Month: October 2004

Justin Raimondo delivers his Friday column early, assessing last night’s final Presidential debate.

Fallujah negotiators deny that al-Zarqawi is in Fallujah:

Iyad Allawi told Iraq’s interim assembly that Fallujah must surrender Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, America’s top enemy in Iraq, or face military action.

“We want to know what proof there is that Zarqawi is in Fallujah,” Hatem Maddab, a member of a Fallujah negotiating committee, told Arabic Al Jazeera television, adding that the government had now halted peace talks.

US warplanes have repeatedly struck at targets the military says are hideouts used by Zarqawi and his followers in the Sunni Muslim city 50 kilometres west of Baghdad.

“Zarqawi is like the weapons of mass destruction that America invaded Iraq for,” Mr Maddab said, alluding to Saddam Hussein’s arsenal of banned arms that proved not to exist.

“We hear about that name (Zarqawi), but he is not here. More than 20 or 30 homes have been bombarded because of this Zarqawi and his followers but only women, children and the elderly have been affected,” the negotiator added.

He said the fate of Zarqawi had not been raised in talks with the interim government aimed at restoring state authority in Fallujah before nationwide elections due in January.

“At this point in time, the negotiations are halted for the sake of consultation. We did not suspend any negotiations … they were stopped by the government,” Mr Maddab said.

The Rolling Stones 1966 hit, “Mother’s Little Helper,” was a warning about addiction to Valium, a tranquilizer used by a legion of western women “…to get her through her busy day.” Of course, there is no comparison between the relatively placid suburban existence of the 1960s and the nightmare of Baghdad at war today. According to Riverbend, Valium is in the emergency first-aid kit of most Baghdad families to help them them make it through their day, and through the night.

Drug addiction is growing in Iraq, but as Riverbend remarks, Iraqis have other concerns which are more pressing; like protecting their children from kidnappers and bombs in this continuing disastrous war and occupation. As she puts it so well, it’s “like discovering you have cancer while you’re fighting off a hungry alligator- you’ll worry about the disease later.”

Read more…

Eight people are dead and four wounded in two explosions in the Green Zone. At least two Americans are among the casualties.:

It is believed to be the first time that insurgents have struck from within the heavily guarded compound that is home to the US and British embassies as well as Iraqi government offices.

Initial reports said that six people were killed and three wounded at the zone’s bazaar, while two were killed and an unspecified number were wounded at the Green Zone Café, but later reports amended the death toll to seven, including two Americans.

The blasts sent a large plume of thick, black smoke rising from the zone, home to about 10,000 Iraqis alongside US troops and international officials and contractors.

• One US soldier killed and two wounded by a roadside bomb in east Baghdad.
• ……an Iraqi female TV reporter was killed by gunmen in a morning drive-by shooting in Baghdad today.

  Zeina Mahmoud, who worked for Kurdish-run Al-Hurriya TV, was shot by three assailants driving by in an Opel car, said officials.

• In an apparently unrelated shooting that took place less than a half mile away, a judge was shot dead just minutes earlier.
• RFE is reporting five assassinations: Iraqi police say five people have died in a series of assassinations today in Baghdad, and the town of Baquba. They include two army officers, a judge, and a woman journalist, who were shot by gunmen.
• Update: Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi’s Tawhid wal Jihad claims responsibility for the Green Zone attack, “Two lions from the `Martyrdom-seeking Brigade` (suicide bombers), which is affiliated to the military wing of Tawhid wal Jihad (Unity and Holy War) group, managed to enter the US embassy compound inside the Green Zone in the capital Baghdad,” said the statement posted on the Internet.

Update: AP reporting ten dead in the Green Zone bombings.

Suicide bombers today penetrated Baghdad’s heavily-secured Green Zone for the first time, setting off bombs at a market and cafe that left ten dead.

The victims were four Americans and six Iraqis.

The U-S military says the bombs were carried by hand into the fortified zone that houses American and Iraqi government headquarters.

Witnesses say they saw two men carrying backpacks sitting in a cafe full of Americans, chatting and drinking tea. They say a blast was heard after one man left — and that the second man then set off his bomb.

They say neither man was wearing a required I-D badge.

Jim Henley on the newest rationale for the war:

It is high time we recognize the grammatical inversion that has seized our Imperial Wing. While they produce sentences of the form “I support the War for the sake of this reason,” the truer template is “I support this reason for the sake of the War.”

Read the whole thing.

The Libertarian Jackass on the favorite excuse for the war:

I hate to be the one to point out the obvious (actually, scratch that, I love it!) but all humans act under conditions of imperfect information and uncertainty. If there was perfect information and certainty in human action, humans simply would not need to choose and act. They would be like robots on a path. The existence of “imperfect information” certainly does not justify the initiation of force. If it did, we certainly would not have advanced human civilization.

Read the whole thing.

And check out our new blogrollees:Tim Swanson, Chris Andersen, and James Landrith.

Comical Allawi, the man without a military, is threatening “military action” against the people of Fallujah:

13 October 2004 — Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is threatening military action against the main insurgent stronghold of Al-Fallujah if residents don’t hand over Jordanian-born militant Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi and his comrades.

“If al-Zarqawi and his group are not handed over to us, we are ready for major operations in Fallujah,” Allawi said. “We are determined to safeguard the Iraqi people, because there are forces that want to inflict harm on the Iraqi people. I hope they [people in Al-Fallujah] will respond. If they don’t, we will have to use force.”
[…]
Meanwhile, a group led by al-Zarqawi posted a video on the Internet that showed two Iraqi intelligence officers beheaded.

I guess upping the bounty for Zarqawi from ten million to twenty five million hasn’t worked any better than it has for capturing Osama bin Laden. Of course, massive force didn’t work against bin Laden either. Massive force is usually counterproductive in a guerrilla conflict anyway, since inevitably large numbers of civilians get killed, which turns more of the population into insurgents or rebel-sympathizers, which is why guerillas try to provoke the massive use of force – sort of like what Zarqawi is doing to Allawi and the US military.

Anyway, how do they know he’s in Fallujah? More of that whiz-bang “intelligence?”

The United States tried twice to rescue the two Americans and one British citizen held hostage in Iraq, according to a U.S. official with direct knowledge of the attempts.

The attempts involved deploying U.S. military as well as other government personnel on two occasions. Intelligence led the rescue teams to two locations in Baghdad, the official said.

Both times, the source said, the missions came up with “dry holes.”