Posted on 01/08/2005 4:45:04 AM PST by AntiGuv
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Militants abducted three senior Iraqi officials, beheaded a man who worked for the U.S. military and killed at least four others, officials said Saturday, a day after a U.S. general warned that insurgents may be planning "horrific" attacks ahead of Jan. 30 elections.
Meanwhile, Shiite and Sunni religious leaders voiced sharply divergent views on whether the vote should be held at all.
Air Force Brig. Gen. Erv Lessel, deputy chief of staff for strategic communications in Iraq, said Friday the United States has no intelligence indicating specific plots. But he said American leaders expected a rise in attacks.
"I think a worst case is where they have a series of horrific attacks that cause mass casualties in some spectacular fashion in the days leading up to the elections," Lessel said.
"If you look over the last six months, they have steadily escalated the barbaric nature of the attacks they have been committing. A year ago, you didn't see these kinds of horrific things," he said.
In Washington, President Bush said the elections will be "an incredibly hopeful experience" despite rising violence and doubts that the vote will bring stability and democracy.
"I know it's hard but it's hard for a reason," Bush said. He acknowledged security problems in four of Iraq's 18 provinces.
The comments came amid an escalating insurgency believed to be led by minority Sunnis who dominated the country during Saddam Hussein's regime. In the election — the first democratic vote in Iraq since the country was formed in 1932 — the Sunnis are certain to lose their dominance to the Shiites, who comprise 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million people.
Reflecting Shiites' demands to hold the vote as scheduled and Sunnis' calls for a boycott or postponement, two senior religious leaders expressed sharply differing views during Friday prayers.
"We want all the Iraqis to participate, we also insist on holding the elections as scheduled and to put these elections behind us as a way to end the conflict in Iraq," Saadr Aldeen al-Qubbanji, a leader of a prominent Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said in the southern city of Najaf.
"We all want elections, but we are seeking fair and free elections," Sheik Mahmoud Al-Somaidie of the Sunnis' Association of Muslim Scholars said in Baghdad. "Those of us who are calling for postponement are seeking that for the benefit of the country. Elections have to be an Iraqi demand, not the demand of the foreign countries."
The United States insists on holding the vote as planned, and strongly opposes a postponement.
This week has seen a string of assassinations, suicide car bombings and other assaults that killed nearly 100 people, mostly Iraqi security troops, who are seen by the militants as collaborators with the American occupiers.
Authorities in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit said Saturday that gunmen abducted a deputy governor of a central Iraqi province and two other senior officials as they traveled to meet with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most prominent Shiite leader, in the holy city of Najaf to discuss national elections.
The delegation was stopped and the members kidnapped about 40 miles south of Baghdad on Friday. The area is in the so-called "triangle of death," a string of Sunni-controlled towns that have been the scene of frequent attacks.
In Baqouba, insurgents beheaded a translator who was working with the U.S. army after breaking into his house, police said Saturday. An Iraqi policeman was killed by masked gunmen as he was leaving his house the southern Dora neighborhood of Baghdad.
A booby-trapped car blew up Saturday at a gas station in Mahaweel, about 35 miles south of Baghdad. One man was killed and several others were injured, police said.
In Baghdad's western neighborhood of Khadraa, gunmen shot dead Abboud Khalaf al-Lahibi, deputy secretary-general of the National Front for Iraqi tribes — a group representing several Iraqi tribes — his aide, Ibrahim al-Farhan, said. A bodyguard was killed and three others wounded in the attack, he said.
On Friday, a U.S. soldier was killed in a non-hostile vehicle accident in the western province of Anbar, the U.S. military said. The incident is under investigation, and the Marine's name was being withheld pending notification of the family.
Lessel said he expects the insurgents would escalate attacks before the election, and that the incidents would probably decline after the vote.
"What the terrorists fear most is a simple piece of paper called a ballot," he said. "They fear the election. I think successful elections will have a significant impact on the insurgents."
Yeah, I know it's been said before. It just makes me angry.
Our military needs to go house to house, and kill all males they find concealing weapons in their houses. We need drones out 24x7, snipers on all the roofs killing anyone sneaking around back alleys or bushes beside the road (with boxes, guns, etc.), and paying TOP DOLLAR for information. We might be doing this, but i never hear about it. We need to be flattening the enemy like the war was still on. Bush isn't up for re-election, and Cheny doesn't want the job, so there should be no problem.
Is there no end to these creatures.
It seems to me that all the candidates need to be flown out of the country and radio and TV ads need to be run for them. I don't know that we can protect all the candidates. To allow these guys to pick off all the ones they don't like is to allow them to alter the election field to be more of what they want.
This burns me up.
All the public officials need large guard forces; aw, hell, then they'd just car bomb them.
For every terrorist act, we NEED to take out 3 guys in Guantanamo and behead them on AlJazeera network and pour pigs blood all over their bodies. That would send a powerful message! But, our senators are fighting over a memo on AbuGharab instead and trying to destroy the reputation of a good man attempting to become the first hispanic Attorney General...
How about we call them cold-blooded serial killers?
Yes, and vaporize Mecca.
You can call them all you want.
But as long using the terms like terroroists, thugs, killers and the kind, you may well misslead yourself...
In every strategy the greatest danger is to UNDERESTIMATE the enemy...
You wont loose anything to call them a well trained and organised group of soldiers and prepare against them accordingly.
But if you send the US solders to fight some idiot diehard braindead idiots, you have to be prepared to the event that many of these soldiers never come back alive.
If the main strategy is based on to fight some serial killers, then I do not think a reasonable solution.
I know that is not easy not being emotional after the news like these, but let's not fool ourself.
There is an army in Iraq, opposing the US presence.
They have seemingly unlimited resources and large numbers.
They are able to constantly increase the daily attacs, in numbers and in accuracy.
They have better position in gathering intelligence than the US.
They choose the type of fight, the location and the place (well...often...).
They eliminating those iraqis who are ready to cooperate with the US...
I know these are tough things but that's why Rumsfield sent a team to re-assess the situation in Iraq...
Because if you try to protect the soldiers there, you need to give them accurate info about the situation, and give them protection accordingly...
Why is it so difficult for Reuters, AP, NYT, etc. to understand the difference?
5.56mm
For every terrorist act, we NEED to take out 3 guys in Guantanamo and behead them on AlJazeera network and pour pigs blood all over their bodies.
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So for every Iraqi attack we should kill three Afghani?
Great way to take the moral high ground!
I would suggest taking the top Iraqi officials to an underground secure site until after the election. That way, car bombs won't be an issue. Not knowing who the "rats" are is a problem. Why can't they keep information secret over there? Maybe one of you military guys can tell us.
The problem here is that there is no electricity in most of Iraq, and if there is for few hours, the people do not use it to wach TV, but to do some work, turn on the fridge, cook, etc...
Then also there is a problem of the "team" of the candidates, they automaticly become targets as soon the important man leaves the country.
kill all males they find concealing weapons in their houses
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I think most houses are allowed to keep a firearm for protection.
Killing people for upholding their right to bear arms does not sound very American.
How would you organise a "secret campagn" for a democratic election?
For how many hundreds of candidates?
Do not forget, there supposed to be free and democratic election if you expect anyone to accept the result.
Your statement needs some perfection.
There is planty of electrical capacity in Iraq, most of it going to the power grid. While I appreciate your opinion on the situation in the middle east, I would more appreciate that you are accurate in your statements.
All Iraqi's are permitted to own an AK-47, but our troops have been conducting these types of searches for pretty much the entire time we've been in Iraq. The problem is that we don't have enough troops to secure the country. Another 100,000 or so would help.
There are numerous blogs written by people living in Iraq, a common theme is the lack of reliable electricity in the country, including in urban places such as Baghdad.
As much I kow of the Iraqi electic situation that most of the generated electricity going to the industry and the population gets the two hour on six hour off periods.
The ratio may changes by time, but that is the general reading...
The frequent attacks are on the power systems are the strategy of the terrorists to undermine the trust in the present( and future ??) authorities.
That goes also with the fuel shortage - there are often long queues at the petrol stations.
I guess the general problem with the Iraq situation is the huge effort what trys to paint much rosier pictures than the reality. But if you face the facts that from the average child-mortality to the basic food supply almost everything is in worse shape than in Saddam's time you may see why the terrorist getting support from the public.
I think once we admit that the initial approach to the situation was wrong and continuing that would lead to disaster, we could develop a real "winning" strategy over there.
The resistance to the US forces and ideas are higher than anticipated and the general public's suspicions about the US interests are greater than previously thought.
We could not blame every difficulties on those "few diehards" forever...
They rather look immortal if we add up all the US firepower and the time spent to kill them.
And we do not want to do a free advertisment for them.... do we ?
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