Suicide Blast Kills Dozens At Iraq Funeral

Scott Stein/CNET

A suicide bomber struck the funeral of two anti-al Qaeda Sunni tribesmen in a town north of Baghdad on Thursday, killing at least 50 people, police said.

The blast was the latest this week to break a period of relative calm in Sunni areas, raising concerns that Sunni insurgents are reorganizing.

Over the past months, violence has dropped with the increase in U.S. troops and the growth of so-called Awakening Councils, groups of Sunni tribesmen who have joined American forces in fighting al Qaeda-linked militants.

The suicide bomber detonated his explosives in the town of Albu Mohammed, about 90 miles north of Baghdad, during the funeral of two brothers who belonged to the local Awakening Council who were slain a day earlier, police in the nearby city of Kirkuk said.

At least 50 people were killed and 20 were wounded in the blast, the police officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk to the media. The blast was the deadliest attack since March 6, when a bombing in central Baghdad killed 68.

Thursday's attack came on the heels of a string of suicide attacks on Tuesday that killed 60 people in four major cities in central and northern Iraq.

The attack came a day after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki voiced optimism that his government would conquer al Qaeda in Iraq. "We are today more confident than any time before that we are close to the point where we can declare victory against al Qaeda... and its allies," he said in an address to the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium.

Dozens of Iraqis have been killed this week by bomb blasts. Just one day before al-Maliki's bold comments, nearly 60 people died in a series of blasts in four cities in northern and central Iraq. Those attacks were blamed on al Qaeda.

The deadly bombings struck directly at U.S. claims that the Sunni insurgency is waning and being replaced by Shiite militia violence as a major threat.

The U.S. military has touted the relative calm in Sunni areas as a major success of the troop surge and the strategy of encouraging Awakening Councils and other Sunnis - some former insurgents - to turn against al Qaeda.

U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner said Wednesday that despite this week's stepped-up violence, the overall situation in Iraq has markedly improved over the past year.

"We have said all along that there will be variants in which we will see al Qaeda and other groups seek to reassert themselves," Bergner said.

But the new Sunni violence comes as fighting has increased between U.S.-Iraqi forces and Shiite militiamen, particularly members of anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.

In other developments:

In Baghdad, clashes between U.S.-backed Iraqi troops and Shiite militiamen in the Sadr City district killed two men and injured 18 other people, police said Wednesday. A police officer said those injured in gunbattles Tuesday included three women and three children. Sadr City is a stronghold of the Mahdi Army militia of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

(AP Photo/Petr David Josek)

The U.S. military has released Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein after holding him for more than two years. Hussein, seen at left hugging a family member upon his release, was handed over to AP colleagues on Wednesday in Baghdad. The U.S. military accused Hussein of links to insurgents. But an Iraqi judicial panel this month dismissed all allegations against Hussein and ordered his release. A U.S. military statement on Monday said Hussein is no longer considered a threat.

An unmanned U.S. drone fired two Hellfire missiles Wednesday at militants attacking Iraqi soldiers in a Shiite militia stronghold in the southern city of Basra, killing four of the gunmen, the military said. The airstrike occurred after militiamen attacked an Iraqi army patrol with rocket-propelled, the U.S. military said. A vehicle suspected of containing more weapons and ammunition also was destroyed. The area has seen some of the fiercest fighting since a government offensive against the militias in Basra began March 25.

On Wednesday, the Iraqi government said it was replacing two senior military commanders overseeing operations in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city.

Officials insisted the two - security army commander Lt. Gen. Mohan al-Fireji and police chief Maj. Gen. Abdul-Jalil Khalaf - had not been fired but were being reassigned to positions in Baghdad after their assignments ended.

The two Iraqi officers will be replaced by new security commander Maj. Gen. Mohammed Jawad Huwaidi and new police chief is Maj. Gen. Adil Daham, officials said.

U.S. officials have praised al-Maliki for the determination he showed in confronting the militias, but they have also said the Basra operation was hastily arranged and badly executed. Critics said it highlighted the Iraqi army's poor leadership and the low morale among its rank and file after some 1,000 troops deserted or refused to fight in Basra.

[prinzowhales]

Fifteen years ago the stormtroopers murdered dozens of men, women and children at Waco. Gasing them first and then setting them afire...shooting anyone who tried to escape. It was one of those ''Proud Moments in American Democracy'' like when Rockefeller''s thugs attacked the tent city of the workers in Colorado Coal and Fuel strike...ask the Israeli army...nothing beats killing women and children with high-powered rifles at long range for a few dollars a month to earn the respect of patriots and scoundrels.

As with the 1993 FBI attack on the WTC...the real culprits in this have yet to be brought to justice.
For the sake of publicity and funding, the BATF attacked a church in Texas and in the end, the entire weight of the US Regime came down on these poor people ''for the sake of the children'' inside...I''m surprised more day care centers haven''t picked up on how children thrive when being gassed and burned to death...

AT the WTC in 1993, the FBI cooked the bomb, trained the driver and provided the detonator and refused to let their inside man replace the explosives with a harmless powder--they wanted the attack to go forward and it did...Six Americans did...but like a herd of dumb animals stumbling across an African plain... Americans simply grazed contentedly while jackals feasted on their countrymen...That is the new American way...''Always be Appropriate''...

[starleo146]

Those who sell the invasion and occupation as a "just war" will deny that these first-hand accounts are part of the whole truth or they will simply dismiss the speakers as liars and traitors, which is already happening. They will continue to entice new advocates and a never-ending stream of recruits, all made possible by a gutless Congress, a compliant media, an apathetic public, and a bottomless military budget, including $4 billion annually for recruiting.

Repeatedly, the speakers stated that they welcomed the opportunity to testify as to the accuracy of their statements in a legal proceeding. Luis Montalvan, a captain with 17 years of service in the Army, stated, "I would like nothing better than to testify under oath to Congress." He then quoted President Theodore Roosevelt: "To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." __

[starleo146]

Some vets like Jeff Lucey couldn''t speak, so his parents spoke in his stead. His father said his grown Marine son came home so haunted by what he had done and witnessed that he drank heavily to anesthetize his pain-a coping strategy mentioned by many of the vets who spoke. His parents said Veterans Affairs (VA) told them they couldn''t assess him for PTSD until he was alcohol free. Although he wouldn''t talk about the trauma he experienced, Jeff would ask his father to hold him on his lap and rock him so he could feel safe. Jeff''s father said the last time he was able to hold his son was when he cut his body down from the rafters at their home where Jeff had hung himself with a hose.

[starleo146]

Like Turner, numerous soldiers and veterans stared into the cameras that were recording the hearing for broadcast and pled for forgiveness from the Iraqi people now that they were distanced from the madness in Iraq in an apparent attempt to regain some of what had been lost. For many, their hands trembled as they talked and, along with us witnesses, were moved to tears. At other times, so many only revealed that thousand-yard stare we''ve seen too many times on the faces of Vietnam vets who carry the scars of that war.

We sat engulfed in the horror, sorrow, and grief of the soldiers'' experiences and wondered how we could transform this to help our children and grandchildren reach an understanding so that they can make wise decisions when they have the opportunity to serve their community and country at the local homeless shelter, the voting booth, the peace march, or the armed forces.

[starleo146]

Soldiers and vets told how superior officers instructed them on the official ways to torment and beat detainees. Andrew Duffy, a medic who served on the trauma team at the Abu Ghraib military prison, put it this way, "You can''t spell abuse without ''Abu.''" They were told to use the term "detainee" because, unlike "prisoner of war," there are no laws protecting detainees. While he rocked back and forth in his seat nervously, Mathew Childess, a Marine infantryman who served two tours in Iraq, referred to beating detainees and "breaking fingers." When a particular detainee begged for food and water, he took the man''s hat, wiped himself with it, and stuffed it into the man''s mouth.

[starleo146]

Describing the heartache that results from not being able to identify your enemy, Jason Washburn, a Marine who served four years and completed three tours of duty in Iraq, said this: "If the town or the city that we were approaching was a known threat, if the unit that went through the area before we did took a high number of casualties, we were basically allowed to shoot whatever we wanted. . . . I remember one woman was walking by, carrying a huge bag, and she looked like she was heading towards us. So we lit her up with the Mark 19, which is an automatic grenade launcher. And when the dust settled, we realized that the bag was only full of groceries. And, I mean, she had been trying to bring us food, and we blew her to pieces for it."

[starleo146]

He was one of the first to speak of these things but far from the last. Like so many other speakers, he said this kind of situation was the norm for him and for others, not the exception. With a forced smile that constrained his quivering lips, he closed with an apology to the Iraqi people: "I just want to say that I am sorry for the hate and destruction that I have inflicted on innocent people. . . . until people hear about what is going on with this war, it will continue to happen and people will continue to die. I am sorry for the things that I did. I am no longer the monster that I once was."

[starleo146]

Clifton Hicks described an operation that resulted in an official estimate of 700 to 800 enemy dead. "Judging from what I saw on the ground," he said, "I''m willing to swear under oath in all honesty that while many enemy combatants were in fact killed, the majority of those so-called KIAs were in fact civilians attempting to flee the battlefield.

The gripping presentation and images from Jon Michael Turner, who served in Iraq with the 8th Marines, were, like so many personal stories we''ve heard, still bleeding with its raw truthfulness. "A lot of the raids and patrols we did were at night around three in the morning . . . . And what we would do is just kick in the doors and terrorize the families." After he described segregating the women, the children, and the men, he said, "If the men of the household were giving us problems, we''d go ahead and take care of them anyway we felt necessary, whether it be choking them or slamming their head against the walls. . . . On my wrist, there''s Arabic for ''F you.'' I got that put on my wrist just two weeks before we went to Iraq, because that was my choking hand, and any time I felt the need to take out aggression, I would go ahead and use it."

[starleo146]

Soldiers and vets also explained the practice of "reconnaissance by fire," where they''d shoot first into a house or a neighborhood in order to draw return fire. Then, instead of moving on the source of the return fire and incurring more risk to the unit, they''d respond with overwhelming firepower that devastated the entire building or area. Hart Vigas, a mortarman who served with the Army''s 82nd Airborne for the invasion of Iraq, painted a word picture of the indiscriminate, "ground-shaking" destruction from C-130 Specter gunships. The students have learned from their teachers. A forward observer and drill instructor with the Army''s 101st Airborne Division, Jessie Hamilton stated that the Iraqi forces "showed little or no restraint" when they responded to the slightest attack with such indiscriminate firing that the U.S. troops gave nicknames to their methods: ''spray and pray'' and ''death blossom.'' "Once the shooting started," he said, "death would blossom all around."

[starleo146]

Two Marines talked about trashing the country during the invasion. One of them, Brian Casler, served three combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. As part of the invasion force, he said he and others in their unit defecated and urinated into the containers of food and water they threw at the welcoming children they encountered. To relieve the boredom during his first deployment, they demolished Babylonian ruins and "drove over the rubble for fun." After describing how they ransacked a public building, he said, "We found out later that we had shredded all of the birth certificates for the City of Fallujah."

Several speakers talked about the disrespect of the Iraqi dead. Michael Leduc, for example, told us about "Rotten Randy" and "Tony the Torso," the nicknames his Marine unit gave to the corpses they used for rifle practice.