capital, pushing the US death toll in the five-year conflict to nearly 4,000. Also yesterday, Iraqi authorities reported that a US air strike north of the capital killed six members of a US-backed Sunni group - straining relations with America's new allies in the fight against Al Qaeda. Two Iraqi civilians also died in the roadside bombing, which occurred as the Americans were patrolling an area northwest of the capital, the US military said in a statement. Two of the soldiers were killed in the blast and the third died of injuries sustained in the blast, the statement said. The soldiers were assigned to Multinational Division-Baghdad, the statement said, but gave no further details. The latest deaths brought to 3,996 the number of US service members and Pentagon civilians who have died since the war began on March 20, 2003, according to an Associated Press count. It was not immediately clear today where most of the missiles landed in the Green Zone or if there were any casualties, according to Reuters. The US military has blamed past missile attacks on rogue elements of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia. Sadr last month renewed a seven-month old cease-fire for his militia. A large plume of thick black smoke could be seen rising from one area of central Baghdad's Green Zone, which houses the Iraqi parliament and many government ministries as well as the US embassy and other diplomatic missions. The barrage, which started just before 6 a.m., came in three separate volleys and lasted for a total of about 16 minutes. With the war entering its sixth year, President Bush paid tribute yesterday to America's fallen service members, saying in his weekly radio address that they will "live on in the memory of the nation they helped defend." Speaking for the Democrats, however, Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey called on Bush to "face the reality" in Iraq and "tell us the truth" about the cost of the conflict as America is struggling with a faltering economy and mounting casualty tolls. US officials have pointed to a number of positive signs, including a 60 percent drop in violence since Bush ordered 30,000 US reinforcements to Iraq early last year. Iraqis have also made some limited progress in power-sharing deals among rival Shi'ite, Sunni, and Kurdish communities. However, US military commanders have been careful to point out that security gains are fragile and that major violence could erupt abruptly. Much of the progress has been due to a move by thousands of Sunnis to abandon the insurgency and join pro-US defense groups known as Awakening Councils. Another was a cease-fire called last August by Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, leader of the feared Mahdi Army militia. Yesterday, a US attack helicopter fired on two checkpoints manned by US-allied Sunni fighters near Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, killing six and injuring two, Iraqi police said. The US military said an AH-64 Apache helicopter fired on the positions after five people were "spotted conducting suspicious terrorist activity" in an area notorious for roadside bombs. Material from Reuters was included in this report. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080323589347.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_2134052_AKf OjkQAAKUeR%2Bai9AOVDR4tfDs&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080323aaindex_concat.html&cred=hVCbJ.FTB4c8_C Ol7CoSzCgzxBAau1k6rm4t8e2pRhpciDz3bWtl40ghrpUDke#T OP">RETURN TO TOP London Sunday Telegraph March 23, 2008 General David Petraeus Stays Focused In Iraq By Colin Freeman 'You're sitting where Angelina Jolie sat!" The black sofas in General David Petraeus's Baghdad offices have hosted many of the world's more distinguished backsides in recent months. Some have been more shapely than others, but all are amply qualified for the red VIP pass that gets them waved through security at Petraeus's HQ, in Saddam Hussein's old presidential palace. Actress Angelina Jolie, Hollywood's roving conscience-at-large, was here last month in her capacity as a United Nations goodwill ambassador, discussing the plight of Iraqi refugees. Then last week came US Vice-President Dick Cheney and Senator John McCain, the latter breezing into the Petraeus parlour fresh from his nomination as Republican presidential candidate. From staunch neo-cons through to Hollywood liberals, plus a pageant of world leaders, Iraqi politicians and even the odd insurgent leader, the Supreme Commander of coalition forces in Iraq is a man everyone is happy to be seen with right now. Not bad for someone who, exactly a year ago, was widely tipped to become the next William Westmoreland, the general whose decision to send endless extra units into Vietnam ended in military failure, huge loss of life and a badly wounded sense of American national pride. Here's why. Next month, Petraeus will report to Congress on the success of his "troop surge", in which nearly 30,000 extra soldiers have spent the past 12 months pulling Iraq back from the brink of all-out civil war. No one knows quite what he will say - to underscore his independence, not even President Bush gets a preview. But the news is expected to be good - or, at the very least, better than anything else that has come of Iraq in the past five years. Violence overall is down about 60 per cent on last year. Al-Qa'eda is on the run, its former allies among Iraq's Sunni Muslims having turned against it. Iran-backed Shia Muslim militias are on a voluntary ceasefire, thanks to the cowing of their al-Qa'eda enemies. And most importantly, many ordinary Iraqis finally feel like things might be turning the corner. Similarly upbeat is President Bush, who last week felt sufficiently confident to declare the "high cost in lives and treasure" had all been worth it. In fact, one of the few people not talking things up is Petraeus himself. "We don't talk turning points, there are no lights at the end of the tunnel, we don't do victory dances, and we've moved the champagne to the back of the fridge," he tells me over a mid-morning coffee, his fourth in a day that typically starts with a five-mile dawn run. Neither he nor his close colleague, US Ambassador Ryan Crocker, are either optimists or pessimists, he says. In a way it makes sense. The former, after all, have tried before out here and failed. The latter, presumably, would never set foot in post-Saddam Iraq in the first place. That is not to say that Petraeus doesn't have a few good news tales to push. Take the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, both former rebel strongholds in Anbar province west of Baghdad. For most of the past five years, they have symbolised everything that was wrong with Operation Iraqi Freedom: both were home to large numbers of Saddam's fellow Sunni Arabs, who, disfranchised after his downfall, turned against the occupation and into the embrace of al-Qa'eda. Fallujah's main drag was where, in March 2004, four US security contractors were mutilated by a mob and hung from a bridge, a televised atrocity that beamed the full venom of the growing insurgency into homes worldwide. Today, however, having successfully encouraged the local tribes to turn against al-Qa'eda, the self-declared "graveyard of the Americans" jostles with Ramadi as one of the most peaceful cities in Iraq. Discussing them, General Petraeus displays all the fondness of a teacher who has somehow brought two recalcitrant pupils to the top of the class. "If you walk through markets in Ramadi, surprisingly, you will see that they are absolutely flourishing," he says, sounding like a particularly intrepid Alan Whicker. "You have to push your way through the souks there, it's so crowded. Fallujah, too, has sprung back to life. That is not to say that al-Qa'eda is not trying to go back in there, or that there are not issues of violent criminals, or Mafia-like figures, or extortion artists, or a variety of other challenges, because they are all present." His fear of being a false prophet is understandable. There have, after all, been numerous premature celebrations since the fall of Saddam's statue on April 9, 2003. The capture of the man himself eight months later, hailed as the final blow to the Ba'athist resistance, proved to be anything but. The elections of 2005, welcomed by President Bush as the "Purple Revolution", simply enshrined sectarianism as religious parties filled the vacuum left by 25 years of one-man rule. And the killing in 2006 of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qa'eda leader hell-bent on fomenting civil war, came too late to stop the momentum of the sectarian death squads. Today, those highs and lows are marked on graphs in Petraeus's files, charting the rise and fall of daily attacks. A fan of statistics and a veteran of presentations to sceptical Washington audiences, he can analyse the death and destruction with all the deftness of a rep at a sales meeting. There are the grim peaks that followed the al-Qa'eda bombing of the holy Shia shrine at Samarra in February 2006, when the monthly death toll reached 3,000. And here is the current "trough", which, according to the Associated Press news agency, translated into 739 deaths among Iraqi security forces and civilians this February. By any normal standards, they are dreadful figures. But out here, it's better than anybody dared hope. "The attack levels have gone to a level not consistently seen like this since 2005," says Petraeus. "That is not satisfactory but it is significantly better than a year or so ago." So what is the secret of the man who has achieved the seemingly impossible? At first glance, he doesn't show any obvious Hannibal or Henry V tendencies. The handshake is mercifully easier on the fingers than those of some of his colleagues and the manner is relaxed and friendly. But ask his soldiers about him and one often hears the kind of hyperbolic language more commonly reserved by Iraqis for praising revered Muslim imams. "He is an amazingly dynamic and diverse thinker who transformed our efforts here in Iraq," said one US officer, who is not normally a man given to praising HQ. "He has changed the conditions in Iraq to such a degree that the people have started to believe in the future." The adulation diminishes little among America's non-uniformed population, among whom Petraeus enjoys a kind of rock-star status. He seems at ease as a role model and is full of praise for what he sees as the "greatest generation" of young soldiers cutting their teeth out here. Petraeus's own CV shows him destined from an early age to become one of the top brass's brightest buttons. Born to Dutch-American parents in Cornwall, New York, he graduated at the top of his class at West Point Military Academy in 1974. In 1991, he nearly died without ever setting foot on a battlefield, after being shot in the chest in a training exercise. Tales of his subsequent recovery hint at his alpha-male qualities: friends say he persuaded the doctors to let him leave hospital early after getting them to pull the tubes out of his arm and performing 50 press-ups in front of them. Today, aged 55, he is still a fitness fanatic, despite another near-fatal accident in 2000, in which he fractured his pelvis in a skydiving jump, after his parachute collapsed 60ft above the ground. Ambitious young officers who work with him are expected to participate in his early morning runs and, while it isn't officially a race, coming second is frowned upon. "The guy is real competitive," says one former colleague, who has sweated it out in many a sweltering Baghdad summer morning. "He will do everything he can to beat you." Yet for all that, there is as much of the college professor about him as the football coach, hence his nickname, the "Warrior Monk". The holder of a PhD in international relations, he is the co-author of the US military's counterinsurgency field manual, which reveals him as much more of a "hearts and minds" adherent than many of his US colleagues. As commander of the 101st Airborne Division during the 2003 invasion, he was known for asking embedded reporters "Tell me how this ends?", a catchphrase that suggested he was more aware than most of the problems that might lie ahead. Based in the northern city of Mosul after the war, his troops built schools, water and sewage works, held local elections, and pumped money into their surroundings. It served as a model of how the occupation should have worked - until late 2004, six months after their departure, when al-Qa'eda militants stormed the city. The Iraqi policemen whom Petraeus had trained melted away, along with most of the nation-building framework he had hoped to leave. The way in which Iraq could confound even the most agile military minds was frequently cited two years later, as America debated what to do about the civil war. The country was such a basket case, went one argument, that it was no longer worth keeping a single American soldier there, never mind putting yet more in. At a Pentagon meeting in December 2006, when President Bush tested support for a surge, his joint chiefs of staff were unanimous in believing it wouldn't work. Petraeus believed otherwise, but when he arrived in Baghdad in February 2007 and toured Ghazaliya, a once-affluent western suburb turned sectarian battleground, he began to wonder if his critics were right. "It set in upon us as we patrolled that this was going to be extraordinarily difficult," he says. "Ghazaliya, a community that was fairly upper-middle-class, literally looked like a movie version of a Wild West town, with tumbleweed blowing down the streets, houses clearly unoccupied, and enormous scarring from battles. The damage was stark, it was obvious and very, very real." Did he ever think he shouldn't have taken the mission on? "About once an hour." His response was to dominate the ground, taking US troops out of big barracks and moving them into small, makeshift bases in derelict offices and shopping malls, where they worked alongside Iraqi army and police units. A military version of bobbies-on-the-beat, the scheme benefited from the fact that many of the surge troops were no longer Iraq rookies but old hands on their third tour in four years, for whom the once alien landscape and its people were now as familiar as Texas. There was also a subtle shift in attitude towards the opposition, at least in the language, and towards recognition that not all of them were evil. Whereas coalition commanders once talked about "good guys v bad guys", now there were "reconcilable" insurgents who could be persuaded to lay down their weapons, and "irreconcilables" such as al-Qa'eda, to whom the only answer was force. Moqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the Shi'ite Mehdi Army, found himself being addressed by US military spokesmen as "Sayed" Moqtada al-Sadr, a religious honorific in recognition of his militia's ceasefire. Previously, they had used a rather less respectful term: "murderer". Petraeus also did his best to get the warring sides to make peace among themselves, enlisting Britain's General Graeme Lamb, a veteran of the Northern Ireland peace process, to help form a special "reconciliation cell" that held secret meetings with insurgent leaders in hotels in neighbouring Jordan. "A great man, he gave some wonderful insights as we were establishing this intellectual construct that talked about reconcilables and irreconcilables," says Petraeus. "The counterinsurgency manual discusses this, but we were really applying it. You cannot kill your way out of an insurgency of this magnitude, you have to get as many people as possible to become part of the solution, rather than part of the problem." That may also prove to be his Achilles' heel. The most prominent of Petraeus's "reconcilables" so far have been the units of "concerned local citizens" (CLCs), the euphemism for the former Sunni militiamen whom the US has recruited as poachers-turned-gamekeepers against al-Qa'eda. The official version of events is that they represent the "honourable" resistance, whose main concern previously was to defend their own communities from Shia militants and who had no interest in al-Qa'eda's extremist agendas. But while working with them has led to a dramatic reduction in attacks, many fear it is a pact with the devil. "The guys in the CLC units are the same guys who were in al-Qa'eda," says one Iraqi. "Before, they were using the knife to cut people's throats; now they are taking the gun and getting paid by the Americans." It is a criticism made also by the Shia-dominated Iraqi government, which fears the CLCs will simply become new and more organised Sunni militias, willing to grant the Americans short-term peace in order to start the "real" civil war once they pull out. "It is clear that there are some concerns from the government of Iraq, understandable ones, and we have concerns too - some of these individuals undoubtedly have blood on their hands," admits Petraeus. So what would he say to someone who saw a former al-Qa'eda man now dressed in a policeman's uniform? "You would have to ask them what was the situation before and what is the situation now. Would they rather have individuals still killing and adding fuel to the sectarian fires that almost consumed Baghdad? Iraq was clearly on the brink of civil war and it has come back from that, and part of the process is just to get people to stop shooting." So to borrow his own phrase, how does this all end? That is, for now at least, a question he prefers to ask rather than answer. When will US troops finally leave, I inquire. And was Britain really right to scale down its presence in Basra? In response to both questions, there is a long, detailed analysis, one that would take an Iraqi interpreter hours to translate at any Green Zone press conference, but which boils down effectively to just two words: "No comment." Petraeus is, like all generals at his level, a politician as much as a warrior, although contrary to reports - and, it would seem, the express wishes of some of the American public - he has no wish to run for president when his work in Iraq is over. Pressed hard, he does finally crack on one question. Who would play him in any future movie? He laughs and blushes. "There have been book offers and other things, and obviously I am not thinking about any of those at the moment. But I am hopeful - joking, of course - that Harrison Ford is in good shape." You heard it here first. How the East Was Won, starring Harrison Ford as General David Petraeus, coming to a cinema near you, maybe sooner, maybe later. Right now, though, it's still very much a working title. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080323589476.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_2134052_AKf OjkQAAKUeR%2Bai9AOVDR4tfDs&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080323aaindex_concat.html&cred=hVCbJ.FTB4c8_C Ol7CoSzCgzxBAau1k6rm4t8e2pRhpciDz3bWtl40ghrpUDke#T OP">RETURN TO TOP New York Daily News March 23, 2008 Female Terrorists Give Qaeda Boost Six recent suicide attacks in Iraq triggered by women By James Gordon Meek, Daily News Washington Bureau WASHINGTON — A pummeled Al Qaeda in Iraq is switching to female suicide bombers for a new wave of strikes, which government experts fear is a sign of the group’s comeback. Since the U.S. troop surge began nearly a year ago, the most deadly suicide bombings— a hallmark of the foreign-led insurgent network — had decreased. Recently, however, Iraq has seen a return of the mass-casualty bombings that were practically a daily blight before the U.S. force was beefed up. And since November, at least six suicide blasts by women have slain scores of Iraqis. Nimrod Raphaeli, an Iraqi-born terror expert at the Middle East Media Research Institute, said the rash of new strikes by Al Qaeda in Iraq “is a sign of new energy rather than collapse.” The most recent suicide blast by a woman hit Tikrit onWednesday, killing five Iraqis. On Monday, a female terrorist blew up 43 people worshiping at a mosque in Karbala and on March 14, another killed herself and two other Iraqis in Tikrit using what a 10th Mountain Division commander labeled “barbaric tactics.” The use of women, who are checked less frequently by security because of Muslim sensitivities, is an alarming new twist, U.S. counterterror officials said. “Six female suicide bombers is a trend within the increasing number of attacks,” a defense intelligence official acknowledged. Another counterterror official agreed the “recent uptick” in female suicide attacks is evidence that Al Qaeda in Iraq is not as decimated as some — including President Bush — have claimed. “They may be down, but they’re not out,” the official told the Daily News. But “it’s too early to tell whether this shift in terror tactics is part of a larger or longerterm trend.” The most infamous attack so far was on Feb. 1, when two women killed more than two dozen Iraqis in two marketplaces. The U.S. military at first said the bombers had Down syndrome, but later retracted that claim. The terror group is focusing on mixed Sunni-Shiite populations in Baghdad and northeast of the city in Kirkuk and Baquba. At least three female suicide terror cells have also been rolled up by coalition forces in recent weeks. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080323589379.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_2134052_AKf OjkQAAKUeR%2Bai9AOVDR4tfDs&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080323aaindex_concat.html&cred=hVCbJ.FTB4c8_C Ol7CoSzCgzxBAau1k6rm4t8e2pRhpciDz3bWtl40ghrpUDke#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Washington Post March 23, 2008 Pg. 5 Iraq Detention Case Heads To High Court Jailed American Citizens Say They Have Right to Access U.S. Legal System By Josh White and Robert Barnes, Washington Post Staff Writers In a jail guarded by U.S. military police on the outskirts of Baghdad, at a base where U.S. interrogators do the questioning, Iraqi American Mohammad Munaf and Jordanian American Shawqi Ahmad Omar are stuck in a peculiar legal limbo. Munaf and Omar say their jailers at Camp Cropper are under U.S. Army command, and therefore they are entitled to challenge their detention under U.S. law. But the Bush administration has argued in court that the prison belongs to the international military coalition called Multi-National Force-Iraq and that Munaf and Omar are, therefore, beyond the reach of U.S. courts. The dispute is scheduled to be taken up by the Supreme Court on Tuesday, and the outcome could have broad implications for the rights of U.S. citizens held on international battlefields. Until the court rules, the extent of U.S. constitutional protections overseas remains unclear. "Habeas corpus, the power of the courts to review detention by the executive, has existed in some form for over seven hundred years," American Bar Association President William H. Neukom told the court in a brief. "It remains, in the context of military detentions of this country's citizens, a vital protection of the rule of law." The largely parallel legal claims of the two men are complicated by their controversial personal sagas. Munaf was jailed in Camp Cropper as the result of a strange kidnapping incident involving three Romanian journalists he was escorting through Baghdad. He and the journalists were taken to a tiny concrete dungeon beneath a farmhouse on the city's outskirts, where they were held with seven other hostages, bound and blindfolded for nearly two months. After Munaf and the journalists were released, U.S. and Romanian authorities accused him of setting up the kidnapping. The U.S. government contends in court papers that Munaf "admitted on camera, in writing, and in front of the Iraqi investigative court" that he was an accomplice. The case was sent to the Iraqi Central Criminal Court, where Munaf was convicted and sentenced to death in what his attorneys have called a sham trial. U.S. authorities wanted to transfer Munaf to Iraqi officials for the sentence to be carried out, but three weeks ago an Iraqi appeals court overturned the conviction. An Iraqi court is investigating how to proceed in the case while Munaf remains at Camp Cropper. Munaf's attorneys challenged the transfer on grounds that the U.S. government would be violating the constitutional rights of a U.S. citizen and that the transfer could have meant Munaf's imminent death. Although he allegedly confessed to American and Romanian officials, his attorneys say that confession was coerced under threat of abuse, and Munaf told the Iraqi court that he is completely innocent, according to court records. Omar, who has dual U.S.-Jordanian citizenship, was arrested in Baghdad in October 2004 on allegations that he was aiding Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's terrorist network. U.S. authorities wanted to transfer him to Iraqi courts for trial, but a U.S. district court blocked the move. Both men claimed that their U.S. citizenship and the circumstances of their detention by U.S. forces gave them the right to take their challenges to federal court. Separate panels of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit examined their claims in light of a 1948 Supreme Court ruling that said federal courts have no power to review decisions of multinational forces. Each panel came to a different conclusion. Omar was allowed to pursue his claim in federal court because he had not yet faced trial overseas, while Munaf's conviction took him out of the reach of U.S. courts. The government appealed the Omar case, Munaf's lawyers appealed his case, and the Supreme Court has combined the two in the case that will be heard Tuesday. Multi-National Force-Iraq operates under the unified command of American military officers, but a British officer is its second in command. The government, in briefs filed in the combined cases, said the force is "legally distinct" from the U.S. military and, therefore, is not subject to U.S. courts. "The United States courts lack jurisdiction to review habeas petitions filed on behalf of individuals held by a multinational force abroad pursuant to international authority," Solicitor General Paul D. Clement wrote in a brief to the court. ". . . These cases present two distinct questions of exceptional importance to the separation of powers, the Nation's conduct of foreign and military affairs, and the sovereign prerogative of foreign nations to try individuals for the commission of criminal offenses within their own borders." The administration told the justices that the men are asking for an "unprecedented intrusion" into the executive branch's conduct of the war and the sovereignty of foreign courts, and warned of the consequences. "Other nations would inevitably take offense if American courts were to assume the authority to review the determinations of international bodies in which United States forces or personnel may participate abroad, and if the United States courts assume such jurisdiction, the courts of other nations could do so as well," Clement wrote. No amicus briefs were filed supporting the administration's position, while a number of civil liberties groups registered their support for Omar and Munaf. They said in court filings that the government's plea would undermine rights that the Supreme Court ruled in 2004, in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, are guaranteed for U.S. citizens held by the military. They accused the government of trying to hide behind a "multinational-forces fig leaf," in the words of a joint brief by the Constitution Project and the Rutherford Institute. "The U.S. military -- not the U.N., not any coalition partner, and not Iraq -- has plenary and exclusive authority over their custody," the lawyers for Munaf and Omar wrote in briefs to the court. "They are, therefore, held under or by color of the authority of the United States." The two sides differ on the importance of the 1948 Supreme Court ruling. Clement said the current case is made easy by Hirota v. MacArthur, which held that "the courts of the United States have no power or authority to review, to affirm, set aside or annul the judgments and sentences" of World War II military tribunals in Japan. Attorneys for Omar and Munaf said the government's reliance on that case is mistaken, not least because those challenging their convictions in Hirota were Japanese citizens living in Japan. "The case is irrelevant to applications filed in the district court by U.S. citizens making a direct challenge to U.S. detention by U.S. soldiers at a U.S. prison," the attorneys told the court. "Omar and Munaf do not seek to 'overrule' Hirota; it is the government that seeks to extend Hirota beyond its original sphere." U.S. courts have previously ruled that the existence of international coalitions can preclude some cases from surviving in American courts. A judge in Alexandria ruled in 2006 that a civil fraud suit against Custer Battles LLC, a U.S. security contractor in Iraq, could not go forward because the defunct Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which hired it, was not a U.S. entity. Although "the CPA was principally controlled and funded by the U.S., this degree of control did not rise to the level of exclusive control required to qualify as an instrumentality of the U.S. government," U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III wrote. "In fact, the evidence clearly establishes that it was created through and governed by international consent." The Justice Department wrote a brief in 2005 supporting the plaintiffs in the Custer Battles case, arguing that the company should be subject to U.S. anti-fraud laws because of the major role that American officials played in the CPA. Now, the government argues that Multi-National Force-Iraq is not a U.S. entity subject to U.S. court interference. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080323589378.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_2134052_AKf OjkQAAKUeR%2Bai9AOVDR4tfDs&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080323aaindex_concat.html&cred=hVCbJ.FTB4c8_C Ol7CoSzCgzxBAau1k6rm4t8e2pRhpciDz3bWtl40ghrpUDke#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Washington Post March 23, 2008 Pg. 1 Stalwart Service For U.S. In Iraq Is Not Enough To Gain Green Card By Karen DeYoung, Washington Post Staff Writer During his nearly four years as a translator for U.S. forces in Iraq, Saman Kareem Ahmad was known for his bravery and hard work. "Sam put his life on the line with, and for, Coalition Forces on a daily basis," wrote Marine Capt. Trent A. Gibson. Gibson's letter was part of a thick file of support -- including commendations from the secretary of the Navy and from then-Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus -- that helped Ahmad migrate to the United States in 2006, among an initial group of 50 Iraqi and Afghan translators admitted under a special visa program. Last month, however, the U.S. government turned down Ahmad's application for permanent residence, known as a green card. His offense: Ahmad had once been part of the Kurdish Democratic Party, which U.S. immigration officials deemed an "undesignated terrorist organization" for having sought to overthrow former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Ahmad, a Kurd, once served in the KDP's military force, which is part of the new Iraqi army. A U.S. ally, the KDP is now part of the elected government of the Kurdish region and holds seats in the Iraqi parliament. After consulting public Web sites, however, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services determined that KDP forces "conducted full-scale armed attacks and helped incite rebellions against Hussein's regime, most notably during the Iran-Iraq war, Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom." Ahmad's association with a group that had attempted to overthrow a government -- even as an ally in U.S.-led wars against Hussein -- rendered him "inadmissible," the agency concluded in a three-page letter dated Feb. 26. In an interview Friday at Quantico Marine Corps Base, where he teaches Arabic language and culture to Marines deploying to Iraq, Ahmad's voice quavered, and his usually precise English failed him. "I am shamed," he said. He has put off his plans to marry a seamstress who tailors Marine uniforms. "I don't want my family live in America; they feel ashamed I'm with a terrorist group. I want them to be proud for what I did for the United States Marine Corps," said Ahmad, 38. "After I receive this letter, it's been three weeks, since then my whole life turns upside down. You might hear from the lawyer, they're not going to revoke your [visa], but how can you guarantee this? . . . I'm expecting, they stop the process of green card, tomorrow they're going to tell you to get out." A nearly identical denial was sent the same day to another Iraqi Kurdish translator living in this country, according to Thomas Ragland, a lawyer with Maggio and Kattar, the Washington law firm representing both men in court challenges to the denials. The second translator, who worked with U.S. intelligence and Special Forces in Iraq starting several years before the U.S. invasion, declined to discuss his case out of fear for his family in Iraq. Petraeus, now the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said in an e-mail that he did not recall Ahmad personally but that KDP forces had performed valuable security services for the 101st Airborne Division he led in the northern city of Mosul in 2003. He said he had never heard of any U.S. agency labeling the KDP as terrorists. Many of the thousands of Iraqis who have served as linguists for U.S. forces have been threatened in Iraq. Ahmad left the country after he was branded a "collaborator" from mosque pulpits in Anbar province and posters calling for his death began appearing there. Under congressional pressure to allow such translators into the United States, the Bush administration in 2006 authorized 50 visas for them annually. That number was increased to 500 in fiscal 2008, and the quota will revert to 50 a year in fiscal 2009. In announcing the program, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) emphasized that it allows translators "to gain admission to the United States, apply for permanent residency and eventually acquire U.S. citizenship." According to Petraeus's command, 648 of the 5,300 Iraqi translators now working for U.S. forces in Iraq had special-visa applications pending as of December. Petraeus has assigned legal officers to facilitate their petitions, helping gather the documents, signatures and military affidavits required, and said he has signed many letters urging individual approvals. The program's Special Immigrant Visa allows only entry into the United States, however, and immigrants are advised to petition for permanent residence upon arrival. Retired Marine Capt. Jason P. Schauble, who returned from Iraq in 2004 after being wounded, is Ahmad's official sponsor. In a letter he appended last week to Ahmad's immigration file, Schauble condemned whatever "faceless bureaucracy" rejected the application. "I don't know what a foreigner has to do that is greater than what Saman Ahmad has done in service to his American allies," Schauble wrote. USCIS spokesman Peter Vietti said regulations prevent him from commenting on any specific case, adding that denials can be appealed only in court. After inquires about Ahmad from The Washington Post, he said, "I can tell you the matter is being looked into." The second youngest of five children, Ahmad was away at college when Saddam Hussein, striking at rebellious Kurds, launched a chemical gas attack against Ahmad's home town, Halabja, in 1988. The infamous assault, in which more than 5,000 died, was often cited by the Bush administration as part of its justification for invading Iraq. It left Ahmad without a single living relative, as he has recounted to Americans many times over the past six years. After graduation from Salahadeen University in Irbil, Ahmad was conscripted into Hussein's army, served his time and then held various jobs. He turned to smuggling and spent a period in jail, then fled to Turkey. He worked as a hotel dishwasher in Istanbul. When he decided to return home in December 2001, he turned himself in to Turkish police as an illegal immigrant and was deported. At the time, KDP forces were fighting both Hussein and a rival Kurdish party. Ahmad joined the KDP militia. "I don't have any resources, I don't own a penny. I want to eat," he recalled. In his area of Kurdistan at the time, "even you cannot clean up street if you do not become part of that group." By early 2003, U.S. Special Forces in the region were working to unify the Kurds as allies in the invasion of Iraq. Ahmad, the only English-speaker in his KDP unit, became a translator and liaison. After Petraeus's arrival in Mosul, Ahmad's offer to work full time for the Americans was turned down on grounds it would anger his KDP commander, he said. He deserted the KDP military and decided to try his luck at U.S. headquarters in Baghdad, taking with him the commendation for his "outstanding service and dedication to the 101st" signed by Petraeus on Sept. 11, 2003. In Baghdad, Ahmad became a Marine translator and was sent to Anbar. In an affidavit, Gibson -- now a major -- said Ahmad was the first translator in Iraq to wear a Marine uniform, body armor and helmet, and "the first one to be entrusted with a weapon." Ahmad accompanied Gibson's Kilo Company on more than 200 patrols over seven months in violent areas of western Iraq. "I simply could not have accomplished my mission without Sam's tireless and unconditional efforts," Gibson wrote. But threats against Ahmad's life by anti-coalition forces led the Marines to decide to get him out of Iraq. Schauble shepherded his visa application and met him at John F. Kennedy International Airport on arrival. A USCIS "Fact Sheet" on special translator visas notes that applicants must be "otherwise admissible to the United States for permanent residence," so Ahmad and Schauble foresaw little problem in his obtaining a green card. To buttress his case, Ahmad successfully applied for political asylum once he reached the United States. In 2006, he began applying for permanent residence -- submitting the same documents that had won him a visa and asylum -- and finished the process last August. In the meantime, he continued working for the Marines at the Quantico-based Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning, established in 2005 when the corps realized that its lack of knowledge and understanding of Iraq was undermining its mission. Ahmad spends much of his time being flown by Marines to training bases around the country to provide rudimentary Arabic and cultural pointers. The maximum language training is 40 hours, which he said is too little. "But at least you can teach him to say a tactical word, how to survive," how not to shoot "a guy who didn't stop" at a checkpoint. Those on their second or third tours have more complicated queries, he said. "They say: okay, we're going to go there and it's Ramadan time, what is 'no'? What is 'do this -- don't do this'? What do I tell my Marines?" According to Human Rights First, a nonprofit that handles similar immigration cases, groups such as the KDP do not appear on U.S. government lists of designated terrorists. Instead, determinations of "undesignated terrorist organizations" are made, case by case, by the USCIS, part of the Department of Homeland Security. Using definitions in the Immigration and Nationality Act, the USA Patriot Act and other legislation adopted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, it is up to USCIS officials to research an applicant's background and make a decision. According to Ahmad's denial letter, the information in his case was obtained from the Web site of the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, a DHS-funded nonprofit group. The legislation contains waiver provisions -- by the secretary of state for foreign petitioners, and the secretary of homeland security for those who, like Ahmad, are already in this country. But there is no path for a denied individual to apply for a waiver. In a velvet box in his desk drawer at Quantico, Ahmad keeps two medals he received for his service in Iraq -- the Navy-Marine Corps Achievement Medal and the War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal. Above his computer, he has a snapshot of President Bush. He was a guest at the White House last year when Bush presented a posthumous Medal of Honor to a Marine for actions in an Anbar mission in which Ahmad participated. Ahmad remains in this country under his special visa and asylum status, but neither one has the permanence of a green card. Under U.S. law, those granted asylum can be sent back to their country if the secretary of state determines that it is at peace and that the danger to the person has subsided. Ahmad said he would like to return to Iraq, but only "as a Marine." He has no family there, he said, but "I have the greatest, biggest family in America. I have the USMC." http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080323589361.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_2134052_AKf OjkQAAKUeR%2Bai9AOVDR4tfDs&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080323aaindex_concat.html&cred=hVCbJ.FTB4c8_C Ol7CoSzCgzxBAau1k6rm4t8e2pRhpciDz3bWtl40ghrpUDke#T OP">RETURN TO TOP London Sunday Times March 23, 2008 Saddam Hussein's Son Uday Plotted To Send Hit Squad Into UK Before the Iraq war, Uday Hussein ordered an elite team to carry out murders and bombings in Britain By Michael Smith Saddam Hussein's son Uday hatched a plot to assassinate the leader of the Iraqi opposition in London in April 2000, according to a new Pentagon study based on documents seized during the Iraq war. The abortive conspiracy called for an elite recruit in the Fedayeen Saddam paramilitary group to kill Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, who was based in London. The plot is outlined in Iraqi memos that detail Saddam’s support for a wide network of Middle Eastern terror groups, including Islamists linked to Al-Qaeda. They include a 1993 cooperation deal with Egyptian Islamic Jihad, headed byAyman al-Zawahiri, who became second-in-command of Al-Qaeda when the two groups merged in 2001. There is, however, no evidence of the firm link to Osama Bin Laden that the Bush administration had claimed as one of the justifications for attacking Iraq: “This study found no ‘smoking gun’ [ie, direct connection] between Saddam’s Iraq and Al-Qaeda.” A British official said this weekend: “Nothing we have seen has changed our prewar position that there was no link between Saddam and Bin Laden.” However, there was strong evidence of Uday Hussein planning to order the Fedayeen, which he set up in the 1990s as answerable only to himself or his father, to carry out assassinations and bombings in London. In a possible recognition that Britain would be one of the most difficult targets to attack, officials ordered that only the best recruits should be based there. One memo from a senior Fedayeen official refers to orders given by Uday at two meetings in May 1999. The dictator’s son had ordered officials to “start planning special operations in the centres of the traitors’ symbols in the fields of London / Iran / self-ruled areas [Kurdish northern Iraq]”. The operations were to be known by the codename Blessed July and would be backed by the Iraqi intelligence service, the Da’irat al-Mukhabarat al-Amah. Agents in London were to carry poison suicide capsules, with orders to use them if captured. The official then listed Uday’s orders on how to prepare the recruits: “Select 50 Fedayeen martyrs according to the required specifications. Admit them to the Intelligence School to prepare them for their duties. “After passing their tests they will be selected for their targets as follows. The top 10 will work in the European field – London. The next 10 will work in the Iranian field. The third 10 will work in the self-ruled area.” The plot to attack Chalabi in April 2000 is the only example of a specific attack planned in London. It called for a Fedayeen operative to make his way across Europe “for the purpose of executing a sanctimonious [sic] national duty, which is eliminating hostile agent Ahmed Chalabi”. The Fedayeen was later to prove one of the few Iraqi forces that offered tough resistance to the 2003 invasion, but on this occasion its operation failed because the agent was unable to obtain a visa to enter Britain. The documents show that officials at the Iraqi embassy in London had a stock of weapons that Saddam had ordered them to destroy in July 2002. The embassy asked Baghdad for advice “regarding how to destroy weapons in London, which include seven Kalashnikov guns, 19 other guns with ammunition, and silencers”. Saddam had extensive cooperation with Middle Eastern terrorist groups. One memo refers to an agreement with Egyptian Islamic Jihad during the 1991 Gulf war for attacks against Hosni Mubarak, the president of Egypt, which was taking part in the operation to free Kuwait. The memo, dated March 1993, says that whereas Iraq had promised to finance and train Egyptian Islamic Jihad for the attacks, it was now prepared only to provide the group with finance. The study’s assessment of Iraq’s lack of links to Al-Qaeda represents a final acceptance by the Pentagon that it was wrong to make such claims. MoD in ‘secret justice’ over deaths The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has been accused of operating “secret justice” after issuing a court gagging order to conceal how Whitehall cost-cutting might have caused the deaths of 10 servicemen in Iraq. The MoD has demanded that key parts of the inquest next week into the crash of an RAF Hercules in Iraq in 2005 be held in secret on grounds of “national security”. Nine British servicemen and one Australian airman died in the tragedy. It was the largest single loss of life of British forces in Iraq. Their lawyers said they might challenge the gagging order in the coroner’s court this week because its real purpose appeared to protect the government from political embarrassment. The secret MoD papers are understood to cover its decision not to spend an extra £50,000 buying a fire suppressant foam system for each Hercules plane in Iraq. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080323589474.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_2134052_AKf OjkQAAKUeR%2Bai9AOVDR4tfDs&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080323aaindex_concat.html&cred=hVCbJ.FTB4c8_C Ol7CoSzCgzxBAau1k6rm4t8e2pRhpciDz3bWtl40ghrpUDke#T OP">RETURN TO TOP New York Daily News March 23, 2008 Spy For Sticky Situations By Rich Schapiro, Daily News Staff Writer ONE DAY in the not-too-distant future, the Defense Department may dispatch a team of the country’s most sophisticated spies to an enemy nation. The secret agents won’t speak several languages or be masters of disguise. And they won’t even walk on two legs. They’ll be robotic lizards — geckos, to be exact — that are able to climb walls and remain perched for days, covertly surveilling the terrain below with little risk of detection. Stickybots, the name given to the 2-foot-long robots, were designed using the same principles that enable real geckos to scamper up and down trees with extraordinary efficiency. “I’m trying to get robots to go places where they’ve never gone before,” the robot’s creator, Mark Cutkosky, told National Geographic in its upcoming issue. The development of the robots, which use adhesive toes and an agile tail to scale walls, just like a gecko, is funded by the Department of Defense’s advanced research projects program. Cutkosky’s team at Stanford University began working on a machine based on the agile lizards because of their superior climbing prowess. He observed that the geckos’ scaling ability is largely due to the millions of tiny hairs on the bottom of each of the reptile’s toes. The robots he created have synthetic fibers on their feet that provide an adhesive that enables the Stickybots to climb at a speed of 4 centimeters per second. Cutkosky says the mechanical lizards could one day also aid in rescue operations and planetary exploration. http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080323589409.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_2134052_AKf OjkQAAKUeR%2Bai9AOVDR4tfDs&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080323aaindex_concat.html&cred=hVCbJ.FTB4c8_C Ol7CoSzCgzxBAau1k6rm4t8e2pRhpciDz3bWtl40ghrpUDke#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Houston Chronicle March 23, 2008 Army Goes On Offense To Get Arabic Translators But recruitment figures mask the suspicions seen in Arab community By Jeff Karoub, Associated Press DETROIT — The billboard displays a phone number and only two English words: "Call Mona." The rest is in Arabic. But if you can read it, the Army wants you. The sign, erected to help recruit translators from Detroit's large Middle Eastern population, urges Arabic speakers to consider joining the military. "In the land of different opportunities," it says, "this is one you might not have heard before: job opportunities with the U.S. Army." Five years after the invasion of Iraq, the Army says it is meeting or exceeding its goals for recruiting Arabic translators. But despite growing acceptance of the military among Arab immigrants, recruiters acknowledge that much of the immigrant community remains deeply suspicious of the Army. "At first, it was more hostile from the community. It was at the peak of the invasion," said Mona Makki, a community liaison and language specialist with a company that helps the Army with recruitment. "They perceive us now in a positive way." Motivating factors Hassan Jaber, executive director of the Dearborn-based Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services, said the Army has built some credibility in the community, but it is not fully embraced. "To my knowledge, people who are volunteering and taking these jobs are doing it in secret," he said. "It might be a factor of shame, and that they go in there ... because of the money offered, not necessarily because they feel the war is justified." Sgt. Mario Banderas, a 39-year-old native of Lebanon, joined the Army in Detroit and served a tour of duty in 2005 as translator in Iraq. He returned as a recruiter. "I had the idea in my mind that I can go talk to this community and probably get at least two or three people a day to join the Army. This is not the case," said Banderas, whose name is an alias because the Army does not release translators' real names to protect their safety. Recruitment efforts "The idea that people have here, as soon as they see me in uniform is: 'Oh, you're in the U.S. Army? You're in Iraq killing your own people?' " He said such comments upset him, but he doesn't blame the critics "because they don't know what's going on in the Army." Banderas, a former architect who speaks six languages, works with civilian recruiters of Arab descent to find new translators in the Detroit area, which is home to 300,000 people who trace their roots to the Middle East. They hold recruitment fairs, sponsor community events and advertise in print, on the radio and billboards. Applicants must be between 17 and 42, have documents proving U.S. residency, speak fluent Arabic and decent English. The process includes a background check and physical. The military has met recruitment goals for its translator program since 2006 after falling short in the first three years of the war. In 2006, it recruited 277 translators and the following year got 250. Salary differences Community leaders and some potential recruits say interest in the jobs is driven in large part by the offer of a steady salary. Many would-be recruits expect to make $180,000 a year, a maximum figure touted by civilian contractors hiring translators. But Banderas puts the military's salary for a translator of his rank and tenure in the $35,000-to-40,000 range, which includes nontaxed compensation for housing, separation from family and other incentives. "With this economic problem we have, they're thinking more about money, about their paycheck at the end of the month and nothing else," he said. Michigan has the highest unemployment rate in the nation. At a recent recruitment event, some potential translators declined to speak publicly out of concern for their safety. But a few acknowledged that money would be a key factor in their decision. "You've got no choice," said Salim Alamiri, 24, who said he was recently laid off from a military contractor. "There's hardly jobs out here. ... I've got a high school diploma, and started in college, but I need the money." Looks of disgust Banderas says recruiters succeed when they can move beyond the money and misgivings about the mission to show what translators really do. He tells them about being on patrol in Iraq when a woman holding a baby ran toward his convoy. Soldiers raised their guns, thinking she had a bomb, but he listened to her screams and told them to stop. "I was the only one to understand the language. ... She needed help," he said. "At the end ... we saved her life and her baby's life." Still, it hasn't been easy to erase all suspicions. As he entered a Detroit-area gas station in a noncombat uniform, an Arab immigrant approached him. "The guy was like, 'Oh, you in the Army?' looking at me up and all the way down like disgusting or something. I said, 'No, I'm in immigration.' He's like, 'Hey, cousin! How are you doing? What's going on?' "But if I told him I was in the Army, it was going to be totally different. He'd keep looking at me as a disgusting person." http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20080323589416.html <A href="http://68.142.200.12/us.f318.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_2134052_AKf OjkQAAKUeR%2Bai9AOVDR4tfDs&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilenam e=e20080323aaindex_concat.html&cred=hVCbJ.FTB4c8_C Ol7CoSzCgzxBAau1k6rm4t8e2pRhpciDz3bWtl40ghrpUDke#T OP">RETURN TO TOP Arizona Republic (Phoenix) March 23, 2008 5 Years Later, Family Remembers Piestewa By Betsey Bruner, Arizona Daily Sun FLAGSTAFF - The room is jammed full of symbolic keepsakes, including a green Miss Junior High Indian Princess crown, mounted caribou antlers sent from Alaska, three woven "burden baskets" from the Apache people and a big brown stuffed Teddy bear. The memorial room in the home of Terry and Priscilla "Percy" Piestewa is kept locked, and no photographs are allowed. In this sanctuary, the Piestewas and their two grandchildren, Brandon, 9, and Carla, 8, pay tribute to the memory of Lori, the daughter and mother they loved so well. Army Spc. Lori Ann Piestewa, 23, was killed March 23, 2003, in an ambush in Nasiriyah in the first days of the invasion of Iraq by U.S. forces and their allies. "Papa" and "Grandma," as the children call them, have been caring for Brandon and Carla since the death of their mother. "There'll be times when they'll miss their mother," said Terry, 64, who is Hopi and was born in Winslow. "Percy takes them into the memorial room. She'll talk to them about their mother, and they'll feel better about their mother. It's kind of like a healing place to us." Lori, a member of the Hopi tribe, was the first American Indian woman to die in combat while serving in the U.S. military. Reminders of Lori's service are everywhere in the special room, included a large wall replica of the badge of the 507th Maintenance Company, in which she served in supply for two years, keeping track of missile parts and other equipment. "It's just so honoring and humbling, all the tribes in our country who have recognized Lori," her father said. "They claim her as one of their own." A glass cabinet holds three triangular folded American flags, Purple Heart and Iraq War medals and, perhaps most poignant, a leather wallet with her Army photo, removed from her body before it was hastily buried outside a Nasiriyah civilian hospital after her death from head wounds. Now one of the most celebrated soldiers among Arizona war casualties, with both a Phoenix mountain peak and a freeway renamed in her honor, her parents said their daughter didn't like attention. "She didn't like being recognized out in the public," said |
