Baghdad Blast Rattles U.N. Chief

Green Zone Explosion Occurs Near Meeting Between Ban Ki-Moon And Iraqi PM

(CBS/AP)  Annan pulled all U.N. international staff out of Iraq in October 2003, after two bombings at U.N. headquarters in Baghdad and a spate of attacks on humanitarian workers. The first bombing, on Aug. 19, 2003, killed the top U.N. envoy, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and 21 others.

In August 2004, the secretary-general allowed a small U.N. contingent to return to Baghdad and imposed a ceiling of 35 international staffers. The ceiling has steadily increased since then, but the total number has remained relatively low because of the security situation.

Also Thursday, The U.S. military said it had captured the leaders of a Shiite insurgent network responsible for kidnapping and killing five American troops — one of the boldest and most sophisticated attacks on U.S. soldiers in the war in Iraq. The network was "directly connected" to the January kidnapping and murder of the Americans in the holy city of Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad, the military said.

The brazen assault, was conducted by nine to 12 gunmen posing as an American security team, the military confirmed. The attackers traveled in black GMC Suburban vehicles - the type used by U.S. government convoys - had American weapons, wore new U.S. military combat fatigues, and spoke English, according to two senior U.S. military officials as well as Iraqi officials.

Additionally, CBS News reports a U.S. military spokesman said the group might be tied to the trafficking of Explosively Formed Penetrators (EFPS), which can pierce most of the battlefield armor used in the war and are blamed for more than 170 American deaths since they first appeared in 2004.

"We do suspect and are looking at this network also being involved in smuggling Explosively Formed Penetrators into Baghdad," Lt. Col. Christopher Garver told CBS News correspondent Cami McCormick.

Garver added that in February there was a 47 percent decrease in the use of the powerful roadside bombs, correcting statistics initially reported by CBS News. Garver said "the trend remains the same", but the numbers aren't "as significant."

Meanwhile, Saad Yousif al-Muttalibi of the Ministry of National Dialogue and Reconciliation said talks with Sunni insurgent groups were initiated at the request of the insurgents and have been taking place inside and outside Iraq over the past three months.

He refused to identify the groups, but said they did not include al Qaeda in Iraq or Saddam Hussein loyalists. Members of the former president's outlawed Baath party took part, he added.

Speaking to The Associated Press in a telephone interview Thursday, al-Muttalibi said the negotiations were deadlocked over the insurgent groups' insistence that they would lay down their arms only when a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S.-led coalition troops in Iraq is announced.

The government's response was that such a move could only be taken when security is restored.

Future rounds of negotiations are planned, he said, but did not elaborate.

Al-Muttalibi's comments came one day after he expressed optimism in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. that al-Maliki's government was making progress in talks with insurgent groups, predicting some factions might be close to laying down their arms.

"One of the aims is to join with them in the fight against al Qaeda (in Iraq)," he told the BBC.

Reports have periodically surfaced in the past three years of talks between Iraqi and U.S. authorities and representatives of Sunni insurgent groups, but details of the contents of these negotiations and whether they made any progress always have been sketchy.

Groups said to have taken part in such talks often denied their participation in statements posted on the Internet.

[randalds]

RandalDS
I wish your wife all the best and hope when she'll recover from flu,she'll come up with some good advise for lar008(I know about her experience in Mental ward).
Posted by patriotic9 at 07:27 PM : Mar 22, 2007

Thanks, but I don't think they've come up with a drug to treat Troll-ism yet. Sure wish they would though!

[zootallures2]

Na, Ki-moon was drunk and stumbling and they added the sound effect to save the face of an honorable public servant.

[randalds]

******** Cheney and GW Bush don't travel to Iraq often enough for my liking.

I'd pay good money to see what their reaction would have been.
Posted by mcdazz at 11:57 PM : Mar 22, 2007

They'd both still be cleaning the sh*it out of their pants because both of them have shown themselves in the past to be what they are now, the lowest of the low, the scummiest of the scummiest, the most yellow-bellied gutless cowards in the world. In a real war situation like they're more then happy to send other peoples children to fight and die in each of them would pis*s their panties in fear every time they heard a shot. the only satisfaction we have as Americans is knowing that both of thier names will be recorded in the annuals of history as nothing more then the most cowardly cowards in American history. That forever they will always be (rightfully) tarred with the brush of being two of the most disgustingly gutless human beings that ever walked the face of the earth. I hope I outlive both of them and that some right wing as*shole erects a monument to one or both of them at their grave, just so I can have the privilege of standing in the very long line to pis*s on it. And I'll bring my dogs to lift their legs on their graves too. Even they know cowardly as*sholes when they see them and Bush and Cheney are two of the worst.

James_John wrote:

"ehhehe OMG that video was so *** funny.

the poor Ban Ki-moon wet his pants.

I think he wont come again to baghdad for a long time ."

******** Cheney and GW Bush don't travel to Iraq often enough for my liking.

I'd pay good money to see what their reaction would have been.

badaxmofo wrote:

"ra - how about a link that works, test it first for me, could ya?"

The link works fine.

Do you need some kind of help to copy and paste?

[radiob-2009]

badaxmofo Here is the article itself.There has been no follow up on this and no other news org. has it.Notice it says likely!!!!!!!!!!!!





British military: Damage to C-130 likely caused by IED
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- An explosion that occurred when a British C-130 landed last month in southern Iraq, wounding two soldiers, likely was caused by an improvised explosive device, British military officials said Tuesday.
The plane landed at a remote, undeveloped landing strip in Maysan Province with about 30 troops on board.

A British military spokesman told CNN that "early findings of the investigation" show the plane most likely hit an IED that was buried in the ground. The blast also badly damaged a wing of the aircraft. Officials said they don't know exactly when the IED was planted.

Officials said troops had used the unguarded landing site before, and it had been swept for explosive devices. --From Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr (Posted 10:21 a.m.)

[radiob-2009]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/03/06/tuesday/index.html

You have to read down to find it, it barely made a paragraph.

[radiob-2009]

badaxmofo I gave you the link for J the other night. It occured on the 6th of March.

[patriotic9]

RandalDS
I wish your wife all the best and hope when she'll recover from flu,she'll come up with some good advise for lar008(I know about her experience in Mental ward).

[randalds]

Can't join in now j. The wife is home with the flu and even though she's the RN, she's not a great patient. lol!

[james_john-2009]

ehhehe OMG that video was so *** funny.


the poor Ban Ki-moon wet his pants.

I think he wont come again to baghdad for a long time .

[james_john-2009]

ehhehe OMG that video was so *** funny.


the poor Ban Ki-moon wet his pants.

I think he wont come again to baghdad for a long time .

[j-whitman]

RandalDS ,,,, I'm battling Lars over on the Iraq Reconstruction article,, join us.

[randalds]

Tough choice, one I hope never to have to make. However...
"Those who are willing to sacrifice liberty for security, deserve neither liberty nor security."
Is life so sacred that there is no cause worth dying for? As long as my loved ones are around me, everything else be damned? I'm not so sure.

Posted by crazyivan32 at 10:16 AM : Mar 22, 2007

It's an easy choice for me. Life without liberty is life not worth living.

[j-whitman]

Bush attacked Iraq on the same rhetorical Presumed Threat as Nazi leaders claimed.

Hitler's Soviet Spy Chief Reinhard Gehlen spun the intelligence as Bush did, then later developed our Cold War Policies.

[j-whitman]

Benjamin B. Ferencz on Terrorism

One cannot try an idea, nor can it be killed by a gun. An idea must be replaced by a better idea. We must stop glorifying killing "the enemy" and replace the existing war-ethic with a new "peace-ethic."All must learn that law is better than war. The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg held that aggressive war is the "supreme international crime." That was affirmed by the United Nations and upheld in many legal decisions. Nazi leaders argued that they acted only in self-defense against a presumed attack by the Soviet Union. Their justification for mass murder was rejected and responsible leaders were hanged after a fair trial. Who is to try those who continue to use such invalid and deceptive justifications for sending young persons and countless civilians to their death? --

[j-whitman]

Here's one from "Fair & Balanced Fox News" on Prescot Bush

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2
933,100474,00.html

[j-whitman]

This is from a Nurembeg Trials prosecuter

BENJAMIN FERENCZ
Ferencz was a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials for Nazi war crimes after World War II and is available for a limited number of interviews. He said today: "It's a sad commentary when the president of the United States has apparently no knowledge or concern for international law. We said at Nuremberg that we would be bound by laws -- that they would apply equally to all. But it's a violation of international law to go to war without the approval of the [U.N.] Security Council when you are not under armed attack. The U.S. has violated that in its attack on Iraq, as well as other times. The Bush administration has repudiated the International Criminal Court, when over 90 nations want to carry on the legacy of the Nuremberg tribunals, but the administration is trying to cripple it in its cradle."

[bluestardad]

HERE IS A KISS FOR YOU FROM THE ONE AND ONLY!

Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf (Baghdad Bob)

"Do not be hasty because your disappointment will be huge," al-Sahaf is quoted as saying in early 2003. "You will reap nothing from this aggressive war, which you launched on Iraq, except for disgrace and defeat." "We will embroil them, confuse them, and keep them in the quagmire," he said later, adding that "they cannot just enter a country of 26 million people and lay besiege to them! They are the ones who will find themselves under siege."

[j-whitman]

Yeah,, They not only sell you swampland they can't develope, They sell you homes in fire zones, on earthquake faults, flood zones, & have our government paying for rebuilding thier million dollar homes destroyed by hurricanes.