November Off To Bloody Start In Iraq

A blood-drenched October has passed into a violent early November as a motorcycle rigged with explosives ripped through a crowded Shiite market in Sadr City on Thursday and suspected Sunni insurgent gunmen killed a Shiite dean of Baghdad University.

The attacks showed no signs of abating after at least 1,272 Iraqis were killed in the first full month of autumn and the 43rd month of the U.S. bid to quell violence and build democracy in Iraq, according to an Associated Press count. The figure is a minimum since many deaths go unreported, but the total is higher than any other month since the AP began keeping track in May 2005.

AP statistics also showed nearly twice as many Iraqi security forces died last month as U.S. forces — 194 versus 106. The Interior Ministry said at least 119 Iraqi policemen were killed.

With shootings, bombings and abductions tearing apart Iraq three years after the U.S.-led invasion, the war in Iraq is the top issue for voters before next week's U.S. congressional elections.

The Iraqi president, visiting Paris, said Thursday all American forces could be gone from Iraq within three years.

"Two to three years are needed to build our security forces and say bye-bye to our friends," Jalal Talabani said. The president, a Kurd whose ethnic group owes its relative prosperity and independence in northern Iraq to the U.S. invasion, has repeatedly predicted an earlier departure for American forces than U.S. generals have.

Asked about Talabani's remarks, Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Todd Vician, said: "All parties agree on the desire to hand over control for security to the Iraqis as soon as possible."

Democratic Sens. Carl Levin and Jack Reed said their party will attempt to pass legislation to begin bringing some troops home immediately.

"We want to end the open-ended commitment of our troops, and we want to begin, at least by the end of the year, the reduction of American forces," Levin said.

In Related Events:

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who served a tumultuous year as commander of all U.S. forces in Iraq, retired from the Army on Wednesday, calling his career a casualty of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. He said for a story in The Monitor in McAllen, Texas, "that's the key reason, the sole reason, that I was forced to retire. I was essentially not offered another position in either a three-star or four-star command." He had been a candidate to become the next commander of U.S. Southern Command. But he was passed over after the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal exploded into an international controversy. Sanchez has not been accused of any misconduct but has been criticized by some for not doing more to avoid mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners.

San Francisco-based Bechtel is pulling out of Iraq after three years of work that cost the lives of 52 of its workers. A company spokesman says the deaths are among the greatest losses of life that Bechtel has suffered during any job in its 108-year history, possibly exceeded only by the work it did on the Hoover Dam during the Depression. Besides the 52 workers killed, another 49 were wounded. Bechtel had hired as many as 40-thousand workers — mostly Iraqi subcontractors — while it worked on rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure.

The U.S. military said a Baghdad-based soldier was killed on Wednesday after the vehicle he was riding in was struck by a roadside bomb west of the capital, the first U.S. casualty in November. At least 2,818 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. Last month was the fourth deadliest month since the invasion, with 105 American service members killed.

The U.S. military said Thursday it killed a mid-ranking al Qaeda operative in an air strike. In a brief statement, the military said Rafa al-Ithawi, also known as Abu Taha, was killed Wednesday in Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, by precision laser guided weapons that destroyed his vehicle. It said al-Ithawi had been named an emir under al Qaeda in Iraq, making him a local commander in Anbar province, the heartland of the stubborn Sunni insurgency against U.S. troops and their Iraqi allies. It said al-Ithawi frequently sheltered foreign militants who came to Iraq to attack Shiite civilians and U.S. and Iraqi forces.

The U.S. military identified a kidnapped soldier for the first time on Thursday, saying the abducted Iraqi-American was 41-year-old Ahmed Qusai al-Taayie. Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell also said that the reserve soldier was visiting his Iraqi wife when he was handcuffed and taken away by gunmen during a visit to the woman's family. The soldier's name had been widely known after a woman claiming to be his mother-in-law told the story of the interpreter's secret marriage three months ago and his abduction on Oct. 23. Caldwell said the United States believed the soldier was still in the custody of his abductors.

Scattered bombings and shootings in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq on Thursday killed at least ten people and injured 42, police said. The bodies of two men who had been bound and blindfolded before being shot execution style were found dumped in an eastern suburb of the capital.

In an apparent revenge killing, gunmen ambushed and killed Jassim al-Asadi, the Shiite dean of Baghdad University's school of administration and economics, along with his wife and son. The shooting followed the murder on Monday of prominent Sunni geologist Essam al-Rawi, and closely followed the pattern of tit-for-tat sectarian killings that have raged through much of Iraq following attacks on Shiite holy sites in February.

Iraq's Interior Ministry said at least 119 Iraqi officers were killed last month. The figures for October deaths came after the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, said more than 300 Iraqi police and soldiers died during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which included the first three weeks of October. The official also said 185 police were reported injured — pointing to a low survival rate among members of the force, who lack the armored vehicles, body armor, and fortified bases of U.S. troops operating in the country. In contrast, a much higher percentage of U.S. soldiers have survived their injuries.

At least 49 people were killed or found dead throughout Iraq on Thursday, including the seven killed when the motorcycle blew up in a crowded market in Baghdad's Sadr City district. At least 45 people were wounded in that attack, many of them seriously, police said.

It was the first bombing in Sadr City since Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered the lifting Tuesday of the week-old U.S.-Iraqi army security blockade on the sprawling Shiite slum of 2.5 million people.

Police Lt. Thaer Mahmoud said the explosives went off at 4 p.m., usually the busiest time at Mereidi market, one of the neighborhood's most popular commercial centers.

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[pakaal]

And in OTHER other Iraq news, now that things are going so well over there the Bush Administration feels we no longer need to audit our reconstruction company efforts over there, so they're shutting down the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.

After all, it's not like they were saying Cheney's old company "KBR, formerly Kellogg Brown & Root, had systematically engaged in practices aimed at veiling the facts around its contracts" or anything. Oh, whoops, they did say it, and I just quoted it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6114132.stm

Once again we see just how much responsibility the Bush Administration wants to take on what they continue to do in Iraq. In other words, none.

[grumpas]

You got it right janem4! Now you are finally starting to get it! You listen to much to the infantile rantings of Dubya and Company and it starts to effect your reasoning ability! People like you have all the answers! Nuke em then ask em what they did wrong! Never mind it cost billions of tax dollars to invade the wrong country! Never mind we are going to be living with the result for the next century(the unbridled hatred)! Never mind we are bound by duty to repair the two countries Bush has destroyed! Never mind your Grandchildren are going to be paying the debt Dubya has racked up! Never mind all the innocent people who get killed! Never mind all the troops who didn't ask to get killed for Dubya's folly! Never mind everyone in this world thinks George Bush is up there with Osama! So, you keep living out there in "LA-LA-Land" with the rest of the neocon's until the roof caves in! If he keeps it up it will! We will be bankrupt as a nation!

[bluestardad]

Dictators is that a Washington Dish that Republican Mark Foley was covertly serving the Congressional pages, Or Is that a Texas Style potato dish that the Bush administration has been feeding the American people for the last few years? Served with a side order of Stay the Course.

[wvopfor81]

Arm chair generals You know only what the media wants you to know, were are your solutions?

clestes wrote:

"I do bet he'd like a few minutes alone with Rummy in a sound proof room though...."

Wouldn't we all.

[agnim]

In the 'heat of battle' over emotional humans are likely to do very uncivilized things.
That is why it is so vital to not jump into a war as if one is going to a picnic.

Because these warmongering 'leaders' found it so easy to duck out on the Vietnam war, they have no heart and no conscience in sending young Americans to foolishly die, torture, sodomize and torture other humans.

Karma is a b!tch. In time, these cruel warmongers will certainly get theirs for using the US military as their private army in order to settle personal scores, and further weaken and endanger the nation, while the maniac muslims continue to run around in Pakistan.

[radiob-2009]

The general was one of the scapegoats along with several soldiers for the C.I.A. . The techniques that were used are not a part of military protocol for interrogation.The techniques are similiar to the C.I.A. approach and that of a elite group of special forces.I find it hard to beleive that these types of interrogations were stirred by regular soldiers.The ladder of guilt is much higher and was properly authorized and supervised by C.I.A. agents that posed as officers.The soldiers had the option to refuse an unlawful order but wereprobaly under the illusion that they would be protected and that it was in the national intrest.

[agnim]

See the effects of privilege?

This general can retire from the war, sit, back relax and earn a nice pension!

A little foot soldier goes AWOL in order to 'retire' from the war and he's being persecuted and encouraged to go give up his precious young life.
What a country. LOL

[clestes-2009]

I don't even feel sorry for the general. He knew what he was doing was wrong and went with it anyway. I do bet he'd like a few minutes alone with Rummy in a sound proof room though....

[huskerarmy]

It's the General's fault:

%u201CLet's not blame what's happening in Iraq on Rumsfeld... Secretary Rumsfeld is the best thing that has happened to the military in 25 years... The management of the war in Iraq is being handled by the generals on the ground.%u201D

House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH)