Bush Says War's Outcome 'Will Merit the Sacrifice'

President and Petraeus Discuss Strategy as the U.S. Death Toll in Iraq Rises to 4,000

By Karen DeYoung and Michael Abramowitz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, March 25, 2008; A01

As the American military death toll in Iraq reached 4,000, President Bush conferred yesterday with top U.S. officials in Washington and in Baghdad and vowed in a public statement that the outcome of the war "will merit the sacrifice."

Bush held a two-hour videoconference with Gen. David H. Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker. Petraeus reiterated his plan to halt U.S. troop withdrawals, begun late last fall, at the end of July. At that point, he has said, he will "evaluate" whether Iraqi forces and a reduced number of U.S. troops can maintain the lower levels of violence.

"We have every desire to continue with the withdrawal of forces" at some time after July, one military official said. "The issue will be once we remove over 25 percent of combat power plus other associated units . . . we let the dust settle . . . and look to see where we're at," he said, adding that the evaluation period would probably be at least six weeks. Petraeus has offered no guarantee that conditions will allow further withdrawals before Bush leaves office.

In congressional testimony next month, Petraeus and Crocker are expected to describe continued but slow improvement in military and political conditions, even as recent weeks have seen an increase in suicide bombings, along with Sunday's renewal of rocket attacks on Baghdad's Green Zone, where the U.S. Embassy and much of the Iraqi government are located.

Among the wounded in four separate attacks were an American military contractor and an embassy employee from Jordan, both of whom remain in serious condition, a U.S. official in Baghdad said. Military officials said the munitions were Iranian-made, fired from northeastern Baghdad by renegade Shiite militia groups.

Late Sunday night, the U.S. command in Baghdad announced that four soldiers had been killed by a makeshift bomb in southern Baghdad, bringing the total number of U.S. troops killed to 4,000 since the war began in March 2003. Dozens of Iraqis were also killed in violence around the country Sunday.

Overall attacks in Iraq have sharply declined in Iraq, but the trend has begun to plateau over the past three months -- car bombings have decreased, but suicide bombings have increased. Military officials said that Petraeus will tell Congress that the withdrawal, which has now reached about 9,000 troops, will continue with three additional brigades to be withdrawn without replacement by July 31.

Although administration officials have said that U.S. troop strength at that point should be about where it was before a "surge" in deployments began last spring -- approximately 130,000 -- the military official said the net number remaining may be larger. "They're in the process now of trying to scrub the numbers," he said of Petraeus's command in Baghdad. "Figuring out boots on the ground is difficult because . . . units come in at different sizes, people have left, people have been wounded."

There are similar difficulties, he said, in determining the "battlefield geometry" that will enable the withdrawal of entire combat brigades. Brigades are seldom deployed intact, and their battalions are often scattered. While one battalion could be withdrawn without replacement, others may have to be replaced by U.S. or Iraqi forces from elsewhere.

During his testimony on April 8 and 9, Petraeus expects to present Congress with firm numbers on how many U.S. troops will leave Iraq and how many will remain by the end of July.

Crocker, who in previous testimony has cautioned against hopes of rapid progress, is expected to describe some political and economic achievements but to say that much work remains. In a mid-March interview with The Washington Post, he described Iraqi political and economic institutions as "like everything else here, still very much under development."

Another senior U.S. diplomat offered positive indicators yesterday, saying that Iraqis are "spending increasingly more money than we are" on reconstruction and some military programs. "We're not starting any new projects and [the Iraqis] are getting incrementally better," he said. Iraq's "Arab neighbors are gradually engaging, although not enough. They're not embracing Maliki the way they ought to," he added, referring to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

After speaking with Petraeus and Crocker yesterday morning from the White House, Bush attended a briefing by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the State Department on cooperation between military and civilian officials in Iraq and elsewhere. In a statement to reporters, he spoke of the U.S. civilians who have died in Iraq and said: "I will vow so long as I am president to make sure that those lives were not lost in vain."

Bush will attend a similar briefing by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and military leaders today at the Pentagon, but administration officials said they do not expect any new decisions or departures from current policy.

One official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that after months of friction among civilian and military leaders -- including over concerns about overall stress on the military -- there is little debate over the basic Iraq strategy for the next six months. The only real question, he said, is how long the "pause" in withdrawals after July will last.

In Turkey yesterday, Vice President Cheney told ABC News that "there's no reason now to decide what the force level is going to be in December of '08." The criterion, he said, "is how do we make certain we succeed in Iraq? It may be that we can make judgments about reductions down the road. . . . But I don't think [Bush] is likely to want to try to say now what the force level ought to be at the end of the year."

Iraqi and U.S. Forces Battle Shiite Militia

By MICHAEL KAMBER and JAMES GLANZ

BAGHDAD — Heavy fighting broke out Tuesday in two of Iraq’s largest cities, as Iraqi ground forces and helicopters mounted a huge operation to break the grip of the Shiite militias controlling Basra, and Iraqi forces clashed with militias in Baghdad. The fighting threatened to destabilize a long-term truce that had helped reduce the level of violence in the five-year-old Iraq war.

The battles, along with indications in recent weeks that militia and insurgent attacks had already been creeping up, raised fears across Iraq that Moktada al-Sadr, the renegade Shiite cleric, could pull out of a cease-fire he declared last summer. If his Mahdi Army militia does step up attacks, that could in turn slow American troop withdrawals.

There were also serious clashes in the southern cities of Kut and Hilla.

In Basra, American and British jets roared through the skies, providing air support for the Iraqi military. A British Army spokesman for southern Iraq, Maj. Tom Holloway, said that while Western forces had not entered Basra, the operation already involved nearly 30,000 Iraqi troops and police forces, with more arriving. “They are clearing the city block by block,” Major Holloway said.

The scale and intensity of the clashes in Baghdad kept many residents home. Schools and shops were closed in many neighborhoods and hundreds of checkpoints appeared; in some neighborhoods they were controlled by the government and in others by militia members.

Barrages of rockets and mortar shells pounded the fortified Green Zone area for the second time in three days. An American military spokesman said there were two minor injuries to civilians in the Green Zone.

Even before the crackdown on militias began on Tuesday, Pentagon statistics on the frequency of militia and insurgent attacks suggested that after major security gains last fall, the conflict had drifted into something of a stalemate. Over all, violence has remained fairly steady over the past several months, but the streets have become tense and much more dangerous again after a period of calm.

It is not clear how responsible the restive Mahdi militia commanders are for stalling progress in the effort to reduce violence. In recent weeks, commanders have protested continuing American and Iraqi raids and detentions of militia members.

If the cease-fire were to unravel, there is little doubt about the mayhem that could be stirred up by Mr. Sadr, who forced the United States military to mount two bloody offensives against his fighters in 2004 as much of the country exploded in violence.

Sadiq al-Rikabi, the prime minister’s political adviser, and other Iraqi officials said that just how the unrest in Baghdad was related to the crackdown in Basra was unknown.

Sadr City, the Baghdad neighborhood that is the center of the Mahdi Army’s power, was sealed off by a cordon of Iraqi troops and what appeared to be several American units. A New York Times photographer who was able to get through the cordon found more layers of checkpoints, each one run by about two dozen heavily armed Mahdi Army fighters clad in tracksuits and T-shirts. Tires burned in the city center, gunfire echoed against shuttered stores, and teams of fighters in pickup trucks moved about brandishing machine guns, sniper rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

“We are doing this in reaction to the unprovoked military operations against the Mahdi Army,” said a Mahdi commander who identified himself as Abu Mortada. “The U.S., the Iraqi government and Sciri are against us,” he said, referring to a rival Shiite group whose name has changed several times, and is now known as the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, which has an armed wing called the Badr Organization.

“They are trying to finish us,” the commander said. “They want power for the Iraqi government and Sciri.”

Basra, which until 2005 enjoyed relative peace, has since been riven by power struggles among the Mahdi Army and local Shiite rivals, like the Badr Organization and a militia controlled by the Fadhila political party, a group that split from the Sadr party.

In the weeks leading up to the operation, Iraqi officials indicated that part of the operation would be aimed at the Fadhila groups, which are widely believed to be in control of Basra’s lucrative port operations and other parts of the city. The ports have been plagued by corruption, draining revenue that could flow to the central and local governments. But the operation also threatens the Mahdi Army’s strongholds in Basra.

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s government depends on support from the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq but is less dependent now on coalitions with the Mahdi Army.

In Basra, Iraq’s most important oil-exporting center, thousands of Iraqi government soldiers and police officers moved into the city around 5 a.m. and engaged in pitched battles with Shiite militia members who have taken over big areas of that city.

The Basra operation, which senior Iraqi officials had been signaling for weeks, is considered so important by the Iraqi government that Mr. Maliki traveled to the city to direct the fighting, several officials said.

Although Sadr officials said the cease-fire was still in effect, on Monday Mr. Sadr called for a nationwide civil disobedience campaign in response to what his followers said was an unwarranted crackdown. Some Mahdi commanders referred to an edict by Mr. Sadr saying their militias had the right of self-defense.

A member of Mr. Sadr’s political party in Basra, Sheik Abdul Sattar al-Bahadli, complained bitterly about the enormous operation, claiming that it was aimed at innocent people in Basra.

“We never witnessed such attacks even under the regime of Saddam Hussein,” Mr. Bahadli said. “Maliki gave orders and said, ‘Erase them.’ ”

But Mr. Maliki said in a statement that the operation was intended to root out “outlaws” who, he said, were working with local confederates inside and outside the government.

“The federal government, pressed by its obligations to support the local government in Basra and support its officials, has decided to restore security and stability and impose the law,” the statement said

An American military official said the American-led coalition forces had provided air transportation for the operation and were keeping “quick reaction forces” on standby.

The official said coalition forces had supported Iraqi security forces in clashes around Sadr City with “special groups” — a term reserved for what American commanders say are Iranian-backed Shiite splinter groups, which include portions of the Mahdi Army.

“A coalition forces helicopter also engaged targets north of Sadr City in support of this operation,” the official said, asserting that despite the fighting, most of Baghdad had been peaceful and that there were still signs of progress on security in most areas of Iraq and its capital.

“We feel that the cease-fire is being honored” by those loyal to Mr. Sadr, the official said. The cease-fire, he said, “is in the best interest of all Iraqis.”

Many places in Baghdad were tense. At a checkpoint downtown, a policeman’s radio crackled with the news of the sniper shooting of a police officer in a nearby neighborhood. “We’ve heard that Sadr has canceled the cease-fire, is this true?” he asked motorists whose car he was searching.

In a statement issued late Tuesday, the military said an American soldier was killed in Baghdad about 5.p.m. No other details were provided.

Witnesses in Basra said jets flew overhead as armored vehicles raced through the city and machine gun and canon fire reverberated through the streets. Civilians took refuge in their homes. Iraqi television showed images of civilian gunmen with grenade launchers taking up positions and ambulances ferrying the wounded to hospitals.

On Tuesday night, after about six hours of silence, armored vehicles and helicopters could again be heard moving through the city, witnesses said. Gunfire and shelling could be heard to the north.

In Baghdad, some areas were deserted as clashes broke out across the city. In downtown Baghdad, checkpoints blocked sparse traffic every 100 yards.

Saeed Ammar, a government employee, said he was standing near policemen in the Huriya neighborhood on Tuesday morning when he was approached by Mahdi Army members. “They told me not to stand near checkpoints. They said, ‘We are waiting for the word from Moktada Sadr to attack the checkpoints — it may come at any moment.’ ”

Despite the armed actions by many Sadr followers, members of Mr. Sadr’s party said the cease-fire was still in effect and called for peaceful civil disobedience. In Najaf, hundreds of followers carrying Korans and olive branches mounted a sit-in, chanting, “No to occupation, no to terrorism.”

Sahar Gani, a teacher, was taking students home along a nearly deserted Baghdad sidewalk. “The security situation is getting worse day by day,” she said. “The city is getting very bad now. We’ve been through this before, so we find it natural. But we don’t know what to do.”

Reporting was contributed by Joao Silva, Anwar J. Ali and Hosham Hussein from Baghdad, and employees of The New York Times from Baghdad, Basra, Hilla, Diwaniya and Kut.

13 Iraqis Killed by Shells Fired at the Green Zone

By ERICA GOODE

BAGHDAD — As many as 20 mortar shells were fired Sunday at the heavily fortified Green Zone, one of the fiercest and most sustained attacks on the area in the last year.

The shelling sent thick plumes of dark gray smoke over central Baghdad and ignited a spectacular fire on the banks of the Tigris River. It ushered in a day of violence that claimed the lives of four American soldiers and at least 58 lraqis around the country.

American military officials said the soldiers were killed by a homemade bomb about 10 p.m. as they patrolled southern Baghdad in a vehicle, pushing the number of American service members killed in Iraq closer to 4,000. Another soldier was wounded in the attack.

The intensity of the violence added to the sense that insurgent and sectarian attacks had been on the rise in recent weeks.

Bush administration officials have said repeatedly that an increase in troop levels has reduced violence to the point that political and sectarian reconciliation is becoming a reality. The administration has withdrawn some of the reinforcements and is assessing the effect of that reduction before withdrawing additional troops, a decision expected in the next week.

Recent statistics compiled by the Pentagon suggest that after dropping significantly last fall, the number of daily attacks remained static from November through January, the last month for which official figures were available. And the relative calm has been pierced by a flare-up of violence in recent weeks.

No Americans were killed in the shelling on Sunday, officials said, but mortar shells that fell short of their target killed 13 Iraqis in neighborhoods east of the Green Zone. The first attack, about 6 a.m., sent thunderous booms echoing across the city, shaking buildings and rattling windows.

Although the source of the attacks could not be determined conclusively, two witnesses said the early-morning rounds were fired across the river from the Shiite-dominated Baladiyat neighborhood by militia men who the witnesses believed belonged to the Mahdi Army of the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

American military officials have in the past blamed Shiite militia factions or “special groups” backed by Iran for such attacks. The factions are thought to be splinter groups of the Mahdi Army.

Last month, Mr. Sadr announced the extension of a cease-fire begun last year and said that he would not tolerate any violations. But in recent weeks, there have been clashes between Mahdi fighters and multinational forces in Kut, southeast of the capital, and Diyala Province, to the north.

The attack on Sunday morning sent early risers in the Green Zone running for shelter. Sirens went off, and loudspeakers blared: “Duck and cover! Duck and cover!”

Barrages of mortar fire continued through the day at four- to five-hour intervals, including a series of intense blasts just before 8:30 p.m. In that assault, one round landed just outside the Green Zone wall on the west bank of the Tigris, igniting a large brush fire. For hours afterward, the city was oddly silent, the helicopters that are a constant presence here nowhere in sight.

Philip T. Reeker, a spokesman for the American Embassy, said that the mortar attacks “caused no deaths or major injuries” within the Green Zone. He said that for security reasons, American officials do not release the details of such attacks.

But Iraq’s Interior Ministry said that some shells landed in residential neighborhoods, in one case crashing into a family’s house, killing a mother, a father and three children. Another landed in the Kamalia neighborhood of eastern Baghdad, killing five people and wounding eight others.

A third fell in Bab al-Sharji, where one person was killed and five wounded.

In the upscale Karada neighborhood, a mortar shell killed two people and wounded seven; another landed near the house of Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi. The vice president was uninjured.

Not all of the violence in the capital on Sunday was directed at the Green Zone. In the Shuala neighborhood in western Baghdad, a bomb in a parked car exploded, killing six and wounding at least 10. The explosion tore through the neighborhood’s main street, lined with houses and shops.

“We were having our lunch inside the restaurant when we heard a big sound of an explosion that broke the front glass of the shop,” said Abbas Qasim, 38, the owner of a store on the street.

“I almost suffocated while I was eating, and when I got out I saw four cars burning,” he said. “One of them was a van carrying students who had just gotten back from the university. I rushed to help them with some local people, but five of them were already dead and riddled with shrapnel.”

Ali Mahmoud, 45, who lives on the street, said the explosion was the first in the neighborhood in two years.

“The American warplanes were shelling most of the area all last night because of the Madhi Army,” he said. It dominates the neighborhood, he said.

Attackers also struck in the Zafaraniya neighborhood, in southern Baghdad, where gunmen in three cars opened fire on pedestrians, killing seven and wounding 16.

In northern Iraq, a suicide bomber in a truck smashed through a barrier of armored vehicles in front of an Iraqi Army garrison in the Haramat neighborhood of Mosul. The bomb killed 12 soldiers and wounded 42 other soldiers and civilians.

About 100 miles southeast of Mosul, in the Hamrin Mountains, a roadside bomb exploded, killing four soldiers in an Iraqi Army convoy, including a lieutenant. Dr. Jawdat Abdul Waq Mahmoud, of the general hospital in Touz, said that the soldiers were from the Third Battalion, Second Brigade.

American forces on Sunday reported killing “12 terrorists” who had attacked ground troops east of Baquba. In a statement, the military said that American troops had ordered the occupants of a building to come outside.

“Some complied but others remained inside,” the statement said. “Coalition forces entered the building and were fired upon by several armed men.”

The statement said that assault weapons, grenades and “military-style assault vests” were found in the building.

A security official in Diyala who was informed of the fighting said that it had broken out between American forces and members of a family in a house in the village of Nahar Sabah. American warplanes then reportedly shelled the house, belonging to Khudhaier al-Salem, a prominent figure in the region. The official said 13 people, most of them members of the family, were killed and nine wounded, including neighbors.

Two children in Baquba, a 10-year-old and an 8-year-old, also died Sunday. They were playing in a street when a homemade bomb hidden under some garbage detonated, killing them instantly. When the authorities reached the scene, the security official said, all they found were pieces of the children’s bodies.

Reporting was contributed by Hoshan Hussein, Qais Mizher, Ahmed Fadam and Mudhafer al-Husaini from Baghdad and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Mosul and Diyala.

Ominous Rise in Baghdad Bombings

By Charles Crain/Baghdad

Thursday's double bombing in Baghdad, which killed nearly 70 people and left hundreds more wounded, was the worst attack in Iraq since June 2007. It continues a troubling trend: a slow but steady increase in deadly bombings across the country. The troop surge is ending and the U.S. has begun withdrawing soldiers from Baghdad, but these attacks may indicate that a military or political solution to the Sunni insurgency may be as far off as it was a year ago.

The attacks capped off a violent week. Last Sunday more than 20 people died in bombings across the capital. And last month nearly 100 people were killed when two women detonated suicide vests in a crowded Baghdad market. According to statistics released by the U.S. military such attacks declined sharply for most of 2007, bottoming out in December. Since late last year, though, car bombings and suicide vest bombings have increased steadily.

Despite this week's carnage the absolute number of bombings is still far lower than it was one year ago. The problem, however, is not simply lives lost, but also what the slow increase in attacks says about the resiliency of the Sunni insurgency. Battered by Shi'ite militias, the U.S. military and the defection of more moderate insurgents, al-Qaeda in Iraq and other radical insurgent groups are much weaker now than they were just last summer. But, as U.S. officials are quick to acknowledge, they still have the men, the money and the organization to pose a serious threat.

The question now is how that threat will be kept under control. American troop levels in Baghdad and the rest of Iraq will return this year to about the same level as 2006 — the year that saw the worst of the country's sectarian violence. Helping to fill that void, supposedly, will be former members of the Sunni insurgency: thousands have become U.S.-paid counter-insurgents and, in some cases, members of the Iraqi government security forces. Unlike the mostly Shi'ite Iraqi army and police, these Sunnis have credibility in their towns and neighborhoods and have proven effective in fighting their former insurgent allies.

The trouble is that this ground-level military solution may be in conflict with other government efforts to reduce the violence and foster stability in Iraq. The Karrada bombing came on the heels of a state visit by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and struck a neighborhood that is home to Iraq's largest Shi'ite political party and many Shi'ite government officials. The timing and location of this bombing may have been a coincidence, but Karrada makes a nice target for Sunni militants who frame their fight as a struggle against Iranian domination.

The long-term difficulty for the United States and the Iraqi government is that this suspicion of Iran is not simply a fantasy of radical Sunni insurgents. It is a very real fear of Sunni former insurgents currently cooperating in the fight against al-Qaeda. Former insurgent leaders routinely scorn the Iraqi government's intentions, casting it as a pawn of the Iranians. So, as the Iraqi government strives to reduce violence by improving its relationship with Iran, it may be setting the stage for continued conflict with disaffected Sunnis.

Bombs Kill 54 and Wound 123 in Baghdad

By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and MOHAMMED OBAIDI

BAGHDAD — Two bombs struck a bustling shopping district in the heart of Baghdad on Thursday evening, turning display windows and cabinets and glass shelves into deadly shrapnel, and killing 54 people and wounding 123, the Iraqi authorities said.

The attack, in the Karada neighborhood, was the worst here in the capital since early February, when bombings killed almost 100 people at two pet markets, and it reinforced fears that insurgents could still carry out devastating attacks in well-guarded areas. While violence has declined sharply from last year, bomb attacks in Baghdad have increased in recent weeks.

No one claimed responsibility. But the attackers used an old tactic to maximize casualties: detonating one bomb, then setting off a second blast to kill passers-by and emergency workers who rushed to the scene to aid the victims.

A shoe salesman who would identify himself only by his first name, Hatam, said the first bomb slammed him to the ground. He got up, looked behind him, and ran to aid a woman whose leg had been ripped off by the blast.

“We managed to drag her away from the spot, and then the police came really quickly, and they were shouting at the people to move back because there might be another explosion,” he said. “But the people didn’t listen, and even some of the policemen who were already there didn’t pay attention, and that is when the second explosion happened.”

This time, Hatam said, he walked away. “I couldn’t go back again,” he said. “The scene was so horrible, and I lost the energy to see dead people.”

The explosions sprayed chunks of human flesh for 50 yards. The second bomb, about 10 minutes after the first, killed more people. A number of Iraqi soldiers and police officers who hurried in after the first attack were among the dead and wounded.

Some witnesses said the first bomb had been hidden in a trash can. The second explosion may have originated in a vest worn by a suicide bomber, the American military said. One witness said a man on a motorcycle carried the bomb into the crowd. But other witnesses interviewed later said the second bomb had been planted previously.

In the chaos that followed the attacks, Iraqi security forces fired Kalashnikov rifles into the air to scare people away. But many people pushed forward anyway to search for family members feared dead.

The attack “was like an electric shock, it happened so suddenly nobody could avoid it,” said Abu Abdullah, who operates a kebab stand nearby. “Some people were burning, and I saw some without legs.”

In other violence reported Thursday, insurgents struck in the north, Iraqi authorities in Mosul said, killing one guard and wounding another at Badoosh Prison with an improvised bomb. The bodies of four guards who were kidnapped Wednesday were found Thursday.

On the political front, the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, refused to proceed with the execution of the man known as Chemical Ali, one of Saddam Hussein’s most notorious henchmen, in what seemed to be an effort to press other top Iraqi leaders to ratify the death sentences of two other former military commanders.

Chemical Ali, whose real name is Ali Hassan al-Majid, commanded the brutal Anfal campaign in the late 1980s that killed as many as 180,000 Kurds. He was sentenced to death last summer, and Iraq’s three-member Presidency Council, which has the constitutional power to ratify death sentences, approved his punishment last week.

Now, Mr. Maliki is arguing that Mr. Majid should not be sent to the gallows unless the American military also hands over for execution two other former military commanders who were sentenced to death at the same time.

One of the men, Sultan Hashem Ahmed al-Jabouri al-Tai, was a former defense minister and general who remains a hero to many Sunni Arabs. Some Iraqi leaders and American commanders question the appropriateness of his sentence and fear that executing him would anger Sunnis already wary of the Iraqi government, which is dominated by Kurds and Shiites. But many Shiites say he deserves to be executed and that sparing him would set a dangerous precedent.

The other condemned man is Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti, a former senior Iraqi armed forces commander.

The Presidency Council — President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd; Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, a Sunni; and Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, a Shiite — has refused to ratify the execution of Mr. Hashem. Mr. Talabani and Mr. Hashemi have said they do not approve of his sentence.

The American military, which holds all three of the condemned prisoners, is unlikely to transfer custody until the issue is resolved with the Presidency Council.

But Mr. Maliki contends that the council’s power to ratify executions does not extend to sentences on members of Saddam Hussein’s former government that were handed down by the Iraqi High Tribunal, the court that tried Mr. Hussein and his top lieutenants, said Ali al-Dabbagh, a government spokesman.

“The prime minister feels the Presidency Council has no power to reduce the sentence or give any amnesty to the convicted persons, so it is not necessary for them to approve this verdict,” Mr. Dabbagh said. “That is why the prime minister feels the execution cannot be done unless the other two are also handed over.”

It remains unclear how long this latest twist could leave the fates of all three in limbo. Mr. Dabbagh suggested that Mr. Maliki was not interested in any political deal to resolve the conflict with the council. “There is no compromise on this,” he said.

A senior American military spokesman in Baghdad, Maj. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner, said Wednesday that the Iraqi government had not presented the Americans “with a request yet for the release of Majid” into Iraqi custody. “We will fulfill our responsibility once that request has been submitted to us,” he said.

Ahmad Fadam contributed reporting from Baghdad, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Mosul.

5 Witnesses Insist Iraqis Didn't Fire On Guards

State Dept. to Study System for Security

By Sudarsan Raghavan and Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, September 29, 2007; A01

BAGHDAD, Sept 28 -- Five eyewitnesses to a Sept. 16 shooting incident in Baghdad involving the private security firm Blackwater USA insisted that company guards fired without provocation, forcing civilians and Iraqi police to run for cover, and that the Iraqi officers did not return fire.

The eyewitnesses and a senior Iraqi police official close to an investigation of the incident contradicted initial accounts provided by the company and the State Department, which employs Blackwater to protect U.S. diplomats. At least 11 Iraqis died in the shootings, which have focused attention on the actions of largely unregulated security companies operating in Iraq.

"The Iraqi security forces had the right to shoot at them when they saw the [Blackwater] convoy shooting at the people, but they did not shoot at the convoy," said Ahmed Ali Jassim, 19, a maintenance worker who saw the incident. "When they see Iraqis getting shot like that, their blood would be boiling. But no one crossed the limits."

The latest eyewitness accounts emerged as the State Department announced the creation of a high-level panel to assess whether appropriate rules are in place for the three private firms that protect U.S. diplomats and other civilian officials, whether the companies -- including the largest, Blackwater -- are following those rules, and whether the system should be altered or scrapped altogether.

Named by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the panel will travel to Baghdad on Saturday to begin a comprehensive review of the State Department's multibillion-dollar private security operation in Iraq, according to Patrick E. Kennedy, the department's senior management official and head of the panel. The inquiry would remain separate from probes into the Sept. 16 incident, including a joint Iraq-U.S. committee composed of U.S. military and State Department personnel and Iraqi officials.

An ABC News report Friday quoted what it said were sworn statements from Blackwater employees, four of whom said they fired on a white sedan that failed to slow down despite hand and arm signals and water bottles they threw as it approached their convoy.

"I turned and engaged the car with approximately 20 to 30 rounds from my M4 rifle. After I no longer felt the threat to my life, I turned back to cover my sector," wrote one guard, according to ABC.

The guards also reported taking fire from gunmen dressed as civilians and Iraqi police officers from a tree line, a red bus and a dirt mound. One guard reported firing on a man who exited another white sedan with what the guard believed was a detonating device.

"Fearing for my life and the lives of my team members, I fired several well aimed rounds center mass at the threat," he wrote, according to ABC.

Another guard wrote that he fired in response to shots fired from Iraqis dressed as civilians. "I fired one shot from my SR-25 at the closest threat," wrote the guard, referring to a semiautomatic sniper rifle. "He went down and did not fire anymore."

The ABC report showed a photo of what Blackwater said was an armored vehicle that had been hit by at least five rounds during the incident.

The report also showed the fiery images of what Blackwater guards said was a car bomb attack before the incident. The car bomb detonated outside a financial compound where a U.S. official under Blackwater's protection was attending a meeting. The compound is about a mile from the site of the shootings, which did not occur until nearly 30 minutes after the bombing.

The eyewitnesses -- three traffic policemen and two maintenance workers who were interviewed separately -- offered a dramatically different account of the events in Nisoor Square.

Traffic police officer Sarhan Thiab said that shortly after noon he saw two Blackwater convoys, minutes apart, come through the traffic circle. Following procedure, he and other traffic officers ordered cars to stop entering the circle to allow the convoys to pass.

Fifteen minutes later, a third Blackwater convoy of four gray REVA armored vehicles arrived. Unlike the two previous convoys, this one swerved left and rolled into the circle against the flow of traffic, the eyewitnesses said. Such a move made it more difficult for the traffic policemen to slow down vehicles that were driving directly into the convoy.

The Blackwater guards threw water bottles in the circle to halt traffic, Thiab said. He and another officer, Ali Khalaf, walked into two intersections to stop traffic heading toward the convoy, which had stopped in a semicircle.

Suddenly, guards fired on a white sedan that did not slow down quickly enough, the witnesses said. The car kept moving forward, but not in a threatening way, said Khalaf, who has given his account to U.S. and Iraqi investigators.

"The car went on rolling slowly. But they kept on shooting," said Khalaf, who ran for cover. Thiab and other witnesses said that they heard loud booms and that the vehicle burst into flames, killing the female passenger.

In seconds, there was shooting in all directions, eyewitnesses said. People were fleeing their cars and running for cover. Afterward, dead and wounded were found in almost every direction, police said.

Eyewitnesses also disputed the Blackwater guards' account that civilians were firing from a red bus. Hussam Abdul Rahman, 25, another traffic policeman who was near the bus, said passengers were kicking out the windows in a desperate attempt to escape the firing.

"There were many on this bus. They were hardly able to walk and they were screaming," Khalaf said.

The senior Iraqi police official also rejected Blackwater's account of being ambushed by gunmen. Nisoor Square, he said, sits in front of the National Police headquarters. There were checkpoints, Iraqi army and police, nearby in nearly every direction, making it hard for gunmen to take positions to ambush the convoy.

The police guards in the square, he added, would not shoot without orders. The square is a common route for dozens of heavily armored U.S. military and embassy convoys. Anyone planning an attack would use heavy weapons such as rocket-propelled grenades -- not guns, the official said. "To attack body-armored vehicles with bullets? No one can believe this," the police official said.

Both the State Department and the Defense Department have maintained they have no choice but to contract out security and other functions in an era of downsized government and increased international danger. "As long as the security threats continue at the level they are now, we're going to have to figure out a way" to protect civilians operating in Iraq, Afghanistan and other hot spots, Kennedy said. "How that is done is the purpose of the review."

Kennedy's team includes retired NATO commander Gen. George A. Joulwan; J. Stapleton Roy, a former senior diplomat who is now vice chairman of Kissinger Associates; and Eric Boswell, a senior official in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The Defense Department this week sent its own five-man team to Iraq for a parallel review of contractor security operations.

U.S. General in Iraq Speaks Strongly Against Troop Pullout

By JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, July 15 — An American general directing a major part of the offensive aimed at securing Baghdad said Sunday that it would take until next spring for the operation to succeed, and that an early American withdrawal would clear the way for “the enemy to come back” to areas now being cleared of insurgents.

Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commanding 15,000 American and about 7,000 Iraqi troops on Baghdad’s southern approaches, spoke more forcefully than any American commander to date in urging that the so-called troop surge ordered by President Bush continue into the spring of 2008. That would match the deadline of March 31 set by the Pentagon, which has said that limits on American troops available for deployment will force an end to the increase by then.

“It’s going to take us through the summer and fall to deny the enemy his sanctuaries” south of Baghdad, General Lynch said at a news briefing in the capital. “And then it’s going to take us through the first of the year and into the spring” to consolidate the gains now being made by the American offensive and to move enough Iraqi forces into the cleared areas to ensure that they remain so, he said.

The general spoke as momentum is gathering in Congress for an early withdrawal date for the 160,000 American troops, as well as an accelerated end to the troop buildup, which have increased American combat casualties in the past three months to the highest levels of the war. In renewed debate over the past week, Congressional opponents of the war have demanded a withdrawal deadline, with some proposing that Congress use its war-financing powers to end the troop increase much sooner, possibly this fall.

General Lynch, a blunt-spoken, cigar-smoking Ohio native who commands the Third Infantry Division, said that all the American troops that began an offensive south of Baghdad in mid-June were part of the five-month-old troop buildup, and that they were making “significant” gains in areas that were previously enemy sanctuaries. Pulling back before the job was completed, he said, would create “an environment where the enemy could come back and fill the void.”

He implied that an early withdrawal would amount to an abandonment of Iraqi civilians who he said had rallied in support of the American and Iraqi troops, and would leave the civilians exposed to renewed brutality by extremist groups. “When we go out there, the first question they ask is, ‘Are you staying?’ ” he said. “And the second question is, ‘How can we help?’ ” He added, “What we hear is, ‘We’ve had enough of people attacking our villages, attacking our homes, and attacking our children.’ ”

General Lynch said his troops had promised local people that they would stay in the areas they had taken from the extremists until enough Iraqi forces were available to take over, and said this had helped sustain “a groundswell” of feeling against the extremists. He said locals had pinpointed hide-outs of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, an extremist group that claims to have ties to Osama bin Laden’s network, that had been used to send suicide bombers into Baghdad and they had helped troops locate 170 large arms caches. The general said the locals had started neighborhood patrol units called “Iraqi provincial volunteers” that supplied their own weapons and ammunition.

The general declined to be drawn into what he called “the big debate in Washington” over the war, saying American troops would continue to battle the enemy until ordered to do otherwise. But he made it clear that his sympathies were with the Iraqis in his battle area, covering an area about the size of West Virginia, mostly between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, that extends about 80 miles south of Baghdad and includes 4 of Iraq’s 18 provinces. The offensive he commands is part of a wider push by American and Iraqi forces in the areas surrounding Baghdad, and in the capital, that began in February.

“What they’re worried about is our leaving,” he said. “And our answer is, ‘We’re staying,’ because my order from the corps commander is that we don’t leave the battlespace until we can hand over to the Iraqi security forces.” To hold on to recent gains, he said, would require at least a third more Iraqi troops than he now has, and they would have to come from other battle areas, or from new units yet to complete their training. “Everybody wants things to happen overnight, and that’s not going to happen,” he said.

General Lynch’s outspoken approach contrasted with the more cautious remarks made recently by other senior American officers, including the top American commander here, Gen. David H. Petraeus. General Petraeus has said in recent interviews that the troop buildup has made substantial gains. But he has declined to say whether he will urge a continuation of it when he returns to Washington by mid-September to make a report on the war to President Bush and Congress that was made mandatory by war-financing legislation this spring.

General Lynch said he was “amazed” at the cooperation his troops were encountering in previously hostile areas. He cited the village of Al Taqa, near the Euphrates about 20 miles southwest of Baghdad, where four American soldiers were killed in an ambush on May 12 and three others were taken hostage. One of the hostages was later found dead, leaving two soldiers missing. Brig. Gen. Jim Huggins, a deputy to General Lynch, said an Iraqi commander in the area had told him on Saturday that women and children in the village had begun using plastic pipes to tap on streetlamps and other metal objects to warn when extremists were in the area planting roadside bombs and planning other attacks.

“The tapping,” General Huggins said, was a signal that “these people have had enough.”

General Lynch also challenged an argument often made by American lawmakers who want to end the military involvement here soon: that Iraqi troops have ducked much of the hard fighting, and often proved unreliable because of the strong sectarian influence exercised by the competition for power between Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish political factions.

“I don’t know,” he said, how American war critics had concluded that the new American-trained Iraqi Army was not up to the fight. “I find that professionally offensive,” he said, after noting that there were “many Iraqi heroes” of the fighting south of Baghdad. “They’re competent,” he said. “There’s just not enough of them.”

General Lynch said that he and other American commanders were worried that extremist groups under attack by the buildup might retaliate with a spectacular, focused attack on American troops aimed at tipping the argument in Washington in favor of withdrawal.

U.S. troops, Shiite militants battle in Baghdad; 19 killed

By Ned Parker
Times Staff Writer

9:58 AM PDT, July 12, 2007

BAGHDAD — Clashes between U.S. troops and Shiite Muslim militants in eastern Baghdad left 19 people dead and 21 wounded today, police and hospital officials said.

The fighting in the capital's Amin district was sparked by a U.S. raid before dawn that the military said apprehended two militants suspected of carrying out kidnappings and bombings. Armed men retaliated by firing rocket-propelled grenades at U.S. troops.

American forces returned to Amin later in the morning, triggering a shootout and a barrage of mortar fire, police said.

Nine of the dead Iraqis were gunmen, and the rest were civilians, a police officer said. An Iraqi photographer and driver employed by Reuters news service died in the violence, the London-based news agency said. Hospital officials identified them as photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and driver Saeed Chmagh, 40.

The two militants detained during the initial raid were members of "the special groups," an offshoot of radical cleric Muqtada Sadr's Al Mahdi Army, the military said. U.S. officials think the groups are being supported by Iran.

Since the spring, U.S. troops have intensified their raids in Shiite sections of Baghdad, hunting for leaders in Al Mahdi-affiliated groups thought to be involved in sectarian killings.

A suicide bomber attacked a wedding party today in Tall Afar, 260 miles northwest of Baghdad, killing four civilians and wounding five others, said police chief Brig. Gen. Ibrahim Jubouri. Tall Afar has been plagued by attacks on its Shiite population by Sunni extremists.

A U.S. soldier died today in an attack east of Baghdad, the military said, but gave no further details.

At least 3,611 U.S. military personnel have been killed in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion, according to the website icasualties.org, which tracks deaths and injuries in the conflict.

ned.parker@latimes.com

Shelling in Green Zone kills 3

A U.S. service member is among the dead in Baghdad's fortified region. Iraqi Cabinet pledges aid to a bomb-ravaged town.
By Molly Hennessy-Fiske
Times Staff Writer

July 11, 2007

BAGHDAD — At least 20 mortar rounds and Katyusha rockets struck the fortified Green Zone on Tuesday afternoon, killing an American service member and two other people in an attack on the heart of U.S. and Iraqi government facilities in the capital.

Those killed included an Iraqi and a person whose nationality was unknown, according to a statement released by the U.S. Embassy. About 18 people were injured, including two U.S. military personnel and three American contract employees, the statement said.

Brig. Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf, a spokesman for Iraq's Interior Ministry, said 20 mortar shells and rockets had struck; another source in the ministry put the number of blasts at more than 30.

The Green Zone, also known as the International Zone, is home to the U.S. and British embassies, Iraqi parliament and other foreign and Iraqi government offices. It covers about 4 square miles in central Baghdad on the west bank of the Tigris River.

Iraqi police said Tuesday's attack, the most intense in recent months, targeted the embassy, Ibn Sina Hospital and the homes of Iraqi officials.

A U.S. Embassy spokesman said he could not confirm whether the embassy was a target, and that the frequent attacks on the Green Zone are not a barometer of the security situation in the capital.

"There's fire into the Green Zone virtually every day, so I can't draw any conclusions about the security situation based on that," he said.

United Nations staffers have temporarily moved to a different compound within the Green Zone and are calling for construction of a building capable of withstanding the stepped-up assaults. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon experienced an attack firsthand during a televised visit to the Green Zone in March and appeared shaken by the explosion.

U.N. and U.S. military leaders acknowledged last month that militants were increasingly targeting the area. There were about 39 attacks in May, compared with 17 in March, according to a U.N. report. In addition to mortar and rocket attacks, the Green Zone was shaken April 12 by a suicide bombing in the Iraqi parliament building that killed a Sunni Arab legislator.

Tuesday's attack came the same day gunmen kidnapped Iraqi Police Col. Mahmoud Muhyi Hussein, who directs security inside the Green Zone, as he was driving in the central Baghdad neighborhood of Jadriya. There was no word on his fate late in the day.

Also on Tuesday, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's Cabinet announced plans to spend $10 million on recovery efforts in the northern town of Amerli, where a massive suicide bomb Sunday killed as many as 150 people and wounded at least 250.

The money will go to victims' families, compensate business owners and help rebuild the area, the Cabinet announced.

Maliki's Cabinet also ordered the government to secure the highway that runs north from Baghdad through Amerli to Kirkuk, and to pursue militants who have fled into Salahuddin province, which includes Amerli. The Cabinet plans to form an emergency administrative unit to respond to future large-scale attacks, the statement said.

At least 17 people died in explosions and shootings across Iraq on Tuesday.

In the northern city of Samarra, five Iraqi soldiers were killed and three injured after about 60 gunmen in more than 20 cars attacked a checkpoint at 8 a.m.

Three Iraqi police were killed and one injured as they drove to work in the northern city of Tikrit, shot by gunmen on the highway between the northern towns of Yathreb and Balad.

In Baghdad, a suicide car bomb exploded at an Iraqi commando checkpoint in the southern neighborhood of Sadiya, killing a commando and injuring eight people. And police in the capital recovered 23 bodies.

--

molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com

Times staff writers Saif Hameed, Said Rifai, Wail Alhafith and Raheem Salman and special correspondents in Baghdad, Kirkuk and Samarra contributed to this report.

Green Zone Is Hit By Barrage of Shells

American Killed; Attacks Becoming Frequent, Accurate

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, July 11, 2007; A09

BAGHDAD, July 10 -- More than two dozen mortar shells pounded the Green Zone on Tuesday, killing three people, including a U.S. military member, and injuring 18, among them five Americans, U.S. officials said.

The dead also included an Iraqi and a person of unknown nationality. Two of the wounded Americans were service members and three were contract employees, the U.S. Embassy said in a statement.

The attack, around 4 p.m., was the latest in a series of mortar and rocket strikes in recent months against the Green Zone, which houses the U.S. Embassy and other Western missions along with Iraqi government buildings. In April, a suicide bomber attacked inside Iraq's parliament building.

A U.S. official in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that "around 30" mortar shells had hit the Green Zone. "They got hammered," the official said.

U.S. military and Iraqi government officials have accused the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, of sending mortar and rocket fire into the Green Zone, although Sunni insurgents also are believed to use mortars.

On Tuesday morning, before the main barrage, one projectile landed inside the U.S. Embassy compound, according to a Western diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to make the information public.

People who live in the Green Zone have grown accustomed to mortar attacks, but many found the scope of Tuesday's attack particularly jarring, the diplomat said.

"Within a few hours they had everything cleaned up. It was like nothing happened," the diplomat said. "These attacks have been happening every other day and they are not being reported."

Westerners in the Green Zone, considered the safest part of the capital, "are realizing that they are being recklessly exposed to danger," the diplomat said. "They are getting angry."

A U.N. report last month found that mortar and rocket attacks into the Green Zone were rising and had become "increasingly concentrated and accurate." Between Feb. 19 and the end of May, at least 26 people were killed in Green Zone attacks, the report said.

In western Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed two people and injured seven. Another roadside bomb struck a police patrol in the southwest neighborhood of Saydiya, killing two policemen and injuring four, police said.

Police also found 12 unidentified corpses across Baghdad, some showing signs of torture and shot in the head.

Special correspondent Dahlia Farooq in Baghdad and staff writer Robin Wright in Washington contributed to this report.

Iraqi Politicians Disagree about Hostage Release

Iraq's minister for higher education said that a number of people kidnapped the other day from a ministry building were tortured and killed. He says 70 are still missing. A number were taken to Shiite eastern Baghdad.

Prime Minister Maliki disagrees, saying that the numbers kidnapped totaled around 40 and almost all of those 40 were released.

But after the release of large numbers of kidnapped persons by the Shiite militias or gangs that were holding them, is it any wonder that Americans complain that the Maliki government doesn't do as much as it can about sectarian militia activity?

It seems to be within Maliki's power to tell at least some Shiite militias what to do some of the time.

Mass Kidnapping in Baghdad

As many as 55 people were kidnapped from a Ministry of Higher Education building today, leading to arrests of high-ranking police officers possibly culpable.