:: Da' Militant One's Lair ::

:: Monday, December 29, 2003 ::

Excerpt from an article listing total casaulties in Iraq

The total number of wounded soldiers and medical evacuations from the war in Iraq is nearing 11,000,
according to new Pentagon data provided in response to a request from UPI.

The military has made 8,581 medical evacuations from Operation Iraqi Freedom for non-hostile causes
in addition to the 2,273 wounded -- a total of 10,854, according to the new data. The Pentagon says that 457 troops have died.

The Pentagon's casualty update for Operation Iraqi Freedom listed on its Web site, however,
does not reflect thousands of the evacuations.

It is a toll the country has not seen since Vietnam

:: DM1 12/29/2003 05:22:00 PM [+] ::
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Who Said It?

"So many minority youths had volunteered that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like myself."

Sounds like very cowardly and ridiculous statement doesn't it? Should someone who makes a statement like that be trusted to do the right thing. To be honest and above board? The answer is "No". Who is this coward and racialist? Why it's none other than "Mister Coward" himself: House Majority Leader Tom Delay! How's that for moral and christian values, Republicans?

:: DM1 12/26/2003 12:14:00 PM [+] ::
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"Latest U.S. Casualty Count"

Killed: 464
Wounded in Combat: 2,657

Total Casualties: 3,121


Just remember that these figures do not include soldiers hospitalized for illness, mental disorders, and non-combat injuries. These numbers total in the thousands, also.

:: DM1 12/24/2003 03:34:00 AM [+] ::
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"You Can't Handle The Truth"

Word is that Condi Rice does not want to be placed under oath if she is called to testify in front of the 9/11 Commission" I repeat, it is alleged that Condi Rice does not want to swear to tell the truth under oath. Remember that right after 9/11, she suggested that no one could have predicted that terrorists would hijack planes and crash them into buildings. Intelligence data that was readily available to her indicated other wise. In fact, there was many years of data that showed terrorists might try to hijack planes for various purposes. There were many who hounded Bill Clinton for many years for lying about the Monica Affair. Evidence exists that directly contradicts statements mde by National Security Advisor Condolezza Rice on behalf of George Bush. Should she and Bush get a break because neither one was under oath when Rice made her statements? If Rice has to testify under oath at the 9/11 Commission will she have to admit that her previous statements to the American public were lies? Also, the Commission may ask Bush, Cheney, Clinton, and Gore to testify at the hearing. The catch is that none of the four will be placed under oath. Shouldn't these supposed "servants of the America People" be required to tell the absolute truth about what they knew prior to 9/11? Ah, "You Can't Handle The Truth!"

:: DM1 12/24/2003 03:15:00 AM [+] ::
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The Rule of Law and Rush Limbaugh


There is nothing more disgusting than to hear a blowhard scream about the rule of law for eight years when his ox is not being gored. Now that It's Limbaugh's feet instead of Bill Clinton's being held to the fire, Limbaugh is whining and suggesting that he is a "victim" of the government's heavy boot. This ass has been railing against the victimization mentality of mostly blacks and gays. Now that he has been caught engaging in illegal drug activity, Limbaugh wants to change the rules. He says that Bill Clinton didn't have to disclose his medical records so why should he? Now isn't it ironic that this windbag is now trying to use Clinton as part of his defense? Hey, Limbaugh about that rule of law, did you purchase prescription drugs illegally. You know the truth and a court of law is not required. Why don't you "tell the truth"? Why don't you require of yourself that which you required of Bill Clinton. Just tell the truth. The only positive thing out of this is that you have been exposed as a liar and a criminal who is most likely guilty of many felonies in connection with your illegal drug use. What a phony. I hope that you are given a full dose of the "rule of law". You certainly deserve it!

:: DM1 12/23/2003 01:13:00 PM [+] ::
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More on the Capture of Saddam

Article detailing the capture? of Sadam By Foreign Editor David Pratt:



Saddam’s capture was the best present George Bush could have hoped for, and then Gaddafi handed a propaganda gift to Blair. But nothing’s ever that simple




It was exactly one week ago at 3.15pm Baghdad time, when a beaming Paul Bremer made that now-famous announce ment: “Ladies and gentlemen, we got him!”
Saddam Hussein: High Value Target Number One. The Glorious Leader. The Lion of Babylon had been snared. Iraq’s most wanted – the ace of spades – had become little more than an ace in the hole.

In Baghdad’s streets, Kalashnikov bullets rained down in celebration. In the billets of US soldiers, there were high fives, toasts and cigars. In the Jordanian capital Amman, an elderly woman overcome by grief broke down in tears and died. Inside a snow-blanketed White House, George W Bush prepared to address the nation.

“There’s an end to everything,” said a sombre Safa Saber al-Douri, a former Iraqi air force pilot, now a grocer in al-Dwar, the town where only hours earlier one of the greatest manhunts in history had ended under a polystyrene hatch in a six foot deep “spider hole.”

But just how did that endgame come about? Indeed, who exactly were the key players in what until then had been a frustrating and sometimes embarrassing hunt for a former dictator with a $25 million (£14m) bounty on his head?

For 249 days there was no shortage of US expertise devoted to the hunt. But the Pentagon has always remained tight-lipped about those individuals and groups involved, such as Task Force 20, said to be America’s most elite covert unit, or another super-secret team known as Greyfox, which specialises in radio and telephone surveillance.

Saddam, of course, was never likely to use the phone, and the best chance of locating him would always be as a result of informers or home-grown Iraqi intelligence. On this and their collaboration with anti-Saddam groups the Americans have also remained reticent.

Enter one Qusrat Rasul Ali, otherwise known as the lion of Kurdistan. A leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), Rasul Ali was once tortured by Saddam’s henchmen, but today is chief of a special forces unit dedicated to hunting down former Ba’athist regime leaders.

Rasul Ali’s unit had an impressive track record. It was they who last August, working alone, arrested Iraqi vice-president Taha Yassin Ramadan in Mosul, northern Iraq. Barely a month earlier in the al-Falah district of the same town, the PUK is believed to have played a crucial role in the pinpointing and storming of a villa that culminated in the deaths of Saddam’s sons Uday and Qusay.

In that mixed district of Mosul where Arabs, Kurds and Turkemen live side by side, PUK informers went running to their leader Jalal Talabani’s nearest military headquarters to bring him news on the exact location of the villa where both Uday and Qusay had taken shelter.

Armed with the information, Talabani made a beeline for US administration offices in Baghdad, where deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz was based for a week’s stay in Iraq at the time.

The Kurdish leader and US military chiefs conferred and decided that PUK intelligence would go ahead and secretly surround the Zeidan villa and install sensors and eavesdropping devices. The Kurdish agents were instructed to prepare the site for the US special forces operation to storm the building on July 22.

American officials later said they expected that the $30m bounty promised by their government for the capture or death of the Hussein sons would be paid. Given their direct involvement in providing the exact location and intelligence necessary, no doubt Talabani’s PUK operatives could lay claim to the sum, but no confirmation of any delivery or receipt of the cash has ever been made.

The PUK and Rasul Ali’s special “Ba’athist hunters” have, it seems, been doing what the Americans have consistently failed to do. In an interview with the PUK’s al-Hurriyah radio station last Wednesday, Adil Murad, a member of the PUK’s political bureau, confirmed that the Kurdish unit had been pursuing fugitive Ba’athists for the past months in Mosul, Samarra, Tikrit and areas to the south including al-Dwar where Saddam was eventually cornered. Murad even says that the day before Saddam’s capture he was tipped off by PUK General Thamir al-Sultan, that Saddam would be arrested within the next 72 hours.

Clearly the Kurdish net was closing on Saddam, and PUK head Jalal Talabani and Rasul Ali were once again in the running for US bounty – should any be going.

It was at about 10.50am Baghdad time on last Saturday when US intel ligence says it got the tip it was looking for. But it was not until 8pm, with the launch of Operation Red Dawn, that they finally began to close in on the prize.

The US media reported that the tip-off came from an Iraqi man who was arrested during a raid in Tikrit, and even speculated that he could get part of the bounty. “It was intelligence, actionable intelligence,” claimed Lt General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of coalition ground forces in Iraq. “It was great analytical work.”

But the widely held view that Kurdish intelligence was the key to the operation was supported in a statement released last Sunday by the Iraqi Governing Council. Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, said that Rasul Ali and his PUK special forces unit had provided vital information and more.




Last Saturday, as the US operation picked up speed, the Fourth Infantry Division moved into the area surrounding two farms codenamed Wolverine 1 and Wolverine 2 near al-Dwar, the heart of the Saddam heartland – a military town where practically every man is a military officer past or present. It is said to have a special place in Saddam’s sentiments because it was from here that he swam across the Tigris River when he was a dissident fleeing arrest in the 1960s.

Every year on August 28, the town marks Saddam’s escape with a swimming contest . In 1992, Saddam himself attended the race. It was won by a man called Qais al-Nameq. It was al-Nameq’s farmhouse – Wolverine 2 – that about 600 troops, including engineers, artillery and special forces, surrounded, cutting off all roads for about four or five miles around.

Next to a sheep pen was a ramshackle orange and white taxi, which US officials say was probably used to ferry Saddam around while he was on the run, sometimes moving every three or four hours.

Inside the premises was a walled compound with a mud hut and small lean-to. There US soldiers found the camouflaged hole in which Saddam was hiding.

It was 3.15pm Washington time when Donald Rumsfeld called George W Bush at Camp David. “Mr President, first reports are not always accurate,” he began. “But we think we may have him.”

First reports – indeed the very first report of Saddam’s capture – were also coming out elsewhere. Jalal Talabani chose to leak the news and details of Rasul Ali’s role in the deployment to the Iranian media and to be interviewed by them.

By early Sunday – way before Saddam’s capture was being reported by the mainstream Western press – the Kurdish media ran the following news wire:

“Saddam Hussein, the former President of the Iraqi regime, was captured by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. A special intelligence unit led by Qusrat Rasul Ali, a high-ranking member of the PUK, found Saddam Hussein in the city of Tikrit, his birthplace. Qusrat’s team was accompanied by a group of US soldiers. Further details of the capture will emerge during the day; but the global Kurdish party is about to begin!”

By the time Western press agencies were running the same story, the emphasis had changed, and the ousted Iraqi president had been “captured in a raid by US forces backed by Kurdish fighters.”

Rasul Ali himself, meanwhile, had already been on air at the Iranian satellite station al-Alam insisting that his “PUK fighters sealed the area off before the arrival of the US forces”.

By late Sunday as the story went global, the Kurdish role was reduced to a supportive one in what was described by the Pentagon and US military officials as a “joint operation”. The Americans now somewhat reluctantly were admitting that PUK fighters were on the ground alongside them , while PUK sources were making more considered statements and playing down their precise role.

So just who did get to Saddam first, the Kurds or the Americans? And if indeed it was a joint operation would it have been possible at all without the intelligence and on-the-ground participation of Rasul Ali and his special forces?

If the PUK themselves pulled off Saddam’s capture, there would be much to gain from taking the $25m bounty and any political guarantees the Americans might reward them with to keep schtum. What’s more, Jalal Talabani’s links to Tehran have always worried Washington, and having his party grab the grand prize from beneath their noses would be awkward to say the least.

“It’s mutually worth it to us and the Americans. We need assurances for the future and they need the kudos of getting Saddam,” admitted a Kurdish source on condition of anonymity. It would be all to easy to dismiss the questions surrounding the PUK role as conspiracy theory. After all, almost every major event that affects the Arab world prompts tales that are quickly woven into intricate shapes and patterns, to demonstrate innocence, seek credit or apportion blame. Saddam’s capture is no exception.

Of the numerous and more exotic theories surrounding events leading to Saddam’s arrest, one originates on a website many believe edited by former Israeli intelligence agents, but which often turns up inside information about the Middle East that proves to be accurate.

According to Debka.com, there is a possibility that Saddam was held for up to three weeks in al-Dwar by a Kurdish splinter group while they negotiated a handover to the Americans in return for the $25m reward. This, the writers say would explain his dishevelled and disorientated appearance.

But perhaps the mother of all conspiracy theories, is the one about the pictures distributed by the Americans showing the hideout with a palm tree behind the soldier who uncov ered the hole where Saddam was hiding. The palm carried a cluster of pre-ripened yellow dates, which might suggest that Saddam was arrested at least three months earlier, because dates ripen in the summer when they turn into their black or brown colour.

Those who buy into such an explanation conclude that Saddam’s capture was stage-managed and his place of arrest probably elsewhere. All fanciful stuff. But as is so often the case, the real chain of events is likely to be far more mundane.

In the end serious questions remain about the Kurdish role and whether at last Sunday’s Baghdad press conference, Paul Bremer was telling the whole truth . Or is it a case of “ladies and gentlemen we got him,” – with a little more help from our Kurdish friends than might be politically expedient to admit?

:: DM1 12/21/2003 02:14:00 PM [+] ::
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Was Saddam Capture a Photo Op?

Some foreign newspapers are reporting that Saddam was captured by the Kurds prior to being turned over to the U.S. Ridiculous you say? In early December Representative Ray La Hood a republican, responded to a question by a reporter regarding the potential capture of saddam by saying that he was very confident that Saddam would be apprehended shortly. the reporter asked La Hood why he thought that. La Hood was coy in his response and didn't answer. What did La Hood know? Here is the article from Pantagraph.Com


Tuesday, December 2, 2003
LaHood: Hussein's capture imminent

Pantagraph Staff

BLOOMINGTON -- U.S. Rep. Ray LaHood held his thumb and forefinger slightly apart and said, "We're this close" to catching Saddam Hussein.
Once that's accomplished, Iraqi resistance will fall apart, said the five-term Republican congressman from Peoria who serves on the House Intelligence Committee.

A member of The Pantagraph editorial board -- not really expecting an answer -- asked LaHood for more details, saying, "Do you know something we don't?"

"Yes I do," replied LaHood.

LaHood spent an hour at the newspaper Monday, discussing the war on terror, the 2004 elections, Central Illinois' regional economic development and his less-than-enthusiastic appraisal of Gov. Rod Blagojevich's performance.

The comment about the deposed Iraqi president came while LaHood discussed next year's elections.

The congressman said he's been disappointed with U.S. Sen. Peter Fitzgerald and believes the Republican senator isn't seeking a second term because "he can't get the votes."

LaHood hopes his party can hold the Senate seat because, he said, "President Bush is popular south of I-80, and that will help our Republican Senate candidate."

The economy -- barring a cataclysmic event like the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- will be central to the presidential race, he said.

"People working, making money, taking care of their families, health-care costs" -- those are the key issues, LaHood said.

He said the war is a major issue, but not as important as the economy.

LaHood said polls still show most Americans support the U.S. military presence in Iraq. Then he added, "Once we get Saddam ... and we're this close."

He said members of Congress who return from trips to the war zone all say the Iraqi people are very thankful to the United States and added, "You don't hear about that too often."

:: DM1 12/21/2003 02:00:00 PM [+] ::
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Safer?

Howard Dean was crucified by the Bush Adminstration, the pundits, and some of the democratic presidential candidates. Dean had the nerve to suggest that the capture of Saddam did not make America safer. Well today the terror level threat is being raised to "Orange", or "High". It appears that the Bush Administration may have validated Dean's assessment. If not then Bush should explain that if capturing Saddam made us safer then why only a week after his capture is the terror threat being elevated. Could it be that we should have been spending these last two years focusing on the real mastermind behind 9/11? Could it be that Osama was, is, and will be our biggest threat until to apprehend him? The answer of course is yes. Christmas is only days away, let's hope that our use of force thus far has been properly focused.

:: DM1 12/21/2003 01:52:00 PM [+] ::
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Of War and Money

The "probable" next President of the United States is ... George W. Bush. He doesn't have Osama, but he has Saddam. He doesn't have an 11,000 stock market, but he has a 10,000 stock market. So what if he told a bunch of lies. Who is going to call him on them? Obviously, Bush is truly a "teflon-coated" president. Where are you now Howard Dean? Will you stick to your guns? Will you challenge Bush and his versions of the truth? Stay tuned sports fans!

:: DM1 12/17/2003 06:09:00 PM [+] ::
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