There are so many stupid, horrid, unbelievable, obscene, and just plain bizzare things happening in Iraq I thought it worthy of it's own thread.

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=68884

Iraq investigates more prisoner abuse
Wednesday Nov 16 14:23 AEST

Another prisoner abuse scandal has erupted in Iraq with the discovery of more than 170 tortured and starving prisoners in a locked Interior Ministry bunker beneath Baghdad.

Many had been severely beaten. Some had been paralysed. Others had skin peeled off their bodies.

US officials deny any responsibility and Iraq's government has ordered an investigation, saying it is shocked by the horrific find.

Some human rights groups say Iraq's new security forces are routinely abusing and torturing detainees in ways reminiscent of those used by the notoriously brutal regime of Saddam Hussein.

They've come such a long way haven't they?

The War in Iraq has cost the US Government over 2 billion dollars. No wonder they didn't have the immediate resources to respond to the Hurricanes that hit the New Orleans region just a short time ago. I do hope the US is getting more than 2 billion dollars worth of Oil out of this otherwise what a waste of money and humanity this little  exercise has proven to be.

The money is nothing, they needed the "war business" to save their economy, look at how badly it is still doing even with 2 billions in war spending to stimulate it!

What it has cost them is over 2000 lives and over 10,000 serious injuries (IE pensions)

Dozens killed in anti-Shiite attacks

November 19, 2005 - 10:14AM

At least 75 worshippers have been killed in suicide attacks on two Shiite mosques in an eastern town near the border with Iran, the latest deadly strike by rebels on Iraq's majority religious group.

The attack today in the Shiite Kurdish town of Khanaqin, which came just hours after suicide bombers killed six people outside a Baghdad hotel, destroyed the two mosques, the interior ministry said, and left 90 people wounded.

The two suicide bombers, wearing explosives belts, blew themselves up in the midst of worshippers during Friday's weekly prayers in the two Shiite mosques, officials said.

The local authorities immediately imposed a curfew in Khanaqin, a majority Shiite Kurdish town 170 km from the capital, Baghdad. The attacks come less than a month ahead of the legislative elections due on December.

The attack was the latest in a line of bloody strikes against the Shiites since the al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Sunni, declared all-out war on the Shiites in mid-September.

For more go here:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/dozens-killed-in-antishiite-attacks/2005/11/19/1132017012824.html

2083 US Military Personel have been killed since the March 2003 Invasion. Who the hell thinks this country is going to be better off after the troops from other countries leave???

Sort of makes a mockery of the Iraqi's request that the US get out. . .they are their own worst enemy now. . . *can't believe they would bomb their own neighbours.*.  

This today....

Suicide bomber kills 25 at Iraqi funeral
Five U.S. soldiers killed in attacks north of Baghdad

Saturday, November 19, 2005 Posted: 2240 GMT (0640 HKT)

A man is rushed into a hospital Saturday after being injured when a suicide bomber struck a funeral.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A suicide car bomber struck a funeral ceremony Saturday evening north of Baghdad, killing at least 25 people and wounding 30 others, Iraqi police in Abu Sayda said.

The funeral was for the uncle of the sheikh who leads the city council in the town of Abu Sayda, near Baquba, 30 miles north of Baghdad. The sheikh was among the wounded. The family is Shia.

The attacker drove the car, packed with explosives, into the mourning tent in front of a house and detonated it as mourners were reading verses from the Quran, police said.

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/11/19/iraq.main/index.html

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/11/20/iraq.main/index.html

Gunmen launch deadly ambush of Marine convoy
Iraqi and U.S. presidents address ways to tackle the insurgency

Sunday, November 20, 2005 Posted: 1908 GMT (0308 HKT)

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Gunmen ambushed a U.S. Marine convoy in Iraq after it was struck by a roadside bomb, a U.S. military statement said Sunday.

A Marine died when his vehicle was hit by the explosion near the western city of Haditha, the statement said.

Gunmen then shot at the convoy, and Marines and Iraqi soldiers fired back, the military said.

Fifteen civilians and eight insurgents were killed in the gun battle on Saturday, according to officials.

Violence continued across Iraq on Sunday, with the presidents of both Iraq and the U.S. addressing the best ways to deal with the insurgency.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said he was prepared to hold talks with those who opposed his government.

For more, go to the above web address.

Sunni sheik, family members slain
Hussein trial scheduled to resume Monday

Thursday, November 24, 2005 Posted: 0714 GMT (1514 HKT)


BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Gunmen dressed as Iraqi troops stormed the home of a senior Sunni leader Wednesday, killing him, his three sons and a son-in-law, Iraqi police said.

Neighbors told authorities that at least 10 vehicles that appeared to belong to the Iraqi army stopped outside the western Baghdad house of Kadhim Sarheed Ali al-Dulami, a sheik of the Sunni al-Dulami tribe, before gunmen went inside the home and shot the men. The killings took place about 4 a.m. local time in the Hurriya neighborhood.

The Associated Press quoted an Interior Ministry official, Maj. Falah al-Mohammedawi, as identifying al-Dulami as the brother of a parliamentary candidate in the December 15 election.

Al-Mohammedawi also told the AP that government forces were not involved and that insurgents were the focus of the investigation.

"Surely, they are outlaw insurgents. As for the military uniform, they can be bought from many shops in Baghdad," he told the AP. "Also, we have several police and army vehicles stolen, and they can be used in the raids."

One of al-Dulami's sons was assassinated a month ago, a Sunni leader told CNN. The son's body was found in western Baghdad's Shulaa neighborhood.

Al-Dulami was chief of the Batta tribe, a branch of the al-Dulami tribe.

In other violence Wednesday, two mortar rounds exploded around 4 p.m. (8 a.m. ET) in central Baghdad, wounding at least three people, according to an official with the Baghdad emergency police.

One exploded near the Ministry of Justice on Haifa Street, the other near Mutthaf Square. Both were a few hundred meters apart.

Also Wednesday, unknown gunmen killed Radi Ismail Jouwad, the head of a battery company in northeastern Baghdad, as he was leaving his home at about 8 a.m., police said.

For more on Iraq:
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/11/23/iraq.main/index.html

Poll: Increased doubts over Iraq

As U.S. President George W. Bush launches a renewed effort to gain public support for the Iraq war, a new poll finds most Americans do not believe he has a plan that will achieve victory.

But the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll also finds nearly six in 10 Americans said U.S. troops should not be withdrawn from Iraq until certain goals are achieved.

Asked about Bush's handling of the Iraq war, 54 percent said it was poor, while 44 percent thought he was doing a good job.

Those polled were split over whether they think a democratic government can be established in Iraq that won't be overthrown, with 47 percent saying that was likely and 49 percent saying it was not.

Fifty-four percent said they thought it is unlikely that Iraqi forces alone will be able to ensure security without U.S. help, and 44 percent said otherwise.

for more go to:
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/11/30/iraq.poll/index.html

10 Marines killed near Falluja

In separate incident, three soldiers die in traffic accident

Friday, December 2, 2005 Posted: 2301 GMT (0701 HKT)

Iraqi soldiers take position during a joint Iraqi-U.S. raid in Ramadi, Iraq, on Friday.


BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A roadside bomb killed 10 U.S. Marines and wounded 11 others on nighttime foot patrol Thursday near Falluja, and three other soldiers died Friday in a traffic accident, the military said.

Few details were available about Friday's wreck. The three U.S. soldiers killed were members of the National Guard's 48th Brigade Combat Team, according to a news release. The wreck is under investigation, the military said.

The bomb that killed the Marines on Thursday was "fashioned from several large artillery shells," a Marine Corps statement said.

For more:
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/12/02/iraq.main/index.html

11 Iraqi soldiers killed in ambush
Attack follows deaths of 10 Marines as elections approach

Saturday, December 3, 2005 Posted: 2307 GMT (0707 HKT)

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Two days after a roadside bomb killed 10 U.S. Marines on patrol in Falluja, insurgents in Iraq on Saturday staged another deadly strike, killing 11 Iraqi soldiers in an ambush north of Baghdad.

Attackers wielding small arms and detonating roadside bombs struck in the late morning near Adhaim, a Diyala province town 62 miles north of the capital, a U.S. military official reported.

Full report:
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/12/03/iraq.main/index.html

U.S.: 'No information' on hostage's fate

Friday, December 9, 2005 Posted: 1659 GMT (0059 HKT)


(CNN) -- A U.S. official said Friday that the United States still does not know if anything has happened to Ronald Schulz, an electrician taken hostage in Iraq.

"We have no information that anything happened to him," said the official, who asked not to be named. The official said he is familiar with the details of U.S. attempts to find and free Schulz.

There are six known U.S. hostages in Iraq, according to the State Department, which does not identify the hostages by name.

Schulz's family pleaded Thursday for his safe release, urging his abductors to communicate with the family "to discuss this matter at any time" after postings on the Internet said he had been killed.

Schulz, 40, an electrician who had been working in Iraq, was kidnapped by insurgents around November 25.

Video from a group called the Islamic Army in Iraq surfaced Tuesday showing Schulz sitting on a white plastic chair with his hands apparently tied behind his back.

The group demanded that jailed Islamic Army fighters be released and that compensation be paid to families in Iraq's hard-hit province of Anbar.

"Our family is aware that the Iraqi people have concerns regarding the U.S. government presence in their country. However, murdering Ron will not solve these issues," his sister, Julie Schulz, told reporters in his home state of North Dakota.

"Because Ron's life is in your hands and in order to secure his safe release, for which you are ultimately responsible, my family is willing to receive any communication to discuss this matter at any time. We respectfully request you to reach out to us through any media channel to discuss a safe release."

Several Islamic militant Web sites posted a claim Thursday from the Islamic Army in Iraq that it had killed "the American security consultant for the Housing Ministry," after the United States failed to respond to its demand for the release of Iraqi prisoners.

A similar claim was posted early Friday on a Web site known to be used by the Islamic Army. The claims cannot be independently verified by CNN.

State Department officials said Thursday they were trying to determine if the message is credible.

Julie Schulz said the family has heard no confirmation that her brother is dead.

"We're working on the assumption that he's alive," she said.

Schulz, a former Marine who grew up on a farm around Jamestown, North Dakota, was working in Iraq as an industrial electrician, a job that has previously taken him to the Philippines, China, Vietnam and other countries around the globe.

His sister said it came as a "surprise" this week when the family first learned of his abduction, because they didn't know he was in Iraq.

She added it was "typical" of her younger brother, who had recently moved to Alaska, not to tell the family when he went overseas.

She last spoke with him two months ago. She said she immediately knew it was her brother when she saw the hostage video earlier this week.

"It's just been a roller coaster. We've just been trying to take things as it comes," she said.

Schulz is the second American known to have been kidnapped in Iraq in recent weeks. The other American, Tom Fox, was abducted with three other Christian aid workers.

The group claiming responsibility for the kidnapping of Fox and the other three workers extended its deadline for their execution to Saturday. (Full story)

The State Department said Thursday that another American contractor working for the U.S. government was killed Wednesday night outside the Iraqi city of Kirkuk.

U.S. officials said it was not a hostage situation and the victim was not Schulz.

There was no word on the status of a German aid worker and a French engineer, who have also been kidnapped

Iraq jails seven al-Qaeda members

Sunday Dec 11 05:37 AED

An Iraqi court has handed down long jail terms to seven men, including four foreigners, for belonging to al-Qaeda in Iraq and taking part in attacks in Baghdad and Mosul, the Justice Ministry said.

US lawyers said this was probably the first prosecution for membership of al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Led by Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the group has claimed responsibility for some of the bloodiest incidents in an insurgency pitting Sunni and foreign Arabs against the Shi'ite and Kurdish-led government and its US backers.

The four foreigners, from Syria, Algeria and Jordan, were each sentenced to 20 years in jail for attacks in Mosul. They were seized in a raid on a house on May 29 in the Anbar province of western Iraq, which is a hotbed of insurgent activity.

Two Iraqis were jailed for 10 years and a third for 15 years for attacks in Baghdad and for helping smuggle foreign fighters into the country.

Washington says foreigners are only a small percentage of the insurgency but are to blame for many of its suicide bombings. Marines have been fighting in Anbar all year to stop foreign militants crossing the border from Syria.


©AAP 2005

I had to say it surprised me that the judge had the backbone to do this. Bravo.  

Iranian leader: Holocaust a 'myth'

Thursday, December 15, 2005 Posted: 0030 GMT (0830 HKT)


TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has described the Holocaust as "a myth" and suggested that Israel be moved to Europe, the United States, Canada or Alaska.

The United States, Israel and the European Commission -- along with individual European countries -- have condemned the remark.

Ahmadinejad sparked widespread international condemnation in October when he called for Israel to be "wiped off the map."

Last week, he also expressed doubt about the killing by the Nazis of six million Jews during World War II, but Wednesday was the first occasion when he said in public that the Holocaust was a myth.

"They have invented a myth that Jews were massacred and place this above God, religions and the prophets," Ahmadinejad said in a speech to thousands of people in the Iranian city of Zahedan, according to a report on Wednesday from Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.

"The West has given more significance to the myth of the genocide of the Jews, even more significant than God, religion, and the prophets," he said. "(It) deals very severely with those who deny this myth but does not do anything to those who deny God, religion, and the prophet."

For more:http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/12/14/iran.israel/index.html

Quoted Text

There are so many stupid, horrid, unbelievable, obscene, and just plain bizzare things happening in Iraq I thought it worthy of it's own thread.

Terrible, terrible things : http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/001055.html

Bombs keep Iraq on civil war footing

By Lin Noueihed and Waleed Ibrahim in Baghdad
February 27, 2006
Page 1 of 2

A BOMB killed five people at a bus station in Hilla, south of Baghdad, yesterday, breaking a relative calm after Iraqi and US leaders appealed for an end to days of sectarian bloodshed that have pitched Iraq towards civil war.

A bomb in the washroom of a Shiite mosque in the southern city of Basra caused minor injuries, police said. It went off shortly after a rally in another part of the city by the Shiite cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr.

Another bomb killed two US soldiers overnight on Saturday in Baghdad.

Hours earlier the Prime Minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite, made a midnight televised appeal, flanked by Sunni and Kurdish politicians, to Iraqis not to turn on each other following Wednesday's bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, a site sacred to Shiites. A three-hour meeting produced a commitment from the main factions to form a unity coalition, although the Sunni leader Tareq al-Hashemi said he was not ready to end a boycott of the coalition talks.

Four days of tit-for-tat reprisals have left more than 200 dead and mosques damaged, despite a daytime curfew on Baghdad that has been extended until today.

With a traffic ban in force and the airport closed, Baghdad was largely quiet. But a policeman was killed and two were wounded when their patrol was hit by two roadside bombs near Madaen, another flashpoint for Sunni-Shiite violence just south-east of the city.

On Saturday, in the mainly Sunni town of Baquba, north of Baghdad, 12 members of one Shiite family were killed when gunmen burst into their home.

Dr Jaafari said he was hopeful that Iraqis would step back from sectarian strife.

"The Iraqi people have one enemy: it is terrorism and only terrorism. There are no Sunnis against Shiites," he said.

The attacks provoked a warning from the Defence Minister, Saadoun al-Dulaimi, who said: "If there is civil war in this country it will never end."

Mr Dulaimi said the Government was prepared to "fill the streets with armoured vehicles" if the violence does not stop.

In Basra, Mr Sadr appeared at a rally to call for Muslim unity against US occupation and summoned his many followers to hold joint prayers next Friday at Sunni mosques, especially those damaged in the past days' violence.

Although his black-clad Mahdi Army militia have been accused by officials of taking part in attacks on Sunni mosques, Mr Sadr himself, his influence rising within the ruling but factionalised Shiite Islamist bloc, denies ordering violence.

for more go to:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/wor.....88748199.html?page=2

I beleive that what we hear is being very downplayed.
I only watched the first couple of videos on this page but it's more along the lines of the way I had heard it.  I didn't read the article either, I was just looking for news that was more along the lines of what I understood and stopped when I found it without giving it the deeper look that I should have.
http://kutv.com/topstories/topstories_story_054083831.html

"This is no another Vietnam"
-An idiot blindly backing Bush

Here's more:
http://www.rferl.org/reports/iraq-report/default.asp
I somehow think that referances to Iraqi government has become a bit more irrelevant.

Losing faith in the push for peace
February 28, 2006


There is little real hope as Iraq lurches towards civil war, writes Paul McGeough in Amman.


IRAQ'S political and religious leaders voiced support for national unity after a weekend of crisis talks, but as the bloodletting continued analysts were despondent about the ability, or genuine desire, of the country to retreat from the brink of civil war.

More than 220 Iraqis, mostly Sunnis, have died in continuing violence since the bombing of one of the holiest Shiite shrines, the Askariya mosque in Samarra. Shiite gunmen were reportedly still in control of some of the dozens of Sunni mosques that were targeted in a wave of retaliatory attacks.

Up to 30 deaths were reported on Sunday, among them five passengers on a bus bombed in the Shiite town of Hilla, and 18 residents of the predominantly Shiite district of Dora in Baghdad.

There were reports of more Shiites fleeing or being cleansed from communities where they are outnumbered by Sunnis. Amid complaints of food shortages, ordinary Iraqis seemed to have little faith in a push by US diplomats to salvage their effort to export democracy to the Middle East.

Residents in Baghdad complained that the violence had eased only because of a curfew imposed after the desecration of the Samarra shrine and they fully expected opposing militias to re-emerge in greater numbers with the planned easing of the curfew yesterday. Some minority Sunnis claimed to have been opposed to the relentless violence perpetrated in their name since the US-led invasion, but said they now needed the protection of al-Qaeda's Iraq top man in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Shaken US officials underscored the crisis atmosphere by arranging a series of phone calls in which President George Bush pleaded with Iraqi leaders for calm.

Ridha Jawad al-Taqi, an official in the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the biggest of the Shiite Islamist parties, said: "We've passed the danger period. The security situation is now 80 per cent stable. [This crisis] pushed the different groups to get together."

But the International Crisis Group, headed by Gareth Evans, issued a report saying that Iraq was on the verge of breaking up - religiously, ethnically and tribally.

The greatest risk, the group said, was the Sunni-Shiite schism, which "threatens to tear the country apart", bringing chaos in the region.

Urging the outside world to brace itself for the collapse of Iraq, it warned: "Until now such an effort has been a taboo, but failure to anticipate such a possibility may lead to further disasters in the future."

Under US diplomatic pressure, Sunni leaders indicated they would drop their boycott of talks to form a new government which have been bogged down since a national election in December.

A Sunni negotiator, Mahmoud al-Mashhadany, said Sunnis recognised the need for a widely inclusive government instead of the existing administration, which is dominated by religious Shiites and Kurds.

"We've cancelled our withdrawal from the talks," Mr Mashhadany told The New York Times. "We should hurry up and form a national unity government, to change this hopeless government."

But while there is much lip service to the need for unity, doubts that existed before the Samarra bombing about the willingness of the Shiite majority to share power have only intensified.

Source:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/wor.....7/1141020020332.html

46 Iraqis Killed Amid Rising Violence
By Borzou Daragahi, Times Staff Writer
12:29 PM PST,February 28 2006


BAGHDAD -- A sudden upsurge in violence across a wide swath of Iraq today has left at least 46 Iraqis dead and many more wounded, prompting fresh worries that sectarian violence sparked by the bombing last week of an important Shiite Muslim shrine could resume.

The violence spread beyond the capital — where explosions shook the city — and Sunni Arab provinces, to the country's mostly peaceful Shiite south, where two British soldiers were killed.

The U.S. military reported today that a U.S. soldier was killed by small-arms fire in western Baghdad on Monday.

Sunni Arab insurgents have waged a campaign of bombing and assassinations against the Shiite-led government and security forces, as well as Shiite civilians. Calmed by senior clergy, the Shiite community has generally turned the other cheek.

But the Feb. 22 shrine bombing of the Golden Dome mosque in Samarra has ignited furious reprisals. Black-clad Shiite militiamen marauded through Sunni neighborhoods, attacking Sunni mosques and killing Sunni clergy. An unprecedented spasm of sectarian violence since the bombing has left hundreds of Iraqis dead.

Iraqi officials have released various figures for the death toll in the recent fighting. So far, at least 379 Iraqis have been killed and 458 wounded nationwide in the most recent spate of violence, according to the government's Council of Ministers.

Morgue officials in Baghdad said at least 249 had been killed since the Samarra blast.

Haidar Safar, a Ministry of Health official in charge of tabulating data from hospitals and morgues across the country, said 519 Iraqis have died since the mosque blast of "unnatural causes," which could include car wrecks and suicides, as well as violence.

In today's worst violence, a suicide bomber attacked the poor, mostly Shiite Jadida district, leaving 27 dead and 112 injured in two incidents that occurred within minutes of each other.

In the first attack shortly after noon, a man wearing an explosives belt targeted a gas station. Minutes later, a car bomb exploded near a group of laborers, police said.

Also, a car bomb detonated by a remote control near a small market in the mostly Shiite Karada district left six dead and 18 injured. Another car bomb targeting a convoy for an advisor to the Defense Ministry, Daham Radhi Assal, injured three people.

A car bomb explosion intended for a police patrol on the road between Kirkuk and the capital killed four civilians. Police in the mostly Kurdish city of Kirkuk said they arrested three suspected Sunni militants planting a roadside bomb.

Gunmen also blew up a Sunni mosque in the capital's Hurriya district without causing casualties, and damaged a mosque in the Sunni town of Tikrit that houses the remains of former President Saddam Hussein's father.

A mortar shell landed near the offices of Baghdad TV, a satellite channel operated by the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni faction. Two employees were injured.

Authorities in Baqubah this morning discovered nine bodies, each shot in the head in a style that bears the signature of death squads with alleged ties to the country's Shiite-dominated Ministry of Interior.

The two British soldiers were killed in the Missan province, a mostly placid agricultural section of the country's Shiite south, when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb.

In the southern city of Nasiriyah, quiet for months, a roadside bomb targeting a convoy of Italian troops wounded a civilian.

http://www.latimes.com/news/na.....ll=la-home-headlines

Occupation by foreign forces is no longer the issue . Iraq will cease to exist in a few short years.    

"This is not another Vietnam!"


I wonder if it will be true if I type it again.

Quoted from MeanDean

"This is not another Vietnam!"


I wonder if it will be true if I type it again.

It can only truly be true if it 'springs forth from J Howards mouth' . .    

Quoted from SuziH

The War in Iraq has cost the US Government over 2 billion dollars. No wonder they didn't have the immediate resources to respond to the Hurricanes that hit the New Orleans region just a short time ago. I do hope the US is getting more than 2 billion dollars worth of Oil out of this otherwise what a waste of money and humanity this little  exercise has proven to be.

Don't know where you got that unbelievably low figure. In June 2004 it was $US120 billion and August 2005 it was US$144 billion.

Currently it is 246.5 billion and growing:
http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=182

At the current rate, even if in the unlikely event Bush decides to pull out at the end of this year, the total cost of Iraq will exceed US$700 billion, which compares to the total cost of US$600 billion for Vietnam adjusted for todays dollars. Vietnam cost 5.1 billion per month whilst Iraq cost 5.6 billion per month in 2005, more now.

2 billion hardly paid for the planning let alone the invasion, and recently Bush again asked for tens of billions extra in the budget to pay for Iraq.

Ex-Judge in Iraq Stands by Death Sentences for 148 Shiites

By ROBERT F. WORTH
Published: March 13, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 13 ? A former judge in Saddam Hussein's Revolutionary Court acknowledged today that he sentenced 148 Shiites to death in 1984, but he said they had received a proper trial and had confessed to trying to assassinate the former Iraqi leader at the instigation of Iran.

The former judge, Awad al-Bandar, spoke as defendant testimony continued in the trial of Mr. Hussein and seven others in connection with mass tortures and executions after the failed assassination attempt in 1982. The first high-level defendants testified today, and Mr. Hussein is expected to speak on Tuesday

The chief prosecutor and judge often seemed amazed at Mr. Bandar's defense of his role in the trial of the 148 Shiites. Mr. Bandar said that the 1984 trial had taken two weeks, and that the dock in his courtroom had often been packed as the men moved in and out.

The prosecutor, Jafar Musawi, then showed Mr. Bandar documents indicating that 46 of the 148 defendants had been "liquidated during interrogation" prior to the two-week trial. Prosecutors have said in the past that the entire 1984 trial was a sham, but this time Mr. Bandar seemed not to understand the prosecutor's efforts to undercut him.

"Is it a strange thing that a defendant died during interrogation?" he asked.

The prosecutor drove his point home shortly afterward: "People were dying during interrogation and the strange thing is that they were afterwards being referred to the Revolutionary Court to get the death penalty."

Mr. Bandar angrily denied that. But he invoked the war with Iran as a necessary context for his actions, saying, "We had an external enemy and an internal enemy," and that the would-be assassins were members of the dissident Dawa Party with links to Iran.

Mr. Hussein himself offered a similar self-defense two weeks ago when he admitted ordering the trial, though he stopped short of saying he had signed the execution order that prosecutors have introduced as documentary evidence.

Several of the defendants have questioned the authenticity of those documents, or suggested that they were marred by commonplace errors. "The typist must have made a mistake," Mr. Bandar said, when asked why the records of the Revolutionary Court show no mention of any defense lawyers for the 148 Shiites who were executed.

Aside from Mr. Bandar, all the defendants who have given direct testimony so far this week have denied any role in the torture and executions carried out after the assassination attempt, in the Shiite village of Dujail. Taha Yassin al-Ramadan, a former vice president in Mr. Hussein's government, said he had no connection to the events in Dujail.

But Mr. Ramadan insisted on reading a lengthy statement alleging that he was tortured after his capture in August 2003. His captors included an American, he said, and they demanded to know where Mr. Hussein was hiding. When he told them he did not know, they beat and kicked him for days.

The other four defendants are local Baath Party officials who are accused of playing roles in the crackdown that followed the assassination attempt. Three testified on Sunday, saying they were innocent of any wrongdoing, and disavowing earlier signed statements given to investigators. But they have described terrifying scenes on the days in question in Dujail, with warplanes bombing orchards near where the assassination attempt took place and security officers storming the town.

A fourth local official, Muhammad Azawi Ali, testified today, saying he had been in the Baath Party headquarters in Dujail on the day in question. But he also said he is illiterate and had not understood the statement he gave investigators earlier. "I am innocent, I am innocent, I am innocent!" he said as he finished his testimony.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/13/international/middleeast/13cnd-saddam.html

What I want to know is this. . . If 148 people tried to shoot Saddam . . they ALL missed!!. .      

They should be on trial for INCOMPETENCE! . .not attempted murder.

lol hehehe, that is pretty funny.

It could be that the law there interpreted attempted murder and conspiracy as the same thing though.  If it happened here it might be considered a military action against the state.  There just isn't a death penalty for it.

US launches biggest air assault in Iraq since 2003

March 17, 2006 - 6:38AM


The US military has launched its biggest air offensive in Iraq since the 2003 invasion against insurgents near a town where recent violence raised fears of civil war.

Announced with media fanfare just hours after Iraq's parliament held a brief first meeting that did nothing to end a political stalemate over forming a government, the US military said 50 aircraft were taking part in the operation north of Baghdad.

The US military released to the media photographs of troop-carrying Black Hawk helicopters lined up in a row for the offensive. There were no pictures of warplanes.

A Pentagon official said it was "predominantly" a helicopter operation that involved UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters and other aircraft and the insertion of ground forces.

A military statement said "Operation Swarmer" involved more than 1,500 Iraqi and US troops and 200 armoured vehicles targeting insurgents active near Samarra, 100 km north of Baghdad.

A defence official in Washington said 600-700 of the troops involved were Iraqi government forces. The rest were Americans.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said the offensive showed Iraqi forces, some facing accusations of cooperating with the rebels, are increasingly capable of securing the country.

The US military has launched several major offensives against Sunni Arab insurgents since the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, including one involving several thousand soldiers that captured the former rebel stronghold of Fallujah.

There were also a series of assaults in the rebel heartland in western Iraq's Anbar province which failed to hurt the insurgency and infuriated Iraqis who dug their loved ones out of the rubble after US air strikes.

Security crackdowns were also carried out near Samarra, the the site of a bombing attack last month on a Shi'ite shrine that set off sectarian reprisals and pushed Iraq to the brink of sectarian civil war.

The military statement said the offensive launched this morning was "expected to continue for several days as a thorough search of the objective area is conducted".

"Initial reports from the objective area indicate that a number of enemy weapons caches have been captured, containing artillery shells, explosives, IED-(bomb) making materials, and military uniforms," said the statement.

The US military has issued frequent statements about the capture of arms, but Iraq is still awash with weapons.

As it has done in the past, the US military made a point of saying both American and Iraqi forces were taking part in the operation in an apparent bid to show that rebuilding of Iraqi forces was making progress.

The United States has 130,000 troops in Iraq. Washington has said it will begin withdrawing troops as US-trained Iraqi forces take over security.

But US military officials have said few units were capable of fighting insurgents on their own, let alone protecting people from suicide bombings, shootings, and kidnappings.

Source:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/wor.....7/1142098630434.html

Now I have heards it all!. . this idiot says Iraq is NOT on the brink of civil war. . what the h*** is 'breakdown of governance' if it is not civil war??. . only a ploitician/religious fanatic could come up with a lie like that!.

Iraq ethnic, religious hatred 'tragic'
From: Agence France-Presse From correspondents in Washington
March 18, 2006

IRAQ is not poised for civil war, though ethnic and religious fighting could spell tragedy, special UN envoy Ashraf Jehangir Qazi said overnight.

The "prospect of civil war is not there," the UN envoy to Iraq told reporters.
"But the situation is very serious and that could lead to a breakdown of governance and of order," he said.

The "sectarian situation is a cause of concern," he said.

"It will be a tragedy if the political process is defined by sectarian and ethnic division," he said in Washington.

Secular governance does not guarantee peace, he said. Iraq has a long tradition of secularism, he said, but recalled that toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and his Baath party was tyranny under a secular government.

He said Iraq's "security forces do need to be complimented."
"Number one for the Iraqis (is) to ensure the situation does not get out of their hands. They took the decisions of curfew, and not to allow the perpetrators to defeat and defy the Iraqi people," he said, after militants destroyed the dome of one of the holiest Shiite shrines on February 22.

He said that Iraq's political process has so far followed its timetable. "But without improvement of security the long term will be difficult," he said.

"The political process has not been translated in a better security."


http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,18509840-401,00.html?from=rss

The boy who saw too much
By Paul McGeough Chief Herald Correspondent In Baghdad
March 18, 2006
Page 1 of 4 | Single page


THIS is Ibrahim Sa'ad Al-Jabouri's story At just five, a Shiite boy cannot be expected to comprehend what the past three years have been about in Iraq.

But it is not surprising he has retreated into his own very small and empty world. Ibrahim became an orphan when Sunni insurgents forced him to watch as they executed his father, a brother and two uncles. He had already lost his mother to illness.

The killers compounded this unbelievable cruelty by then abandoning the helpless child where wolves and wild cats roam the empty river flats on the eastern fringe of metropolitan Baghdad.

But this was just one of a series of debauched killings that have traumatised the farm and factory district of Nahrawan in just eight weeks in the run-up to the third anniversary - on Monday - of the US-led invasion of Iraq. It climaxed grotesquely in the aftermath of the desecration of the Golden Mosque at Samarra on February 22.

In a series of interviews with the Herald, local figures confirmed the death of 48 civilian men, women and children who were abducted as they drove from a factory near Nahrawan to join a midtown protest against the Samarra attack.

They also provided rare - and disturbing - video footage of the aftermath of the February 23 attack, in which the camera steadily pans the length of a shallow ditch where the victims were made to lie down, side by side, and then were systematically executed in one of the worst single killing rampages in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

About 100 metres from the burnt-out vehicles of their convoy, the ditch yawns to reveal its full horror: tangled, bloodied bodies, some seemingly in peaceful repose, others horribly disfigured. One of the victims appears to have been injured recently or to be a cripple - a pair of crutches lies among the bodies.

The local mayor, Fadal Barah Joda, and the regional security chief, General Nabil Lamlum Al-Aboudi, appear in this and videos of the recovery of bodies in the other killings. Each man vouched for the authenticity of the videos.

Fadal said he maintained a video record of local atrocities in his effort to prove the security and humanitarian needs of his desperate community.

Experts see the February 23 video, provided to the Herald by a tribal sheik, as a chilling new low in a deepening human rights crisis in liberated Iraq.

Global audiences are becoming inured to the carnage in Iraq after endless grainy footage of the aftermath of bombings and increasingly familiar accounts of the work of death squads that often lack explicit pictorial evidence.

Source:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/the-boy-who-saw-too-much/2006/03/17/1142582522183.html

Did anyone see the The Cutting Edge doco on SBS last night "Targets: Reporters In Iraq"?

What a sad situation Iraq is. And Bush has the nerve to predict victory their soon. The place is an absolute mess.

Anyone else getting the hunch that with all this Uranium talk with India Bush is looking for an alternative source of riches to oil? Sounds like the U.S. are considering dropping the ball in Iraq and doing a runner because the mission is too difficult and not worth the efforts.

An interesting letter to The Age yesterday:

Quoted Text

It's none of our business

On the occasion of the third anniversary of the Iraq war, it is surprising how many media commentators are still running the line: "If only the Americans and their allies can establish a stable democracy in Iraq, they will be able to leave, and everything will be fine."

The Americans will not leave Iraq for a long, long time, not because they wish to bring the joys of freedom to the Iraqis, but because they have too much at stake there: oil, reconstruction opportunities for US companies, and control of a strategic pivot point. That is why they are bunkering in, establishing more bases, not fewer. Although there is some disquiet in the US about troop losses, this will not be a significant factor politically while the losses are confined to poor whites, blacks and Hispanics, with the white middle class largely untouched. The situation will remain the same under either a Republican or a Democrat administration.

The lesson for Australia? Get out. It's none of our business.

Mike Puleston, Brunswick

Thirty bodies, most beheaded, found in Iraq
March 27, 2006 - 7:04AM


Thirty bodies, most of them beheaded, have been found on the main street of a village north of Baghdad, stepping up pressure on divided Iraqi leaders to form a government they hope can avert sectarian civil war.

Iraqi army officials said the corpses were found in Mulla Eed near the town of Baquba, 65 km north of the capital. The motive for the killings was not clear but they fit a pattern of rapidly escalating sectarian violence.

Police said many of the victims had also been shot.

Another round of negotiations over the formation of a unity government more than three months after parliamentary elections failed to provide any relief for Iraqis.

"In practical terms, there is not a complete agreement nor is there total disagreement," secular Shi'ite politician Wael Abdul Latif told reporters today as talks persisted.

Visiting US senators told Iraqi leaders yesterday that American patience is running thin, but renewed US pressure has failed to push politicians towards a deal.

Prolonged political deadlock and raging violence will decrease the chances of the stability Washington yearns for in the hope that American troops will eventually be able to leave.

Asked about comments last week by President George W Bush that US troops may still be in Iraq in three years, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said many will still leave as planned over the coming year if conditions are met.

"If Iraqi forces continue to develop in the way that they have ... then it is entirely likely that there will be drawdowns of American forces over this next year," she told Fox television.

Fresh bloodshed reminded Iraqis that their country was in danger of sliding into civil war, with deep divisions paralysing talks among Shi'ite, Kurdish and Arab Sunni leaders.

As well as those near Baquba, 10 more bodies were found across Baghdad today, Interior Ministry sources said.

Some were blindfolded, bound and shot in the head, the familiar signs of sectarian killings that have exploded since the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine last month touched off reprisals and pushed Iraq closer to all-out conflict.

In an unusual admission, Iraqi Interior Ministry officials said a police major accused of taking part in death squads had been arrested.

Arkan al-Bawi, who works in Diyala province north-east of Baghdad, was detained after visiting the ministry.

Sunni Arabs accuse the Shi'ite-led government of sanctioning death squads, which the government denies.

Bawi, whose brother is police chief in Diyala, was accused of operating death squads in Baquba, the main town in Diyala.

Death squads are a taboo subject with the Iraqi government despite mounting evidence that they operate with impunity.

For more:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/wor.....ullpage#contentSwap1

Key aide to Iraq PM slams US raid on mosque

March 27, 2006 - 12:33PM

A top aide to Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari condemned a US raid on a Shi'ite mosque in Baghdad which killed up to 20 people as a "policy of aggression".

"I demand a full investigation of this crime," Jawad al-Maliki, a member of Sadr's Dawa party, told Shi'ite-dominated state television.

Shi'ite officials, who came to power in elections after a US-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated government in 2003, rarely criticise the United States.

Maliki's remarks came a day after US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad called on the Shi'ite-dominated government to crack down on militias, saying they are killing more Iraqis than insurgents.

Iraqi police and residents said the raid in the Shaab district of east Baghdad sparked fierce clashes with militiamen of the Mehdi Army loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

A senior aide to Sadr, in comments that could inflame passions among the radical cleric's supporters, accused US troops of shooting dead more than 20 unarmed worshippers at the Mustapha mosque.

The mosque's faithful follow Sadr but the aide denied they were Mehdi Army gunmen.

Sadr, who has led two armed revolts against US and Iraqi forces, is Jaafari's main supporter in the main Shi'ite alliance.

Al Iraqiya state television, which repeatedly showed footage of bodies inside the mosque, identified the dead as nationals, not militiamen.

A medical source at Yarmouk hospital said he saw 18 bodies of Iraqis killed in the operation.

Police sources said 20 Mehdi Army fighters were killed in the fighting, close to Sadr's stronghold in the Sadr City slum, and five vehicles belonging to the militia were burned.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/wor.....7/1143330968735.html

Rarely do we read what is actually happening in Iraq but this website has daily updates and IMHO NO-ONE is winning the War.
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/04/18/iraq.main/index.html

Marines fire on mosque to repel attacks
18 bodies with signs of torture found around Baghdad

Tuesday, April 18, 2006 Posted: 0627 GMT (1427 HKT)

RAMADI, Iraq (CNN) -- A coordinated attack from three directions on the governor's compound in Ramadi Monday left an unknown number of insurgents dead after an hourlong fight with U.S. Marines.

The insurgent assault -- which included car bombs, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and machine-gun and small-arms fire -- occurred between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m., the U.S. military said in a written statement.

Militants used a suicide car bombing to attack an observation point, wounding one Marine. Two other car bombs were stopped and destroyed by Marines firing from observation posts, the military said. (Watch troops under fire in governor's compound -- 2:45)

Insurgents also fired on the compound from a mosque about 330 yards (300 meters) away in the center of the city with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns.

The Marines called for air support against the fire coming from the mosque, but ground forces arrived first.

"The Marines returned fire but continued to be attacked from the mosque's minaret," the military statement said. "The Marines fired one 120 mm tank round and several 7.62 mm machine-gun rounds into the minaret, after which fire from the mosque ceased."

CNN correspondent Arwa Damon said she saw two tank rounds fired into the mosque.

"This is the fourth time in three-and-a-half weeks that the Ramadi Government Center has received attacks from the Fatemat Mosque," said Lt. Col. Stephen M. Neary, commander of 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment.

He