BBC UK
The map from the BBC article:
Gunmen seize 100 at Iraq ministry
Posted on 11/14/2006 1:15:41 AM PST by bd476
2 minutes agoDozens snatched in mass kidnap at Iraq ministry
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Gunmen in Iraqi police uniforms rounded up dozens of men at a government building in central Baghdad on Tuesday and drove off, in what may be the biggest mass kidnapping seen in a city becoming used to such violence.
A source at the Interior Ministry said 20 employees of the Higher Education Ministry were seized. But a spokeswoman for the department itself said dozens of men -- "100 or maybe 150" -- had been rounded up, including many visitors to the building.
Women were separated from the men and locked in a room after having their mobile phones confiscated by the gunmen, who drove up to the ministry's Research Directorate in the commercial, religiously mixed district of Karrada, in government vehicles.
"All Interior Ministry forces are on alert, searching for this group. We don't know if it's terrorists, militias or even government forces," Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier Abdul Kareem Khalaf said, declining to say how many people were missing.
Numerous mass kidnappings have been blamed on sectarian militias operating either within the security forces or with the help of police in providing equipment.
The once dominant Sunni minority and U.S. officials have focused particular suspicion on militias from the now dominant Shi'ite Muslim parties, who control the Interior Ministry.
The Higher Education Ministry is headed by a member of the main Sunni Arab political bloc. Most ministries have become fiefdoms of particular parties.
Not far from the ministry building attacked on Tuesday, about 30 sports officials and athletes, including the head of Iraq's national Olympic Committee, were seized during a meeting in July by gunmen in uniform. Some were later freed but many, including the Olympics chief, have never been heard of again.
Last month, the 26-strong workforce of a Baghdad meat-processing factory were also seized in similar circumstances.
Some kidnap victims are ransomed but many end up among the dozens of corpses, found bound and tortured, on the streets of Baghdad every day. On Monday alone, 46 were found and the morgue says it is taking in about 50 unclaimed bodies a day.
After the incident involving the meat factory workers, the government removed a number of senior police officers who had responsibility for the area and took an entire brigade of police out of service for vetting and re-training.
Washington, under mounting domestic political pressure to start pulling its 150,000 troops out of Iraq, has placed a heavy emphasis on recruiting and training Iraqi security forces, which now number more than 300,000.
But their competence and sectarian loyalties remain a matter of grave concern as the government struggles to slow a slide toward all-out civil war.
AP and Yahoo News
20 Iraqis killed; 150 abducted in Baghdad
By QAIS Al-BASHIR, Associated Press Writer
November 14, 2006
3 minutes ago
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Police and medical workers said at least 20 Iraqis were killed in clashes Tuesday in Ramadi, where U.S. ground troops and warplanes have conducted a series of operations over recent days targeting Sunni insurgents.
Also Tuesday, gunmen wearing Interior Ministry commando uniforms kidnapped up to 150 staff members from a government research institute in downtown Baghdad, the head of the parliamentary education committee said.
Alaa Makki interrupted a televised parliamentary session to say reports had been received that between 100 and 150 people, both Shiites and Sunnis, had been abducted in the raid at about 9:30 a.m. He urged the prime minister and ministers of interior and defense to rapidly respond to what he called a "national catastrophe."
Police and witnesses said gunmen closed off roads around the institute in the downtown Karradah district at about 9:30 a.m., and loaded their handcuffed captives onto pickup trucks before driving away to an unknown destination.
Meanwhile, Ali al-Obaidi, a medic at Ramadi Hospital, said those killed were civilians who died in shelling by U.S. tanks. A police spokesman said 20 people were killed, but gave no information about their identities or how they died.
The U.S. military said it had no information on fresh Ramadi clashes.
Insurgents have grown increasingly bold around Ramadi, which lies deep in the Sunni heartland west of Baghdad where tribal leaders were strong allies of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein.
U.S. forces said they used air-launched weapons on Saturday to destroy a building in the city that had been booby-trapped to explode upon entry. The military said there were no reports of civilian casualties in that attack.
In other violence, assailants killed seven passengers aboard a minivan ambushed Tuesday near Mandali on the Iranian border, Diyala provincial police said.
Six people were killed in fighting overnight between Shiite gunmen and American forces in Shula, northwest Baghdad, police spokesman Mohammed Kheyoun said. Residents said U.S. warplanes had fired rockets at homes in the area and put the death toll as high as nine. The U.S. military has not commented on the reports.
Elsewhere in the capital, one person was killed when a car bomb detonated near a restaurant in west Baghdad, police Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razzaq said.
Three insurgents were blown apart trying to plant a roadside bomb Monday night in the northwestern city of Mosul, police Brig. Abdul-Karim Ahmed Khalaf said.
The U.S. military, meanwhile, said an airstrike killed three insurgents suspected of being part of a bomb-making ring in Youssifiyah, 12 miles south of Baghdad.
20 Iraqis killed; 150 abducted in Baghdad
Reuters. Pfffft! Who can believe them?
There, I've done the bashing so others won't have to.
Now I'll read the article.
Those who argue that this is not another Vietnam are right.
It's worse.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6146152.stm
Tuesday, 14 November 2006, 09:26 GMT
Gunmen seize 100 at Iraq ministry
BBC UK
Gunmen seize 100 at Iraq ministry
14 November 2006
Gunmen in military-style uniforms have kidnapped more than 100 men from a research institute belonging to Iraq's higher education ministry.
A ministry spokeswoman said the gunmen arrived in new pick-up vehicles and stormed the ministry's Research Directorate in central Baghdad.
They ordered women into one room and seized the men, including employees, guards and visitors to the building.
Academics and researchers have been frequent targets of violence in Iraq.
Correspondents say many Iraqis believe mass kidnappings like this latest incident are committed by members of the Shia Muslim-dominated security forces or take place with their collusion.
The head of the parliamentary education committee, Alaa Makki, said the abductees had been both Shias and Sunnis.
Mr Makki interrupted a televised parliamentary session with the news and urged the prime minister and interior and defence ministers to respond rapidly to what he called a "national catastrophe".
Eyewitnesses say the gunmen closed off roads around the institute in Karrada district and took away their captives in handcuffs.
The higher education minister is a member of main Sunni Arab political bloc in Iraq - where most ministries are fiefdoms of the various sectarian groups.
Gunmen seize 100 at Iraq ministry
According to the map at the BBC site, the area is just a stone's throw south of the Green Zone.
Add me to the list of those who are very, very tired of being involved in Iraq. Did anyone truly believe that those people wanted democracy? Did anyone think it through?
It's unreal that I had to live through two wars that we didn't fight to win. What a waste.
Heh, we must have been reading it around the same time.
Well, I have no idea what anyone is going to do about this, but in the story of Jack the Giant Killer, he just made the giants more angry at each other, and the giants killed each other off. This just might be the best plan.
Yeah, my routine for headlines:
Yahoo!
BBC
then C-SPAN
http://www.c-span.org/homepage.asp
Yes, that's a good model for foreign and defense policy: a children's fairy tale.
Nothing will improve while al Sadr is alive.
At the risk of getting in way over my head (hasn't stopped me before) don't fairy tales and fables usually have a moral.
To answer your question, yes. Me.
But it isn't a belief. I KNOW this is the case.
The problem isn't that the Iraqi people generally don't want democracy. The problem is that it only takes a small, dedicated band of obsessed nut-jobs to totally derail someting that 80-90% of the people genuinely want.
Normally you can attrit the nut-jobs over time, but in the case of Iraq, there is a steady trickle of new nut-jobs coming in to replace those killed or captured, and we aren't successfully attriting them.
Meanwhile, folks are getting tired of the violence, especially the folks 8,000 miles from the focus.
While this will be disastrous for Iraq, it also bodes ill for the longer term. If we can't stand 24 months of pain without surrendering in Iraq, how in the devil are we going to live through the next 24 years of even worse pain without surrendering right here in the USA?
I'm buying Burkhas for my granddaughters. They are going to be needing them.
BBC UK
The map from the BBC article:
Gunmen seize 100 at Iraq ministry
I bet the terrorists are killing all of the kidnapped. Or why have they left the women in the building?
I also have stopped shaving and start to dye my hair black.
Thanks. I like that idea. :-)
I don't know but I'd feel better if Donald Rumsfeld was still at the helm.
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