Free Internet Press Newsletter - Monday October 23 2006 - (813)

Monday October 23 2006 edition
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In Balad, Iraq, Sectarian Battles Drive Out Sunnis, Create State Of Siege 2006-10-22 21:55:19 At midweek, Shiite Interior Ministry commandos and their Shiite militia allies cruised the four-lane hardtop outside the besieged city of Balad, trying to stave off retaliation for a four-day killing spree in which they had all but emptied Balad of Sunnis. Sunni insurgents pouring in to take that revenge patrolled the same highway, driving battered white pickups and minivans, their guns stashed out of sight. Affecting casualness, more Sunni men gathered on rooftops or clustered on the reed-lined edge of the highway, keeping an eye on the Shiite forces and the few frightened civilians who dared to travel the highway past Balad. What brought this Tigris River city north of Baghdad to this state of siege was a series of events that have displayed in miniature the factors drawing the entire country into a sectarian bloodbath: Retaliatory violence between Sunni and Shiites has soared to its highest level of the war, increasingly forcing moderates on both sides to look to armed extremists for protection. Read The Full Story Commentary: Why Is Tony Blair Still In Office? 2006-10-22 21:53:30 Intellpuke: As more evidence of his role in the Iraq debacle emerges, many in Britain find it hard to believe that Prime Minister Tony Blair hasn't been impeached. Among them is Henry Porter, writing for The Observer. Mr. Porter's commentary follows: Over the course of little more than a week, we have learned that civilian casualties so far in the Iraq war may be more than 600,000; that Britain's Chief of the General Staff believes the conflict could break the army apart; that a federal solution to the growing chaos involving the effective dismemberment of the country is being openly discussed in America; that the U.S. Iraq Study Group, headed by Republican grandee James Baker, is recommending that the U.S. military withdraws to bases outside Iraq and seeks Iranian and Syrian help; and that Britain is now the number one al-Qaeda target, partly, it seems clear, as a consequence of events in Iraq. There should be at least one universal response to this in Britain. Why is Tony Blair still Prime Minister after leading his country into such a disastrous war? Any large company would by now have got rid of a managing director guilty of a mistake on that scale. Any institution you care to name would have done the same. Why is Blair immune from the normal requirements of high office? Why, instead of being allowed by the cabinet to establish six new policy committees designed to entrench his legacy, has he not been impeached and thrown out of office? Even if his Iraq policy was formed in good faith, the scale of the error surely requires us to ask him and all those concerned with this disaster to leave. Read The Full Story Sudan Expels U.N. Official For Revealing Darfur Military Defeats 2006-10-22 21:51:49 Sudan is to expel the United Nation's top official in the country after he reported two military defeats for the government and other embarrassing details in the largely invisible war in the western region of Darfur. Journalists and aid workers have minimal access to the conflict zone to check claims and counter claims by government and rebel commanders as well as displaced villagers, but Jan Pronk used his authority as Kofi Annan's special representative to make sensitive statements on his weblog. This month he reported heavy government casualties, the sacking of several generals and the mobilizing of Arab militias to make up for a fall in army morale after frightened troops mutinied. Read The Full Story U.S. Envoy Apologizes For Saying U.S. Showed Stupidity, Arrogance On Iraq 2006-10-22 21:49:59 A senior U.S. diplomat apologized Sunday night for saying U.S. policy in Iraq displayed "arrogance" and "stupidity". A day after his remarks in an interview were broadcast by the pan-Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera, Alberto Fernandez issued a written apology through the State Department press office. "Upon reading the transcript of my appearance on Al Jazeera, I realized that I seriously misspoke by using the phrase 'there has been arrogance and stupidity' by the U.S. in Iraq," said Fernandez, director of public diplomacy in State's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. "This represents neither my views nor those of the State Department," Fernandez added. "I apologize." Read The Full Story Flooding Destroys Southeast Texas Homes 2006-10-22 21:47:11 Flooding along the Neches River in Southeast Texas destroyed an estimated 40 homes, forcing people to flee their residences and even FEMA trailers brought in after Hurricane Rita pounded the region last year. The river stood at about 12 feet late Sunday afternoon, 8 feet above flood stage. "We have a lot of homes under water," said Jeff Kelley, Orange County emergency management coordinator, who estimated about 40 homes have been destroyed. Read The Full Story 9/11 Conspiracy Theorist Retires So He Can Keep Speaking Out 2006-10-22 14:15:38 A Brigham Young University physics professor who suggested that the World Trade Center was brought down by explosives has resigned, six weeks after the school placed him on leave. "I am electing to retire so that I can spend more time speaking and conducting research of my choosing," Steven E. Jones, a physics professor, said in a statement released by the school. His retirement is effective Jan. 1. Jones recently published theories about U.S. government involvement in the events of Sept. 11, 2001, including one suggesting that explosives inside the World Trade Center -- not airplanes striking the twin towers -- brought the complex down. Read The Full Story Several Killed, Many More Wounded As Bombs Explode In Baghdad 2006-10-22 14:14:02 A series of bombs exploded in the Iraqi capital today, apparently aimed at residents as they did last-minute shopping before the start of the Muslim festival of Id al-Fitr that begins this week and marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan, and the blasts punctuated what had already been one of the bloodiest stretches for the country since the American-led invasion. Attacks of all kinds have spiked in Baghdad since the beginning of Ramadan, the Muslim period of fasting and repentance that will come to an end this week with the three-day holiday of Id al-Fitr, albeit on different days for Sunnis and Shiites. The surge in violence has unfolded despite the presence of thousands of additional American troops as part of a new security plan for the capital that military officials had hoped would help staunch the unrelenting bloodshed. Sunday, shopping areas in Baghdad were crowded as residents stopped by bakeries to purchase sweets and picked through racks to buy new clothes for Id al-Fitr. This year's Ramadan will go down in history as one of the country's bloodiest periods since the American-led invasion, with hundreds killed in sectarian attacks in Baghdad and clashes between rival Shiite militias breaking out last week in the southern city of Amara, threatening to extend the spiraling violence to the Shiite south. Read The Full Story	Grim Turn May Harden Darfur Conflict 2006-10-22 21:54:30 Haroun Abdullah Kabir stepped from one bloodied corpse to another on the parched, rocky battlefield. He searched the soldiers' decomposing faces for an aquiline nose, fair complexion or fine, straight hair: telltale Arab features. Instead, Kabir, a field commander of the Darfur rebels fighting the Arab-dominated Sudanese government, found among the Sudanese soldiers his men had felled only the dark-skinned faces of southern Sudanese and Darfurians. He looked away in disgust. "You see, they send black men to kill black men," he said. "We are waiting for them to send Arabs for a real fight." This is the new battlefield in Darfur, a blood-soaked land in which at least 200,000 people have died since early 2003, many of hunger and disease, as a result of a campaign of violence the Bush administration and others have called genocide. Read The Full Story Blair To Give Iraq 12 Months To Be Ready For Handover 2006-10-22 21:52:39 Tony Blair will put pressure on the Iraqi government Monday to demonstrate that its security forces will be ready to take over from the British army in southern provinces within roughly a year. Amid mounting international concern over escalating violence, Blair is expected to use Monday's Downing Street talks with Iraq's deputy prime minister, Barham Saleh, to discuss plans for an exit strategy for British troops, with some ministers openly contemplating withdrawal inside a year. In an attempt to demonstrate that the British army will not be bogged down in Iraq indefinitely, the defense secretary, Des Browne, said Sunday he expected that Iraq's security forces would have the capacity within a year to take over from British forces, a point also pushed home by the Foreign Office minister, Kim Howells. Howells said: "I would have thought that certainly in a year or so there will be adequately trained Iraqi soldiers and security forces - policemen and women and so on - in order to do the job." Read The Full Story Military Analysis: Stand Or Fall In Baghdad 2006-10-22 21:50:57 After three years of trying to thwart a potent insurgency and tamp down the deadly violence in Iraq, the American military is playing its last hand: the Baghdad security plan. The plan will be tweaked, adjusted and modified in the weeks ahead, as American commanders try to reverse the dismaying increase in murders, drive-by shootings and bombings. Yet military commanders here [Baghdad] see no plausible alternative to their bedrock strategy to clear violence-ridden neighborhoods of militias, insurgents and arms caches, hold them with Iraqi and American security forces, and then try to win over the population with reconstruction projects, underwritten mainly by the Iraqi government. There is no fall-back plan that the generals are holding in their hip pocket. This is it. Read The Full Story Paraguay In A Dither Over Alleged Bush Purchase Of 100,000-Acre Hideaway 2006-10-22 21:48:56 Meeting the new couple next door can be an anxious business for even the most relaxed home owner. Will they be international drug traffickers? Have they got noisy kids with a penchant for electronic music? As worries go, however, having the U.S. president move in next door must come fairly low on the list. Unless, of course, you are a resident of northern Paraguay and believe reports in the South American press that he has bought up a 100,000 acre (40,500 hectare) ranch in your neck of the woods. The rumors, as yet unconfirmed but which began with the state-run Cuban news agency Prensa Latina, have triggered an outpouring of conspiracy theories, with speculation rife about what President Bush's supposed interest in the "chaco", a semi-arid lowland in the Paraguay's north, might be. Some have speculated that he might be trying to wrestle control of the Guarani Aquifer, one of the largest underground water reserves, from the Paraguayans. Read The Full Story U.S. Diplomat Criticizes U.S. Arrogance, Stupidity In Iraq 2006-10-22 14:16:07 A senior U.S. diplomat said the United States had shown "arrogance" and "stupidity" in Iraq but was now ready to talk with any group except al-Qaeda in Iraq to facilitate national reconciliation. In an interview with Al-Jazeera television aired late Saturday, Alberto Fernandez, director of public diplomacy in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the State Department offered an unusually candid assessment of America's war in Iraq. "We tried to do our best but I think there is much room for criticism because, undoubtedly, there was arrogance and there was stupidity from the United States in Iraq," he said. "We are open to dialogue because we all know that, at the end of the day, the solution to the hell and the killings in Iraq is linked to an effective Iraqi national reconciliation," he said, speaking in Arabic from Washington. "The Iraqi government is convinced of this." Read The Full Story 43 French Baggage Handlers Have Security Clearances Revoked 2006-10-22 14:14:47 Authorities rescinded the security clearance of 43 baggage handlers at France's main international airport due to suspicions they were connected with radical organizations, a top government minister said Saturday. Responding to reports a day earlier that several dozen baggage handlers at Charles de Gaulle airport had lost security clearance, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy put the number at 43 and said authorities had clear reasons to deny them security badges. "There were specific elements that made us forbid them entry" to sensitive areas at Paris' largest airport, Sarkozy said. "I cannot accept that people with radical practices" work in an airport, the minister said, adding that it was his "duty to ensure that (workers) do not have any kind of links with radical organizations." Read The Full Story
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