Bush's "icy smile" enraged Iraq shoe-thrower
19 Feb 2009 12:37:39 GMT
Source: Reuters
(Adds Zaidi comments, proceedings postponed)
By Khalid al-Ansary
BAGHDAD, Feb 19 (Reuters) - An Iraqi reporter who hurled his shoes at George W. Bush said in the past
he had videotaped himself practising the Arab insult to use against the president whose "icy smile" had filled him with uncontrollable rage.
Muntazer al-Zaidi said on Thursday at the start of his trial in Baghdad on charges of assaulting a foreign leader that
he took a recording of his shoe-throwing training two years ago and had hoped to accost Bush in Jordan but this did not take place.
Zaidi, who was hailed across the Middle East by critics of the Iraq invasion and who also called Bush a "dog", told the court
he had acknowledged making a training film under interrogation after his arrest at a Baghdad news conference.
"I said this before the guards of the prime minister after I was beaten and after my body was devoured by electricity," said Zaidi, who added that his original plan had been to throw the shoes at Bush during a news conference in Amman.
But Zaidi, whose unusual protest overshadowed Bush's final visit to Iraq in December, insisted he had not planned to attack Bush this time.
Instead,
he said Bush's smile as he talked about achievements in Iraq had made him think of "the killing of more than a million Iraqis, the disrespect for the sanctity of the mosques and houses, the rapes of women", and enraged him.
"He was talking and at the same time smiling icily at the (Iraqi) prime minister. He said to the prime minister that he was going to have dinner with him,"Zaidi told a three-judge panel, a small army of 25 defence lawyers lined up next to him.
"Suddenly I saw no one in the room but Bush. I felt the blood of innocents was running under his feet while he was smiling coldly as if he had come to write off Iraq with a farewell meal."
Zaidi added:
"After more than a million Iraqis killed, after all the economic and social destruction ... I felt that this person is the killer of the people, the prime murderer. I was enraged and threw my shoes at him."
At the time, Zaidi shouted at Bush that the shoe-throwing was a
"goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog".
The trial had barely begun at Iraq's Central Criminal Court in the heavily fortified Green Zone before the judges postponed proceedings until March 12 so it could be determined if Bush was truly on an "official" visit to Iraq as a head of state.
ZAIDI DRAPED WITH FLAG
When Zaidi appeared in court, family members waiting for him ululated wildly and draped an Iraqi flag across his shoulders.
Zaidi, 30, who faces up to 15 years in prison, has been detained for more than two months.
The reporter for an Iraqi television station based in Cairo became a hero in much of the Middle East and his protest was played by television stations around the world.
Bush, whose support of Israel and decision to invade Iraq in 2003 to oust Saddam Hussein made him passionately disliked in the region, nimbly ducked out of the way of the first shoe and made light of the incident.
The second shoe also missed the American president.
The invasion plunged Iraq into six years of sectarian warfare and insurgency that killed tens of thousands of Iraqis.
Although some in Iraq condemned Zaidi for disrespectful behaviour, the incident resonated among many ordinary Iraqis.
Haider Ahmed, a government employee, called Zaidi a patriot. "He allowed us to hold our heads high," he said.
Zaidi's lawyers lost an appeal to have the charges reduced to insulting Bush. They argued he could not have hurt Bush with a shoe.
Zaidi himself said he could not be charged with assaulting a visiting head of state when that leader was also the chief of an occupation force. "How can he be a guest in an area that they themselves run?" he said.
"I did not intend to kill U.S. President Bush. But I wanted to express what is inside of me and what is inside all Iraqis, from north to south and east to west, the hatred we have for this man."(Additional reporting by Aseel Kami; Writing by Missy Ryan; Editing by Michael Christie and Peter Millership)
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Muntader’s Moment
By Steven Lee Myers
Steven Lee Myers, then a traveling member of the White House press corps and now Baghdad Correspondent of The New York Times, was at the December press conference where Iraqi journalist Muntader al-Zaidi threw his shoes at President George W. Bush.
Mr. Zaidi appeared before a court in Baghdad for 90 minutes on Thursday morning, only to have his trial adjourned until March 12.
In an audio report, Myers recalls that December moment and assesses its impact on Iraqis and Americans.
Steven Lee Myers Recalls 'Shoe-Throwing Incident'
Trial of Iraqi ‘Shoe-Thrower’ Is Adjourned
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
Published: February 19, 2009
BAGHDAD — The trial of the Iraqi television journalist who threw his shoes at President Bush was adjourned after 90 minutes on Thursday until March 12.
But the brief appearance of the journalist, Muntader al-Zaidi, who has been incarcerated since he threw the shoes during a news conference in Baghdad on Dec. 14, was enough to trigger
applause and shouting both in the courtroom and in the hallways outside.
In interviews before the trial began, several of Mr. Zaidi’s lawyers said that his actions were constitutionally protected free speech, and that the charge against him — that he had assaulted a foreign leader — was too strong. The Central Criminal Court, where Mr. Zaidi is being tried, is reserved for serious crimes including terrorism.
At the prodding of a judge, Mr. Zaidi spoke for more than half an hour about the incident before the questioning was stalled on the nature of Mr. Bush’s visit to Iraq.
Mr. Zaidi argued that Mr. Bush was not a guest in Iraq and that, because the president was under American military protection in the Green Zone, he was an occupier.The questioning continued on other matters, but after a short discussion among the three-judge panel, the chief judge announced the adjournment.
“The court has decided to address the general secretariat of the cabinet to ascertain whether the American President George Bush’s visit was formal or informal,”he said.
The law under which Mr. Zaidi has been charged applies to offenses against a foreign leader on a formal visit; if the visit is found to be informal, a largely technical point, it will cast the matter onto less certain legal ground.
Once the adjournment announcement was made, the courtroom once again erupted into chaos as Mr. Zaidi’s family and supporters rushed toward the dock where he was standing. They clapped, ululated and shouted slogans of support.
Since throwing his shoes in a gesture of protest, Mr. Zaidi has become a hero to many in the Arab world. Several Iraqi politicians attended the trial, which they saw as a test of the Iraqi judiciary.
“This is of utmost importance, more than all the trials we have witnessed in the years of occupation,” said Zayneb Kareem al-Kinani, a member of Parliament and a follower of the anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr. “It puts the Iraqi judiciary in a critical situation, either proving its independence, integrity and impartiality from political influence, or proving its failure.”
Riyadh Mohammed contributed reporting.
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A sister of Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zeidi watches a video of her brother throwing shoes at the US President Bush, at his apartment in in Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, Dec.15, 2008. al-Zeidi threw his shoes at President George W. Bush during a press conference in Baghdad on Sunday, while yelling in Arabic: 'This is a farewell kiss, you dog,this is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.'
(AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)
Iraqis hold up signs as they protest against Sunday's visit by US President George W. Bush and the arrest of an Iraqi journalist in the eastern Baghdad district of Sadr City. "There is more work to be done," Bush admitted during his visit to Baghdad, where the hostility still felt towards him was demonstrated when an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at the president, forcing him to duck.
(AFP/Ahmad al-Rubaye)
Bush’s visit to Baghdad will likely be immortalized by the photo of the departing President skillfully ducking the shoes hurled at him by an Iraqi journalist, Montazar al-Zaidi.
Al-Zaidi screamed “dog” at the US President, shortly after Bush shook hands with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki following the formal signing of the SOFA document, and - according to witnesses - shouted “this is the goodbye kiss from Iraqis,” before aiming his footwear at the President. According to journalistic sources in Baghdad, al-Zaidi (who works for al-Baghdadiya channel and was reportedly abducted by gunmen in 2007) was dragged by security personnel to an “unknown location;" Iraqi blogger Raed Jarrar quotes contacts in Baghdad who said that al-Zaidi was severely beaten following the incident. After his arrest, al-Baghdadiya channel issued a statement calling for the release of its reporter.
The shoe-throwing incident dominated the headlines of Arab and Iraqi papers, with few exceptions. Pro-Talabani al-Mada, for example, kept the incident away from the headlines. Al-Quds al-'Arabi, on the other hand, did not content to relay the news on the top of its front-page, but also fronted with an op-ed article by the editor-in-chief, 'Abd al-Bari 'Atwan, entitled “a fitting farewell to a war criminal.”
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MediaWatch:Print
Daily Column
US Papers Mon: A Hurled “Farewell Kiss"
Bush Dodges Shoes! ...Oh, and he signs SOFA.
Today, it’s all about the shoes.
From Baghdad
In an incident that has gotten more coverage than the Iraqi parliament’s passing of the security agreement, U.S. president George W. Bush showed off an agility not often seen, in ducking to miss two shoes thrown at him by an Iraqi television journalist at a press conference in Baghdad.
Sudarsan Raghavan and Dan Eggen of the Washington Post summed it up by saying that, on his final presidential visit to Iraq, the president “received a taste of local resentment toward his policies ,” and included a four-photo spread of the near-miss on page one(left).
The best and most thorough description of the event was written by the New York Times’ Steven Lee Myers and Alissa J. Rubin.
The drama unfolded shortly after Mr. Bush appeared at a news conference in Baghdad with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to highlight the newly adopted security agreement between the United States and Iraq. The agreement includes a commitment to withdraw all American forces by the end of 2011.
The Iraqi journalist, Muntader al-Zaidi, 28, a correspondent for Al Baghdadia, an independent Iraqi television station, stood up about 12 feet from Mr. Bush and shouted in Arabic: “This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog!” He then threw a shoe at Mr. Bush, who ducked and narrowly avoided it.
As stunned security agents and guards, officials and journalists watched, Mr. Zaidi then threw his other shoe, shouting in Arabic, “This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq!” That shoe also narrowly missed Mr. Bush as Prime Minister Maliki stuck a hand in front of the president’s face to help shield him.
Mr. Maliki’s security agents jumped on the man, wrestled him to the floor and hustled him out of the room. They kicked him and beat him until “he was crying like a woman,” said Mohammed Taher, a reporter for Afaq, a television station owned by the Dawa Party, which is led by Mr. Maliki. Mr. Zaidi was then detained on unspecified charges.
Other Iraqi journalists in the front row apologized to Mr. Bush, who was uninjured and tried to brush off the incident by making a joke. “All I can report is it is a size 10,” he said, continuing to take questions and noting the apologies. He also called the incident a sign of democracy, saying, “That’s what people do in a free society, draw attention to themselves,” as the man’s screaming could be heard outside.
But the moment clearly unnerved Mr. Maliki’s aides and some of the Americans in Mr. Bush’s entourage, partly because it was televised and may have revealed a security lapse in the so-called Green Zone, the most heavily secured part of Baghdad. In the chaos, Dana M. Perino, the White House press secretary, who was visibly distraught, was struck in the eye by a microphone stand.
Andrea Stone of USA Today gives some ink to the signing of the security agreement which also occurred .
The agreement is "a reminder of our friendship and as a way forward to help the Iraqi people realize the blessings of a free society," Bush said after meeting with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and two vice presidents. "The work hasn't been easy, but it has been necessary for American security, Iraqi hope and world peace."
The security agreement calls for U.S. combat forces to leave Iraqi cities by June 30. All American troops would be out by the end of 2011.
The deal allows both sides to renegotiate if violence, at its lowest level since the war began in 2003, returns. Saturday, the top U.S. commander here, Gen. Raymond Odierno, left wiggle room for a continued U.S. presence in urban areas after next summer, saying troops will remain as mentors and trainers at Iraqi security stations.
After Iraq, Bush zipped over to Afghanistan and gave an early-morning press-conference there, prompting the AP headline “Afghan reporters keep shoes on during Bush news conference”.
The reason could be that the article was already finished, and the shoes were thrown so late, but still, John D. McKinnon, Yochi J. Dreazen and Gina Chon of the Wall Street Journal still probably deserve some kudus for their restraint in only allotting one paragraph to the shoe-throwing. It wasn’t the most fun to read, but journalistic austerity has its place.
The Christian Science Monitor’s Jane Arraf reports on the shoe incident some from Mosul, but then turns the focus on the still-embattled northern city, and the upcoming provincial elections.
The act is an Arab symbol of contempt, much like when Iraqis hit Hussein's statue with their shoes after the US invasion.
While Bush's visit was intended to mark gains made across Iraq – and there have been plenty over the past year – in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul the forces unleashed by toppling Saddam Hussein are still persistent and apparent.
Roadside bomb attacks still occur almost every day and businesses are just beginning to reopen after US and Iraqi forces wrestled the worst parts of the city from insurgents earlier this year. Some areas of Mosul still look like a war zone.
Mosul, Iraq's second or third largest city, depending on who is counting, has perhaps the most diverse ethnic mix in the country. Believed to have a slight Sunni Arab majority, the city also has a large Kurdish population, significant numbers of Christians, and almost every other minority.
Provincial elections in January are likely to be the first since the war began in which former Baathists, some of whom have returned under the Iraqi government's reconciliation policy, will participate in political life. It's a volatile mix and one in which US forces have been sometimes the catalyst for violence and sometimes the glue that holds the city's fractures together.
In Other News
Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times reports from Balad that the top American commander in Iraq said Saturday that some soldiers would remain in a support role in cities beyond summer 2009, when a new security agreement calls for the removal of American combat troops from urban areas.
“We believe that’s part of our transition teams,” he told reporters in Balad while accompanying Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who arrived on an unannounced trip Saturday.
General Odierno declined to say how many American troops might remain in Iraqi cities past the summer and said the number still remained to be negotiated with the Iraqi government under the terms of the so-called status of forces agreement. “But what I would say is we’ll maintain our very close partnership with the Iraqi security forces throughout Iraq even after the summer.”
Later on Saturday, a spokesman for General Odierno, Lt. Col. James Hutton, reiterated that the soldiers staying in cities would not be combat forces but rather “enablers,” who would provide services like medical care, air traffic control and helicopter support that the Iraqis cannot perform themselves. He said that all their actions would be closely coordinated with the Iraqi government and that all tenets of the security agreement would be followed.
Mr. Gates met with General Odierno for an hour and then was scheduled to return to Washington. Before the meeting, Mr. Gates held a question-and-answer session with American soldiers and repeated the Bush administration’s pledge to the Iraqi government of a complete troop withdrawal by the end of 2011.
...Mr. Gates came to Baghdad from Manama, Bahrain, where he warned that foreign powers should not try to “test” President-elect Barack Obama with a crisis in his first months in office. He said the new administration would be committed to security in the Gulf and criticized Iran as trying to destabilize the region.
“The president-elect and his team are under no illusions about Iran’s behavior and what Iran has been doing in the region and apparently is doing with weapons programs,” he said.
Mr. Gates, who was speaking at a conference on regional security, said that Mr. Obama and his advisers had done more extensive planning across the government for the transition than any other incoming administration he could remember and asserted that they would therefore be prepared from their first day in office. Mr. Gates, who is staying on as defense secretary, has worked for seven presidents; Mr. Obama will be his eighth.
“So anyone who thought that the upcoming months might present opportunities to ‘test’ the new president would be sorely mistaken,” Mr. Gates said. “President Obama and his national security team, myself included, will be ready to defend the interests of the United States and our friends and allies from the moment he takes office on Jan. 20.”
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IraqSide:Media
MEDIA BUZZ
TV Network, Arabs Proclaim Shoe-Thrower a Hero
Employer, TV Viewers Call for Quick Release of Reporter Who Took Aim at Bush
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Photo by Eason Jordan
Baghdad - A shoe-throwing hero?
So says his TV network employer and many across the Arab world.
Al-Baghdadia TV is telecasting hours of live phone calls and SMS messages from across Iraq, the Arab world, and Europe from people voicing sympathy and support for the station's correspondent who threw his shoes at President Bush at a Baghdad news conference yesterday.
The TV network is calling for the correspondent to be freed.
The Iraqi government says it'll charge correspondent Muntazer al-Zaidi with the crime of insulting the Iraqi state.
In this image from an al-Baghdadia telecast, the detained shoe-throwing correspondent is seen in two file photos on the left side of the screen, while SMS messages expressing support for the correspondent scroll on the bottom of the screen.
The TV anchor on the right of the screen is taking live phone calls from Arab supporters.
The shoe-throwing drama has provided the previously unheralded al-Baghdadia TV with unprecedented attention throughout Iraq and the Arab world.
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IraqSide:Buzz
See it here
Full Text: Station's Statement on al-Zaidi
Photo Gallery for "The Lion of Iraq" and Hundreds of Online Comments
Like its television broadcast, the website of al-Baghdadiya television has been dominated in the last 24 hours with commentary related to its correspondent Muntadhar al-Zaidi, currently in Iraqi custody after throwing his shoes at American President George Bush on Sunday at a joint press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Also below is a photo gallery of al-Zaidi during previous assignments, which, like the statement features prominently on the al-Baghdadiya website, and a look at some commentary posted by website visitors.
Below is full text of a statement released by the administration of the al-Baghdadiya television channel:
Al-Baghdadiya channel demands the Iraqi authorities to immediately release its employee Muntadhar al-Zaidi, in line with the democracy and freedom of expression promised to the Iraqis by the new era, and by the American authorities.Any measure taken against Muntadhar would recall the actions seen in the dictatorial age, random acts of violence and arrests, mass graves, and the violations of private and public freedom.
Al-Baghdadiya channel also demands that global, Arab, and Iraqi press and media institutions stand in solidarity with Muntadhar al-Zaidi for his release.
Executive committee
Al-Baghdadiya Channel
December 14, 2008
Here is the photo gallery of al-Zaidi on assignment, featured by al-Baghdadiya on its website.
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Al-Baghdadiya.
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Al-Baghdadiya.
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Al-Baghdadiya.
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Al-Baghdadiya.
Finally, in addition to viewers' on-the-air commentary on al-Zaidi's actions, the channel is also receiving hundreds of comments on its website from around Iraq, the Arab region, and from posters identified as Iraqi or Arab expatriates around the world.
The vast majority of the comments praise al-Zaidi's "heroism" and demand correspondent's release by Iraqi authorities. Writing in Arabic, English, and French, posters offer words of praise for al-Zaidi's "heroism" and "bravery," and demanding his release.
In Arabic, one poster says, "Bush says al-Zaidi does not represent the Iraqis -- no! I say he represents all Iraqis!" Another poster, writing in French, takes it a step further, saying Zaidi does not represent all Iraqis, rather he "represents all Arabs."
Another writes: "You have left a mark on history, Muntadhar, and we are with you. You have honored the Arabs and we are all honored by you."
Many posters have taken to calling the journalist "The Lion of Iraq," while one writes that Zaidi's show-throwing represents the "thousands of innocent Iraqi victims" and the "thousands of Iraqi displaced."
Very few posters among the hundreds leaving comments on the al-Baghdadiya website have criticized al-Zaidi's shoe throwing, saying that the action was inaproppriate for a journalist. None seem to suggest that the American president was an inappropriate target for the shoe attack.
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BEIRUT, Dec. 15 (Xinhua) -- Lebanese Shiite armed group Hezbollah praised Monday the Iraqi reporter who hit former U.S. President George W. Bush with his shoes during a press conference in Baghdad on Sunday, local National News agency reported.
Hezbollah said in a statement that "He should be treated like a hero who refused aggressions by the occupation against his people."
Calling on all Arab media to campaign for the release of Journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi, Hezbollah said that the incident is a "Farwell kiss on behalf of the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq."
On Sunday, an Iraqi reporter threw his shoes at visiting U.S. President George W. Bush and called him a "dog" in Arabic during a news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Baghdad on Sunday.
Muntadhar al-Zaidi, reporter of Baghdadiya television jumped and threw his two shoes one by one at the president, who ducked and thus narrowly missed being struck, raising chaos in the hall in Baghdad's heavily fortified green Zone.
"This is a farewell kiss, dog," said Zaidi.
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29-year old Muntazar Al-Zaidi has been working for Al-Baghdadia News media since its establishment in 2005. Because of the anti-Occupation stand of Al-Baghdadia, Mr Al-Zaidi was kidnapped by pro-government agents and remained in custody for three days. The Al-Baghdadia operates from Cairo and is owned by Dr. Eng. Owun Hussein Al-Khashlook.
According to AlIraqinews.com, an auction on the internet received a bid of $500000 for Al-Zaidi pair of shoes which is currently with US intelligence for 'analysis'.
Thousands are currently demonstrating in Baghdad today Monday 15.11.08 calling on the Americans to leave the country and in support of Mr Muntazar Al-Zaidi. One person was carrying a shoe with a sign under it “USA get out of Iraq”, Iraqshabab.net.
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Family: Shoe thrower hates both US, Iran role
By ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press Writer Robert H. Reid, Associated Press Writer – 29 mins ago
BAGHDAD – The Iraqi TV reporter who hurled his shoes at George W. Bush was kidnapped once by militants and, separately, detained briefly by the U.S. military — a story of getting hit from all sides that is bitterly familiar to many Iraqis. Over time, Muntadhar al-Zeidi, a 28-year-old unmarried Shiite, came to hate both the U.S. military occupation and Iran's interference in Iraq, his family told The Associated Press on Monday.
Al-Zeidi's act of defiance Sunday transformed an obscure reporter from a minor TV station into a national hero to many Iraqis fed up with the nearly six-year U.S. presence here, but also fearful that their country will fall under Iran's influence once the Americans leave.
Several thousand people demonstrated in Baghdad and other cities to demand al-Zeidi's release. The attack was the talk of the town in coffee shops, business offices and even schools — and a subject across much of the Arab world.
Al-Zeidi was held Monday in Iraqi custody for investigation and could face charges of insulting a foreign leader and the Iraqi prime minister, who was standing next to Bush.
Conviction carries a sentence of up to two years in prison or a small fine — although it's unlikely he would face the maximum penalty given his newfound cult status in the Arab world.
Bush ducked and was not hit or injured in the attack, and Iraqi security guards wrestled al-Zeidi to the ground immediately after he tossed his shoes. White House press secretary Dana Perino suffered an eye injury when she was hit in the face with a microphone during the melee.
A day after the incident, al-Zeidi's three brothers and one sister gathered in al-Zeidi's simple, one-bedroom apartment in west Baghdad. The home was decorated with a poster of Latin American revolutionary leader Che Guevara, who is widely lionized in the Middle East.
Family members expressed bewilderment over al-Zeidi's action and concern about his treatment in Iraqi custody. But they also expressed pride over his defiance of an American president who many Iraqis believe has destroyed their country.
"I swear to Allah, he is a hero," said his sister, who goes by the nickname Umm Firas, as she watched a replay of her brother's attack on an Arabic satellite station. "May Allah protect him."
The family insisted that al-Zeidi's action was spontaneous — perhaps motivated by the political turmoil that their brother had reported on, plus his personal brushes with violence and the threat of death that millions of Iraqis face daily.
Al-Zeidi joined Al-Baghdadia television in September 2005 after graduating from Baghdad University with a degree in communications. Two years later, he was seized by gunmen while on an assignment in a Sunni district of north Baghdad.
He was freed unharmed three days later after Iraqi television stations broadcast appeals for his release. At the time, al-Zeidi told reporters he did not know who kidnapped him or why, but his family blamed al-Qaida and said no ransom was paid.
In January he was taken again, this time arrested by American soldiers who searched his apartment building, his brother, Dhirgham, said. He was released the next day with an apology, the brother said.
Those experiences helped mold a deep resentment of both the U.S. military's presence here and Iran's pervasive influence over Iraq's cleric-dominated Shiite community, according to his family.
"He hates the American material occupation as much as he hates the Iranian moral occupation," Dhirgham said, alluding to the influence of pro-Iranian Shiite clerics in political and social life. "As for Iran, he considers the regime to be the other side of the American coin."
That's a view widely held among Iraqis — including many Shiites — who believe the Americans and the Iranians have been fighting a proxy war in their country through Tehran's alleged links to Shiite extremists.
Al-Zeidi may have also been motivated by what a colleague described as a boastful, showoff personality.
"He was very boastful, arrogant and always showing off," said Zanko Ahmed, a Kurdish journalist who attended a journalism training course with al-Zeidi in Lebanon. "He tried to raise topics to show that nobody is as smart as he is."
Ahmed recalled that al-Zeidi spoke glowingly of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose followers organized protests Monday to demand his release.
"Regrettably, he didn't learn anything from the course in Lebanon, where we were taught ethics of journalism and how to be detached and neutral," Ahmed said.
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Associated Press reporters Muhieddin Rashad in Baghdad and Yahya Barzanji in Sulaimaniyah contributed to this report.
Zaidi's crude public display of disdain for an incumbent U.S. president hit a chord with many in the Middle East.
"A shoe company in Hebron claimed the attack on Bush and they will give the attacker shoes all his life," runs one joke being exchanged on mobile telephones in the Gaza Strip.
"To say disaster is an under-statement. The best thing he can do is exit the White House," said Hilal Khashan, political science professor at the American University of Beirut. "I can't remember a lower point in U.S. prestige abroad."
Arabs have long fumed at American support for Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians, but Bush's war in Iraq created a new source of anger and instability in the Middle East.
"It's a sore, open and bleeding wound, just as the Palestine issue is," said Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, an expert on Hezbollah.
The Iraqi shoe-thrower had found a far more telling protest than raising a banner or poster showing war victims, she argued.
"It's a sign of empowerment. He was saying not only that your (Bush's) legacy is one of disgrace, not only do we see you as lowly, but that we can overpower and defeat you."
Mohammed al-Masri, a researcher at Jordan University's Centre for Strategic Studies, saw the vignette as iconic.
"Arabs will always remember the shoes hurled at Bush as symbolising their deep frustration with his failed policies."
The insult to Bush also embarrassed Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who was standing beside him at the time.
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Shock and Awe on A Shoestring
by Khaled Diab
Muntadar al-Zaidi will go down in the annals of popular protest as the man who kissed the Bush presidency goodbye by hurling his shoes at the outgoing president.
While throwing your shoes at someone would be considered insulting in any culture, in the Arab world, the gesture has a special potency: footwear is commonly used to deliver both verbal and physical insult.
In Egypt, for example, many popular and colourful insults include the mention of shoes: "You son of a shoe", "You have shoes for brains", "You'll follow me like an old shoe", etc.
Although their offensiveness is largely lost in translation, delivered in Arabic they are a sure-fire way of getting people's backs up. But why this obsession with shoes? Does it reflect a weird foot fetish? One shoe-lover I know found the whole episode a terrible waste of a pair of perfectly good shoes.
The offensive power of shoes probably has something to do with the lowly status of the shoe, which resides, downtrodden with its face in the dirt, all the way at the bottom of the clothing hierarchy. That's why worshippers leave their shoes outside mosques.
That is probably why hot-blooded working-class Egyptian women sometimes take off their shoes or slippers to hit men who harass them on the street: to show that the man belongs in the gutter and is not worthy of contempt. Bizarrely and inexplicably, slapping someone on the back of the neck and calling them a "nape" ('afa) is also a huge insult.
"This is your farewell kiss, you dog!" Zaidi yelled, delivering a second insult, popular in Arabic. In English, there is a gender distinction. While "[Edited Out]" is an insult, "dog" has less impact in English. But the same does not hold in the Arab world: if you call someone "ibn kalb" (son of a dog), you're insulting both the person and his forebears.
The reason could be a difference in cultural perceptions, while dogs in the Anglo-Saxon world are widely seen as "man's best friend", in the Muslim world, dogs are regarded as impure animals and usually not kept as pets, except for security purposes.Other popular insults involve mothers and fathers, genitalia and graphic sexual acts, as in many other languages, and, as the word "swearing" in English implies, religion, such as "Curse the religion of your father".
While this "shoe incident" is little consolation for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have suffered under the crush of the Bush administration's boots, many Arabs are applauding Zaidi's audacity while others believe he overstepped the bounds of decorum. Let's just hope that journos will not, as a consequence of this isolated act, be forced, under new Homeland Security regulations, to remove their shoes before entering White House briefings and other presidential media events.
Zaidi has been arrested for his act. Of course, had he caused Bush physical injury, he could have been charged for that. But his action was essentially one of freedom of expression, which includes the freedom to cause offence. If President Bush believes in any of his own rhetoric, he should join the chorus of voices calling for the journalist's immediate release.
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From Washington, Dan Eggen of the Washington Post reports that the U.S. Secret Service yesterday defended its agents' own response, saying that they acted with the proper balance of aggressiveness and restraint.
"No one should read anything more into it than what it was, which was an individual throwing a shoe," said Eric Zahren, a Secret Service spokesman.
The episode underscored the limits of the large security apparatus that surrounds U.S. presidents, a detail that must balance safety concerns against the need to be accessible, according to security experts.
"They are already so protected as it is that it's hard to imagine how they could guard against something like this," said John E. Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a think tank on defense and security issues. "It just comes with the territory."
Zahren said that those at the news conference at the prime minister's palace were screened with magnetometers and were given additional pat-downs to ensure that no weapons were brought into the room. U.S. officials also conducted background and identity checks on all participants ahead of time as usual, he said. "This was a room full of cleared and screened press, and that could be the case anywhere," Zahren said. "We wouldn't expect this type of behavior out of our press corps, but within the security structure, people can still misbehave."
William H. Pickle, a former Secret Service agent and former sergeant at arms in the Senate, said, "Other than the shoes, the most deadly weapon in that room was probably going to be a chair or a pen." He said there are limits to what security officers can do in such situations.
"Unless you isolate the president from human contact, I'm not sure you can entirely prevent someone from doing something like that," Pickle said.
Bush has been particularly well protected during his eight years in office, often limiting himself to pre-screened and friendly audiences. His weekend trip to Iraq and Afghanistan was unannounced and cloaked in secrecy.
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Iraq to probe 'custody abuse' of Bush shoe assailant
Bodyguards protect U.S. President George W. Bush .
Iraqi security officers and U.S. secret service agents leapt at the man and dragged him struggling and screaming out of the room where Bush was giving a news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
REUTERS/ Thaier al-Sudani (IRAQ)
by Salam Faraj Salam Faraj – 45 mins ago
BAGHDAD (AFP) – Iraq's justice system is to probe the case of the journalist who hurled his shoes at US President George W. Bush, officials said on Tuesday, as his brother said he had been beaten up by security agents.
"Muntazer al-Zaidi has been transferred to the judicial authorities who have opened an investigation. But it is too soon to say who was behind this act," General Qassem Atta, spokesman for a Baghdad security plan, told AFP.
The journalist's brother, meanwhile, said he has a broken arm and ribs after being struck by Iraqi security agents.
QUOTE
I hope Maliki should be assassinated sooner or later.
Durgham Zaidi was unable to say whether Muntazer had sustained the injuries while being overpowered during Sunday's protest against Bush's visit to Baghdad or while in custody later.
He said he had been told that his brother was initially held by Iraqi forces in the heavily fortified Green Zone compound in central Baghdad where the US embassy and most government offices are housed.
"He has got a broken arm and ribs, and cuts to his eye and arm," said Durgham.
Zaidi, 29, a journalist for private Iraqi television channel Al-Baghdadia, was swiftly overpowered by Iraqi security forces after he threw the shoes at Bush in a gesture seen as the supreme mark of disrespect in the Muslim world.
An AFP journalist said that blood was visible on the ground as he was led away into custody although it was unclear if it was his.
Bush, who was on a swansong visit to the battleground that came to dominate his eight-year presidency, ducked when the shoes were thrown and later made light of the incident.
But Zaidi's action won him widespread plaudits in the Arab world where Bush's policies have drawn broad hostility.
The Lebanese television channel NTV, known for its opposition to Washington, went as far as offering a job to the journalist.
In its evening news bulletin on Monday, it said that if he takes the job, he will be paid "from the moment the first shoe was thrown".
Zaidi A manager at the channel told AFP that it had made its offer known to Zaidi and was ready to post bail on his behalf.
An Iraqi lawyer said Zaidi risks a miminum of two years in prison if he is successfully prosecuted for insulting a visiting head of state.
In Gaza, around 20 Palestinian gunmen from the Popular Resistance Committees, a hardline militant group that has been behind a spate of rocket attacks on Israel in recent weeks, staged a demonstration in support of Zaidi.
Wearing fatigues and brandishing Kalashnikov assault rifles, they stamped on photographs of the US president and held banners in support of the journalist.
Egyptian independent daily Al-Badeel carried a frontpage caricature of the US flag with the sole of a shoe replacing the stars in the top corner.
Even government-owned newspapers in Cairo praised Zaidi's actions. "Pelting the American president with shoes was the best way for expressing what Iraqis and Arabs feel toward Bush," wrote Al-Gomhuria editor Mohammad Ali Ibrahim.
In Iraq, press comment was divided.
The pro-government Al-Sabah newspaper expressed concern about the potential impact on press freedom of what it called Zaidi's "abnormal individual behaviour."
But the independent Al-Dustur newspaper hailed the journalist as the "only Iraqi whose patriotic feelings made him express his opinion in this way."
"It is not a declaration by the Iraqi media only, but for all Iraqis who have suffered over the years and we demand that he not be handed over to US forces," the paper said.
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In Sadr City, Maythem al-Zaidi stands before a photograph of his brother Muntader al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President Bush. (Photo: Johan Spanner for The New York Times)
Update | 4:42 p.m. BAGHDAD — The brother of Muntader al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President Bush during a joint press conference on Sunday with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, said Monday that he was “proud of his brother — as all Iraqis would be.”
Hitting someone with a shoe is a particularly strong rebuke in Iraqi culture. Although the president was uninjured, the incident overshadowed media coverage of the trip in the Arab world. And it has transformed Muntader al-Zaidi, who remains in Iraqi custody, into a symbolic figure in the debate about the American military’s presence in Iraq.
Interviews with Mr. al-Zaidi’s family and co-workers reveal a man with ties to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party and long-building anger towards the United States military presence in Iraq.
When his brother, Maythem al-Zaidi, 28, called his cell phone on Sunday night, a man claiming to be one of the prime minister’s bodyguards answered. Maythem al-Zaidi said that the bodyguard threatened, “that they will get us all.”
Maythem al-Zaidi said his brother had not planned to throw his shoes prior to Sunday. “He was provoked when Mr. Bush said [during the news conference] this is his farewell gift to the Iraqi people,” he said. A colleague of Muntader al-Zaidi’s at al-Baghdadiya satellite channel, however, said the correspondent had been “planning for this from a long time. He told me that his dream is to hit Bush with shoes,” said the man, who would not give his name.
Muntader al-Zaidi appears to have a long-standing dislike of the United States presence in Iraq. He used to finish his reports by saying he was in “the occupied Baghdad.” His brother said that he hates the occupation so strongly that he canceled his wedding, saying: “I will marry when the occupation is over.”
The correspondent for Al Baghdadiya, an independent Iraqi television station, had previously been detained in November 2007 by “a particular party” — his brother didn’t reveal whether American or Iraqi –- after videotaping the scene of an improvised explosive device that targeted an American Humvee. He was held again two months later for several hours by the American army without charges, his brother said. Other reports said he had been kidnapped by Shiite militants. Co-workers said that all Mr. al-Zaidi would reveal afterwards was that he had been strongly threatened, but he would not say by whom.
Muntader al-Zaidi was the head of the student union under Saddam Hussein and he earned a diploma as a mechanic from a technical institute before becoming a journalist. Mr. al-Zaidi attened several journalism courses outside Iraq, including one in Beirut. He worked at al-Qasim al-Mushterek newspaper, an Iraqi daily founded after the 2003 invasion, then he joined al-Diyar satellite channel, an Iraqi channel founded after the war. Two years later, he joined al-Baghdadiya satellite channel, another Iraqi channel, which is based in Cairo.
An editor at al-Baghdadiya, Sayfulddin al-Qaysi, said that Mr. al-Zaidi was ambitious. “He dreamed of becoming the president of Iraq,” Mr. al-Qaysi said. “He is brave and professional in his work.”
Mr. al-Qaysi said he recalled that in last year his colleague told him that “the criminal Bush” would pay two-fold for the crimes he committed against innocent Iraqis. Mr. al-Qaysi said he tried to warn Mr. al-Zaidi of the consequences of such an action, but that he was insistent.
Mohammed al-Wadhih, a newspaper editor and friend of Mr. al-Qaysi, said the reporter had sworn a personal revenge against President Bush for crimes that committed and he is committing in Iraq.
One former colleague at al-Baghdadiya who now works for the Iraqi government said that “Muntader was very keen to attract attention to himself. He would do anything t become famous.”
Maythem Mr. al-Zaidi contacted a judge to ask him if what his brother did is a crime under Iraqi law. The judge told him that he might serve two years in prison or pay a fine for insulting a president of foreign country unless Mr. Bush withdrew the case. “If they manage to imprison Muntader, there are millions of him all over Iraq and the Arab world,” Maythem al-Zaidi said.
Maythem al-Zaidi said has been contacted from about 100 Iraqi and foreign lawyers offering their services free of charge — including Saddam Hussein’s lawyer Khalil al-Dulaymi. When asked if he will accept Mr. al-Dulaymi’s services, he replied, “Why not, we are all Iraqis.”
The Rusafa office of Moktada al-Sadr organized a demonstration in Sadr City to support the shoe thrower. Across Iraq, everyone seems to have an opinion about the case.
According to his brother, Muntader al-Zaidi is “a calm man.” Both of his parents are dead, and he has 10 other siblings. Maythem al-Zaidi said that his brother is politically independent, but several people who know him mentioned that he was a Baathist who turned into a Sadrist after the war.
Meanwhile, al-Baghdadiya satellite channel’s Baghdad bureau chief is not responding to reporters to comment on the incident and he prevented all his staff of doing so.
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G.I.’s in Sadr City Laugh Off Shoe-Hurling
By Campbell Robertson
BAGHDAD — Late Monday night, as the international chattering classes were discussing the finer points of the Bush Shoe Throwing Incident, Lt. Jamen Miller’s platoon was on a six hour patrol in one of the world’s less Bush sympathetic neighborhoods, Sadr City.
There were a variety of items on the night’s agenda, including intelligence gathering, food delivery and helping Iraqis fill out compensation claims, nothing as “interesting,” to use the preferred euphemism, as what was seen on the platoons’ last deployment in super-violent Anbar in 2006. But it filled up the hours.
They knocked on doors in the moonlight, as many soldiers that could piling out of the cold muddy streets into a soft warm living room while the platoon leader and his interpreter sipped tea with the owner of the house and asked if he knew such and such person and if so and so had been seen around the neighborhood lately.
The Shoe Incident had barely been brought up among the soldiers all day. It wasn’t much of a priority, not compared to leave dates or the Cowboys-Giants game. The whole fact that the president had been in town at all wasn’t known for hours afterwards he arrived on Sunday and was really only worth mentioning because it explained the particular kind of patrol missions –a particularly boring kind–that are always ordered up along with an important visit.
“Hey you see George was hit with a shoe?” a soldier had asked Monday morning, laughing and lumping eggs into his plate in the kitchenette of the company’s security outpost.
“George who?”
And that was mostly it for Monday. By the middle of the day most had heard about it, on the Internet, from wives back home, but it was more or less dismissed with “I can’t believe that, that’s some funny stuff” (or so paraphrased, for this is a family blog).
Midway through Monday night’s patrol, Lt. Miller, one of the sergeants and the interpreter were standing in a kitchen trying to iron out a misunderstanding with a couple of nervous looking Iraqi men, when a burst of laughter came from the soldiers in the living room. The Shoe Throwing Incident was being shown on the Iraqi evening news, frequently, and in slow motion. The soldiers were guffawing and remarking on Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s impressive attempt to block the second shoe. The Iraqis in the room stood in the back, unsmiling, as the throws were replayed, again and again. Then the news moved on to another story and the soldiers moved back out into the cold streets.
A few houses later, the last stop of the night, a little confrontation broke out when the women of the houses assumed the soldiers were robbers — their house had been broken into earlier this year — and began screaming. The owner of the house was angry but Lt. Miller calmed the man’s nerves, and they began the usual chat about the neighborhood.
I stayed out in the street, talking with the soldiers, who were discussing the wars or quiet lives that awaited them on the other side of this deployment. Soon Lt. Miller appeared and we moved on.
The next day, Lt. Miller told me that, out of nowhere, the man in the last house had announced that he wanted to apologize for the Shoe Incident, insisting that it not reflect poorly on all Iraqis.
I asked Lt. Miller what he said in return. He assured the man that it was OK, that they do not consider one Iraqi’s behavior indicative of the country, that this was what democracy can look like, etc.
And, he said, “I told him that a lot of the soldiers thought it was pretty funny.”
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On the Spot: Time Froze as the Shoes Flew
By Atheer Kakan
Security guards detained a man who threw a shoe at President Bush. (Photo: Evan Vucci/Associated Press)
Atheer Kakan is an Iraqi journalist with The New York Times in Iraq. He attended the press conference at which Muntader al-Zaidi threw two shoes at President Bush.
BAGHDAD — To throw shoes at the president of the greatest superpower in the world is not something that you see every day in Iraq. It never happened before, and who knows when it will happen again.
That press conference began in as boring a way as any other. It was in one of Saddam Hussein’s old buildings that is located in the Green Zone, in a street that I was never able to see during the former regime.
I heard from someone who used to work at Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s office that this palace was once used by the late King Hussein of Jordan whenever he visited Iraq. But now the new rulers of Iraq are occupying the same palaces and they use it as an office for Maliki, in addition to another office that is also located in the Green Zone.
Everything was as usual. The same waiting in line that we always have to do, the same arguments between the journalists and the security people, dogs sniffing our tools and equipment, the same complaints of the Iraqi journalists.
The press conference started after long, meaningless, waiting. First the western journalists who accompanied the American president on his plane were seated on the front seats, as the White House staff planned, while two rows of chairs were placed on the left side of the table where they had decided to do a ceremonial signing.
President Bush and Prime Minister Maliki came in through a side door. They entered the room like any other officials on a regular day at a routine press conference. Mr. Maliki started his speech thanking Mr. Bush for what he did for Iraq and he ended his speech in the same way. Then it was the American president’s turn.
At first I thought Mr. Maliki’s speech would be longer, but on the contrary, Mr. Bush’s was. A few seconds before the attack I noticed Mr. Maliki’s facial expressions began looking strange. I thought at first that something in the American president’s speech had angered him, or that he had gone on too long.
I was sitting four seats away from Muntader al-Zaidi but did not see anything until he threw the first shoe, and shouted: “This is the farewell kiss, you dog.”
At first I thought that all those well-armed bodyguards would jump at the first moving object, but nothing happened. Then he threw his second shoe. After that the guards began to move and Mr. Maliki’s bodyguards swarmed over the journalist, who was known for covering Sadr City.
Some people said that he was beaten severely and some said that he was only dragged to the floor by the American and Iraqi bodyguards. I could not see because there was already a crowd around him.
Mr. Bush and Mr. Maliki both tried to get over the shock. Mr. Bush said that the shoes were size 10 and Mr. Maliki said that the guy was expressing nothing but his ignorance.
After the press conference we were locked inside the room for a while. It was very tense.
While we were inside the Prime Minister’s bodyguards tried to delete or confiscate film of the incident from the cameramen, but the journalists were all switching tapes quickly, like magicians, because no one wanted to lose such shots.
Later they let us all go, we do not know why. They just told us: “You can go, no one will try to delete your tapes.”
One of Mr. Maliki’s bodyguards called us ugly names because they thought that we were participating in a conspiracy, that we had all known about what was going to happen.
“We cooperated with you, and you betrayed us. You should have stopped him,” he said. Another guard told me me: “You are all Baathists.” He then raised his finger and said, “You are not allowed to say anything” in a very scary way.
Another tried to beat me after I objected because he was pushing an Iraqi journalist. I told him, “Why are you doing that? He is just a journalist.” He started calling us “sons of bitches” and other dirty names.
The journalists in general were against Muntader al-Zaidi’s actions, at least before we left the press conference room that we were locked inside. I think some of them were tense with all the bodyguards around.
When they were outside some of them changed their tone and started talking about how “brave” he was to take such a step, but they still criticized the way that he chose to express his rejection.
However some of them were really convinced that al-Zaidi was wrong. One female journalist said: “That was totally inappropriate and unethical to insult a guest of the Prime Minister, this guy does not represent the Iraqi people.”
As we started leaving the area the journalists were still cautious — maybe because of decades of oppression and no free speech. They started hiding their tapes because they didn’t believe that they were going to let us go. I heard someone telling his colleagues “let us split into groups and not walk with each other.”
Even after they had left Mr. Maliki’s office and were on the way out of the Green Zone approaching their news agencies, many of the journalists still did not believe they were going to be allowed to keep their film.
During the press conference Mr. Bush said: “That’s what people do in a free society, draw attention to themselves.” Well, I don’t how true is this but I know one thing: no one during Saddam’s era would have dared to think about doing that.
He would have been executed, and maybe also his family, and the journalists who witnessed the incident.
Afterwards one photographer approached me and said “Al Jazeera and some other TV networks are already hailing the guy and praising him for courage.”
I said: “But he was wrong!”
“Well, not to me,” he replied.
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Cutting off some of the speculation of who would end up with possession of the shoes (and how much would be paid for them), one of the lawyers representing al-Zaidi said the shoes thrown at the president “had been destroyed at a laboratory during an examination to determine whether they contained any explosives or hazardous chemicals.
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Iraqi judge says shoe-tossing reporter was beaten
By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer Qassim Abdul-zahra, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 7 mins ago
A Turkish leftist holds a model of shoe as he marches to the U. S. embassy to AP – A Turkish leftist holds a model of shoe as he marches to the U. S. embassy to protest against the invasion …
BAGHDAD – The Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President George W. Bush during a news conference was beaten and had bruises around his eyes and other parts of his face, a judge said Friday.
Judge Dhia al-Kinani, the magistrate investigating the incident, said the court has opened a probe into the alleged beating of journalist Muntadhar al-Zeidi during the news conference.
Al-Zeidi was wrestled to the ground after throwing his shoes at Bush Sunday as he stood beside Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki at the news conference in Baghdad, and there have been conflicting claims about his condition since then.
The journalist has not been seen in public since his arrest. One of his brothers claimed he had been harshly beaten but another said he seemed to be in good condition.
Al-Zeidi "was beaten in the news conference and we will watch the tape and write an official letter asking for the names of those who assaulted him," the judge told The Associated Press.
The journalist was in custody and was expected to eventually face charges of insulting a foreign leader. A conviction could bring a sentence of two years in prison.
Al-Kinani also confirmed that the journalist had written a letter of apology to al-Maliki. Iraq's president can grant pardons that are requested by the prime minister, but the judge said such a pardon can be issued only after a conviction.
He added that he could not drop the case even though neither Bush nor al-Maliki had complained.
"This case was filed because of an article in the law concerning the protection of the respect of sovereignty," he said.
A spokesman for al-Maliki said Thursday that the letter contained a specific pardon request. But al-Zeidi's brother Dhargham told The AP that he suspected the letter was a forgery.
The incident, a vivid demonstration of Iraqis' dismay over the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of the country for more than five years, turned al-Zeidi into an instant folk hero. Thousands of Iraqis have demonstrated for his release.
About 20 members of his family protested at the edge of Baghdad's Green Zone on Friday and his brother Uday complained that "neither his attorney nor any family member has seen him."
At Friday prayers in Baghdad's Shiite stronghold Sadr City, cleric Mohanad al-Moussawi told worshippers that "al-Zeidi's life must be protected and he must be immediately, immediately, immediately released."
Sadr City protesters also laid down two American flags, hit them with shoes and burned them to protest his detention. And in southern city of Kufa, crowds also protested the arrest by American forces of an official of Momahoudin, a militia led by radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr that was disbanded and turned into a social welfare group.
The judge said the al-Zeidi investigation would be completed and sent to the criminal court on Sunday, after which a court date would be set within seven to 10 days.
Al-Zeidi's action was broadcast repeatedly on television stations around the world. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack suggested that worldwide attention to the shoe-tossing was overblown.
In the Iranian capital Tehran, hard-line Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati praised the act at Friday prayers, calling it the "Shoe Intifada."
Jannati proposed people in Iraq and Iran should carry shoes in further anti-American demonstrations.
"This should be a role model," he said.
He also proposed that the shoes themselves should be put in an Iraqi museum. But al-Kinani, the judge, said the shoes had been destroyed by investigators trying to determine if they had contained explosives.
Also Friday, the head of a large West Bank family offered one of its eligible females as a bride for al-Zeidi. The leader, 75-year-old Ahmad Salim Judeh, said that the 500-member clan had raised $30,000 for al-Zeidi's legal defense.
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Iraq preachers demand release of Bush shoe attacker
By Waleed Ibrahim Waleed Ibrahim – Fri Dec 19, 10:41 am ET
BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Muslim preachers from both sides of Iraq's once-bloody Sunni-Shi'ite divide appealed to the government on Friday to release the journalist who threw his shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush.
The family of TV reporter Muntazer al-Zaidi, meanwhile, protested at an entrance to the heavily-fortified Green Zone in Baghdad where they believe he is being held in a hospital after being badly injured during his arrest.
At Baghdad's main Shi'ite mosque, al-Kadhum, preacher Mohammed al-Shami leading Friday prayers demanded that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki free Zaidi.
"We hold them responsible for his safety," the preacher said. "They are responsible for his life, his health and psychological condition."
At Baghdad's main Sunni Arab mosque, preacher Abu-Hanifa asked Maliki for an explanation.
"From this place we call on the prime minister and ask him, 'Tell us why you have detained a person who made such a heroic and fair act? A stand that all of us should have taken a long time ago'," Uthman Raheem said in his sermon. "Why do you detain a man who stood up in the face of injustice?"
In the western city of Falluja, a Sunni preacher praised Zaidi on Friday and called him a courageous man who honored all Iraqis with his action.
LOCATION YET UNKNOWN
Zaidi's whereabouts were unknown on Friday. He appeared on Tuesday before an investigatory judge and could face trial on charges of "aggression against a president," a crime that carries a maximum prison sentence of 15 years.
Zaidi's lawyer said the court overseeing his case had opened a new case related to alleged beating of the reporter.
Dhiaa al-Saadi, head of the Iraqi lawyers' association, said the court had accepted his request to open a new proceeding against the people who had allegedly beaten Zaidi, according to Saadi, while he was being detained and afterwards.
Saadi said he had not met with Zaidi and did not know where he was being held, but said that, according court documents, the reporter's face and body were bruised.
At one of the heavily-guarded entrances to the Green Zone, an area that houses many government offices and foreign missions, Zaidi's family and a few dozen supporters waved banners and vowed to continue to protest until he was freed.
"We know nothing about him or about his health and if he's dead or still alive. We are asking to see him," said Um Saad, one of the journalist's sisters.
His aunt, Um Zaman, broke into tears.
"When I saw them beating him on television and he shouted in pain ... We want to see him, even if I am the only one allowed in for God's sake," she said.
(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed; writing by Michael Christie; editing by Ralph Boulton)
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MediaWatch:Print
Daily Column
US Papers Monday: After the UN Mandate
Zaidi Tortured, Brother Says
; Redefining "Combat Troops" under SOFA
Shoe-throwing Muntadar al-Zaidi again appears prominently in the news, after his brother alleged on satellite television that the jailed Iraqi correspondent was tortured by his captors after he tossed his two shoes at US President George Bush last week.
Iraqi security personnel tortured Muntadar al-Zaidi, the Iraqi television correspondent who made international headlines by throwing his shoes at US President George Bush in Baghdad last week, according to family members, according to the jailed al-Baghdadia reporter's brother. Timothy Williams writes in the Times that the 29-year-old's brother said he had been stripped to his underwear, doused with cold water, beaten with a thick cable, and burned on the ear with a cigarette. According to Uday al-Zaidi, the jailed correspondent's brother, in an interview on the correspondent's al-Baghdadia channel, Iraqi forces attempted to compel him to "state in a videotaped confession that he had been ordered to commit the act by enemies of the prime minister," Uday al-Zaidi said. Earlier in the day, Iraqi PM Nuri al-Maliki had announced that al-Zaidi had stated that "A person urged him to commit this (shoe-throwing) act, and this person is known to us as a person who beheads people," but such a claim contradicts the allegetions of torture and attempted forced confessions by al-Zaidi's Iraqi captors. If the vote passes, Mr. Mashhadani will keep his seat in Parliament but lose the speaker’s post. It is one of the most prominent positions in the Iraqi government now held by a Sunni," the NYT correspondent writes.
After the UN mandate, after Bush
Iraqi officials are preparing to expel members of the exiled Iranian Mujahadin-e Khalq (MEK) opposition group, currently under US protection at Camp Ashraf, in Diyala Province north of Baghdad, Ernesto Londoño writes in the Post. As Iraqi forces move to assume security responsibility for the camp, and as the United Nations mandate covering the American presence in Iraq is set to expire, "staying in Iraq is not an option," the Iraqi government reportedly told the MEK. The 3,500 exiles, based in Iraq since the 1980s, will be repatriated to Iran unless a third country agrees to take them. The MEK, an ally of the Saddam Hussein regime against the current regime in Iran, has been a target of the governing coalition in Iraq as well as Iran. "Shortly after the 2003 invasion, the U.S. military persuaded the MEK to disarm and offered to protect the group. The arrangement was awkward because it tasked the U.S. military with sheltering a group that remains on the State Department's terrorism list," Londoño writes. Meanwhile, Brown Lloyd James, a public relations firm, emailed a statement signed by Rafae Munahe, an advisor to Interior Minister Jawad Bolani, which said that the minister rejected reports that officials at the ministry detained in raids last week were plotting a coup. "he statement makes clear Bolani was deeply unsettled by the detentions. Bolani, an independent, secular Shiite, has not previously criticized the Maliki government in such stark terms. With provincial elections a few weeks away, competition among Shiite parties has intensified. Bolani recently created his own party, and the statement appears to indicate he believes that the prime minister ordered the raid to undermine him," the Post reporter notes.
On a related note, Scott Peterson writes in the Monitor that "Iran's influence here is only growing and set to increase as US forces begin to pull back." Peterson reflects on alleged points of Iranian influence, including the strikingly lower rate of roadside EFP attacks, the reported Iranian role in shaping the US-Iraqi status of forces agreement, and the throngs of Iranian pilgrims who visit Iraq each year, which Peterson suggests might be an image of "soft" Iranian power.
Now that "combat troops" are due to depart Iraqi cities by June 2009, American forces are involved in a "semantic dance" over the definition of that term, Elisabeth Bumiller writes from Washington in the Times. "Military planners are now quietly acknowledging that many (US troops) will stay behind as renamed 'trainers' and 'advisers' in what are effectively combat roles. In other words, they will still be engaged in combat, just called something else," she writes, noting that the role of such renamed forces could be a thorny issue for the Obama administration: "After June 2009 looms May 2010, 16 months after Mr. Obama’s inauguration, the month he set during the campaign to have American combat forces out of Iraq entirely. Next comes December 2011, the deadline in the status-of-forces agreement to have all American troops out of Iraq."
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In other coverage:
NEW YORK TIMES
"Two shoes for Democracy" opines Roger Cohen in his NYT op-ed, musing on the Muntadar al-Zaidi incident, of which, he says, the most significant aspect is its symbolic penetration of the fortified Green Zone by the voice of an Iraqi from without. "Al-Zaidi’s gesture broke those barriers, penetrated the hermetic sealing, and brought Red-Zone anger to Green-Zone placidity. In this sense, his was a democratic act," he writes, calling for al-Zaidi's release and the dismantling of the Green Zone.
WALL STREET JOURNAL
No Iraq-related stories today.
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On Saturday, Uday, al-Zaidi's other brother, spoke to Fars news agency and rejected the report by the Associated Press.
Uday claimed none of his family members had made any anti-Iran comments.
"AP has completely lied in its report. None of our family members has made any comments about my brother's opinion on Iran… Muntader is a Shia who is fond of Iran," Fars news agency quoted Uday as saying.
Muntadhar al-Zaidi has become an international phenomenon for hurling his shoes at US President George W. Bush during a press conference in Baghdad.
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The Washington Post goes into the Muntadar al-Zaidi in more detail, with Ernesto Londoño writing of Muntadar’s brother, who has spoken with him, giving quotes to the press. He tells of his brothers’ claims that he was beaten with a metal pipe, burned with a cigarette, and that his widespread popularity had been kept from him.
"They told him, 'Your tribe and your family reject you,' " Oday al-Zaidi said. Pointing toward the television set tuned to the Al-Raee channel, the guards added: "This is the only channel that supports you." In fact, his employer, al-Baghdadia channel, his relatives and people across the Arab world have praised him. Oday al-Zaidi, 32, said his brother was gaunt, devastated and bruised -- but unrepentant. " 'If I had the same opportunity again, I would throw my shoes,' " at President Bush, Oday al-Zaidi said, quoting his brother.
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While Moqtada exiled, Montadar prosecuted tortured, The world's eyes focused on Maythem & Uday Al-Zaidi
The World was shocked while shoes were thrown on to the face of sitting US President. Iraqis are so smart and sober nation build of tribal origin. We are famous in taking revenge, how can we leave some one with honor with war crimes and bulldozing cities after cities.
While Montader is hospitalized in Ibn-Sina hospital with head wounds and broken arms, eye sight gone, Maythem & Uday has taken the charge of anti-american resistance and they have started leading tens of thousands of Iraqis to show the anger against the Bush-Maliki Forces of Evil.
Outside Iraq anti-USraelie-Anti Bush Tremors are spreading like Indonesian tsunami alongside financial Tsunami.
While Russia was broken while fighting ground war , US is being tattered by Bush decision to go on WARS after WARS.
I am proud of those mothers who gave birth to Montader, Maythem and Moqtada.
QUOTE (Maythem)
When his brother, Maythem al-Zaidi, 28, called his cell phone on Sunday night, a man claiming to be one of the prime minister’s bodyguards answered. Maythem al-Zaidi said that the bodyguard threatened, “that they will get us all.”
(Maythem)
According to his brother, Muntader al-Zaidi is “a calm man.” Both of his parents are dead, and he has 10 other siblings. Maythem al-Zaidi said that his brother is politically independent, but several people who know him mentioned that he was a Baathist who turned into a Sadrist after the war.
Whether or not Maliki-Bush alliance succeeded in crushing MM , there is little Sadr sitting in hearts and minds of any aniti-American Iraqis.
While Maliki can't walk on Baghdad streets and face the nation. Maythem and other brothers are free to be among fellow Iraqis.
The only place where Al-Maliki go in rest is his home town in U.S.
And yes we are all Ba`athist in the sense of Anti-American Struggle- if you label us to chase and crush us.
On Saturday, Uday, al-Zaidi's other brother, spoke to Fars news agency and rejected the report by the Associated Press.
Uday claimed none of his family members had made any anti-Iran comments.
"AP has completely lied in its report. None of our family members has made any comments about my brother's opinion on Iran… Muntader is a Shia who is fond of Iran," Fars news agency quoted Uday as saying.
One must think why Bush has asked Maliki to execute so early without exposing real perpetrators and sponsors behind his 35 years of aggression and human crimes.
Bush has to face justice and every single Iraqi or Afghan has the right to stone him to death for his war crimes.
One one hand he said" I am not bothered of these falling shoes on my face" but inside they are so scared that they destroyed thrown shoes at a laboratory during an examination to determine whether they contained any explosives or hazardous chemicals.
Cutting off some of the speculation of who would end up with possession of those shoes (and how much would be paid for them as multimillion $ offered by Saudis). The shoes became symbol of resistance against American Aggression in the region.
Wherever there will be army boots, their presidents/Commander-in-Chief have to face our shoes.
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Iraqi PM: Shoe-thrower blames throat-slitter
By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer Qassim Abdul-zahra, Associated Press Writer – Mon Dec 22, 3:28 pm ET
BAGHDAD – Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki moved Monday to undermine the popularity of the Iraqi who threw his shoes at President George W. Bush, saying the
journalist confessed that the mastermind of the attack was a militant known for slitting his victims' throats.
Al-Maliki said that in a letter of apology to him, Muntadhar al-Zeidi wrote that a known militant had induced him to throw the shoes.
"He revealed ... that a person provoked him to commit this act, and that person is known to us for slitting throats," al-Maliki said, according to the prime minister's Web site. The alleged instigator was not named and neither al-Maliki nor any of his officials would elaborate.
The journalist's family denied the claim and alleged that al-Zeidi was coerced into writing the letter, in which he was said to have requested a pardon for "the big and ugly act that I perpetrated."
Al-Zeidi's brother Dhargham said that it was "unfair" of al-Maliki to make the allegation about the throat-slitter and described the prime minister as "a sectarian man who is destroying the Iraqi people."
Earlier, another brother said he met the journalist in prison and that he had expressed no regret for throwing the shoes.
"He told me that he has no regret for what he did and that he would do it again," Uday al-Zeidi told The Associated Press.
He said he visited his brother Sunday and found him missing a tooth and with cigarette burns on his ears. He also said his brother told him that jailers also doused him with cold water while he was naked.
"When I saw him yesterday, there were bruises on his face and body. He told me that they used an iron bar to hit him when they took him out of the press conference room. He told me that he began screaming and thought all those at the press conference would have heard his voice," Uday al-Zeidi told AP Television News.
The investigating judge, Dhia al-Kinani, has said that the journalist was beaten around the face and eyes when he was wrestled to the ground after throwing the shoes at Bush during a Dec. 14 press conference in the Green Zone. The judge said al-Zeidi's face was bruised but he did not provide a further description.
There has been no independent corroboration that al-Zeidi was abused once in custody.
Abdul-Sattar Bayrkdar, a spokesman for the Iraqi Higher Judicial Court, said that when the investigating judge took al-Zeidi's statement last week, the journalist "did not ask to be checked by a medical committee and did not say that he was tortured during the investigation."
Al-Zeidi's trial on charges of assaulting a foreign leader is scheduled to begin Dec. 31. A conviction would carry a sentence of up to two years in prison. Al-Kinani said last week that he does not have the legal option to drop the case and that al-Zeidi can receive a pardon only if he is convicted.
The hurling of the shoes turned the little-known Iraqi journalist into an international celebrity and led to huge street demonstrations in support of him.
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IraqSide:Buzz
RUMOR MILL
Rumors: Who Made al-Zaidi's Shoes?
Everybody wants them!
There is a rumor circulating through Iraqi streets that the local factory that made the shoes which Al-Baghdadiya correspondent Montadar al-Zaidi famously hurled at President Bush shoes have received over 70,000 orders for identical pairs. More are pouring in, and several factories are claiming that thier shoes were, in fact, the ones used.
The Gulf Daily News reports that the factory is owned by Baghdad shoemaker Alaa Haddad, and an AFP report from Istanbul says that they were a Model 271, the black polyurethane-soled shoes, made by the Turkish company Baydan Shoes.
The Gulf Daily News reports that the factory is owned by Baghdad shoemaker Alaa Haddad, and an AFP report from Istanbul says that they were a Model 271, the black polyurethane-soled shoes, made by the Turkish company Baydan Shoes.
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Shoe-throwing Iraqi journalist's trial postponed
By SINAN SALAHEDDIN
The Associated Press
December 30, 2008
The trial of a journalist who has been hailed as a hero in the Arab world after throwing his shoes at President George W. Bush was postponed on Tuesday pending a review of the case by a higher court, a spokesman for Iraq's Higher Judicial Council said.
The trial of Muntadhar al-Zeidi was to begin Wednesday on charges of assaulting a foreign leader, which his defense team said carried a maximum sentence of 15 years. But court spokesman Abdul-Sattar Bayrkdar said that the trial was been postponed pending an appellate court ruling on what charges the journalist should face.
Bayrkdar said the defense team was seeking a lesser charge. Two of his lawyers said they want a reduced charge of insulting a foreign leader _ which carries a maximum sentence of three years.
'There is a difference between assault and insult, al-Zeidi wanted to express his objection to the occupation. So the case is within context of an insult and not an intention to kill,' his lawyer Diaa al-Saadi told Associated Press Television News.
If the appellate court decides to reduce the charges, then al-Saadi said al-Zeidi could be released on bail. It was unclear when the appellate court would issue its ruling.
Al-Zeidi threw his shoes at Bush during a Dec. 14 joint news conference with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The gesture of contempt for the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq made al-Zeidi a folk hero in Iraq and thousands of people have demonstrated for his release.
'According to the appeals raised by Muntadhar al-Zeidi's lawyers to the Federal Appeals Court, the Central Criminal Court has decided to postpone the trial sessions until the Federal Appeals Court issues a decision about these appeals, then another date for the trial will be set,' Bayrkdar said.
Before the postponement was announced, one of al-Zeidi's lawyers told Associated Press Television News that he expected a lengthy trial and a sentence of no less than three years if he is convicted.
Al-Zeidi's brother, Dhargham al-Zeidi, said that the family would turn to an international court if they found the Iraqi jurisdiction system 'biased and unfair.'
'If the Iraqi jurisdiction system will be fair and transparent then its fine, but if it will be politicized,' he said, then 'we will rely on an international court.'
The case transformed al-Zeidi from a little-know television journalist into an international celebrity for defying the U.S. leader, but it also embarrassed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki who was standing next to Bush when the shoes were thrown.
Last week the Iraqi leader sought to undermine the journalist's popularity by saying the he had confessed that the mastermind of the attack was a militant known for slitting his victims' throats.
Al-Maliki said that in a letter of apology to him al-Zeidi wrote that a known militant had induced him to throw the shoes. The alleged instigator has never been identified and neither al-Maliki nor any of his officials have provided further explanation. The letter was never made public.
The journalist's family denied the claim and alleged that al-Zeidi was tortured into writing the letter.
His brother Uday al-Zeidi said he met the journalist in prison about a week after the incident and that there had been no regret for throwing the shoes.
He claimed his brother had a missing tooth and cigarette burns on his ears. He also said his brother told him that jailers also doused him with cold water while he was naked.
The investigating judge, Dhia al-Kinani, has said that the journalist was beaten around the face and eyes when he was wrestled to the ground after throwing the shoes.
There has been no independent corroboration that al-Zeidi was abused in custody, and Iraqi officials have denied al-Zeidi has been abused.
The show-throwing incident also led to a political crisis that resulted in the resignation of parliament's abrasive Sunni speaker and delayed by a week approval of key a vote on whether non-U.S. foreign troops would be allowed to stay in Iraq beyond New Year's Eve.
The parliament speaker, who angered other parliament members during a discussion of the shoe-thrower, had tried to delay a vote on the troop agreement as a way to hold onto his job, but the effort failed.
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A Baghdad court sentenced Zaidi, who hurled his shoes at former U.S. President George W. Bush, to three years in prison on March 12, 2009, a verdict critics said was politically motivated.
"This sentence is harsh and is not in harmony with the law, and eventually the defense team will contest this in the appeals court," said Dhiaa al-Saadi, the head of Zaidi's defense team.
"The case is politicized and is an attempt to take revenge on Zaidi. I believe the judges were under political pressure from known factions ... the verdict is unfair," said Ahmed al-Masoudi, a spokesman for the anti-American Sadrist movement. However, legal expert Tareq Harb said the verdict was "far from politicized."
This is the time to raise the voice it's almost now 6th anniversary of Iraq's invasion, while Bush gone un-sentenced,Both US Secret Service and Iraqi security agents had severely tortured Al Zaidi and now they punished him for 3 years prison term.
I hope this March21st-NeuRoz/2009(6th anniversary of the occupation) will be the last honey moon of American invasion of Iraq.
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To Make Female Hearts Flutter in Iraq, Throw a Shoe
Article Tools Sponsored By
By ABEER MOHAMMED and ALISSA J. RUBIN
Published: March 13, 2009
BAGHDAD — What does it take for an Iraqi woman to fall in love with a man?
In parks and dress shops, in university halls and on picnics, Iraqi women are still smitten(To affect sharply with great feeling) — three months and one new American president later — by the shoe thrower, Muntader al-Zaidi.
His conviction and sentencing for three years on Thursday, only burnished his image as someone who lives out the dream of the common man and in doing so becomes gallant and desirable.
Zainab Mahdi, a 19-year-old student sporting a red baseball cap, swung on a swing set in a riverside park on Friday as she spoke admiringly of Mr. Zaidi.
“Every Iraqi wanted to beat Bush,” she said. “Muntader made our wishes comes true.”
Her sister, Hanan Mahdi, 22, who was standing next to the swing set, spoke with passion in her voice. “Muntader make us proud of ourselves as Iraqis,” she said.
“We were in Syria when he hurled his shoes at Bush, and we noticed the change in the way Syrian people treated us,” she said. “They treated us in a better way.”
Mr. Zaidi, whom Iraqi girls call informally by his first name, captured nearly everyone’s imagination here when he threw his shoes at President George W. Bush during a Dec. 14 news conference with the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. While Iraqi men have been divided over Mr. Zaidi’s gesture, it was hard to find a woman who wholeheartedly disapproved of him.
In conversations with 20 women over the last several days, most expressed strikingly positive sentiments about him and much anger about the three years he must serve behind bars.
“Zaidi restored Iraqi women’s dignity, which was stolen” since the 2003 American invasion, said Um Baneen, 31, a homemaker who said it was President Bush, not Mr. Zaidi, who deserved three years in prison. “No one dared to face Bush in the whole world, only Muntader al-Zaidi.”
Atiyaf Mahmoud, 19, a student in her first year of medical school said, “I love Zaidi. I saw him in my dreams twice, the last one was after the trial, he was released and I went to congratulate him and shake his hand.”
“I was so excited in that sweet dream,” she said. “I wish to have that dream again.”
Not so for Zahra Fadhil, 29, also a homemaker, who said no model man would abuse democracy the way she said Mr. Zaidi did.
“The three-year sentence is a lesson to all Iraqis who are willing to do shameful acts and pretend that it’s democracy,” she said.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
New report slams US reconstruction of Iraq
By JAMES GLANZ, C.J. CHIVERS and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
Published: February 14, 2009
Federal authorities examining the early, chaotic days of the $125 billion American-led effort to rebuild Iraq have significantly broadened their inquiry to include senior American military officers who oversaw the program, according to interviews with senior government officials and court documents.
Court records show that last month investigators subpoenaed(A writ requiring appearance in court to give testimony.) the personal bank records of Col. Anthony B. Bell, who is now retired from the Army but who was in charge of reconstruction contracting in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 when the small operation grew into a frenzied attempt to remake the country’s broken infrastructure. In addition, investigators are examining the activities of Lt. Col. Ronald W. Hirtle of the Air Force, who was a senior contracting officer in Baghdad in 2004, according to two federal officials involved in the inquiry.
It is not clear what specific evidence exists against the two men, and both said they had nothing to hide from investigators. Yet officials say that several criminal cases over the past few years point to widespread corruption in the operation the men helped to run. As part of the inquiry, the authorities are taking a fresh look at information given to them by Dale C. Stoffel, an American arms dealer and contractor who was killed in Iraq in late 2004.
Before he was shot on a road north of Baghdad, Mr. Stoffel drew a portrait worthy of a pulp crime novel:
Mr. Stoffel, who gave investigators information about the office where Colonel Bell and Colonel Hirtle worked, was deemed credible enough that he was granted limited immunity from prosecution in exchange for his information, according to government documents obtained by The New York Times and interviews with officials and Mr. Stoffel’s lawyer, John H. Quinn Jr. There is no evidence that his death was related to his allegations of corruption.
Prosecutors have won 35 convictions on cases related to reconstruction in Iraq, yet most of them involved private contractors or midlevel officials. The current inquiry is aiming at higher-level officials, according to investigators involved in the case, and is also trying to determine if there are connections between those officials and figures in the other cases. Although Colonel Bell and Colonel Hirtle were military officers, they worked in a civilian contracting office.
“These long-running investigations continue to mature and expand, embracing a wider array of potential suspects,” a federal investigator said.
The reconstruction effort, intended to improve services and convince Iraqis of American good will, largely managed to do neither. The wider investigation raises the question of whether American corruption was a primary factor in damaging an effort whose failures have been ascribed to poor planning and unforeseen violence.
The investigations, which are being conducted by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, the Justice Department, the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command and other federal agencies, cover a period when millions of dollars in cash, often in stacks of shrink-wrapped bricks of $100 bills, were dispensed from a loosely guarded safe in the basement of one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces.
Former American officials describe payments to local contractors from huge sums of cash dumped onto tables and stuffed into sacks as if it were Halloween candy.
“You had no oversight, chaos and breathtaking sums of money,” said Senator Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat who helped create the Wartime Contracting Commission, an oversight board. “And over all of that was the notion that failure was O.K. It doesn’t get any better for criminals than that set of circumstances.”
In one case of graft from that period, Maj. John L. Cockerham of the Army pleaded guilty to accepting nearly $10 million in bribes as a contracting officer for the Iraq war and other military efforts from 2004 to 2007, when he was arrested. Major Cockerham’s wife has also pleaded guilty, as have several other contracting officers.
In Major Cockerham’s private notebooks, Colonel Bell is identified as a possible recipient of an enormous bribe as recently as 2006, the two senior federal officials said. It is unclear whether the bribe was actually offered or paid.
When asked if Major Cockerham had ever offered him a bribe, Colonel Bell said in a telephone interview, “I think we’ll end the discussion,” but stayed on the line. Colonel Bell’s response was equally terse when asked if he thought that Colonel Hirtle had carried out his duties properly: “No discussion on that at this time.”
The current focus on Colonel Bell is revealed in federal court papers filed in Georgia, where he has a residence and is trying to quash a subpoena of his bank records by the Special Inspector General. The papers, dated Jan. 27, indicate that Colonel Bell’s records were sought in connection with an investigation of bribery, kickbacks and fraud.
Colonel Bell said that he sought to quash the subpoena not because he had anything to hide, but because the document contained inaccuracies. “If they clean it up, I won’t have a problem,” he said, suggesting that he would cooperate. He declined to detail the inaccuracies, although his handwritten notations on the court papers indicated that the home address and the bank account number on the subpoena were incorrect.
Asked whether he knew why the records had been subpoenaed, he said, “That is not for me to direct what they’re going to do.”
Another case that has raised investigators’ suspicions about top contracting officials involves a company, variously known as American Logistics Services and Lee Dynamics International, that repeatedly won construction contracts for millions of dollars despite a dismal track record.
One contracting official committed suicide in 2006 a day after admitting to investigators that she had taken $225,000 in bribes to rig bids in favor of the company. At least two other former contracting officials in Iraq have admitted to taking bribes in the case and are cooperating with investigators. It is unknown what information they may have provided on Colonel Hirtle, a high-ranking contracting official in Baghdad. But Colonel Hirtle signed the company’s first major contract in Iraq in May 2004, a roughly $10 million deal to build arms warehouses for the fledgling Iraqi security forces, according to a copy of the contract and federal officials. The warehouses went largely unbuilt. Investigators said the inquiry into the Lee case was continuing.
“I can’t talk to any media right now, because I don’t know anything about this and I’ve got to do some research on it,” Colonel Hirtle said when reached by phone in California, before abruptly hanging up.
The next day, Colonel Hirtle said he had been “taken aback” by questions about an investigation involving himself. “I try to keep things as transparent and aboveboard as I can,” he said, referring questions to an Air Force public affairs office.
The Air Force referred questions to the United States Army Criminal Investigation Command, where a spokesman, Christopher Grey, said the command “does not discuss or confirm the names of persons who may or may not be under investigation.”
An extraordinary element of the current investigation is a voice from beyond the grave: that of Mr. Stoffel, who died with a British associate, Joseph J. Wemple, in a burst of automatic gunfire on a dangerous highway north of Baghdad in December 2004 as he returned from a business meeting at a nearby military base.
A previously unknown Iraqi group claimed responsibility for the killings, which remain unsolved. The men may simply have been unlucky enough to be engulfed in the violence that was then just beginning to grip the country.
On May 20, 2004, a little more than a week after Colonel Hirtle signed the Lee company’s warehouse contract, Mr. Stoffel was granted limited immunity by the Special Inspector General for what amounted to a whistle-blower’s complaint. Copies of the immunity document were obtained from two former business associates of Mr. Stoffel.
“Fifty thousand dollars delivered in pizza boxes to secure contracts,” said the former associate, a consultant in the arms business with whom Mr. Stoffel sometimes worked in the former Eastern bloc. “Of course, it just looked like a pizza delivery.”
It was Mr. Stoffel’s experience with Eastern bloc weaponry that helped him win a contract to refurbish Iraq’s Soviet-era tanks as part of a program to rebuild Iraq’s armed forces. Mr. Stoffel’s company remains locked in a dispute over payments it says are owed by the Iraqi government.
His problems with American officials were what led him to make the accusations of corruption. Mr. Stoffel, the associate said, “was trying to do this as quietly as possible, to blow the whistle.”
“He knew enough about what was going on, and he was getting pretty frustrated.”
Reporting was contributed by Eric Schmitt from Washington, David Beasley from Atlanta, Margot Williams from New York, and Riyadh Mohammed from Baghdad.
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-NY Times
14 Dec 2008 01:41:47 GMT
Source: Reuters
NEW YORK, Dec 13 (Reuters) - An unpublished federal draft report depicts the U.S.-led reconstruction of Iraq as a $100 billion failure doomed by bureaucratic infighting, ignorance of basic elements of Iraqi society and waves of violence there, The New York Times reported in its Sunday editions.
The Pentagon issued inflated progress reports to cover up the reconstruction's failure once the effort began to lag, according to the Times, which received copies of the document from two people who had read the draft but were not authorized to comment publicly about it.
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell is cited as saying, for example, that in the months after the 2003 invasion the Defense Department "kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces -- the number would jump 20,000 a week! 'We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.'"
Powell's contention was supported by both the former ground troops commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, and L. Paul Bremer, the civilian administrator before the Iraqi government takeover in June 2004. Powell declined to comment on his quoted remarks, the Times said.
The report, "Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience," was compiled by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, led by Stuart Bowen Jr., a Republican lawyer who visits Iraq often and maintains a staff of engineers and auditors there, the newspaper said.
It was based on some 500 interviews and more than 600 audits, inspections and investigations on which Bowen's office has reported for years.
Bowen's deputy, Ginger Cruz, declined to comment to the newspaper on the substance of the history, but said it would be presented on Feb. 2 at the first hearing of the Commission on Wartime Contracting, created by Democrat-sponsored legislation.
Among the draft report's conclusions is that some five years after its largest foreign reconstruction project since the Marshall Plan following World War II, the U.S. government still does not have the policies, technical capacity or organizational structure needed for a project even approaching this one's scale, the newspaper said.
It found that the reconstruction effort did little more than restore what had been destroyed during the U.S. invasion and subsequent looting. And it concluded the effort had failed in part because no single agency in the U.S. government had primary responsibility for the job.
Partisan politics also figured in, as when a Republican lobbyist working for the U.S. occupation authority implored the Office of Management and Budget to fund $20 billion in new reconstruction money in August 2003.
"To delay getting our funds would be a political disaster for the President," wrote the lobbyist, Tom Korologos. "His election will hang for a large part on show of progress in Iraq and without the funding this year, progress will grind to a halt," the draft quoted Korologos as saying.
The Bush administration supported the request and Congress allocated the money later that year. (Writing by Christopher Michaud; editing by Todd Eastham)
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By Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, February 2, 2009; Page A06
After five years of investigations and 250,000 pages of audits, Stuart W. Bowen Jr. wishes he could say that the $50 billion cost of the U.S. reconstruction effort in Iraq was money accounted for and well spent.
"But that's just not happened," Bowen said.
Instead, the largest single-country relief and reconstruction project in U.S. history -- most of it done by private U.S. contractors -- was full of wasted funds, fraud and a lack of accountability under what Bowen, the congressionally mandated special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, calls an "ad hoc-racy" of lax or nonexistent government planning and supervision.
And despite the Iraq experience, he said, the United States is making many of the same mistakes again in Afghanistan, where U.S. reconstruction expenditures stand at more than $30 billion and counting.
"It's too late to do the structural part and make it quickly applicable to Afghanistan," Bowen said in an interview last week. None of the substantive changes in oversight, contracting and reconstruction planning or personnel assignments that Congress, auditors and outside experts proposed as the Iraq debacle unfolded has been implemented in Afghanistan.
But President Obama could take several steps to mitigate future damage, Bowen said. They include devoting more attention to military and civilian personnel and to reconstruction and relief assignments, and taking advantage of the expertise developed through hard-won experience in Iraq. Instead of the "multiple versions" of the federal acquisition regulations adopted and amended by "multiple agencies" operating in Iraq, Obama "could just issue a FAR regulation applicable to Afghanistan that everyone will follow" in issuing and supervising contracts, he said.
"To bring this all together," Bowen said, "the president should order a Red Cell," a high-level group drawing from the departments of State and Defense and the U.S. Agency for International Development that would turn Obama's orders into action.
Bowen's office, known as SIGIR, is releasing a book today that recounts the Iraq experience and suggests how to avoid future mistakes. "Hard Lessons" is being published as the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting holds its first public hearing. Created by Congress last year, the commission will examine expenditures in Iraq and Afghanistan and propose solutions for "systemic" problems that waste taxpayer dollars.
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Legislation to create the commission was introduced by Democratic Sens. James Webb (Va.) and Claire McCaskill (Mo.) and was inspired by the "Truman Committee," which conducted hundreds of hearings and investigations into government waste during and after World War II.
"Hard Lessons," a draft of which was leaked to the news media in December, concludes that the U.S. reconstruction effort in Iraq was a failure, largely because there was no overall strategy behind it. Goals shifted from "liberation" and an early military exit to massive, ill-conceived and expensive building projects under the Coalition Provisional Authority of 2003 and 2004. Many of those projects -- over budget, poorly executed or, often, barely begun -- were abandoned as security worsened.
In a preface to the 456-page book, Bowen writes that he knew the reconstruction was in trouble when he first visited Iraq in January 2004 and saw duffel bags full of cash being carried out of the Republican Palace, which housed the U.S. occupation government.
Security was a constant problem, not only for military and civilian officials serving in Iraq but also for SIGIR. Auditor Paul Converse was killed in March during a rocket attack in Baghdad, following a year in which five other SIGIR employees were wounded.
The book recounts, in colorful detail based on SIGIR interviews with nearly all the principals, the deep divisions during the same period between the Pentagon, under Donald H. Rumsfeld; the State Department under Colin L. Powell; and the White House office of national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. Former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage recounts an argument between Rumsfeld and Rice in the fall of 2003 during which each said the other was in charge of supervising the Coalition Provisional Authority.
The book also includes numerous demonstrations of the Bush administration's lack of preparation to run Iraq after the March 2003 invasion. In one previously publicized case recounted in "Hard Lessons," Bowen's auditors discovered a cash disbursement of $57.8 million by the CPA to the U.S. comptroller for south-central Iraq. "Pallet upon pallet of hundred-dollar bills" were removed from the CPA vault in Baghdad and driven to the regional office in two unarmored SUVs. There, the local acting comptroller, Robert J. Stein Jr., who later was convicted for money laundering and fraud, had himself photographed with mountains of cash.
Overall, SIGIR and other law enforcement agencies have obtained 35 convictions, including two major bribery schemes involving $14 million solicited by U.S. military officers who ran Kuwait-based units contracting for the billions of dollars in supplies sent to Iraq.
SIGIR also reported on the inability of Iraqi firms to compete with U.S. contractors, due in part to the complicated U.S. bidding system: "Online contracting, which frequently entailed bids of more than a hundred pages, bewildered Iraqi contractors who were used to sealing a business deal with just a handshake."
When he took the job five years ago, Bowen said,
Given that $4 billion in appropriated U.S. reconstruction funds remain unspent in Iraq, Bowen's work is not likely to end anytime soon.
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Is America ripe for Hitler Mark II?
The answer to some; is impossible to happen, since we are living in a different time and people have learned not to fall in the trap of right-wing extremists. But many aspects of present conditions on the American ground may be somewhat similar to those of Germany in 1932.
To start with there is a high unemployment. There are many heavily-armed and angry right extremist groups. The nation to large extent is made of God-fearing political Zombies. What is needed is a charismatic leader who can formulate a political platform concentrating on blaming the Jews for the current economic meltdown and the niggers for sabotaging the 'American Century', undermining the Whitehouse and Washington traditions. Most of Churches with White Anglo Saxon Protestant members will support this plan as a divine salvation. Organisations like Black water can be asked to recruit, train and arm thousands, especially white veterans from the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan. Certain TV stations like Fox news will not be reluctant to support the plan. The so-called American intelligentsia can swallow their words the way the German intellectuals ended up rotting in concentration camps. If there is one country where it is possible for another Hitler to emerge, it is in the United States of America.
Adnan Darwash, Iraq Occupation Times
Published: February 14, 2009
Federal authorities examining the early, chaotic days of the $125 billion American-led effort to rebuild Iraq have significantly broadened their inquiry to include senior American military officers who oversaw the program, according to interviews with senior government officials and court documents.
Court records show that last month investigators subpoenaed(A writ requiring appearance in court to give testimony.) the personal bank records of Col. Anthony B. Bell, who is now retired from the Army but who was in charge of reconstruction contracting in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 when the small operation grew into a frenzied attempt to remake the country’s broken infrastructure. In addition, investigators are examining the activities of Lt. Col. Ronald W. Hirtle of the Air Force, who was a senior contracting officer in Baghdad in 2004, according to two federal officials involved in the inquiry.
It is not clear what specific evidence exists against the two men, and both said they had nothing to hide from investigators. Yet officials say that several criminal cases over the past few years point to widespread corruption in the operation the men helped to run. As part of the inquiry, the authorities are taking a fresh look at information given to them by Dale C. Stoffel, an American arms dealer and contractor who was killed in Iraq in late 2004.
Before he was shot on a road north of Baghdad, Mr. Stoffel drew a portrait worthy of a pulp crime novel:
tens of thousands of dollars stuffed into pizza boxes and delivered surreptitiously to the American contracting offices in Baghdad, and payoffs made in paper sacks that were scattered in “dead drops” around the Green Zone, the nerve center of the United States government’s presence in Iraq,two senior federal officials said.
Mr. Stoffel, who gave investigators information about the office where Colonel Bell and Colonel Hirtle worked, was deemed credible enough that he was granted limited immunity from prosecution in exchange for his information, according to government documents obtained by The New York Times and interviews with officials and Mr. Stoffel’s lawyer, John H. Quinn Jr. There is no evidence that his death was related to his allegations of corruption.
Prosecutors have won 35 convictions on cases related to reconstruction in Iraq, yet most of them involved private contractors or midlevel officials. The current inquiry is aiming at higher-level officials, according to investigators involved in the case, and is also trying to determine if there are connections between those officials and figures in the other cases. Although Colonel Bell and Colonel Hirtle were military officers, they worked in a civilian contracting office.
“These long-running investigations continue to mature and expand, embracing a wider array of potential suspects,” a federal investigator said.
The reconstruction effort, intended to improve services and convince Iraqis of American good will, largely managed to do neither. The wider investigation raises the question of whether American corruption was a primary factor in damaging an effort whose failures have been ascribed to poor planning and unforeseen violence.
The investigations, which are being conducted by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, the Justice Department, the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command and other federal agencies, cover a period when millions of dollars in cash, often in stacks of shrink-wrapped bricks of $100 bills, were dispensed from a loosely guarded safe in the basement of one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces.
Former American officials describe payments to local contractors from huge sums of cash dumped onto tables and stuffed into sacks as if it were Halloween candy.
“You had no oversight, chaos and breathtaking sums of money,” said Senator Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat who helped create the Wartime Contracting Commission, an oversight board. “And over all of that was the notion that failure was O.K. It doesn’t get any better for criminals than that set of circumstances.”
In one case of graft from that period, Maj. John L. Cockerham of the Army pleaded guilty to accepting nearly $10 million in bribes as a contracting officer for the Iraq war and other military efforts from 2004 to 2007, when he was arrested. Major Cockerham’s wife has also pleaded guilty, as have several other contracting officers.
In Major Cockerham’s private notebooks, Colonel Bell is identified as a possible recipient of an enormous bribe as recently as 2006, the two senior federal officials said. It is unclear whether the bribe was actually offered or paid.
When asked if Major Cockerham had ever offered him a bribe, Colonel Bell said in a telephone interview, “I think we’ll end the discussion,” but stayed on the line. Colonel Bell’s response was equally terse when asked if he thought that Colonel Hirtle had carried out his duties properly: “No discussion on that at this time.”
The current focus on Colonel Bell is revealed in federal court papers filed in Georgia, where he has a residence and is trying to quash a subpoena of his bank records by the Special Inspector General. The papers, dated Jan. 27, indicate that Colonel Bell’s records were sought in connection with an investigation of bribery, kickbacks and fraud.
Colonel Bell said that he sought to quash the subpoena not because he had anything to hide, but because the document contained inaccuracies. “If they clean it up, I won’t have a problem,” he said, suggesting that he would cooperate. He declined to detail the inaccuracies, although his handwritten notations on the court papers indicated that the home address and the bank account number on the subpoena were incorrect.
Asked whether he knew why the records had been subpoenaed, he said, “That is not for me to direct what they’re going to do.”
Another case that has raised investigators’ suspicions about top contracting officials involves a company, variously known as American Logistics Services and Lee Dynamics International, that repeatedly won construction contracts for millions of dollars despite a dismal track record.
One contracting official committed suicide in 2006 a day after admitting to investigators that she had taken $225,000 in bribes to rig bids in favor of the company. At least two other former contracting officials in Iraq have admitted to taking bribes in the case and are cooperating with investigators. It is unknown what information they may have provided on Colonel Hirtle, a high-ranking contracting official in Baghdad. But Colonel Hirtle signed the company’s first major contract in Iraq in May 2004, a roughly $10 million deal to build arms warehouses for the fledgling Iraqi security forces, according to a copy of the contract and federal officials. The warehouses went largely unbuilt. Investigators said the inquiry into the Lee case was continuing.
“I can’t talk to any media right now, because I don’t know anything about this and I’ve got to do some research on it,” Colonel Hirtle said when reached by phone in California, before abruptly hanging up.
The next day, Colonel Hirtle said he had been “taken aback” by questions about an investigation involving himself. “I try to keep things as transparent and aboveboard as I can,” he said, referring questions to an Air Force public affairs office.
The Air Force referred questions to the United States Army Criminal Investigation Command, where a spokesman, Christopher Grey, said the command “does not discuss or confirm the names of persons who may or may not be under investigation.”
An extraordinary element of the current investigation is a voice from beyond the grave: that of Mr. Stoffel, who died with a British associate, Joseph J. Wemple, in a burst of automatic gunfire on a dangerous highway north of Baghdad in December 2004 as he returned from a business meeting at a nearby military base.
A previously unknown Iraqi group claimed responsibility for the killings, which remain unsolved. The men may simply have been unlucky enough to be engulfed in the violence that was then just beginning to grip the country.
On May 20, 2004, a little more than a week after Colonel Hirtle signed the Lee company’s warehouse contract, Mr. Stoffel was granted limited immunity by the Special Inspector General for what amounted to a whistle-blower’s complaint. Copies of the immunity document were obtained from two former business associates of Mr. Stoffel.
The picture of corruption Mr. Stoffel painted, including the clandestine delivery of bribes, was “like a classic New York scenario,”said a former business associate.
“Fifty thousand dollars delivered in pizza boxes to secure contracts,” said the former associate, a consultant in the arms business with whom Mr. Stoffel sometimes worked in the former Eastern bloc. “Of course, it just looked like a pizza delivery.”
It was Mr. Stoffel’s experience with Eastern bloc weaponry that helped him win a contract to refurbish Iraq’s Soviet-era tanks as part of a program to rebuild Iraq’s armed forces. Mr. Stoffel’s company remains locked in a dispute over payments it says are owed by the Iraqi government.
His problems with American officials were what led him to make the accusations of corruption. Mr. Stoffel, the associate said, “was trying to do this as quietly as possible, to blow the whistle.”
“He knew enough about what was going on, and he was getting pretty frustrated.”
Reporting was contributed by Eric Schmitt from Washington, David Beasley from Atlanta, Margot Williams from New York, and Riyadh Mohammed from Baghdad.
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New report slams US reconstruction of Iraq
-NY Times
14 Dec 2008 01:41:47 GMT
Source: Reuters
NEW YORK, Dec 13 (Reuters) - An unpublished federal draft report depicts the U.S.-led reconstruction of Iraq as a $100 billion failure doomed by bureaucratic infighting, ignorance of basic elements of Iraqi society and waves of violence there, The New York Times reported in its Sunday editions.
The Pentagon issued inflated progress reports to cover up the reconstruction's failure once the effort began to lag, according to the Times, which received copies of the document from two people who had read the draft but were not authorized to comment publicly about it.
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell is cited as saying, for example, that in the months after the 2003 invasion the Defense Department "kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces -- the number would jump 20,000 a week! 'We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.'"
Powell's contention was supported by both the former ground troops commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, and L. Paul Bremer, the civilian administrator before the Iraqi government takeover in June 2004. Powell declined to comment on his quoted remarks, the Times said.
The report, "Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience," was compiled by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, led by Stuart Bowen Jr., a Republican lawyer who visits Iraq often and maintains a staff of engineers and auditors there, the newspaper said.
It was based on some 500 interviews and more than 600 audits, inspections and investigations on which Bowen's office has reported for years.
Bowen's deputy, Ginger Cruz, declined to comment to the newspaper on the substance of the history, but said it would be presented on Feb. 2 at the first hearing of the Commission on Wartime Contracting, created by Democrat-sponsored legislation.
Among the draft report's conclusions is that some five years after its largest foreign reconstruction project since the Marshall Plan following World War II, the U.S. government still does not have the policies, technical capacity or organizational structure needed for a project even approaching this one's scale, the newspaper said.
It found that the reconstruction effort did little more than restore what had been destroyed during the U.S. invasion and subsequent looting. And it concluded the effort had failed in part because no single agency in the U.S. government had primary responsibility for the job.
Partisan politics also figured in, as when a Republican lobbyist working for the U.S. occupation authority implored the Office of Management and Budget to fund $20 billion in new reconstruction money in August 2003.
"To delay getting our funds would be a political disaster for the President," wrote the lobbyist, Tom Korologos. "His election will hang for a large part on show of progress in Iraq and without the funding this year, progress will grind to a halt," the draft quoted Korologos as saying.
The Bush administration supported the request and Congress allocated the money later that year. (Writing by Christopher Michaud; editing by Todd Eastham)
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Iraq Auditor Warns of Waste, Fraud In Afghanistan
By Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, February 2, 2009; Page A06
After five years of investigations and 250,000 pages of audits, Stuart W. Bowen Jr. wishes he could say that the $50 billion cost of the U.S. reconstruction effort in Iraq was money accounted for and well spent.
"But that's just not happened," Bowen said.
Instead, the largest single-country relief and reconstruction project in U.S. history -- most of it done by private U.S. contractors -- was full of wasted funds, fraud and a lack of accountability under what Bowen, the congressionally mandated special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, calls an "ad hoc-racy" of lax or nonexistent government planning and supervision.
And despite the Iraq experience, he said, the United States is making many of the same mistakes again in Afghanistan, where U.S. reconstruction expenditures stand at more than $30 billion and counting.
"It's too late to do the structural part and make it quickly applicable to Afghanistan," Bowen said in an interview last week. None of the substantive changes in oversight, contracting and reconstruction planning or personnel assignments that Congress, auditors and outside experts proposed as the Iraq debacle unfolded has been implemented in Afghanistan.
But President Obama could take several steps to mitigate future damage, Bowen said. They include devoting more attention to military and civilian personnel and to reconstruction and relief assignments, and taking advantage of the expertise developed through hard-won experience in Iraq. Instead of the "multiple versions" of the federal acquisition regulations adopted and amended by "multiple agencies" operating in Iraq, Obama "could just issue a FAR regulation applicable to Afghanistan that everyone will follow" in issuing and supervising contracts, he said.
"To bring this all together," Bowen said, "the president should order a Red Cell," a high-level group drawing from the departments of State and Defense and the U.S. Agency for International Development that would turn Obama's orders into action.
Bowen's office, known as SIGIR, is releasing a book today that recounts the Iraq experience and suggests how to avoid future mistakes. "Hard Lessons" is being published as the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting holds its first public hearing. Created by Congress last year, the commission will examine expenditures in Iraq and Afghanistan and propose solutions for "systemic" problems that waste taxpayer dollars.
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Legislation to create the commission was introduced by Democratic Sens. James Webb (Va.) and Claire McCaskill (Mo.) and was inspired by the "Truman Committee," which conducted hundreds of hearings and investigations into government waste during and after World War II.
"Hard Lessons," a draft of which was leaked to the news media in December, concludes that the U.S. reconstruction effort in Iraq was a failure, largely because there was no overall strategy behind it. Goals shifted from "liberation" and an early military exit to massive, ill-conceived and expensive building projects under the Coalition Provisional Authority of 2003 and 2004. Many of those projects -- over budget, poorly executed or, often, barely begun -- were abandoned as security worsened.
In a preface to the 456-page book, Bowen writes that he knew the reconstruction was in trouble when he first visited Iraq in January 2004 and saw duffel bags full of cash being carried out of the Republican Palace, which housed the U.S. occupation government.
Security was a constant problem, not only for military and civilian officials serving in Iraq but also for SIGIR. Auditor Paul Converse was killed in March during a rocket attack in Baghdad, following a year in which five other SIGIR employees were wounded.
The book recounts, in colorful detail based on SIGIR interviews with nearly all the principals, the deep divisions during the same period between the Pentagon, under Donald H. Rumsfeld; the State Department under Colin L. Powell; and the White House office of national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. Former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage recounts an argument between Rumsfeld and Rice in the fall of 2003 during which each said the other was in charge of supervising the Coalition Provisional Authority.
The book also includes numerous demonstrations of the Bush administration's lack of preparation to run Iraq after the March 2003 invasion. In one previously publicized case recounted in "Hard Lessons," Bowen's auditors discovered a cash disbursement of $57.8 million by the CPA to the U.S. comptroller for south-central Iraq. "Pallet upon pallet of hundred-dollar bills" were removed from the CPA vault in Baghdad and driven to the regional office in two unarmored SUVs. There, the local acting comptroller, Robert J. Stein Jr., who later was convicted for money laundering and fraud, had himself photographed with mountains of cash.
Overall, SIGIR and other law enforcement agencies have obtained 35 convictions, including two major bribery schemes involving $14 million solicited by U.S. military officers who ran Kuwait-based units contracting for the billions of dollars in supplies sent to Iraq.
SIGIR also reported on the inability of Iraqi firms to compete with U.S. contractors, due in part to the complicated U.S. bidding system: "Online contracting, which frequently entailed bids of more than a hundred pages, bewildered Iraqi contractors who were used to sealing a business deal with just a handshake."
When he took the job five years ago, Bowen said,
"I didn't know that we didn't have a system to protect our interests abroad in post-conflict or contingency operations. . . . It would have been a much funner job to issue 250 reports on how well our rebuilding program went . . . and that the money was well accounted for and that we're leaving Iraq a peaceful and democratic place and nonviolent country."
Given that $4 billion in appropriated U.S. reconstruction funds remain unspent in Iraq, Bowen's work is not likely to end anytime soon.
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Is America ripe for Hitler Mark II?
The answer to some; is impossible to happen, since we are living in a different time and people have learned not to fall in the trap of right-wing extremists. But many aspects of present conditions on the American ground may be somewhat similar to those of Germany in 1932.
To start with there is a high unemployment. There are many heavily-armed and angry right extremist groups. The nation to large extent is made of God-fearing political Zombies. What is needed is a charismatic leader who can formulate a political platform concentrating on blaming the Jews for the current economic meltdown and the niggers for sabotaging the 'American Century', undermining the Whitehouse and Washington traditions. Most of Churches with White Anglo Saxon Protestant members will support this plan as a divine salvation. Organisations like Black water can be asked to recruit, train and arm thousands, especially white veterans from the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan. Certain TV stations like Fox news will not be reluctant to support the plan. The so-called American intelligentsia can swallow their words the way the German intellectuals ended up rotting in concentration camps. If there is one country where it is possible for another Hitler to emerge, it is in the United States of America.
Adnan Darwash, Iraq Occupation Times
Friday, December 12, 2008
A message from Camp Victory: General says Iraq work far from over
CAMP VICTORY, Iraq – Iraq's security forces must develop intelligence, battlefield medicine and logistics before they can stand on their own, the No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq said.
In the rush to create a security force to guard Iraq against violence from insurgents, the U.S. military has been providing the support networks needed to help the country's forces before the Americans leave by the end of 2011.
Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin, commander of all ground forces in Iraq, said U.S. troops now have to partner with Iraqis and work with them on a daily basis to provide the necessary additional training.
"Our intent is to make sure we have helped the Iraqis to have the right capacity, the right capability to handle the insurgent activity when we leave," Austin told The Associated Press during an interview Thursday in his office at the Faw Palace, headquarters of Multi-National Corps Iraq.
U.S. forces will be operating under a new security agreement on Jan. 1 that gives Iraqi authorities a role in approving and overseeing U.S. military operations.
It replaces a U.N. mandate that gives the U.S.-led coalition sweeping powers to conduct military operations and detain people without charge if they were believed to pose a security threat. The new pact requires that U.S. troops withdraw from Baghdad and other cities by the end of June and leave the country entirely by Jan. 1, 2012.
Austin said American troops began the transition months ago, conducting more and more joint operations with Iraqi forces. "The reason we are doing them is that we knew this was coming many months ago," he said.
In 2006, U.S. forces attempted to hand over security in portions of Iraq to security forces only to have them collapse under the weight of sectarian violence and insurgent attacks.
Iraqi forces are now responsible for security in 13 of the 18 provinces with coalition forces available for help if requested.
Austin said U.S. forces are moving as fast as possible to get the Iraqi security forces to a capable and competent level, but cautioned progress would take time.
"We are in no hurry to race away and have things crumble on us," he said.
U.S. and Iraqi officials acknowledge that the capabilities of Iraqi security forces have been improving, but privately doubts persist about whether they have the support and discipline to succeed.
Austin acknowledges the security gains are fragile, citing recent flare-ups of insurgent activity in Baghdad, Basra and other parts of southern Iraq.
"We are still fighting a fairly significant fight against al-Qaida in the north," he said.
Austin said the Iraqi force will naturally develop at an uneven pace, saying some units are older and more seasoned than newer units that are just being created.
He also said the forces need to acquire specific weapons and vehicles, and then need to get experience with those items.
"It is very difficult to pinpoint exactly when they will be fully capable of conducting counterinsurgency operations on their own," he said.
But Austin insists the drop in violence in Iraq has allowed the Iraqi army and police to get a foothold in neighborhoods once considered violent.
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By ANNE GEARAN, AP Military Writer Anne Gearan, Ap Military Writer – Thu Dec 18, 3:09 pm ET
WASHINGTON – The top U.S. general in Iraq has outlined for Pentagon leaders a withdrawal plan that would pull thousands more troops out of Iraq early next year, but move more cautiously than the 16-month timetable pledged by President-elect Barack Obama.
Military officials said Thursday that Gen. Raymond Odierno envisions a gradual drawdown of the nearly 150,000 U.S. forces in Iraq to meet a deadline of full withdrawal of fighting forces before 2012.
That timetable is in synch with the three-year deadline set in a new security agreement signed with Baghdad. And it has the full support of Gen. David Petraeus, who has overall responsibility for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Ultimately, this will be up to the president-elect, to the new commander in chief, to determine the direction he wishes to go in Iraq and what the force requirements will be to get there," Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said.
Morrell said there have been no final decisions by Defense Secretary Robert Gates or the White House.
Odierno and his boss Petraeus described their proposal to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen and the civilian heads of the armed services late last week, senior military officials said. Some officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Odierno's recommendations have not been made public.
Military officials described the recommendations as Odierno's exit strategy for Iraq stretching out through 2011, designed to meet the requirements of the security agreement, not Obama's campaign pledge to get combat troops out of Iraq in 16 months.
The security agreement calls for all forces to pull out, but both U.S. and Iraqi officials have said they expect relatively small numbers of noncombat forces to remain. Gates repeated that prediction in a television interview Wednesday.
"My guess is that you are looking at perhaps several tens of thousands of American troops," left behind after fighting forces depart, Gates said on PBS' "The Charlie Rose Show." Those forces would serve "in a very different role than we have played in the last five years."
Gates discussed troop numbers and withdrawal options during a wide-ranging conversation with Odierno when the two met during Gates' surprise trip to Iraq last week, Morrell said.
Gates and Mullen met with Obama and aides in Chicago on Monday. Gates will continue in his job under Obama, and Mullen has said he also expects to stay on.
An Obama transition official said the session covered topics from the Mideast to India, and lasted more than five hours.
"Adm. Mullen and Secretary Gates briefly discussed current plans developed under President Bush," to meet terms of the Iraq security agreement, the official said. The discussion didn't go much farther, because "there's one commander in chief at a time and everyone around that table respects that."
The official spoke on condition of anonymity to outline the confidential talks.
No officials would provide specifics of Odierno's recommendations, such as how many forces would be out by the end of next year.
The range of options would include a reduction in the more than 20,000 Marines currently serving in the western Anbar province — a region that has seen a dramatic decline in violence.
Marine leaders have been repeatedly pressing to get out of Iraq and into Afghanistan — a plan that Gates has indicated greater interest in lately than he had when the plan was presented months ago.
Petraeus told his troops this month that despite progress on both fronts, the U.S. and its allies face a tough fight in the year ahead.
Petraeus wrote in a letter to all troops in U.S. Central Command — stretching across the Middle East and throughout Central Asia — that improved security conditions in Iraq remain fragile and that while the Afghan army is improving, "the difficulties in Afghanistan are considerable."
It was the first time since Petraeus took charge of Central Command, following almost two years as the top U.S. commander in Baghdad, that he has offered troops what he called "my initial assessment of the situation." It covered not only Iraq and Afghanistan, but also Pakistan and other parts of the region.
The letter, dated Dec. 9, was released by his office at Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla.
Petraeus has assembled a team of experts to conduct an in-depth and comprehensive review of his command area; it is expected to be completed by early February.
• Associated Press Writer Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.
In the rush to create a security force to guard Iraq against violence from insurgents, the U.S. military has been providing the support networks needed to help the country's forces before the Americans leave by the end of 2011.
Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin, commander of all ground forces in Iraq, said U.S. troops now have to partner with Iraqis and work with them on a daily basis to provide the necessary additional training.
"Our intent is to make sure we have helped the Iraqis to have the right capacity, the right capability to handle the insurgent activity when we leave," Austin told The Associated Press during an interview Thursday in his office at the Faw Palace, headquarters of Multi-National Corps Iraq.
U.S. forces will be operating under a new security agreement on Jan. 1 that gives Iraqi authorities a role in approving and overseeing U.S. military operations.
It replaces a U.N. mandate that gives the U.S.-led coalition sweeping powers to conduct military operations and detain people without charge if they were believed to pose a security threat. The new pact requires that U.S. troops withdraw from Baghdad and other cities by the end of June and leave the country entirely by Jan. 1, 2012.
Austin said American troops began the transition months ago, conducting more and more joint operations with Iraqi forces. "The reason we are doing them is that we knew this was coming many months ago," he said.
In 2006, U.S. forces attempted to hand over security in portions of Iraq to security forces only to have them collapse under the weight of sectarian violence and insurgent attacks.
Iraqi forces are now responsible for security in 13 of the 18 provinces with coalition forces available for help if requested.
Austin said U.S. forces are moving as fast as possible to get the Iraqi security forces to a capable and competent level, but cautioned progress would take time.
"We are in no hurry to race away and have things crumble on us," he said.
U.S. and Iraqi officials acknowledge that the capabilities of Iraqi security forces have been improving, but privately doubts persist about whether they have the support and discipline to succeed.
Austin acknowledges the security gains are fragile, citing recent flare-ups of insurgent activity in Baghdad, Basra and other parts of southern Iraq.
"We are still fighting a fairly significant fight against al-Qaida in the north," he said.
Austin said the Iraqi force will naturally develop at an uneven pace, saying some units are older and more seasoned than newer units that are just being created.
He also said the forces need to acquire specific weapons and vehicles, and then need to get experience with those items.
"It is very difficult to pinpoint exactly when they will be fully capable of conducting counterinsurgency operations on their own," he said.
But Austin insists the drop in violence in Iraq has allowed the Iraqi army and police to get a foothold in neighborhoods once considered violent.
-----------
Top US general in Iraq gives first view of pullout
By ANNE GEARAN, AP Military Writer Anne Gearan, Ap Military Writer – Thu Dec 18, 3:09 pm ET
WASHINGTON – The top U.S. general in Iraq has outlined for Pentagon leaders a withdrawal plan that would pull thousands more troops out of Iraq early next year, but move more cautiously than the 16-month timetable pledged by President-elect Barack Obama.
Military officials said Thursday that Gen. Raymond Odierno envisions a gradual drawdown of the nearly 150,000 U.S. forces in Iraq to meet a deadline of full withdrawal of fighting forces before 2012.
That timetable is in synch with the three-year deadline set in a new security agreement signed with Baghdad. And it has the full support of Gen. David Petraeus, who has overall responsibility for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Ultimately, this will be up to the president-elect, to the new commander in chief, to determine the direction he wishes to go in Iraq and what the force requirements will be to get there," Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said.
Morrell said there have been no final decisions by Defense Secretary Robert Gates or the White House.
Odierno and his boss Petraeus described their proposal to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen and the civilian heads of the armed services late last week, senior military officials said. Some officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Odierno's recommendations have not been made public.
Military officials described the recommendations as Odierno's exit strategy for Iraq stretching out through 2011, designed to meet the requirements of the security agreement, not Obama's campaign pledge to get combat troops out of Iraq in 16 months.
The security agreement calls for all forces to pull out, but both U.S. and Iraqi officials have said they expect relatively small numbers of noncombat forces to remain. Gates repeated that prediction in a television interview Wednesday.
"My guess is that you are looking at perhaps several tens of thousands of American troops," left behind after fighting forces depart, Gates said on PBS' "The Charlie Rose Show." Those forces would serve "in a very different role than we have played in the last five years."
Gates discussed troop numbers and withdrawal options during a wide-ranging conversation with Odierno when the two met during Gates' surprise trip to Iraq last week, Morrell said.
Gates and Mullen met with Obama and aides in Chicago on Monday. Gates will continue in his job under Obama, and Mullen has said he also expects to stay on.
An Obama transition official said the session covered topics from the Mideast to India, and lasted more than five hours.
"Adm. Mullen and Secretary Gates briefly discussed current plans developed under President Bush," to meet terms of the Iraq security agreement, the official said. The discussion didn't go much farther, because "there's one commander in chief at a time and everyone around that table respects that."
The official spoke on condition of anonymity to outline the confidential talks.
No officials would provide specifics of Odierno's recommendations, such as how many forces would be out by the end of next year.
The range of options would include a reduction in the more than 20,000 Marines currently serving in the western Anbar province — a region that has seen a dramatic decline in violence.
Marine leaders have been repeatedly pressing to get out of Iraq and into Afghanistan — a plan that Gates has indicated greater interest in lately than he had when the plan was presented months ago.
Petraeus told his troops this month that despite progress on both fronts, the U.S. and its allies face a tough fight in the year ahead.
Petraeus wrote in a letter to all troops in U.S. Central Command — stretching across the Middle East and throughout Central Asia — that improved security conditions in Iraq remain fragile and that while the Afghan army is improving, "the difficulties in Afghanistan are considerable."
It was the first time since Petraeus took charge of Central Command, following almost two years as the top U.S. commander in Baghdad, that he has offered troops what he called "my initial assessment of the situation." It covered not only Iraq and Afghanistan, but also Pakistan and other parts of the region.
The letter, dated Dec. 9, was released by his office at Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla.
Petraeus has assembled a team of experts to conduct an in-depth and comprehensive review of his command area; it is expected to be completed by early February.
• Associated Press Writer Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.
I did mistrust Obama from the beginning
Obama: An American Goebels with power!
It is rather easy for historians to make an analogy between the present-day United States of America and the defunct Nazi Germany. In both countries high military expenditures, bullying of others and wars on many fronts was the norm. What America lacked was a person like Goebels who can mesmerise his audience with high-powered phrases. It seems that US power-centres including the Jewish Lobby, the military industry and the Oil Cartles were disappointed with the dull performance and un-popular G.W. Bush and went to support eloquent Obama in order to sell their outdated and aggressive policies.
With Joe Biden, Hilary Clinton, Robert Gates and Rahm Emanuel one can’t expect anything but more Israeli intransigence, a stalemate in Iraq, a return to tension with Iran and more blood-shed in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Such environments, are conducive to more violence by anti-USraeli forces. To the disillusionment of many, inside and outside America, Obama will be exactly as Al-Zawahiri has correctly identified as no more than an obedient “House Negro”.
I have just read that the American liberals are unhappy with Obama's appointments of conservative Hawks to his cabinet. I did mistrust Obama from the beginning and so far I am not wrong.
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IOT: Iraq Occupation Times
IOT: Mr Obama, did you hear about the Iraqi celebrations in the streets of Baghdad after you won on 03.11.08 as people were shouting “Hear us Bush, Insane, We like Barak Hussein”?
Obama: No, I didn’t hear this but I could imagine people's reaction to the news.
IOT: What was the most single factor that contributed to your victory?
Obama: It was Bush failure on many fronts.
IOT: In your election campaign you said that the US should have never been in Iraq and that you promised to withdraw US troops with 16 months of your inauguration, or by April 2010. Let us take the first promise. Do you intend to apologise and pay the Iraqis since the US had no reason to be in Baghdad let alone to kill the people and to destroy their property?
Obama: The love for wars is inherently American. We love military parades and glorify our war veterans coming victorious from war fronts. An apology may be interpreted as a defeat. No superpower accepts defeat.
IOT: How about the second promise of withdrawing US troops by April 2010?
Obama: In Baghdad we have the biggest embassy in the world with close to 1000 employees. We have strategic interests and US friends to be protected. I can promise the Iraqis that we will withdraw most, but not all of US troops by that date.
IOT: What do you say to the fact that Arabs and Muslims were disappointed following the appointment of an Israeli reserve army officer, Mr Rahm Emanuel, as your chief of staff?
Obama: The Israelis play an important role in US politics. Successful US politicians have to play the game by the rules.
IOT: Does this mean that you are going to ask the fanatically pro-Palestinian Iraqis to recognise Israel?
Obama: The Israelis are already in Iraq helping us by running a number of important programs and agencies. As a matter of fact, part of our embassy in Baghdad is currently occupied by Israelis.
IOT: What message do you have for the Iraqis?
Obama: I believe that the Iraqis will benefit if they put their past anti-US grievances aside, understand political realities of the area, help the US to isolate Iran, drop all opposition to Israeli recognition and assist the US plans for the area.
IOT: Thank you Mr Obama. For Iraqis, Arabs and Muslims, its is back to square one and "peace comes from the power of the gun".
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Adolf Hitler thought that he will exterminate the Jews but ended up with a bullet in his head while the Jews used his atrocities to establish a Jewish state complete with nuclear warheads.
G.W. Bush marched on Baghdad to Israeli drums and hoped to re-draw the Middle East map favouring the State of Israel. After over five years, America, Israeli and US allies are bankrupt while Iraq may emerge as a regional power the way vietnam did following the defeat of America.
Like Hitler hate for Jews, Ariel Sharon was enjoying killing Palestinians hoping they will disappear from the face of the earth. He started his killing at the age of 14 and took part in most massacres from Deir Yassin in 1947 to Sabra and Shatilla in 1982. And like Hitler's failure to exterminate the Jews, the Palestinians will survive to form a strong state sooner than later. Bush and Sharon have repeated Hitler's mistake.
Adnan Darwash, Iraq Occupation Times
It is rather easy for historians to make an analogy between the present-day United States of America and the defunct Nazi Germany. In both countries high military expenditures, bullying of others and wars on many fronts was the norm. What America lacked was a person like Goebels who can mesmerise his audience with high-powered phrases. It seems that US power-centres including the Jewish Lobby, the military industry and the Oil Cartles were disappointed with the dull performance and un-popular G.W. Bush and went to support eloquent Obama in order to sell their outdated and aggressive policies.
With Joe Biden, Hilary Clinton, Robert Gates and Rahm Emanuel one can’t expect anything but more Israeli intransigence, a stalemate in Iraq, a return to tension with Iran and more blood-shed in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Such environments, are conducive to more violence by anti-USraeli forces. To the disillusionment of many, inside and outside America, Obama will be exactly as Al-Zawahiri has correctly identified as no more than an obedient “House Negro”.
I have just read that the American liberals are unhappy with Obama's appointments of conservative Hawks to his cabinet. I did mistrust Obama from the beginning and so far I am not wrong.
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IOT: Iraq Occupation Times
IOT: Mr Obama, did you hear about the Iraqi celebrations in the streets of Baghdad after you won on 03.11.08 as people were shouting “Hear us Bush, Insane, We like Barak Hussein”?
Obama: No, I didn’t hear this but I could imagine people's reaction to the news.
IOT: What was the most single factor that contributed to your victory?
Obama: It was Bush failure on many fronts.
IOT: In your election campaign you said that the US should have never been in Iraq and that you promised to withdraw US troops with 16 months of your inauguration, or by April 2010. Let us take the first promise. Do you intend to apologise and pay the Iraqis since the US had no reason to be in Baghdad let alone to kill the people and to destroy their property?
Obama: The love for wars is inherently American. We love military parades and glorify our war veterans coming victorious from war fronts. An apology may be interpreted as a defeat. No superpower accepts defeat.
IOT: How about the second promise of withdrawing US troops by April 2010?
Obama: In Baghdad we have the biggest embassy in the world with close to 1000 employees. We have strategic interests and US friends to be protected. I can promise the Iraqis that we will withdraw most, but not all of US troops by that date.
IOT: What do you say to the fact that Arabs and Muslims were disappointed following the appointment of an Israeli reserve army officer, Mr Rahm Emanuel, as your chief of staff?
Obama: The Israelis play an important role in US politics. Successful US politicians have to play the game by the rules.
IOT: Does this mean that you are going to ask the fanatically pro-Palestinian Iraqis to recognise Israel?
Obama: The Israelis are already in Iraq helping us by running a number of important programs and agencies. As a matter of fact, part of our embassy in Baghdad is currently occupied by Israelis.
IOT: What message do you have for the Iraqis?
Obama: I believe that the Iraqis will benefit if they put their past anti-US grievances aside, understand political realities of the area, help the US to isolate Iran, drop all opposition to Israeli recognition and assist the US plans for the area.
IOT: Thank you Mr Obama. For Iraqis, Arabs and Muslims, its is back to square one and "peace comes from the power of the gun".
-----------
Adolf Hitler thought that he will exterminate the Jews but ended up with a bullet in his head while the Jews used his atrocities to establish a Jewish state complete with nuclear warheads.
G.W. Bush marched on Baghdad to Israeli drums and hoped to re-draw the Middle East map favouring the State of Israel. After over five years, America, Israeli and US allies are bankrupt while Iraq may emerge as a regional power the way vietnam did following the defeat of America.
Like Hitler hate for Jews, Ariel Sharon was enjoying killing Palestinians hoping they will disappear from the face of the earth. He started his killing at the age of 14 and took part in most massacres from Deir Yassin in 1947 to Sabra and Shatilla in 1982. And like Hitler's failure to exterminate the Jews, the Palestinians will survive to form a strong state sooner than later. Bush and Sharon have repeated Hitler's mistake.
Adnan Darwash, Iraq Occupation Times
Bomber kills 70 at restaurant outside Kirkuk
Deadliest attack in 6 months
By ROBERT H. REID | Associated Press Writer
6:42 PM CST, December 11, 2008
BAGHDAD (AP) — A suicide bomber killed at least 55 people Thursday in a packed restaurant near the northern city of Kirkuk where Kurdish officials and Arab tribal leaders were trying to reconcile their differences over control of the oil-rich region. The brazen attack — the deadliest in Iraq in six months — occurred at a time of rising tension between Kurds and Arabs over oil, political power and Kirkuk.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack at the upscale Abdullah restaurant, which was crowded with families celebrating the end of the four-day Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha. The U.S. blamed the blast on al-Qaida, which uses suicide bombings as its signature attack.
Police Brig. Gen. Sarhad Qadir, who gave the casualty figures, said the dead included at least five women and three children. About 120 people were wounded.
It appeared, however, that the target was a reconciliation meeting between Arab tribal leaders and officials of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the Kurdish party of President Jalal Talabani, on ways to defuse tension among Arabs, Kurds and Turkomen in the Kirkuk area.
Kurds want to annex Kirkuk and surrounding Tamim province into their self-ruled region of northern Iraq. Most Turkomen and Arabs want the province to remain under central government control, fearing the Kurds would discriminate against them.
Iraq's parliament exempted the Kirkuk area from next month's provincial elections because the different ethnic groups could not agree on how to share power.
A guard at the entrance said the blast occurred moments after a man parked his car and walked inside. He was not searched because the guards had not been told to frisk customers, the guard said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of fears for his own safety.
At the city's main hospital, family members wept and screamed in the blood-smeared corridors as doctors tried to save lives. Many victims were horrifically wounded, and mangled bodies lay unattended on the emergency room floor.
Salam Abdullah, a 45-year-old Kurd, said he was having lunch with his wife when they saw shrapnel flying through the room.
"I held my wife and led her outside the place. As we were leaving, I saw dead bodies soaked with blood and huge destruction," he said. Abdullah was wounded in his head and left hand; his wife suffered head and chest injuries.
"I do not know how a group like al-Qaida claiming to be Islamic plans to attack and kill people on sacred days like Eid," said Awad al-Jubouri, 53, one of the tribal leaders at the luncheon. "We were only meeting to discuss our problems with the Kurds and trying to impose peace among Muslims in Kirkuk."
The attack was the deadliest in Iraq since June 7, when a car bomb killed 63 people in a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad.
U.S. officials say attacks are down 80 percent nationwide since March, though major bombings still occur. A double truck bombing killed 17 people on Dec. 4 in the former Sunni insurgent stronghold of Fallujah west of Baghdad.
It was unclear what effect Thursday's attack would have on reconciliation efforts in Kirkuk, since the victims included both Arabs and Kurds. Mass attacks against civilians have prompted many Sunnis to turn against the insurgency.
But ethnic competition is intense in Kirkuk and elsewhere in the volatile north, the most ethnically mixed part of the country.
The U.N. mission, which has been trying to defuse tension in Kirkuk, urged community leaders "to demonstrate responsible leadership and to urge restraint by their followers at this difficult time."
In a joint statement, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and the top U.S. commander Gen. Ray Odierno condemned the bombing and accused al-Qaida of trying to "divide Iraqi communities" and halt the progress toward "a stable, inclusive and tolerant society."
U.S. commanders have long believed that resolving differences among the ethnic communities is the key to defeating the insurgents in the north because al-Qaida and the dozen other Sunni extremist groups there exploit those tensions.
But progress has been difficult because of deep-seated suspicions and conflicting claims on Kirkuk, the center of Iraq's vast northern oil fields which the Kurds have long wanted to bring into their autonomous region.
Kirkuk has been hit by at least 41 suicide attacks since May 2005, according to an Associated Press tally. The deadliest attack occurred July 17, 2007, when a suicide truck bomber struck a Kurdish political office, killing at least 80 and wounding more than 180.
Iraq's constitution provides for a referendum to be held in Kirkuk to determine whether it would be annexed to the Kurdish regional administration. But the vote has been repeatedly postponed because of fears that the balloting would worsen ethnic tension.
At the same time, relations between the Kurds and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki have worsened because of differences over control of oil resources, Kirkuk and power-sharing.
A draft law to regulate the oil industry has been stalled for nearly two years because the Kurds withdrew their support, maintaining it gave too much control to the national government.
The Kurds also want a bigger say in decision-making within the ruling coalition.
Al-Maliki has accused the Kurds of breaking the law by sending Kurdish troops outside the self-ruled region, ostensibly to protect Kurdish communities in central government territory.
___
Associated Press reporters Yahya Barzanji in Sulaimaniyah, Sameer N. Yacoub in Baghdad and the AP News Research Center in New York contributed to this report.
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class="categorypage_headline IraqSide">IraqSide:Developments
class="postcallout">Update
class="postheadline">Witness: Kirkuk Blast Killed at Least 70
class="postsubheadline">Man who helped pull survivors out of the scene says official numbers too low
class="postbyline"> Posted 11 hr. 12 min. ago
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class="postphotocredit">Kirkuk Photo: Daniel W. Smith
BAGHDAD – There was a suicide bomb in a popular restaurant in Kirkuk on Thursday, with official numbers of dead between 40 and 50, and as many as 100 wounded.
Iraqslogger spoke to a witness, an English teacher, who requested that his name not be used. He heard the huge explosion from down the street. He ran to the Abdallah restaurant, which is frequented by political figures, police chiefs, military commanders, and other VIPs, to find almost complete destruction. He reported seeing much blood, and body after body on the floor.
He helped carry wounded people to safety, and was present at the site, throughout the preliminary investigation. He agreed with the estimation of 100 wounded, but insisted that he saw at least 70 dead.
It is a commonly accepted notion throughout Iraq that official figures of dead and wounded in such incidents are usually if not always deflated, in the interest of showing that security is under control.
There is speculation that the target of the blast was a group of local council members at the restaurant from Huweija, just outside of Kirkuk. Aswat al-Iraq quotes Brig. Sarhad Qader, the Kirkuk Districts’ Police Department chief as saying, “There’s a possibility that news of the presence of Huweija council members inside the restaurant were leaked to armed groups like al-Qaeda or Ansar al-Islam.” On Wednesday night, the Iraqi Al-Rafadin satellite television channel reported that Ansar al-Aslam claimed responsibility for destroying an American humvee in Hawija.
The English teacher said, “All the city is stressed and confused by the bombing. It has had a really big effect on people.”
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KIRKUK, Iraq – Muslim clerics appealed for calm Friday, one day after a suicide bomber killed 55 people — including women and children — at a local restaurant in the deadliest attack in Iraq in six months.
The attack appeared aimed at a meeting of local Kurdish, Arab and Turkomen leaders who had gathered at the Abdullah restaurant to discuss ways to reduce ethnic tension in this oil-rich city.
But many of the victims had simply come to the restaurant with their families to celebrate the end of the four-day Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha.
"Yesterday, the terrorists killed innocent people regardless of their religious and ethnic background," Serwan Ahmed, a Kurdish preacher, told 900 worshippers at the Iskan mosque.
"Thus, all the groups living in Kirkuk should be united and work together to enhance peace and solidarity. We must deprive the terrorists from the chance to create more tension in the city," he added.
At another mosque, preacher Hussein Zangana said al-Qaida "murdered" people who were simply enjoying the religious holiday.
"The terrorists are trying to kill innocent people whether they are Kurds or Arabs," he said.
Most of the victims were buried late Thursday. In keeping with local customs, neighbors of the dead joined families of the victims in digging graves in city cemeteries.
By Friday morning, however, markets and restaurants were open again. Black banners hung on many walls, serving as a grim reminder of the bombing.
The deadly attack occurred at a time of tension between Kurds and Arabs over Kirkuk, the center of Iraq's northern oil fields. Kurds want to annex Kirkuk and surrounding Tamim province into their self-ruled region of northern Iraq.
Most Turkomen and Arabs want the province to remain under central government control, fearing the Kurds would discriminate against them.
Iraq's parliament exempted the Kirkuk area from provincial elections to be held on Jan. 31 because the different ethnic groups could not agree on how to share power.
President Jalal Talabani's party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, sponsored the reconciliation luncheon. Talabani had planned to meet with the group later in the day.
The president, who is Kurdish, later issued a statement saying that the "terrorists and their groups" would never "destroy the great security gains achieved across the country."
Among the dead was a locally popular Turkomen singer who was killed along with his three children, newly married brother and sister-in-law.
Kanaan Mohammed Saleh, 39, who hosted a show called "The Sweet Voice" on a Kurdish television channel, had been invited to the restaurant to attend the reconciliation meeting.
He took his wife, Bushra, three young children and his newly married brother and sister-in-law. All were killed except the wife, who was seriously injured, according to the singer's brother Karim Mohammed Saleh.
"We never expected such a thing to happen, especially at a restaurant outside the city," the brother said as he received mourners at a funeral tent. "After this loss, life has become without meaning or taste for me. I cannot cope with this disaster."
Lt. Col. David Doherty, spokesman for U.S. forces in northern Iraq, said the bomber used a suicide vest packed with metal to maximize casualties. The bomber apparently detonated the vest near a fountain at the center of the main dining area where most of the people were killed, he said.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but U.S. officials suspected al-Qaida in Iraq. Two other groups that operate in the north, Ansar al-Sunnah and Ansar al-Islam, have used suicide attacks during the five-year war.
Provincial police chief Brig. Gen. Jamal Tahir said the identity of the bomber and details about how he managed to pass the checkpoints leading to the restaurant were under investigation.
"We know that al-Qaida is always trying to find and make use of weak points in any security system," he said.
___
Associated Press writer Sameer N. Yacoub in Baghdad contributed to this report.
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IraqSide:Buzz
The Latest
Hawija Official: "I Was Target of Kirkuk Blast"
Provincial Arab Leader Accuses "Foreign and Internal Agents" in Deadly Attack
Newsmatique.
Husayn Ali-Salih, head of the Arab Unity political bloc in Kirkuk province and president of the Hawija municipal council.
As a cloud of uncertainty hangs over the circumstances of yesterday's deadly suicide bombing that killed over 50 people north of Kirkuk city, one local official who was present at the scene said that he was the intended target of the blast.
Husayn Ali Salih, the head of the Hawija municipal council and head of the Arab Unity Bloc in Kirkuk province, insisted in an interview Friday that he had been the intended target of the blast, Radio Sawa reports in Arabic.
The explosion at a restaurant on the road between Kirkuk and Arbil city targeted him personally, Salih said in the interview with the US-funded broadcaster.
The purpose of the meeting was to pursue rapprochement between the political forces in Kirkuk province, he said.
"Five of my guards were wounded as a result" of the blast the Hawija official said.
Salih accused "foreign and internal intelligence agents (mukhabarat) as lying behind the attack," without specifying further details
Hawija is a predominantly Sunni Arab district of Kirkuk province located about 30 miles southwest of Kirkuk city.
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Blasts in N. Iraqi oil city kill up to 25 -sources
19 May 2011 10:28
Source: reuters // Reuters
110519-kirkuk
Flames are seen at the Baba Gurgur oil field in Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, August 10, 2010. REUTERS/Thaier al-Sudani
* Three bombs explode near government buildings
* Volatile city of Kirkuk is potential flashpoint
(Updates toll, adds details, quotes and background)
By Mustafa Mahmoud
KIRKUK, Iraq, May 19 (Reuters) - Three bombs targeting Iraqi security forces exploded near government buildings in the centre of Iraq's disputed northern oil city of Kirkuk on Thursday, killing up to 25 people and injuring scores, sources said.
Kirkuk, whose population is a volatile mix of Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen and others, lies amid some of the world's richest oil reserves and is a potential flashpoint as U.S. troops prepare to withdraw from Iraq by the end of the year, more than eight years after the invasion that removed Saddam Hussein.
A small bomb stuck to a police officer's car exploded near police headquarters, followed by two big car bomb blasts as security forces and rescuers rushed to the scene during the attack officials blamed on al Qaeda affiliates.
"I was on my way into police headquarters and suddenly I fell to the ground, but did not feel anything because I lost consciousness," said Talib Jabar, a policeman whose hands and feet were injured. "When I woke up I found myself in the hospital with doctors around me and I was bleeding everywhere."
Television footage showed the twisted and burnt wreckage of cars in the street as police officers picked through the debris. A local hospital was filled with the injured.
"There were three explosions that targeted the security forces near the local government buildings," Hassan Turan, the head of the Kirkuk provincial council, told Reuters.
"The first was a sticky bomb on a car of a police officer, followed by a car bomb targeting the police who gathered near the car," Turan said. "Afterwards there was a second car bomb that exploded in the same place."
Turan put the death toll at 17 with dozens injured but an Interior Ministry source and a hospital source said there were 25 dead and 68 wounded.
"We expect the death toll to rise because most of the wounded are serious cases," the hospital source said.
AL QAEDA ALLIES
The third bomb, which went off not far from the first two, targeted Colonel Oras Mohammed, the head of Kirkuk's counter-terrorism unit, the Interior Ministry source said. He was not hurt but four of his bodyguards were killed.
Major-General Jamal Tahir, the police chief in Kirkuk province, blamed al Qaeda in Iraq for the attack.
"It is a joint operation between al Qaeda and the armed groups allied with them ... it is an al Qaeda technique," he said. "Certainly, al Qaeda is behind today's explosions."
Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, is at the heart of a long dispute between Iraq's central government and the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, which lays claim to the city and its oil riches.
U.S. military commanders consider Kirkuk a potential trouble spot as they withdraw about 47,000 remaining American troops from Iraq by Dec. 31 under a security pact between the two countries.
Violence has declined sharply since the height of Iraq's sectarian conflict four years ago but bombings and other attacks remain a daily occurrence as Iraq battles a weakened Sunni Islamist insurgency and Shi'ite militias.
Iraqi forces have been on high alert for revenge attacks since U.S. commandos killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan earlier this month. Iraq has been a key al Qaeda battlefield since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. (Additional reporting by Muhanad Mohammed and Aseel Kami in Baghdad; Writing by Jim Loney; editing by Andrew Dobbie)
Monday, December 08, 2008
Muqtada al-Sadr announced new Militia
As the 'Eid al-Adha holiday, one of two major Muslim holidays, begins on Monday, papers are reporting on yet another “reorganization” of the Mahdi Army by Shi'a leader Muqtada al-Sadr. Since 2003, Muqtada’s movement and militia have undergone a consecutive series of restructurings, reorganizations and purges, with little evidence on the ground to show the effect of these projects. As a result, the militia previously known as the Mahdi Army has been given a new name after every such attempt: this time, Az-Zaman reported, Muqtada al-Sadr announced that the activist wing in his movement will now be known as the “Mumahhidoun,” which will acquire a “cultural” character, aiming to educate the young activists and “combat the secular currents.”
Judging from the newspaper report, the standards for admission into the “Mumahhidoun” are a bit strange for an ex-militia: Sadrist volunteers will have to progress through intensive educational courses, each lasting several months, before being accepted as a full member of the movement. Sadrist sources said that 300 “students” have been so far accepted out of 6000 applicants. Az-Zaman quoted sources who reiterated claims to the effect that Sadr wants to recreate the Lebanese Hizbollah model in Iraq with a bottom-up approach, hence the focus on producing disciplined and professional activists and purging unwanted elements.
In other news, Pan-Arab al-Hayat said that, with the deadline for the provincial elections approaching, electoral publicity and posters are now part of the urban Iraqi landscape. Notably, the paper pointed out, Sadrists have not posted any electoral material of their own, which confirms that Muqtada will not involve his movement in the elections directly, but will content “to support lists and personalities that he approves of.” The paper said that the lists of ex-Prime Minister Ibraheem al-Ja'fari seem to flourish in pro-Sadrist area, an indication of Ja'fari’s unwritten alliance with the Sadrists in the coming elections.
Meanwhile, IED attacks, especially against Iraqi security forces, continue to increase. Az-Zaman international said that over 34 individuals were injured in IED blast in Ba'quba, including the operational commander in the Diyala province and the governor of the city of Ba'quba. Another nine Iraqis (including two policemen) were reportedly injured in Mosul when a grenade was thrown at a Police patrol.
Al-'Arabiya news channel relayed comments by the vice-President Tariq al-Hashimi in which he volunteered to abandon his post in exchange for an ending to sectarian power-sharing deals in the political system. Al-Hashimi was quoted as saying that the sectarian political arrangement instituted after 2003 “has later proven its failure, and we do not have many more opportunities to waste.”
On a different theme, London-based al-Quds al-'Arabi said that the Kurdistan Regional Government is finally easing restrictions on Iraqis from outside the province and who wish to enter or live in the autonomous Region. One of the oft-criticized measures of the Kurdistan government was its imposition of stringent measures, including a required recommendation by a local guarantor(preferably an employee of the regional government,) and the obtainment of a residence permit – despite the fact that these would be Iraqis wishing to move within their own country.
These clearly unconstitutional measures were often invoked by PM al-Maliki during his recent clashes with Kurdish leaders, the paper noted, which probably prompted Kurdish officials to ease the restrictions in order to divert these criticisms.
