BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 18, 2006
Iraqi Insurgents Shoot It Out With Troops
Search Continues For American Hostages; Britain Announces $190M For Reconstruction
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Play CBS Video Video 53 Died In Iraq Today The hunt continues for the American military contractors kidnapped on Thursday. Elizabeth Palmer reports that this attack has further undermined public confidence in the Iraqi government.
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Video Search For Contractors Goes On A group of private contractors were kidnapped as their convoy headed into Iraq. An Iraqi official says there has been a ransom demand for the four Americans and one Austrian. Elizabeth Palmer reports.
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Video "Shadow Army" In Iraq Tens of thousands of civilians deployed in Iraq provide logistical support for the troops, but face grave danger as they transport supplies around the country. Armen Keteyian has more details.
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Iraqi soldiers shoot from their position on a rooftop in Baqouba, an increasingly violent, mostly Sunni city about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, Iraq, Saturday, Nov. 18, 2006. (AP)
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British soldiers move a stretcher to an ambulance at a hospital in Zubair, near Basra, Iraq, Friday, Nov. 17, 2006. (AP Photo/Nabil Al Jurani)
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In this undated photo released by the St. Louis Park Police Dept., former St. Louis Park police officer Paul Reuben is shown. Reuben, 39, was among four American security contractors and an Austrian co-worker escorting a convoy that was hijacked, his brother, Patrick Reuben, told KSTP-TV and the Star Tribune. (AP Photo/St. Louis Park Police)
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British soldiers patrol in Zubair, near Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, on Nov. 17, 2006. British and U.S. troops were searching for four abducted Americans whose convoy was hijacked Thursday in Safwan, an Iraqi city near the Kuwaiti border. (AP Photo)
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An Iraqi firefighter, left, arrives at the scene following an explosion in Baghdad on Nov. 16, 2006. (AP Photo)
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Interactive Battle For Iraq The government, the insurgency, key players, background and photos.
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Interactive Held Hostage Details on foreign workers and soldiers captured by insurgents in Iraq.
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Who's Who Iraq Insurgency More on the militant groups behind the insurgency in Iraq and their motivations.
Sadr City has long been a Shiite militia stronghold.
A rogue cell from the Mahdi Army militia also is suspected of having captured an Iraqi-American soldier last month. Ahmed Qusai al-Taayie, a 41-year-old reserve soldier from Ann Arbor, Michigan, was visiting his Iraqi wife in Baghdad on Oct. 23 when gunmen handcuffed him and took him away.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Saturday reiterated Washington's determination to support the "small seeds" of Iraqi democracy, but she said that success depends on the government and people of Iraq themselves.
It is up to Iraqis to "face up to their differences and realize that they only have one future, and that's a future together," Rice said at the Asia-Pacific summit in Vietnam. "They don't have a future if they try and stay apart."
In western Baghdad, gunmen killed a senior official with the largest Shiite political group along with his wife, the latest member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, to die in an attack.
In southern Iraq, coalition forces searched on Saturday for five security guards — four Americans and an Austrian — who have been missing since Thursday when a large convoy of trucks escorted by the Crescent Security Group was hijacked on a highway near Safwan, a largely Sunni Arab city of 200,000 people on the Kuwait border.
Convoys are heavily armed, but not heavily enough. They can be several dozen vehicles long and are often attacked in the middle, their weakest point, reports CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer.
Suspected militiamen dressed in Iraqi police uniforms ambushed the convoy, taking 19 of its trucks and 14 hostages: the five security guards and nine foreign truck drivers who were later released.
Coalition forces and Iraqi officials in Basra reported no breakthrough in the case on Saturday.
Officials at Crescent Security Group Inc. refused to comment about the five hostages Saturday, but the company issued a statement on its Web site saying they remain unaccounted for.
Islamic Companies, a previously unknown group, claimed responsibility for the kidnapping, according to an Iranian-run Arabic-language satellite news station. It said the group released a videotaped message saying it was holding the five men and demanded the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq and the release of all prisoners being held there.
Also Saturday, Britain's Treasury chief Gordon Brown, who is expected to replace Prime Minister Tony Blair as Britain's leader next year, made an unannounced visit to Iraq to meet with Iraqi officials and British soldiers.
In an interview with Al-Jazeera TV Friday, Blair said the Iraq war has been difficult, but that British forces will remain in Iraq to fight the country's insurgents and militias as long as Iraq's government wants them to.
Those comments were echoed by Brown on Saturday.
"We are committed to supporting the Iraqis in building a democratic nation which brings security and prosperity to its people and plays a full part in the region and the world economy."
Britain has about 7,200 troops in southern Iraq, mostly stationed in and around Basra. Since the Iraq war began on March 20, 2003, 125 British service members have died, 95 of them in military action.
Brown also was using the trip to announce $190 million in increased reconstruction aid to Iraq from Britain over the next three years.
©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Add a Comment See all 16 Comments
- Tinker3478,
Re: "And your source for that is what?"
Every single public statement that they have ever made on the subject, for starters.
Can you find a single example where either one of them has acknowledged that the illegal war of aggression against Iraq, based only upon lies and hype, is wrong? NOT 'botched', but very, very morally and strategically wrong? - Reply to this comment
- "Bill and Hillary Clinton have been chearleaders of the illegal U.S. war of aggression against Iraq, from the very beginning."
And your source for that is what? - Reply to this comment
- To ketch65, *** Who are you?? Retired mil. Would that be IIS?
Retired mil, so then you are blind to reality? Or just stupid. You sound more like a military deception campaign against the US - Reply to this comment
- rkb4762 said, "In 2003, I told some told people that invading a arab country with only 150,000 US troops would be disaster in the long run... and it would take nearly 200,000 or more troops to secure a country of that size. I was called unpatriotic and unsupportive of the president.
---
Clearly, you remain in good and patriotic company. In 2003, Gen. Eric Shinseki counseled the US congress during a pre-Iraq invasion hearing that several hundred thousand occupation troops would be required to stabilize Iraq. Rumsfeld immediately contradicted him in the rudest way, and Shinseki's distinguished military career ended shortly afterward.
Though Rumsfeld is often saluted by the nation's press as the catalyst for reorganization of US strategic forces along a high-tech and nimble posture, it was Shinseki, in fact, who understood and drove that revolution in the US Army. - Reply to this comment
- Herr General Reichsmarschall Rumsfeld-- 2
The episode between Rumsfeld and Shinseki was both revealing and unfortunate for this country, and silenced military criticism of Rumsfeld for the next three years. It was the equivalent of a political leader with a minor military rank and experience attained years before (Rumsfeld) dressing down an acknowledged military leader, strategist and thinker (Shinseki)-- a similar thing happened between Hitler and Rommel, with Hitler browbeating Rommel into building Festung Europa, when Rommel wanted anything but to build another Maginot Line.
Inflexible to the end, Rumsfeld finally built his own Maginot Line in Iraq around no more than 150,000 outnumbered, bunkered-down US troops for whom the streets of Baghdad and surrounding cities become more dangerous every day. Had Rumsfeld listened to Shinseki, the various armies of Iraqi resistance would have found it far more difficult to materialize. - Reply to this comment
- In 2003, I told some told people that invading a arab country with only 150,000 US troops would be disaster in the long run, Iraq has a culture that differs from ours and it would take nearly 200,000 or more troops to secure a country of that size. I was called unpatriotic and unsupportive of the president. Ummmm, I wonder were my patriotic freinds are right now.
- Reply to this comment
- What a quagmire! What kind of thought process would impel this Administration to invade a Moslem country of 25 million & try to occupy it with 140,000 Christian troops? If the reverse occurred, would the people of this Christian nation put up with an occupation by Moslems? I think not. The same kind of insurgency would happen here. Well, one more big push, huh Dubya?
- Reply to this comment
- stevex47,
Bill and Hillary Clinton have been chearleaders of the illegal U.S. war of aggression against Iraq, from the very beginning.
Why do you think that Bill could offer a solution to a disasterous policy which he, himself has so eagerly supported? - Reply to this comment
- Folks on the right are gonna despise this thought, but....the only person I can think of, to somehow find some workable resolution to this disaster I think is Bill Clinton. Obviously, no one on the right has the will or that ability,
- Reply to this comment
- ketch65,
Good analysis.
Thanks for contributing. - Reply to this comment
- One last thing, the reason for the current chaos in Iraq is due to the very fact that once the Iraqi people started to be harrassed and tortured endlessly by undisciplined and immoral troop forces, they began to understand that there can be no peace as long as American forces occupy their lands!
When a soldier says, -I just don't understand it, these people don't want peace, they are like animals all of them- and yet he fails to see why they hate him and his company when he does nothing to stand up for the rights of the oppressed because his own comrades harrass and punish the innocent civilian populace, he's doomed, he's as bad as the rest and together they are all useless!!!!!!!!!!!! - Reply to this comment
- *******If you feel sorry for our GIs like you pretend, get on their side, quit whining and dragging your feet, and do something to help them win.*********
I'm retired Army, I'm a 50% service connected disabled vet. I'll whine all I want! It's a confusing thing to understand, but most GI's are blind to reality and if you can't understand that, you can't understand anything.
America will never ever win any war again, due to the fact that it's troops are undisciplined and completely blind to any sense of altruism but brute instinct and udying loyalty to their socialized stupidity.
I correct that, America may very well win another war, but only if they can drop a series of nuclear bombs on a population! - Reply to this comment
- The Iraqi's will never ever ever stop fighting against the occupiers of their land, whoever it is. America is building like 10+ "long-term" military bases there.
The media doesn't tell anyone about this though, but this is the reality. America thinks it can in time build the bases, and then shore off the insurgency from entering into the bases, then the casualties will be down.
But that's not going to happen. The insurgency will find endless ways to belittle American forces time and time again.
It's not going to be easy for Captain America to admit he's not going to be able to keep law and order unless some sort of draconian, dictatorish system is made to rule the land by force.
The next puppet will rule as Saddam did!
For now though, maybe economic strangleholds that are being used will finally make them submit, a way to starve out the families of the insurgents, and make them submit to the marshal law.
I doubt it though, they've known starvation for the past 16 years!
It's very interesting to watch though. - Reply to this comment
- We've lost no rights kesac4650?
Bush illegally spies on Americans, asserts his "right" to take legal residents off the streets of the US and put them into his secret prison system to be tortured. Cheney said at a meeting of the Federalist Society JUST LAST NIGHT that the war and "being at war" means the President DOESN'T have to follow court orders or follow ANY congressional oversight - effectively annointing Bush as dictator.
Then you and your ilk sent our soldiers off on a fool's errand and your total level of support is apparently "oh well, you joined up".
Thanks for the lesson in hubris. I'd almost forgotten how faithless you cons are. - Reply to this comment
- An now for a message to our troops:
"Do not fight for a dying regime. It is not worth your life." Former Governor George W. Bush, March, 2003
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxKpeKQA6B4
(speakers on) - Reply to this comment
- No one is destroying the country. The sky is not falling. You have lost absolutely zero Constitutional rights.
Our GIs are doing what they enlisted to do. They are doing it as well as they know how. America will have to learn to win a guerrilla war. This is not the last time we will be faced with that problem.
If you feel sorry for our GIs like you pretend, get on their side, quit whining and dragging your feet, and do something to help them win. - Reply to this comment
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