Posted 4:33 AM by Dil
The news came as another blow to the US forces on the same day that a senior general in Iraq has been suspended and put under investigation over the alleged abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers.

Brigadier General Janis Karpinski was suspended after six soldiers were indicted for the mistreatment of Iraqis being held at the Abu Ghraib prison.

The suspension was ordered in January, but has only just beeen made public by the US military.

America is currently rushing tanks to the country, including the besieged city of Fallujah, where sporadic overnight clashes followed PresidentBush's promise to do whatever was needed to retake the town.

Residents reported sporadic clashes but said there had been no resumption so far of the shellfire and air strikes that shook the town of 300,000 on Wednesday.

US soldiers are also reported to have fired on a minibus full of civilians near a checkpoint on the outskirts of the town, setting the vehicle on fire.

http://www.thisislondon.com/news/articles/10489520?source=TiL

Posted 8:11 PM by Dil
April 29, 2004

Rebel diplomats advised by Baghdad envoy
By Richard Beeston, Diplomatic Editor



THE Prime Minister?s personal envoy to Baghdad gave advice to the 52 eminent former diplomats who launched this week?s devastating attack against Tony Blair?s ?doomed? Iraq and Middle East policies.
The diplomats? letter accusing Mr Blair of slavishly following President Bush?s lead was written after consultations with Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who was Ambassador to the UN before the war and spent six months as Britain?s most senior coalition representative.



The disclosure to The Times suggests that dissent over Iraq now permeates the highest levels of the Government. Sir Jeremy, who last month refused Mr Blair?s request to stay on in Baghdad until the handover of power on June 30, had been handpicked by the Prime Minister to oversee Iraq?s postwar reconstruction.

Sir Jeremy was not available for comment yesterday, and the Foreign Office insisted that he never had any intention of putting his name to the letter. But Oliver Miles, the former Ambassador to Athens and Tripoli who drafted the text, said that he had consulted Sir Jeremy as it was being written. ?He quite understandably thought it would be a bit two-faced for him to join (the other signatories). But he had some interesting views on Iraq. These were reflected in the letter,? Mr Miles said.

The letter accused the coalition of having ?no effective plan for a post-Saddam settlement?. It criticised the US operations in Fallujah and Najaf, saying the Iraqi opposition was being strengthened rather than isolated by heavy-handed military operations. It also said that without a ?fundamental reassessment? efforts to rescue Iraq were ?doomed to failure?.

Inspired by the British diplomats? protest, a former US ambassador to Qatar was last night circulating a letter to other officials criticising the Bush Administration?s Middle East policy. Andrew Killgore, now publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, has received up to 40 signatures for the open letter, which he plans to deliver to President Bush tomorrow.

?We are telling the President, ?Isn't it a pity you are going to give the Israelis five settlement blocks on the West Bank that belong to the Palestinians, and you are telling the Palestinians they cannot go back home?. I would think every diplomat who has served in the Middle East, other than Israel, would sign the letter.?

Since the diplomats? letter was made public on Monday, Whitehall has attempted to play down the importance of the signatories, deriding them as middle-ranking ?Arabists?. But it was clear yesterday that the groundswell of discontent is certainly wider than the 52 names on the letter. Many more diplomats, who never reached ambassadorial rank, were also ready to sign.

Lord Wright of Richmond, head of the Foreign Office from 1986 to 1991, said he ?agreed totally with the letter?. He had not signed it because he had already tabled questions in the Lords.

Posted 3:27 PM by Dil
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Nearly half the Iraqis polled in a survey conducted primarily in March and early April said they believed the U.S.-led war had done more harm than good, but 61 percent of respondents said Saddam Hussein's ouster made it worth any hardships.

The CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll showed conflicted feelings among Iraqis over the war and its impact at the time of the survey.

Most interviews were done between March 22 and April 9 -- before the latest flare-up of violence that brought some of the deadliest fighting since the end of major combat nearly a year ago.

Iraqi interviewers conducted face-to-face surveys with 3,444 adults in Arabic and Kurdish in respondents' homes. The poll covered urban and rural areas throughout Iraq, representing about 93 percent of the population. It has a sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

Nearly half -- 47 percent -- said they believed attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq could not be justified, while 52 percent said those attacks could be justified some or all of the time.

Thirty-three percent of those polled said the war had done more good than harm, while 46 percent said it had done more harm than good.

Forty-two percent said Iraq was better off because of the war, while 39 percent said it was worse off. Given the sampling error, those figures indicated a dead heat.

On a personal level, Iraqis appeared more optimistic, according to the poll. More than half of those surveyed -- 51 percent -- said they and their families were better off than they were before the invasion, while 25 percent said they were worse off.

Fifty-four percent said conditions for creating peace and stability had worsened in the three months before they were questioned for the poll. Twenty-five percent said conditions improved during that time before the upsurge in violence.

Those polled were virtually united in opposition to attacks against Iraqi police, the survey found. Ninety-two percent said those attacks could not be justified.

But the Iraqis surveyed were split on whether ongoing U.S.-led military action in the country was justified. Fifty-two percent said it was not, while 47 percent said it could be justified.

Asked about when they wanted U.S. and British forces to leave, 57 percent chose immediately, as in the next few months, the poll said; 36 percent said troops should stay longer.

At the time the question was asked, 53 percent said they would feel less safe if the U.S.-led coalition left immediately. About half as many -- 28 percent -- said they would feel more safe. Sixty-nine percent said they or their families would be in danger if they were seen cooperating with the coalition.

The respondents were split in their opinions of L. Paul Bremer, the U.S civilian administrator in Iraq. Forty-two percent said they held a unfavorable opinion, while 31 percent rated him favorably. He proved more popular than President Bush, disliked by more than half the respondents.

Forty-four percent gave Bush a very unfavorable rating and 11 percent somewhat unfavorable; 24 percent said they held a favorable opinion of the U.S. president. But Bush proved more popular than Saddam in the survey, with eight of 10 respondents viewing the ousted Iraqi leader unfavorably at the time the poll was done.

Negative view of U.S. forces

U.S. soldiers man a checkpoint Wednesday in Baghdad.
The poll suggested more than half of Iraqis had a negative impression of U.S. forces in general before the current wave of violence.

Twenty-nine percent said troops had conducted themselves very badly, while another 29 percent said fairly badly; 24 percent chose fairly well, and 10 percent said troops had acted very well.

Among those who said the troops acted badly, 54 percent said their opinions were based on things they had heard. Thirty-nine percent said they decided based on things they had seen, while 7 percent said they were judging from personal experience.

Two-thirds -- 67 percent -- said troops were not trying at all to keep ordinary Iraqis from being killed in exchanges of gunfire, while 18 percent said the Americans were trying only a little and 11 percent said they were trying a lot.

Sixty percent of those surveyed said U.S. soldiers sometimes or often showed disrespect for Iraqis during home searches; 29 percent said that the troops did not. Forty-six percent said the troops sometimes or often showed disrespect for Iraqi women during such operations, while 39 percent said the soldiers did not.

Asked whether U.S. troops showed disrespect for Islam during such operations, respondents were split -- 42 percent said often or a little, while 43 percent said not at all.

Those polled gave the troops low marks for reconstruction efforts. Asked about the restoration of basic services such as electricity and clean drinking water, 41 percent said the troops were trying only a little and 44 percent said they were not trying at all.

Seventy-one percent surveyed said they saw troops mostly as occupiers, while 19 percent said they viewed them as liberators. Asked how they viewed troops at the time of the invasion a year ago, the respondents were split, with 43 percent saying they saw the coalition forces as occupiers and another 43 percent saying they considered them liberators at the time.

But asked, "Thinking about any hardships you might have suffered since the U.S.-Britain invasion, do you personally think that ousting Saddam Hussein was worth it or not?" Sixty-one percent said it was worth it. Twenty-eight percent said it was not, while 9 percent said they were not sure.

Posted 3:13 PM by Dil
Posted 4/28/2004 4:55 PM






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CBS to air photos of alleged GI abuses
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. soldiers stacked Iraqi prisoners in a human pyramid, and attached wires to one detainee to convince him he might be electrocuted, according to photographs obtained by CBS News which led to criminal charges against six Americans.
CBS said the photos, to be shown Wednesday night on 60 Minutes II, were taken late last year at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, where American soldiers were holding hundreds of prisoners captured during the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-04-28-cbs-prisoner-abuse_x.htm

Posted 11:06 AM by Dil
Iraqi pipeline attacks go unreported
By Richard Sale
UPI Terrorism Correspondent
Published 4/27/2004 12:43 PM


Insurgent attacks on Iraq's oil infrastructure, added to the damage caused by U.S. forces during the war last year, are helping to cripple economic and other reconstruction efforts in that strife-torn country, U.S. intelligence officials told United Press International.

The result is that Iraq's oil production, which was projected by the Bush administration to double and be used to pay for the costs of the war, has not served that purpose because exports are down from 2.5 million barrels a day to around 1.5 million barrels a day, according to these sources.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has disputed this. In recent congressional testimony, he declared, "Today Iraqi oil revenues go to the Development Fund for Iraq, where it helps to build new infrastructure and a new future for the Iraqi people."

And he gave the current Iraqi export level as 2.5 million barrels a day, or "pre-war levels."

"Simply not accurate," said Gal Luft, director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security and publisher of the online newsletter, Energy Security.

"Iraq's oil exports are not up at pre-war levels because of incessant pipeline attacks."

He said that the prevention of pipeline sabotage has been a top priority of the Coalition Provisional Authority and that currently about 14,000 security workers have taken up positions along important pipeline routes or critical oil installations. Contract security workers are equipped with the latest electronic motion sensors, advanced surveillance equipment, night vision equipment, and that mobile security patrols have increased "six-fold."

None of this is working, he said.

Luft provided UPI with a list of some of the sabotage onslaughts. Beginning with June 12, 2003, there were attacks on a pipeline near Kirkuk that carries oil to the Turkish port of Cayhan on the Mediterranean; on June 19, an explosion at the Bayji refinery complex about 125 miles north of Baghdad; on June 24, an explosion near Barwanah that carries crude oil to the al Dawrah refinery.

In August last year, there were three very damaging attacks, two near Bayji, according to Luft's data. On Sept. 8, an attack ripped through a pipeline from the Jabour oil field 20 miles from Kirkuk to the main originating pipeline, according to the data.

The list, by no means complete, reports 35 major and severely damaging attacks from June 12 to the end of the year and gives a total of eight major attacks from January 2004 through April, a major attack taking place on March 25, when there was a blast at the main oil well in northern Iraq that feeds exports through Qazzaz, a chief installation of the Northern Iraqi Oil Company that caused "massive damage," according to a company official quoted by Luft.

An executive of Hess Oil, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed this: "These security arrangements of ours aren't working, nor are they preventing sabotage. The pipelines remain very vulnerable, and the attacks on pipelines simply aren't being reported.

In fact, Luft claimed that the pipeline attacks are on the increase. After staging more than 100 major attacks on pipelines in northern Iraq, terrorists last month began to hit pipelines in southern Iraq, near Basra.

Another problem besetting the system is the slowness on the part of U.S. authorities in repairing wartime damage to the system, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

The Hess executive claimed that in April of last year, U.S. Air Force planes bombed the Al Fatha Bridge over a tributary of the Tigris River near the Iraqi oil center of Kirkuk.

According to the Hess executives, whose account was confirmed in general by U.S. intelligence officials, U.S. Air Force bombs destroyed "a key mass of crude oil and liquid petroleum gas pipes" that were part of a "critical node" of the oil industry in that area.

No effort was made by CPA officials to repair the pipes until three weeks ago, when it was decided to begin, the Hess Oil executive said.

Before the U.S. bombing, the installation was pumping at full capacity - 670,000 barrels per day to 690,000 barrels per day, but after makeshift repairs, its output was "barely a trickle" -- around 300,000 barrels a day, this oil official said.

Even now, the source said, a quarrel over whether the Iraqi Ministry of Oil or the Ministry of Public Works should restore the pipes have stalled repair efforts.

The Pentagon did not return repeated phone calls.

On Saturday, suicide bombers attacked Iraqi oil facilities in the Gulf, costing the country between $40 million to $150 million in lost revenues, according to newspaper reports.

According to a report in the U.K. Guardian, three U.S. sailors were killed and five wounded near Khawr al Amaya, when a suicide boat flipped over the 8-man U.S. Navy craft that was approaching it.

The Khawr al Amaya Oil Terminal was damaged and at least 1 million barrels of oil lost in the attack, the paper said.

A U.S. intelligence official told UPI: "This was an extremely serious attack, perhaps the worst so far on an Iraqi oil installation." He added that it was designed to distract U.S. military efforts from quelling insurgents in Fallujah and Najaf and demonstrated that the terrorists "are flexible in their targets and tactics."

He also noted that the attacks appeared "to have been in conjunction with and support of the Fallujah and Najaf insurgency."

He said new safeguards and countermeasures were being put in place "even as we speak" and that some progress has been made.

Luft said Iraq's northern pipeline to the Turkish oil installation at Ceyhan has been reopened after months of repeated sabotage, but that its current output of 160,000 barrels a day is "way below its full capacity."

Luft also observed that pipeline attacks are not simply a tactic but part "of a sustained and orchestrated effort" to destroy a valuable strategic target, increase the Iraqi people's sense of insecurity and boost resentment of the U.S. presence there.

Posted 9:29 AM by Dil
Blair's future questioned in backlash at EU vote
By Andrew Sparrow, Political Correspondent
(Filed: 26/04/2004)


Tony Blair's long-term future as Prime Minister was being openly questioned last night as the backlash continued against his decision to call a referendum on the European constitution.

In a sign that Labour figures are starting to consider his successor, Neil Kinnock broke an unofficial taboo by suggesting that Mr Blair would leave Downing Street after the referendum - expected to take place in autumn next year - or possibly even before.

Blair's future questioned in backlash at EU vote
By Andrew Sparrow, Political Correspondent
(Filed: 26/04/2004)


Tony Blair's long-term future as Prime Minister was being openly questioned last night as the backlash continued against his decision to call a referendum on the European constitution.

In a sign that Labour figures are starting to consider his successor, Neil Kinnock broke an unofficial taboo by suggesting that Mr Blair would leave Downing Street after the referendum - expected to take place in autumn next year - or possibly even before.
http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/04/26/neu26.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/04/26/ixportaltop.html

Posted 9:26 AM by Dil
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=499671§ion=news

Diplomats blast Blair for "U.S." foreign policy
Mon 26 April, 2004 14:28



By Lyndsay Griffiths

LONDON (Reuters) - A roll-call of former British diplomats has blasted Tony Blair and said it was time for the prime minister to start influencing America's "doomed" policy in the Middle East or stop backing it.

In an unprecedented letter signed by 52 former ambassadors, high commissioners and governors -- the top ranks of British diplomacy -- Blair was urged to sway U.S. policy in the region as "a matter of the highest urgency".

Posted 6:48 AM by Dil
Merlin - UK
Website: http://www.merlin.org.uk
Merlin has serious concerns about the safety of civilians in Fallujah, based on our experience on the ground in Iraq. In particular, we have reason to believe that the Geneva Conventions ? which oblige the occupying power to restore and ensure public order, safety and basic service provision in the territory under its authority ? is being breached, as highlighted by: ? High level of civilian casualties and use of force. International media and our own sources on the ground report untargeted fire resulting in civilian deaths in Fallujah. ? Reports of coalition forces preventing civilians seeking safety outside Fallujah. ? Lack of lifesaving services. Food, water and electricity are still unavailable in many parts of Fallujah. ? Hospitals being used for military operations. We are extremely concerned by reports that the general hospital of Fallujah is being used as a military base. ? Delays and blockage of aid supplies containing food, water & medical equipment. Humanitarian agencies trying to supply lifesaving supplies such as food and medicine have been obstructed by coalition forces.

We therefore urge that all warring factions in Fallujah respect the Geneva Conventions and take every effort to avoid civilian casualties while facilitating their access to essential aid. We specifically ask for:

- The protection of civilians during periods of conflict and only the use of proportionate and targeted force - The provision of safe access for beneficiaries to humanitarian aid, including water, health facilities and electricity - The provision of care for wounded and sick civilians - That all sides respect the neutrality of medical facilities such as hospitals

- ends -

Posted 5:48 PM by Dil
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=5392
falludja assault