Iraqi PM: Criticism 'signals' militants

An injured man is treated in hospital in the city of Baqouba, some 60 kilometers (35 miles) northeast of Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, Sept. 2, 2007. (AP Photo)

BAGHDAD - Iraq's beleaguered prime minister accused his American critics on Sunday of underestimating how hard it is to rebuild his country and failing to appreciate his government's achievements such as stopping the civil and sectarian war.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said told reporters that some of the criticism from Washington sends "signals to terrorists luring them into thinking that the security situation in the country is not good." He offered no specific examples.

He also said U.S. critics may not know "the size of the destruction that Iraq passed through" and do not appreciate "the big role of the Iraqi government and its achievements, such as stopping the civil and sectarian war."

The Democratic-controlled Congress is growing increasingly frustrated with the slow pace of political reform in Iraq. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, have called for al-Maliki to be replaced.

U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and the top American military commander, Gen. David Petraeus, are to report to Congress during the week of Sept. 10 on the degree of progress achieved since President Bush ordered nearly 30,000 more troops to Iraq.

A draft report by the Government Accountability Office concluded Iraq has satisfied only three of 18 benchmarks set by Congress for measuring progress and partially met two others.

None of those five benchmarks are the high-profile political issues such as passage of a national oil revenue sharing law that the U.S. has said are critical to Iraq's future.

During an interview broadcast Sunday by Iraqi state television, Crocker also urged patience with the Iraqis as they try to reach power-sharing agreements among Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

"After 35 years of injustice under Saddam Hussein, there are some problems since liberation and the problems of 40 years cannot be solved in a year or two," Crocker said, speaking in Arabic. "What is important is that there is progress."

Separately, al-Maliki ordered what he said would be an unbiased investigation into last week's deadly clashes surrounding a Shiite religious celebration in Karbala, which many have blamed on the Mahdi Army militia of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Al-Sadr has himself demanded an investigation, while his followers have condemned the arrests of more than 200 people in Karbala — many of them supporters of the firebrand cleric. The bloodshed in Karbala saw more than 50 people killed and hundreds injured.

Al-Sadr, who has denied that the Mahdi Army provoked the confrontation, announced a surprise six-month suspension of the militia's activities last Wednesday following the fighting in Karbala, in an apparent attempt to deflect criticism.

"After the procrastination we had seen in the past two days, we warn the Iraqi government and the executive authorities in Karbala if they don't open a fair, neutral and quick investigation, the Sadr office will be obliged to take unspecified measures," spokesman Sheik Salah al-Obeidi said in Najaf.

Though the Iraqi government and U.S. commanders have praised al-Sadr's move to stand down his militia, security forces have been keeping the Mahdi Army under pressure, saying they are focusing on breakaway factions believed to be receiving weapons, training and money from Iran — a charge that Iranians deny.

A statement from Sadr's office said that more than 200 al-Sadr followers have been detained in the past three days in Karbala province, making al-Maliki's praise of the decision to freeze the Mahdi Army nothing more than "ink on paper."

Meanwhile, Brig. Gen. Raid Shaker, commander of Karbala police, said 300 detainees are being questioned over the Karbala incident.

Jawad al-Hasnawi, a Sadrist member of Karbala's provincial council, accused the prime minister of reneging on promises to stop detaining people in the Karbala violence: "They have taken us back to the era of the former dictatorship."

Elsewhere, military spokesman Rear Admiral Mark Fox confirmed Sunday that U.S. forces arrested six people in a raid Thursday at the al-Sabah state-run newspaper in Baghdad. Fox said the military staged the raid on "actionable intelligence" and found illegal weapons when they searched the facility.

In the southern city of Basra, an Iraqi commander said that British forces would officially hand over its base at a palace complex within a few days.

"Iraqi forces are already deployed and concentrated in the palace," General Mohan al Fireji said at a press conference. "The Iraqi forces are ready to take security responsibility in Basra."

Following the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, Britain controlled security across southern Iraq, but has since handed over three of four provinces to Iraqi forces. Britain's Ministry of Defense has previously said it hopes to hand security responsibility for Basra, the last remaining province, over to Iraqi forces sometime this autumn.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has consistently refused to set a timetable for the withdrawal of British troops from the country, but Iraqi forces could take control of the country's second-largest city as soon as October, Britain's Sunday Times reported, citing unidentified government sources. (BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer)

U.S. Forces Tracking Iranians In Iraq: AP

BAGHDAD - American forces are tracking about 50 members of an elite Iranian force who have crossed the border into southern Iraq to train Shiite militia fighters, a top U.S. general said Sunday.

In east Baghdad, a mortar barrage slammed into a mainly Shiite neighborhood, killing 12 and wounding 31, police said, and a major battle raged north of the capital where residents of a Shiite city were fighting what police said was a band of al-Qaida in Iraq gunmen.

Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, whose command includes the volatile southern rim of Baghdad and districts to the south, said his troops are tracking about 50 members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps in their area — the first detailed allegation that Iranians have been training fighters within Iraq's borders.

"We know they're here and we target them as well," he said, citing intelligence reports as evidence of their presence.

He declined to be more specific and said no Iranian forces have been arrested in his territory.

"We've got about 50 of those," he said, referring to the Iranian forces. "They go back and forth. There's a porous border."

The military has stepped up allegations against Iran in recent weeks, saying it supplies militants with arms and training to attack U.S. forces.

Iran denies the allegations and says it supports efforts to stop the violence.

The Bush administration is moving toward blacklisting Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps as a "terrorist" organization, subjecting at least part of the entity to financial sanctions, U.S. officials said this week.

A decision has been made in principle to name elements of the corps a "specially designated global terrorist" group, but internal discussions continue over whether it should cover the entire unit or only the Guard's Al-Quds force, the most elite and covert of Iran's military branches, which has equipped and trained Muslim fighters outside Iran's borders.

Lynch, whose mission is to block the flow of weapons and fighters into the Baghdad area, said Sunni and Shiite extremists have become increasingly aggressive this month, trying to influence the debate in Washington before a pivotal progress report on Iraq.

He singled out the Shiite extremists as being behind rising attacks using armor-piercing explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, which he said were largely assembled in Iraq from parts smuggled in from Iran.

He also noted a marked increase in Iranian-rockets that have been increasingly effective against U.S. bases.

There has been an overall decrease in attacks against U.S. and Iraqi forces, as well as civilians, south of Baghdad, but 46 percent of those were being carried out by Shiite extremists, Lynch said.

"The real difference now is we've got to spend as much time fighting the Shia extremists as Sunni extremists," he said.

Women and children were among the 12 victims of the mortar attack in eastern Baghdad. Some houses in the neighborhood were damaged, according to police, and witnesses said U.S. helicopters were hovering above the attack site.

Hussein Saadon, 56, an owner of a small minibus station, was soaked in blood after he drove four victims to the hospital. He said the district had been without electricity for several days and the people were suffering in the heat.

"It fills me with pain and anger to see an attack on such poor area where is no presence of police nor army bases or checkpoints," Saadon said.

In Khalis, 50 miles north of Baghdad, police said more than 1,500 people including sheiks and dignitaries had gathered near city hall to launch the counteroffensive against al-Qaida fighters who have been regularly firing mortars into the town and kidnapping residents at illegal checkpoints.

Police said five townspeople were killed in the early hours of the fighting.

At least seven people were killed and 18 wounded in a mortar attack on Khalis on Saturday.

Police said members of the city militia also said they were determined to push al-Qaida fighters out of the nearby town of Hibhib, where the terror organization's former leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in an U.S. air strike.

In central Baghdad, gunmen driving several cars waylaid a minibus headed for Sadr City, the capital's Shiite enclave, and abducted 15 passengers, police said.(AP)

Four Filipinos Killed In Iraqi Rocket Attack!

ZAMBOANGA CITY (Mindanao Examiner / 03 May) – Four Filipinos were reported killed in a rocket attack in Iraq’s capital Baghdad.

The four were killed when a rocket slammed into the so-called Green Zone, an area that houses foreign embassies and government building and is secured by U.S. soldiers and private contractors.

The Filipinos, whose identities were not immediately known, were working in Iraq as U.S. government contractors, according to a report Thursday (Philippine time) by Bloomberg.

"These four colleagues, citizens of the Philippines, were integral members of our embassy community,'' the report quoted Charge D'Affaires Daniel Speckhard of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.” We value their contributions to our efforts on behalf of the people of Iraq, and we mourn their passing."

It was unknown if the four Filipinos were security contractors. The Philippines’ Foreign Affairs has not issued any statement about the killings of the four Filipinos or how they were able to sneak into Iraq and worked with the U.S. government.

Manila has banned Filipinos from working in Iraq after two of its citizens Angelo dela Cruz and Roberto Tarongoy were kidnapped by militants in 2003.

But despite a four-year old ban, many Filipinos are believed to be working as security personnel and bodyguards of diplomats and foreign contractors for Blackwater USA in Iraq.

Blackwater USA is said to be the most comprehensive professional security, peacekeeping, and stability operations company in the world.

The Green Zone is surrounded by high concrete blast walls and all entry points are staffed by security guards, but despite this it frequently come under attack from rocket and mortar fire.

An Iraqi lawmaker was killed in a suicide bomb attack inside the Green Zone on April 12. (Mindanao Examiner)

Video Of Saddam Hussein Hanging

Saddam Hussein Hanging Captured by Mobile Phone Camera

The complete execution of Saddam Hussein was captured by mobile phone and has appeared on numerous video platforms. An eyewitness documented in graphic details the death of the former dictator.
Saddam is shown falling trough the trap door with the noose around his neck and hanging there for several seconds. The clip ends with a close-up of the dead man´s face. (liveleak.com)