THE IRAQI GOVERNING COUNCIL TOURS THE MIDDLE EAST

Let's see how the Arab League responds now.

"Our priority is to restore security, fill the political gap and meet the needs of the country and people. In this regard we insist on the Iraqisation of security... but we will not be like the buried regime of Saddam Hussain, who had built up formidable security organs just to protect himself and intimidate the people," he said.

"On the contrary, our concern is to protect Iraqis and preserve their dignity. We hope to build a police force of 70,000 and reinforce our border guards. We do not mind that we get weapons and other types of support from this or that country, but we must stick to the Iraqisation of our security… we must not compromise on this issue."

Hey, we're behind you on that issue, my friend.

WHAT THE PAPERS DON'T TELL YOU

Excerpt from a letter from Baghdad.

The news that doesn't get reported in the main papers of media organizations is all the good that is going on over here. For the first time in decades, public executions, the torture of children in front of their parents, and the killing of people who might disagree with the Iraqi government are no longer taking place. The rape of school girls as young as thirteen are no longer conducted in the son's palace and the oil for food program is actually going for food for the population, rather then the palaces for a select few. I can tell you from being in one of Sadism's reported 70 palaces, (seventeen just in Baghdad) that the amount of money spent just in marble for the floors would have fed and clothed hundreds if not thousands.

For the first time in decades as well, clean drinking water is being supplied to the larger cities in the south and the electricity and power grid left largely undamaged by coalition bombs but neglected by the Iraqi government is starting up again and supplying power to areas that have not had any in years.

Medical supplies, food aid, employment, free press, representative government and schools opening back up are things that are going on over here but for what ever the reason those very good things are under-reported in Western news papers. I guess, "Thousands getting clean drinking water," which happens to be a frequent occurrence, doesn't sell as many newspapers as "soldier being killed?" which is a much less frequent happening.

MISTAKEN IDENTITY

Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana, 41, was videotaping outside the prison hours after the attack when U.S. soldiers shot him. He was the 17th news organization employee to be killed since the war began.

The videotape in Dana's camera showed two U.S. tanks coming toward him. Shots were fired, apparently from the tanks, and Dana fell to the ground. His body was taken away by a U.S. helicopter.

''We saw a tank 50 meters away, I heard six shots and Mazen fell to the ground,'' Dana's driver Munzer Abbas said.

One of the soldiers started shouting at us, but when he knew we were journalists, he softened. One of the soldiers told us they thought Mazen carrying a rocket-propelled grenade.''

''There were many journalists around. They knew we were journalists. This was not an accident,'' Abbas said.

A U.S. military official said on condition of anonymity that American soldiers saw Dana from a distance and mistook him for an Iraqi guerrilla, so they opened fire. When the soldiers came closer, they realized Dana was a journalist, the official said.

''This is clearly another tragic incident, it is extremely regrettable,'' Central Command spokesman Sgt. Maj. Lewis Matson said.

Tragic, indeed. But also the natural result of troops left standing in the line of fire for months.

Watch for the zeal and anger with which the press reports this, the death of one of their own.

And compare that with how they report the death of soldiers. "Two more soldiers died in Baghdad today", as if noting the arrival of robins in the spring.

And some will say it was deliberate...which of course, it wasn't.

"A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE"

As if they have some. Sheesh.

A new group of resistance fighters, the Iraqi National Islamic Resistance Movement, said in a video aired on the Al-Jazeera television network that they would fight the occupying troops even if the US-led coalition helped Iraq recover from war.

“This resistance is not a reaction to the American provocations against the Iraqi people or to the shortage of services, as some analysts believe ... but to kick out the occupiers as a matter of principle,” a man read from a statement.

He sat with several other men holding grenade launchers and Kalashnikov automatic rifles. All had their faces covered with chequered headscarves.

And of course Al Jazeera, the all terrorist network, helps these cretins get their message out.

A FORCE TOO SMALL

Sobering forecasts for the US forces.

As the issue simmers inside the Pentagon, a rising chorus outside — of auditors, defense analysts and advocates for military families — suggest the administration already is late in pressing Congress for more people, given the dangerous and daunting contingencies U.S. troops now face.

A new General Accounting Office report (03-670) looks at the strain on U.S. forces just from new domestic missions since 9/11, and criticizes Defense officials for delaying force structure changes to address homeland security needs until the next Quadrennial Defense Review in 2005...

Meanwhile, the pace of operations for units involved in homeland defense is high enough that thousands of military personnel are exceeding personnel tempo ceilings set by Congress to protect troop morale. As a result, GAO warned, they face “future personnel retention problems.”

Michael O’Hanlon, a defense analyst at the Brookings Institution, studied the troop rotation plan for Iraq, which would maintain current force levels using replacement brigades that will serve there for up to a year. Despite that hardship, reminiscent of combat tours in Vietnam, O’Hanlon said the Army’s rotation base could be exhausted by late 2004.

“That means we will have to take the unthinkable step of sending back to Iraq people who returned from there a year before,” said O’Hanlon. “Many American soldiers, as dedicated as they are, will choose not to re-enlist rather than accept such an unpalatable — and frankly, unfair — demand upon them and their families.”

RIGHT NEXT DOOR

BAGHDAD, Iraq — U.S. teams all over Iraq are turning up arms caches, but rarely does a unit find a huge stash of dangerous weapons so close to home that the devices could have killed them and their buddies as they slept in their cots.

But that’s exactly what the “Hunter” platoon did Thursday. Acting on a tip from an informer, the platoon found a major weapons stash right outside its perimeter.

Col. Rob Baker, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Armored Division, said Friday that the Hunters found 123 pounds of C-4 explosive, 47 rocket-propelled grenades, seven grenade launchers, 3,000 rounds of 7.62 mm ammunition, machine guns, AK-47s and 20 pounds of gunpowder — all neatly wrapped and recently stored in holes dug in a palm grove outside one of Baker’s forward operating bases.

“Basically, the guys that found this saved lives,” said Sgt. 1st Class Donald Applegarth, the 2nd Brigade’s fire support noncommissioned officer.

Thousands of arms caches are in Iraq, so many that soldiers say “the entire country is one big armory.”

In Baghdad alone, at least 145 major weapons stashes are left to be emptied by the U.S. military, down from 900 that were known to exist when the U.S. military first came into Iraq, according to Brig. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, commander of the 1st Armored Division.

CENTCOM NEWS RELEASE

August 17, 2003
Release Number: 03-08-36

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

REPORTER KILLED NEAR ABU GHYRIAB PRISON

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Coalition forces engaged an individual in the vicinity of the Abu Ghyriab prison Aug 17. The individual was later identified as a reporter.

The individual was evacuated to the 28th Combat Support Hospital and was
pronounced dead on arrival.

The individual's name and organization are being withheld pending the
notification of next of kin.

The incident is currently under investigation.

MONDAY, AUGUST 18th. The 99th day of CPT Patti's Deployment.

Keeping my eyes on the road, I see you.
Keeping my hands on the wheel, I hold you
99 miles from L.A.
I kiss you, I miss you, please be there

(A. Hammond/H. David)

HOT

I've been in the region a month and I'm still trying to deal with, even comprehend, life in what simply must be one of the hottest places on earth.

Here's what it's like:

A can of Coke blew up in the tent I was sleeping in. Nothing unusual about that when it tops 130 degrees every day -- in the shade -- and there's not an air conditioner in sight...

I lucked out and was invited into an air-conditioned office downtown to relax for a few minutes that day. It was the first real air conditioning I'd felt in more than two weeks, and it was glorious for about 10 minutes.

Then I had to get back outside, into the heat. I couldn't stand the cold. I was shivering. The thermometer said it was 78 degrees in the room. A young American soldier returned from a week of emergency leave in Illinois and talked about home, where the temperature was in the upper 80s.

"I had to wear a jacket," she said. "I froze. I couldn't get used to 80- or 90-degree weather there."

Others repeated similar stories.

Good Lord, I thought. My body is actually adjusting to this. My insides expect to be cooked every day.

Soldiers tell stories of dizziness and of passing out face-down into their baked beans in the dining hall.

Medics at one unit report treating a dozen cases of kidney stones a day. It's because of dehydration.

THE TRUTH ABOUT "ARAB BROTHERHOOD" ON THE STREETS OF IRAQ

But here's what is new and will have a big impact on inter-Arab politics, if Iraq can be rebuilt: Many Iraqis today express real resentment for the other Arab regimes, and even toward the Palestinians, for how they let themselves be bought off by Saddam. They feel that Saddam used the Iraqi people's oil wealth to buy popularity for himself in the Arab street — by giving Palestinians and other Arab students scholarships and nice apartments in Baghdad, and by paying off all sorts of Arab nationalist writers and newspapers.

And then these same Arab intellectuals and media gave Saddam a free pass to torture, repress and starve his own people. In other words, "Arabism," in the minds of many Iraqis, is the cloak that Saddam hid behind to imprison them for 35 years, and now that they can say that out loud, they are saying it.

You'd never know this from watching Arab satellite television like Al Jazeera. Because although these stations have 21st-century graphics, they're still dominated by 1950's Nasserite political correctness — which insists that dignity comes from how you resist the foreigner, even if he's come as a liberator, not by what you build yourself.

But the truth will come out. "Iraq is going to be the Arab libido," a Lebanese aid worker in Baghdad said to me. "You know, when you have those naughty dreams that you can't tell anyone about and then suddenly you're on the couch talking about them — that's going to be Iraq." It's going to be where all the taboos that are not supposed to be spoken, get spoken. Indeed, they already are.

Hassan Fattah is a young Iraqi-American journalist who has returned to Baghdad to start a terrific newspaper called Iraq Today (www.iraq-today.com). Before the fall of Baghdad, though, he worked as a reporter in the West Bank. "I sympathize with the Palestinian cause," he said, "but after the fall of Baghdad, when I told Palestinians that I was an Iraqi, they would say to me, `You sold us out. You sold Iraq for nothing.' I was called a traitor. The average Palestinian wanted to see us fight — to resist — America, and the American `occupation,' because that is what they understood."

Of course, Iraqis want to run their own government as soon as possible, said Mr. Fattah — but not in order to join the old Arab nationalist parade, but rather to focus on themselves. "Iraqis know Saddam was a fake," he explained. "His Arabism came at their expense. For Iraqis it was not Arabism, it was torture and subjugation. [Now] there is this feeling that the Arab world has lashed out at us because we did not `resist' the Americans. It was because Iraqis have learned the lessons of phony Arabism — that Saddam could send $35,000 to the families of [Palestinian] suicide bombers, while leaving his own people starving and living on two dollars a day.

"That's why there is a dramatic gulf now between Iraqis and a lot of other Arabs. Young people here want to move on. In 10 years, this will be a very different place. If I can be a part of it, it will be like Hong Kong or Korea — but with an Iraqi face."

Read the whole story here. It is a great piece.

HOORAY

The US army said on Saturday it had found a weapons cache with thousands of rounds of ammunition near the flashpoint Iraqi town of Ramadi, 100 kilometers (60 miles) west of Baghdad.
Soldiers from the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment "found a weapons cache with thousands of rounds of ammunition" eight kilometers (five miles) east of Ramadi on Wednesday, a statement said.

The unit was on a reconnaissance mission when it found the cache.

"The unit found a 120mm mortar round near the road during its mission. They subsequently found another 120mm round, prompting the troop to conduct a more intense search," it said.

US forces regularly come under attack in the Ramadi area, which is considered a stronghold of sympathizers of Saddam Hussein's ousted regime.

WHY?

Six Iraqis have been killed and 59 others injured in a mortar attack on Baghdad prison.

The US military said three mortar rounds hit the Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad.

A spokesman said: "Three mortar rounds impacted the scene. Three prisoners died on impact and three others died in hospital."

SABOTAGE

Not helpful.

BAGHDAD, Aug. 17 — A major water pipeline in northern Baghdad was breached on Sunday, flooding nearby streets, and residents said they heard a blast early in the morning and saw a car speeding from the scene.

Officials said it would take at least eight hours to repair the pipeline and that the water supply to areas of northern Baghdad had been cut off.

Local residents said they had been woken by a loud blast, and that the pipeline appeared to have been attacked by explosives.

The efforts of the U.S.-led administration to rebuild the country's decrepit oil industry and restore basic services have been dogged by sabotage.

The newly reopened oil export pipeline from northern Iraq to Turkey has been shut down after a fire that officials blamed on a bomb attack.

Thamir Ghadban, Iraq's U.S.-appointed de facto oil minister, said on Saturday it would be several days before the oil pipeline to Turkey would be operational again.

SADDAM'S THIRD SON?

The rumors are everywhere...but then, so are the rumors that the GIs sunglasses can see through clothes.

In a country where the regime obsessively controlled information for 35 years and contact with the outside world was tightly limited, rumor flourished as a popular, if dangerous, pastime. When the regime collapsed and at last people could pass on rumors without fear of being arrested or killed, the pastime blossomed into a full-scale national sport.

Every day absurd stories pass from mouth to ear and appear in the dozens of unreliable new newspapers: The Jews are buying up Baghdad; the American soldiers are all foreign mercenaries; a leading pro-American Iraqi politician blew up the Jordanian Embassy this month. But amid the nonsense, the Ali rumor lingers with a tenacity that is both uncommon and potentially destabilizing.

Even in the West, Ali's existence has been widely reported as fact.

Now Hussein's "hopes rest on Ali, the precocious son of Samira Shahbandar, his second wife," Britain's Sunday Telegraph declared after the killing of Uday and Qusay. The two were from Hussein's first marriage.

Ali "is believed to be in Switzerland," The Washington Post reported late last month in a story that also appeared in Newsday.

"And by the way, Saddam has another son with Samira, a young man by the name of Ali, who again, is out there, and nobody knows where he is, either," respected Iraq commentator Kenneth Pollack said on CNN on Aug. 1.

The Associated Press, Britain's Sunday Times and several authoritative books on Iraq and Hussein have reported Ali's existence as fact.

Other news organizations, some highly reputed, some less so, have offered varied details. One said Hussein's remaining son was called Seif and was 20, not 16. Others had Ali in training to run his father's security services or managing a sports club. Several recent stories have him hiding out with his father in Iraq as the American forces search for the former president.

All, or none, may be true. Time magazine, for example, recently reported that a former valet and a former secretary of Hussein both deny that Ali exists.

On the streets and in the homes and offices of Baghdad, there is only confusion and contradiction.

MY NEIGHBOR

Steve lives in the apartment above mine...or to be more accurate, his wife Amy lives there. Steve, like CPT Patti, is in Baghdad.

So is his brother.

"As the 1st Armored Division snaked across Iraq, Sam's humvee was rammed by a five-ton truck (from the same division)," Barbara Winslow wrote in a letter to the Morning Sentinel and Kennebec Journal. As Sam and his crew scrambled to fix the humvee, Winslow said, an M-113 Armored Personnel Carrier pulled up to the rescue.

"Sam could see it was from the 16th Engineers," her letter went on. "Stepping around the front, he called up to the soldier in the hatch:

"Do you know Lt. Winslow?"

"The soldier looked down at him and said: 'Sam?'"

Help was already on the way, and the brothers snatched just 10 minutes together before the charge to Baghdad swept them apart again. They have not met since.

ANOTHER REASON SHE CAN'T COME HOME SOON ENOUGH

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Army Spc. Christiansen Cory was talking with another soldier when he felt something smack his forearm.

“We were standing around and heard a pssssst,” he said. “It felt just like a big rock had been thrown at me.”

But when Cory looked down, he discovered it wasn’t a rock that hit him. At his feet was a bullet from a Kalashnikov rifle. It was still warm.

The round likely came from an Iraqi who fired it into the air in celebration of a wedding, the birth of a child, or, for nothing in particular.

Every day, sometimes several times an hour, an Iraqi somewhere in the capital is shooting his rifle into the sky because he is happy about something. It is Iraqis’ version of a party noisemaker.

The only problem is, what goes up must come down. And sometimes the bullets they fire into the air fall and hit people.

Cory, a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division, was lucky. The bullet left only a welt that disappeared in a few days.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 17th. The 98th day of CPT Patii's deployment.

READ ABOUT KATIE

The apple of one man's eye goes to Iraq.

Their mission faced early turbulence. During a stop in the Azores Islands in the eastern Atlantic Ocean, Katie mysteriously vanished. A navigator arriving on another plane found Katie in a hangar, folded and defaced with vulgar graffiti.

"Not a very auspicious beginning," Arnold conceded.

Cleaned up and straightened out, Katie made it to a number of countries in the Persian Gulf, where she was the centerpiece of hundreds of photographs. Wearing her Air Devil's Inn hat, she was perched on a dismembered tank turret, in the cockpit of a wrecked plane and in the hold of the C-130. She eventually tagged along on more than 20 combat missions, qualifying her for a ribbon, Williams said.

Among the photographs is one showing the beaming blonde model holding two cardboard beers in the doorway of an Iraqi airport, just below an image of Saddam Hussein that had been obscured by a circle and slash.

The cardboard cutout was signed by dozens of soldiers from around the world, including a group of Lithuanian troops, who wrote a paragraph along Katie's midriff.

"I have no idea what it says," Williams said.

TRUE

For moms, dads, wives and husbands waiting, it's always scary and nothing returns to normal until their loved one is safe at home.

"The war is not over," Linda King, of Lower Salem, Fivecoait's mother, said."We still have moms and sons still apart."

While the rest of the nation deals with the biggest power blackout in U.S. history, a sluggish economy, West Nile virus, school openings, gas prices and a runaway computer worm, moms, like King, wait for sons and daughters to return from Iraq.

Remember Iraq?

It's been more than 100 days since President Bush declared an end to major combat in the Iraq war.

Communication is still difficult. Letters, a brief phone call, e-mail if they ever get a chance, are infrequent at best.

"When it really hit me is when I received a letter from Flint. We were having a garage sale. Somebody was mowing his lawn, others were playing in a local softball game," King said. "Many of our sons are being attacked every night. You feel guilty you are doing anything. They are fighting so we can do this."

Amid the daily distractions, families of American soldiers still serving in Iraq would simply like people not to forget.

UN RECOGNITION

Except Syria. Sand weasels that they are.

The UN Security Council has approved a resolution welcoming the emergence of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council. Some Security Council members expressed regret that the resolution did not establish a timeline for ending the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. But a majority of members said the Governing Council marked a move in the right direction, toward restoring Iraqi sovereignty. The resolution also established a new UN mission in Iraq that is expected to gain a larger political role and potentially broaden contributions to Iraq's reconstruction.

United Nations, 15 August 2003 (RFE/RL) -- Iraq's month-old Governing Council has received a vote of confidence from the United Nations Security Council to help carry forward efforts toward building a sovereign government in Iraq.

Security Council Resolution 1500, which passed 14-0 yesterday, with one abstention, stopped short of recognizing the Governing Council as the legitimate representative of Iraq.