Source: www.command-post.org/index.rdf
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| The Command Post
This weblog is for posts of news items with information about the Iraq conflict.
The Washington Times reports the House last night overwhelmingly voted down a resolution calling for immediate withdrawal from Iraq. The Resolution simply read: It is the sense of the House of Representatives that the deployment of United States forces in Iraq be terminated immediately. The vote was 403-3, with six voting present and 14 not voting. From California Yankee....
Note: Available from Chrenkoff, as well as “WSJ Opinion Journal,” Winds of Change.NET and GoodNewsFromTheFront.com. As this is my last contribution to the series, an extra special thanks to WSJ's James Taranto and Joe Katzman of Winds of Change.NET, as well as to countless readers and bloggers for your support and encouragement right from the beginning. Here is the entire series. It's been almost a year and a half since I first started compiling the under-reported and often-overlooked stories of positive developments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Major changes and events have taken place in both countries. With the constitutional referendum in Iraq and a parliamentary election in Afghanistan still ahead, however, it is time for me to say good-bye. A change in my work circumstances will unfortunately prevent me carrying this forward or blogging at Chrenkoff; nevertheless, the trend has been set. I have no doubt that good news will continue to come out of the Middle East and Central Asia - and that it is likely to continue to lose prominence to stories of violence, mayhem, dislocation and crisis. With the Support of The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, however, GoodNewsFromTheFront.com has risen to fill the news void and redress the imbalance of negativity. Future reports will be found there; other briefings may arise as well. Big thanks go to James Taranto, the editor of WSJ's “Opinion Journal”, who had the courage, imagination and foresight to provide a forum for this news. If the American press and networks across the ocean had more editors like James, I'm certain Americans news providers would face a far less disillusioned public. As they don't, however, it's a huge loss for everyone. Big thanks also to all of my readers for your support and encouragement. I don't know what Iraq and Afghanistan will look like in five or ten years time, but I hope for the best. I hope that despite all the horrendous problems and challenges, both countries manage to make it through and join the international family of normal, decent and peaceful nations. If so, it will be all due to the amazing spirit and commitment of the majority of their people, and to the crucial help of the Coalition members both in and out of uniform. If that does indeed happen, many will wonder just exactly how these two countries, seemingly in the news only when blood flows, ever...
Welcome! Our goal at Winds of Change.NET is to give you one power-packed briefing of insights, news and trends from Iraq that leaves you stimulated, informed, and occasionally amused every Monday & Thursday. This briefing is brought to you by Joel Gaines of No Pundit Intended and Andrew Olmsted of Andrew Olmsted dot com. TOP TOPICS The battle for Tal Afar, mentioned here last week, has expanded to include an attempt by the Iraq government to seal the Syrian border to prevent insurgents from slipping into the country to augment those already there. The fighting in Tal Afar itself seems to have slowed, however. JK: Michael Yon describes the operation in which Lt. Col. Kurilla was shot (he posts the photo of that exact moment) - an operation in which he picked up a gun in the middle of combat and charged in to help the wounded LTC and men of Deuce Four. The jihadi who did it had been released from Abu Ghraib in August. What a surprise. You'll be happy to hear that LTC Kurilla will make a full recovery, but now that he's state-side in hospital, he's annoyed at media coverage that absolutely fails to reflect the reality he lived. What a surprise. Maybe it would be different if they were there, and had the guts to do what Michael does. Someone purported to be Abu Musab al-Zarqawi released an audio tape in which he claimed the U.S. was using chemical weapons in Tal Afar. Al-Zarqawi claimed the Coalition would be defeated in Tal Afar, and he cursed the Iraqis who were joining Iraq's army and security forces as traitors. Other Topics Today Include: a hostage freed; RadioShack IED finders; Iraq takes the lead in Tal Afar; Iraq's stock exchange on the move; reconstruction highlights; working the constitution; Carnival of the Liberated; Dawn Patrol. Read the Rest…...
Reuters reports up to 500 people died when a crowd of Iraqi Shi'ites stampeded off a bridge over the Tigris river in Baghdad on Wednesday, fleeing rumors of a suicide bombing threat: “So far we have 500 dead,” Jalil Al-Shumari, the deputy minister, told Reuters. The crowd, on its way to the Kadhimiya mosque for an important religious ceremony, panicked as rumors spread that a suicide bomber was preparing to blow himself up. Earlier at least seven people died in three separate mortar attacks on the crowd....
Bloomberg reports that suspected al-Qaeda fighters were killed in western Iraq today when precision guided bombs destroyed three terrorist hideouts in two cities near the Syrian border: Four bombs were dropped on a house “occupied by terrorists” outside the city of Husaybah in the first strike, the military said in a statement e-mailed from the capital, Baghdad. Then at 6:20 a.m. local time two bombs were dropped on a second house, killing a man identified as “Abu Islam, a known terrorist” and several others, the military said. At about 8:30 a.m. another attack was conducted, this time on a house in the city of Karabilah, six kilometers south east of Husaybah, where some of Islam's followers are believed to have fled, the military said. Several terrorists were killed, according to the statement. From California Yankee....
The Washington Times reports that firebrand Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is gaining support among Iraqi youth, raising fears he could eventually unify Shi'ites and Sunnis against American forces. Followers of al-Sadr have been engaged in two days of violent clashes with the rival Iranian-trained Badr Brigades in the holy city of Najaf: Fighting between the Mahdi militia and the Badr Brigades — the military wing of the leading Shi'ite political party, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) — began after Sheik al-Sadr's followers tried Wednesday to reopen an office in Najaf. Armed men moved to stop them, setting the office on fire and killing four al-Sadr followers. The Mahdi militia blamed the Badr Brigade and retaliated by attacking SCIRI offices in several southern cities. According to the Washington Times, the clashes reveal a struggle for influence among the Shi'ites of south and central Iraq, with Sheik al-Sadr emerging as a liberating figure for many angry and alienated youth. But he also is attracting support from Sunni militants not connected with the religiously driven followers of Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab Zarqawi. Babak Rahimi, a Jennings Randolph Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, said he was taken aback by the dedicated following accumulated by the young cleric over the past two years: “This is an anti-American resistance movement, and he will eventually exploit this, he will eventually merge with the Sunni insurgents,” Mr. Rahimi predicted. “This would prompt a stronger force against American troops in Iraq and he will have a lot more followers,” he said. From California Yankee....
Italy hid four Iraqi insurgents from U.S. forces and had them treated by the Red Cross in exchange for the freedom of two Italian aid workers kidnaped last year in Baghdad. According to the Associated Press, in exchange for the release of Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, who were abducted on Sept. 7 and freed Sept. 28, “The mediators asked us to save the lives of four alleged terrorists wanted by the Americans who were wounded in combat,” Scelli was quoted as saying. “We hid them and brought them to Red Cross doctors, who operated on them.” They took the wounded insurgents to a Baghdad hospital in a jeep and in an ambulance, smuggling them through two U.S. checkpoints by hiding them under blankets and boxes of medicine, Scelli reportedly said. Also as part of the deal, four Iraqi children suffering from leukemia were brought to Italy for treatment, he said. From California Yankee....
From BBC News: President George W Bush has restated his policy that the US will “stay the course” in Iraq as he interrupted his holiday to address war veterans.Mr Bush said a “policy of retreat and isolation” would not make the US safer. His remarks in Salt Lake City are the first of two speeches on the war this week and come with anti-war protesters still camped outside his Texas ranch. The US anti-war movement has been reinvigorated by Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a US soldier killed in Iraq. Read the rest of the story here....
The Washington Times reports that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld says Iran is arming Iraqi insurgents: “I see intelligence reports and we know that we're finding Iranian weapons inside the country,” Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters on his way to visit Paraguay earlier this week. “They don't just get there by accident. They don't fly there. “And we know that Iran has a system of government it would like to replicate in Iraq. And we know the system of government they have with a handful of clerics running the place and telling everyone what to do is fundamentally inconsistent with the kind of a constitution that's currently being drafted in Iraq,” he said. Time magazine reports that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has established a network of insurgents headed by Abu Mustafa al-Sheibani with the express purpose of committing violence against U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. According to a U.S. military-intelligence document obtained by Time, the U.S. believes al-Sheibani's team consists of 280 members, divided into 17 bombmaking teams and death squads. The U.S. believes they train in Lebanon, in Baghdad's predominantly Shi'ite Sadr City district and “in another country” and have detonated at least 37 bombs against U.S. forces this year in Baghdad alone. From California Yankee....
BAGHDAD, Iraq — Sunni Arabs and followers of a radical Shiite cleric held protests Friday against federal provisions in Iraq's proposed constitution, as negotiators sought to reach agreement on the charter by next week's deadline.Sunni Arab negotiators are holding out against Shiite and Kurdish proposals for a federal structure for Iraq, saying such proposals would divide the country. The Sunnis want a strong central government. On Thursday, masked gunmen burst into the Sunni grand mosque in the tense city of Ramadi as religious, political, and tribal leaders met to discuss possible Sunni participation in the constitutional process. The gunmen asked participants to end their meeting and then opened fire on them, said Omar Seri, secretary of the governor of Anbar province. Three members of the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars and a bodyguard were injured, Seri said. Source: Fox News...
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