Bin Laden slams EU over prophet cartoons
By PAUL SCHEMM, Associated Press Writer
35 minutes ago
Osama bin Laden, in a new audio message posted Wednesday, condemned the publication of drawings that he said insulted the Prophet Muhammad and warned Europeans of a "severe" reaction to come.

The message, which appeared on a militant Web site that has carried al-Qaida statements in the past and bore the logo of the extremist group's media wing al-Sahab, showed a still image of bin Laden aiming with an assault rifle.

"The response will be what you see and not what you hear and let our mothers bereave us if we do not make victorious our messenger of God," said a voice believed to be bin Laden's, without specifying what action would be taken.

The five-minute message, bin Laden's first this year, made no mention of the fifth anniversary Wednesday of the U.S.-led invasion in Iraq.

It came as the Muslim world marks the Prophet Muhammad's birthday Thursday and amid the reigniting of a two-year-old controversy over some Danish cartoons deemed by Muslims to be insulting. Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet, even favorable, for fear it could lead to idolatry.

Bin Laden described the drawings as taking place in the framework of a "new Crusade" against Islam, in which he said the pope has played a "large and lengthy role."

On Feb. 13, Danish newspapers republished a cartoon showing Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban to show their commitment to freedom of speech after police said they had uncovered a plot to kill the artist.

Danish intelligence service said the reprinting of the cartoon had brought "negative attention" to Denmark and may have increased the risk to Danes at home and abroad.

The original 12 cartoons first published in a Danish newspaper triggered major protests in Muslim countries in 2006. There have been renewed protests in the last month.

Ben Venzke, the head of IntelCenter, a U.S. group that monitors militant messages, called Wednesday's message a "clear threat against EU member countries and an indicator of a possible upcoming significant attack."

Wednesday's message, which featured English subtitles, follows up an hour-long, audio missive from Dec. 29 in which he warned Iraq's Sunni Arabs against fighting Al-Qaida in Iraq and vowed new attacks on Israel.

"You went overboard in your unbelief and freed yourselves of the etiquettes of dispute and fighting and went to the extent of publishing these insulting drawings," he said, according to a transcript released by the SITE Institute, another U.S. group that monitors terror messages. "This is the greater and more serious tragedy, and reckoning for it will be more severe."

Adam Raisman, senior analyst at the SITE Institute, said that the message's release coincides with an increased buzz in online jihadi forums calling for revenge against Europe over the cartoons.

But Raisman noted that bin Laden's message did not specifically mention the republishing of the cartoons, only the publishing, and it did not give any other time landmarks to prove it had been recorded since then.

Raisman also noted bin Laden's silence on Wednesday's fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

"The tape doesn't give any specific evidence that would allow us to determine when it was recorded," Raisman said.

In the message addressed to "the intelligent ones in the European Union," bin Laden also criticized the "aggressive policies" of President Bush.

"How it saddens us that you target our villages with your bombing: those modest mud villages which have collapsed onto our women and children. You do that intentionally, and I am witness to that," he said, according to SITE. "All of this (you do) without right and in conformity with your oppressive ally who — along with his aggressive policies — is about to depart the White House."

On Wednesday, Bush praised Sunni tribal leaders for rising up against al-Qaida in Iraq and said that has led to similar uprising across the country. All that, combined with a strategic influx of U.S. troops last year, has "opened the door to a major victory in the broader war on terror," Bush said.

"Iraq was supposed to be the place where al-Qaida rallied Arab masses to drive America out," Bush said. "Instead, Iraq has become the place where Arabs joined with Americans to drive al-Qaida out. In Iraq, we are witnessing the first large-scale Arab uprising against Osama bin Laden, his grim ideology."

In Wednesday's message, bin Laden also attacked his long-time nemesis, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, whom he described as the "crownless king in Riyadh" and said he could have ended the entire dispute over the cartoons if he had wanted because of his influence with European governments.

Bin Laden, who hails from a powerful Saudi family, was stripped of his citizenship in 1994 after criticizing Saudi Arabia for allowing U.S. troops on its soil.

___

Associated Press writers Maamoun Youssef in Cairo, Egypt and Lily Hindy in New York contributed to this report.

March 20, 2008
Bush Defends Iraq War in Speech

By STEVEN LEE MYERS
WASHINGTON — President Bush used the fifth anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq on Wednesday to make the case for persevering in a conflict that will in all likelihood have many more anniversaries.

Mr. Bush, speaking before troops, officers and defense officials at the Pentagon, acknowledged in some of his bluntest language yet that the costs of the war, in lives and money, had been higher than he had anticipated — and longer.

He remained unwavering, however, in his insistence that the invasion of Iraq that began in March 2003 had made the world better and the United States safer.

“Five years into this battle, there is an understandable debate over whether the war was worth fighting, whether the fight is worth winning, and whether we can win it,” he said. “The answers are clear to me. Removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision, and this is a fight that America can and must win.”

Mr. Bush gave his speech as sporadic and relative small protests erupted in several places here in Washington, and in other cities. “How much longer?” read a banner along the president’s route to the Pentagon across the Potomac. There were scattered arrests, including some in front of the Internal Revenue Service, where demonstrators protested the use of taxpayers’ dollars.

As it has in the past, the anniversary galvanized the war’s critics and, to a lesser degree, its supporters. And many of the arguments on both sides fell along familiar lines. The scale and the fury of antiwar protests, however, appears to have diminished from just a year ago before Mr. Bush ordered “a surge” of still more American troops to Iraq that has resulted, according to many, in a decline in overall violence there.

Even in the presidential campaign to replace Mr. Bush, the issue has dropped in significance, as the economy, health care and race have risen in prominence. Iraq, nonetheless, continues to illustrate the stark divide between the Republican candidate, Senator John McCain, and the two Democrats, Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Mr. McCain, who visited Iraq this week, released a statement echoing the president’s rationale for the war, saying that the United States and its allies in Iraq stood “on the precipice of winning a major victory against radical Islamic extremism.”

At a community college in Fayetteville, N.C., Mr. Obama drew the opposite conclusion. He noted that the war in Iraq had now lasted longer than the Civil War, World War I and World War II, though it has been fought on a scale far below those conflicts. “And where are we for all of this sacrifice?” he said. “We are less safe and less able to shape events abroad.”

Mr. Obama criticized both of his rivals, Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton. He said that as commander in chief he would withdraw a brigade or two each month, reducing the American force there to only to the number required to provide security for the American embassy and maintain a force capable of striking any terrorist base. Even he acknowledged that his plan would not end the war until it had already lasted seven years.

“My plan to end this war will finally put pressure on Iraq’s leaders to take responsibility for their future,” he said in remarks prepared for delivery. “Because we’ve learned that when we tell Iraq’s leaders that we’ll stay as long as it takes, they take as long as they want.”

The number of troops in Iraq is at the center of the administration’s planning. The top American commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus, is scheduled to appear before Congress in early April to present his recommendations on how to continue the war after the withdrawal of the 30,000 additional troops ordered to Iraq by Mr. Bush last year.

The troops brought the total number of Americans fighting there to a peak of more than 160,000. Most of those added troops are scheduled to leave by the end of summer, leaving a force of more than 130,000. General Petraeus and other commanders have indicated that there should be a pause in any further reductions — though for how long remains unclear — to see if security in Baghdad and other cities deteriorates as a result of the withdrawals already taken.

In his remarks, Mr. Bush said he had made no decision but indicated that he would be reluctant to hasten the withdrawals. As he has on several occasions recently, he touted the “surge” as a turning point in a war that he acknowledged “was faltering” a year ago.

“Any further drawdown will be based on conditions on the ground and the recommendations of our commanders,” he said, “and they must not jeopardize the hard-fought gains our troops and civilians have made over the past year.”

John Sullivan contributed reporting.

March 20, 2008
In Mosul, New Test of Rebuilt Iraqi Army

By SOLOMON MOORE
MOSUL — After the Iraqi Army increased patrols in this northern city earlier this year, Col. Haji al-Zibari found himself chasing two insurgents in a weapons-laden truck.

The driver and his passenger veered off the road, jumped out, fired a few shots and disappeared into the city.

So Colonel Zibari, then the second-in-command of the Second Brigade of the Second Iraqi Army Division, drove their truck to a traffic circle in the middle of a known insurgent haven on the crowded west end of the city and doused it with gasoline.

Then he set a gas-soaked rag on fire, tossed it on the ground and fired a burst from his AK-47, blasting the burning cloth into the truck.

“This is what we do to insurgents’ property!” he shouted to the rooftops.

When American military officials talk about “Iraqis in the lead,” Colonel Zibari is an example of what they mean: Iraqi soldiers operating their own checkpoints, doing their own patrols, using their own intelligence. American officials acknowledge that Iraqi methods often deviate from standard military doctrine, but they say that even rough-hewn tactics are more acceptable than the prospect of an indefinite, if more professional, occupying force.

The Bush administration says that an Iraqi Army capable of fighting on its own is a crucial prerequisite for the eventual withdrawal of American troops. But since its disbandment in 2003 by Coalition Provisional Authority Order No. 2, the Iraqi Army has struggled to regain its footing. For years, Iraqi troops have been hampered by poor training, corruption, equipment shortages and a determined insurgency that has killed twice as many Iraqi soldiers and police officers as American soldiers.

Now, five years later, American commanders say that the reborn force is coming into its own. And Mosul, an ethnically mixed city that has been under stepped-up assault by insurgents and where Iraqi Army units far outnumber their American counterparts, offers a possible glimpse into the future. But the Iraqi Army’s performance in Mosul so far suggests that while the Iraqi forces are taking on more responsibility and have made strides, there are still troubling gaps.

American commanders said that Iraqi forces in Mosul had conducted basic operations, including patrols, “cordon and searches,” and raids with minimal assistance. Unlike many previous Iraqi Army units, Mosul’s battalions have relatively few desertions. The troops are also known by their American counterparts to be exceptionally good at using informants to glean intelligence.

But continuing logistical problems and equipment shortages crippled many units even as the insurgency regrouped from former strongholds in Baghdad and Diyala, Anbar and Salahuddin Provinces to Nineveh Province. Poor communication between Iraqi Army units and the Defense Ministry remains a problem, as has uneven leadership in the field. American advisers complained that some commanders in Mosul appeared to be unwilling to lead their men into battle. As the American military redeployed units last year to support a troop increase in Baghdad and Diyala Province, Mosul was left with a stripped down “economy of force” operation. Only 750 American soldiers were left in Mosul and about 2,000 in all of Nineveh, a province the size of Maryland along the Syrian border.

Sapped of much of their combat power, American commanders relied on Iraqi security forces in Nineveh, especially the Second and Third Iraqi Army Divisions, two heavily Kurdish units believed to be among the nation’s best. But the Iraqi Army was also short-handed, having sent two battalions to Baghdad. The two divisions currently have about 20,000 soldiers, about 8,700 of whom are in Mosul proper.

Faced with a sustained barrage of insurgent attacks last year, the small number of American troops could not adequately support their undermanned Iraqi counterparts. In many of Mosul’s worst districts, Iraqi soldiers and police officers ceded ground to the insurgency, American commanders said. As violence declined elsewhere in Iraq, attacks spiked in Nineveh.

By February there were about 180 attacks in one week, according to military statistics, a record high and almost double the rate 18 months earlier.

Many of the obstacles the Iraqi forces faced in Mosul would have tested an even more able force.

American military officials say that insurgents in Mosul, especially on the western bank of the Tigris River, are among the most active and best organized in the country.

High unemployment helps drive the insurgency in Nineveh, along with ethnic and nationalist tensions. While Kurds control the provincial government, Sunni Arabs make up about 60 percent of the population. Some insurgents appeal to Sunnis’ fears of Kurdish domination while other groups simply use money to motivate jobless youths to plant roadside bombs.

The tensions between Kurds and Sunni Arabs, as well as Ninevah’s unusually diverse population of Christians, Yazidis and various tribes, precluded attempts to deploy large numbers of citizen guard groups, known as Concerned Local Citizens or the Sunni Awakening, that have helped tamp down violence elsewhere in Iraq.

And the insurgency has chosen Mosul to make a stand. “There’s been movement of guys from Diyala coming up the Haditha River Valley up through the Hamran mountains into Baiji, Sharqat and into Mosul,” said Capt. Patrick Ryan, a military intelligence officer for the First Battalion, Eighth Infantry, which arrived in Mosul in January. “There’s pressure on Diyala, and there’s been reporting that they want more fighters in Mosul right now.”

So entrenched were insurgents in the hardscrabble west Mosul neighborhood of Zanjeli that they regularly hanged bodies from a bridge to intimidate local residents.

Another sign of the sophistication of the insurgency in Mosul was a January ambush that killed five American soldiers. A video of the attack was on the Internet in 21 minutes.

“There are those who say the Iraqi Army can control Iraq without the Americans,” said Col. Ali Omar Ali, an Iraqi battalion commander in east Mosul. “But they are liars. Without the Americans it would be impossible for us to control Iraq.”

More American Help

In November, the military tacitly acknowledged the inability of the Iraqi Army to contain the insurgency without additional American help when it sent the larger and more heavily equipped Third Armored Calvary Regiment of Fort Carson, Colo., to Mosul to replace the shorthanded Fourth Brigade Combat Team, First Cavalry Division.

Based at Forward Operating Base Marez in Mosul, the new regiment has about 3,000 soldiers, nearly 300 tanks and Bradley personnel carriers and scores of new high-axel mine resistant ambush protected vehicles, or MRAPs. In addition the First Battalion of the Eighth Infantry in January is being used to reinforce American and Iraqi troops in east Mosul.

The unit has about 2,000 soldiers in Mosul now, about twice the number the Fourth Brigade Combat Team had. That is still far fewer than the full division posted there in 2003, when violence was at its lowest point of the war. But the infusion of more troops has allowed the unit to increase patrols and sweeps. “We went into areas that basically had been without a coalition or Iraqi Army presence probably in about 15 or 16 months if not longer than that,” said Col. Michael A. Bills, commander of the Third Armored Calvary Regiment.

Iraqi Army officers say they are willing, but unprepared and unequipped to fight the insurgency. Iraqi commanders complained about fuel shortages, cheap Chinese weapons that jam after a few shots and too few combat boots.

“We do have some battalions down to between eight to 10 operational vehicles,” said Lt. Col. Jeff Meeker, a Military Transition Team adviser for the Second Brigade of the Second Iraqi Army Division in west Mosul. “That’s a significant decrease in their combat power.”

Despite its problems in Mosul, however, the Iraqi Army has made progress over all.

In 2004, insurgents overran Mosul and destroyed the security forces, but the current number of all Iraqi security forces in Nineveh Province exceeds 40,000. And some Iraqi Army units did perform basic operations last year like manning checkpoints, and occasional cordon and search missions with minimal assistance from embedded, squad-sized American military advisory teams.

Beyond training their individual Iraqi counterparts in their specific functions, American advisers often play an integral role in coordinating operations between various Iraqi units to prevent friendly fire incidents or replication of duties. Advisers also monitor Iraqi units for human rights abuses, corruption, and other serious departures from military doctrine.

And finally, the advisory teams are often significant force multipliers for Iraqi Army units since they are able to coordinate with other American and Iraqi units, run interference with the Defense Ministry, and request air support.

The American Army is also training thousands more Iraqi troops. Lt. Gen. James M. Dubik, head of the American security training and equipping mission in Iraq, said new training regimens focus less on “marching and saluting” and more on “combat skills and shooting.” He also credited a new system that trains Iraqi soldiers within their units to foster greater troop cohesion. The Iraqi Army hired 45,000 soldiers between June and December 2007, increasing the total force to 170,000 troops.

The Iraqi Army is also planning to add several division-level logistics centers. In early 2007, only about 30 to 40 percent of battalions had appropriate numbers of officers; now about 70 percent have their full set of leaders, General Dubik said.

A recent Defense Department review reported that 102 out of a total of 169 Iraqi battalions are “capable of planning, executing, and sustaining counterinsurgency operations with or without Iraqi or Coalition support,” up from only 24 battalions in 2005. Still, American military officials say that even “independent operations” by the Iraqi Army usually include some measure of American assistance, even if only air support, logistical help, or an embedded squad of military advisers.

The military has also sold or given thousands of Humvees, American firearms, and other essential equipment to the Iraqi Army.

But much of the Iraqi Army’s recently acquired equipment still sits at weapons depots. And officers in Mosul said they lack the training or support systems to maintain vehicles that have been delivered.

“Every week we lose a Humvee because it needs something,” said Maj. Mohammad Akram, an Iraqi soldier in east Mosul. “We don’t have enough body armor. We don’t have enough vehicles.”

He held up his rifle. “I got this from one of the bad guys.”

Major Akram then ticked off other things they regularly need from the Americans. “Ammunition. Rifles. Medicine. Communication,” he said.

“If something goes bad, we need air support,” he said, recalling how insurgents recently pinned his men down during a two-hour gun battle. One Iraqi soldier was killed before American helicopters rescued them.

“If air support hadn’t come, it would not have been good,” he said.

And for every man of action like Colonel Zibari, there are Iraqi security forces like those Army Capt. David Sandoval ordered into action last month.

In February, Captain Sandoval’s 1st Battalion of the 8th Infantry Regiment platoon shot and wounded an insurgent as he attempted to bury a roadside bomb in the Somer neighborhood in southeast Mosul. The man fled and Captain Sandoval radioed nearby Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police units to search houses in the area to find him.

An American platoon commander’s voice crackled over the radio: “The I.A.’s say it’s the I.P.’s job, and the I.P.’s say it’s the I.A.’s job. They won’t go.”

“This happens all the time,” Captain Sandoval said, exasperated. “They won’t go in there unless we’re there with them.”

“The I.A. is getting mutilated out here,” said Sgt. James Luce of the 1-8 Infantry Battalion as they prepared to go on a joint mission with the Iraqis. “Al Qaeda is better equipped and better trained than they are. Without us out here, they don’t stand a chance.”

New Strategy With Checkpoints

In Mosul, the American troops are working to establish fortified checkpoints and combat outposts in some of the city’s toughest neighborhoods. The idea, modeled on previous successful efforts in Tal Afar and Baghdad, is to use the checkpoints to disrupt insurgent mobility and the deployment of car bombs. The combat outposts will form the spine of a new security infrastructure in Mosul that Colonel Bills hopes will retake territory from the insurgents and compensate for the Iraqi Army’s lack of mobility.

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki also dispatched Maj. Gen. Riyadh Jalal Tawfiq, formerly the commander of the 9th Iraqi Army Division in east Baghdad last year, to establish the Nineveh Operational Command, so that Iraqis could take control of the sometimes-fractious Iraqi troops, police and border forces in the province.

In an effort to galvanize the Iraqi Army and build their capability, Colonel Bills said that most operations are now conducted jointly with “Iraqi Army, Iraqi Police, and the coalition working together shoulder-to-shoulder.”

“We are basically doing the outer cordon and Iraqis are doing the inner cordon,” said Colonel Bills. “That way there is an Iraqi face on it and the Iraqi people see that.”

American troops have already built about a dozen checkpoints on the west side of the city and have plans to build several more. Once the checkpoints and outposts are completed and Iraqi security forces have a more secure foothold throughout the city, American troops intend once again to cede them more military responsibility.

Initially, however, American troops are doing most of the heavy lifting. Col. Chris Johnson, the commander of the 1-8 Infantry Battalion, decided to build Combat Outpost Rock near the site of a Jan. 28 ambush by insurgents In mid-February, as army engineers moved a crane and other equipment toward the site, insurgents staged three more ambushes, including a roadside bomb attack which disabled the tracked crane-mover.

A few days later, Iraqi Army units discovered a Red Crescent ambulance truck filled with 5,000 pounds of an ammonia nitrate-based, homemade fertilizer explosive, similar to the bomb Timothy McVeigh used to bring down the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995. The truck bomb was parked at a house only 500 yards away from the new outpost.

Two sweat-soaked American soldiers drove the truck six miles into the desert so that it could be detonated safely. “It still closed doors and rattled windows back in town,” said Captain Ryan, the battalion’s intelligence officer.

American commanders, eager to give Iraqis credit for the ongoing mission to construct combat outposts throughout the city, are meeting frequently with Iraqi soldiers to encourage their participation.

One such briefing took place in February at Al Kindi Base, the Second Iraqi Army Division’s ramshackle hilltop headquarters. American commanders saw the planning session as both a way for the Iraqi Army to put its imprimatur on the combat outpost construction plan and to advise Iraqi commanders on their deliberation process.

Before the meeting, Colonel Johnson and several other American officers spoke with division commander Brig. Gen. Mutaa al-Khazraji about the role his men would play in the upcoming plan. The Americans sounded more gung-ho than General Khazraji.

Sitting behind a broad desk in his office, the general complained that he was short on fuel, military uniforms, and working vehicles. His men had enough weapons, he said, but they were a hodgepodge of AK-47s from various former Soviet republics and China. General Khazraji said that Iraqis were starting to take more responsibility for their own logistical issues, but often with critical delays.

Colonel Johnson sympathized with the general, saying: “It’s the same thing for us. If I have a Humvee destroyed sometimes it takes a long time for the Humvee to get replaced and run through the system in Kuwait.”

“Excuse me, colonel,” the general shot back. “But don’t forget. You have enough vehicles and also when you ask for spare parts you get new spare parts. But sometimes we receive old spare parts, especially for our vehicles made in 2000 or earlier. Many times they don’t fit, so we still cannot repair them.”

A Military Transition Team leader, Col. David Brown, General Mutaa’s main American adviser, also tried to highlight the positive: “Your system is a little bit more immature, sir. But I think the I.A. is doing a lot better than some give them credit for. Iraqi battalions are fighting at a tactical level, and they have been for a year“

“We established new battalions,” interrupted General Mutaa. “But they didn’t get any support. We didn’t get anything from MoD yet.”

General Mutaa said that 56 of his units’ vehicles have been destroyed, and a third of their remaining 178 vehicles are broken.

About two dozen senior military officers crammed into the planning session. Only a few were American advisers. A projector displayed a Power Point map depicting bomb-studded thoroughfares cutting through a residential grid. Iraqi explosive ordinance teams would clear those roads.

Future checkpoints dotted intersections in southeast Mosul. Those would be built by Americans.

Another slide depicted the helmet-shaped district of Somer divided into three sections. The solution was imported directly from Baghdad, where the American military compartmentalized feuding sectarian enclaves with miles of concrete barricades.

Then the discussion swerved off course. Far from the crisp bullet-pointed agendas common in American military briefings, the Iraqis, many of them dressed in mismatching camouflage uniforms, spoke over one another with little regard for rank. A din of debates in English and Arabic filled the room.

Colonel Brown, a slight, bespectacled man with gray hair and a professorial demeanor, attempted to direct the conversation in a Socratic fashion.

“What is it that we’re trying to do?” he asked the Iraqi command staff. “What is the end product that you want in this neighborhood?”

General Mutaa suggested they encircle Somer with a concrete wall.

“Where do you get 12 kilometers worth of barrier material?” asked Colonel Brown, now more incredulous than Socratic.

“It’s not that difficult,” the general replied. “The United States has good money.”

But Colonel Johnson said that the $3 million price-tag on so much concrete was beyond his battalion’s means. The Americans suggested the general should approach Mosul’s mayor for barrier construction funds. But by then the idea seemed to have lost its allure to General Mutaa.

“This is the best plan to control the terrorists,” he said. “But if we do this plan and divide the city, Mosul is not like Baghdad. People are going to get mad and we might have riots.”

Colonel Brown closed out the meeting by posing another dialectical question for the commanders to chew on until their next briefing. “How do we win this fight in Mosul, or do you continue doing the same thing for the next 10 years?”

General Mutaa half-shrugged, closed his eyes, and pressed his hand to his forehead.

Colonel Johnson walked out of the room looking weary. “It’s not exactly how we plan,” he said, a wan smile playing on his face. “But at least they are planning.”

A Joint Operation

The next night Colonel Johnson sent an American company to southeast Mosul to help secure an intersection while engineers constructed a checkpoint in the Somer area, in southeast Mosul. They were to be joined by Iraqi Army troops led by battalion commander Col. Ahmed Khouri.

Maj. Chad Arcand, an adviser to Colonel Khouri, said the battalion was rated a “2” on the four-point operational readiness scale the American military uses to gauge its training efforts. That means that the battalion is capable of company and battalion level operations.

But Major Arcand acknowledged the Iraqis had done few operations independently.

“They’ve done one while we’ve been here,” he said. “And we’re trying to get them to do intelligence driven operations, like when you raid a target. We did a night operation with about 12 vehicles and 80 personnel, but we came up dry.”

Major Arcand was also trying to encourage Colonel Khouri to do joint operations with Iraqi Police. But Colonel Khouri said the predominately Sunni Arab police had ties to local insurgents.

“We have trust in our own Iraqi Army,” said the colonel. “All my men are from Erbil. But the Iraqi Police we cannot trust 100 percent. They always leak our plans.”

By the time the joint convoy rumbled into the Somer district the city’s curfew had emptied the blast-pocked streets. American troops set up a perimeter with their armored vehicles and waited as the Iraqis and their American advisers conducted a series of brief house searches.

An American helicopter crew spotted a man loitering outside his home and radioed his location to the Iraqi units. More than 30 soldiers swarmed the man and peppered him with questions.

“What are you doing? Who are you?” Colonel Khouri demanded. The man looked at once terrified and bewildered. “I am checking the generator,” he told them repeatedly. He lived in a nearby house and the soldiers eventually released him.

“That is a prime example of what they add to the fight,” said Capt. Robert Mahoney, the American company commander looking upon the Iraqis with pride.

In the distance, a bomb exploded with a dull concussive thump. An Iraqi Police convoy had been hit, wounding an officer.

After spending about one hour at the checkpoint, Colonel Khouri decided turn in for the night, leaving his men and Captain Mahoney’s army company behind to finish the mission.

His adviser, Major Arcand, was obliged to follow, although he said he was a little surprised that the commander was leaving the mission so early. The rest of the soldiers would be on guard well past dawn.

“But this is progress,” the major said quietly. “We’ve been on 45 or 46 missions, and this is the first one he’s agreed to go out on.”

By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart

Chinese authorities reported March 18 that an incident earlier in the month aboard a domestic flight was an attempted militant attack orchestrated by separatists living abroad. The incident in question occurred March 7 on China Southern Airlines flight CZ6901, which was flying from Urumqi in Xinjiang province to Beijing. Some 40 minutes into the flight, a woman reportedly was confronted by the crew, who discovered her in a restroom with two gasoline-filled soft drink cans she had managed to smuggle onboard. Apparently, she intended to ignite the fuel while in the restroom, which was located near the wing of the Boeing 757. The woman was restrained and the pilot made an emergency landing in Lanzhou, capital of northwestern Gansu province.

The reaction to this incident has been mixed in the West. Many analysts have eyed Beijing’s report with skepticism, noting that it appeared in the midst of repeated government warnings concerning a Uighur militant threat. Others have called the incident an atypical, amateurish and impractical plot that could not possibly have been the work of a sophisticated terrorist group.

This plot, however, was potentially more devastating than some would believe. Fire is incredibly dangerous aboard an aircraft, and using fire accelerated by something like gasoline could provide the outside-the-box type of attack that militants could turn to in the face of security restrictions aimed at preventing explosives and other weapons from being smuggled aboard aircraft.

Claims and Reactions

China has invoked the specter of the Uighur militant threat quite frequently in recent months. Indeed, China has warned for several years now that the biggest security threat to its 2008 Olympic Games comes from Xinjiang’s Uighur militants, especially the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) and other East Turkistan militant groups. Many suspect that these warnings are intended to provide political cover for a crackdown on China’s minority Uighurs, a majority of whom are Muslims, before the Beijing Olympics begins in August.

It is widely understood that China’s government wants to prevent any incident that could cause it international embarrassment during its spotlight moment as the Olympic host. It also is believed that the Chinese government has played on Western fears of Islamist militants in order to avoid criticism for the aggressive security measures it is instituting for the Olympics. In fact, the security measures are designed to cover any eventuality — to prevent embarrassing political incidents as well as to counter legitimate security threats. The sense that the Chinese are “crying Uighur,” however, has damaged their credibility abroad, so the claim that they have thwarted a militant attack has met with a large degree of skepticism.

Uighur dissidents and human rights activists deny Beijing’s charges, saying the claims are politically motivated. It should be noted, however, that Uighur militant groups have conducted attacks in the past, and there are Uighur groups and individuals who seek to commit such attacks today. In several attacks during the 1990s, Uighur militants targeted transportation targets such as buses, bridges and trains in an effort to cause mass casualties. In some instances they succeeded. In February 1998, for example, an improvised explosive device exploded under a bridge in Wuhan, killing 50 people, many of whom were riding a bus. Uighur militants have conducted attacks in Beijing and other parts of China outside of Xinjiang.

Some observers and human rights activists believe the paltry evidence Beijing has released to support its claim suggests it manufactured the incident in order to meet its political objectives. If the Chinese government really thwarted a major attack, it would have been more forthcoming with proof, some skeptics have said. The skepticism was further heightened when the government twice amended its earlier report that a group of Uighurs was behind the plot. Beijing later said the plot involved only one woman. Most recently, the government has said the woman was acting on behalf of a group from abroad.

However, the slow release of information about this incident and the fact that it was labeled a militant plot well after the fact suggest that the plot was genuine. It seems the Chinese themselves are only slowly coming to understand the implications of the incident and the details of what occurred seem to be supported by accounts that have appeared on various blogs from people who were onboard the plane.

Chinese security sources have informed Stratfor that the woman involved in the incident claimed she had recently married a member of the ETIM, who took her on two practice flights prior to the attempted attack. The sources advise that the woman was discovered when the crew noticed she took too long in the bathroom and they became concerned she might have experienced a health-related problem. When crew members entered the bathroom, they smelled the gasoline fumes and restrained her after they saw her hurriedly place the cans in a trash bin, according to the sources. The woman reportedly would have had more than enough time to light the gasoline and it is believed the plot failed only because she got cold feet and chose not to go ahead. The man who trained the woman and allegedly orchestrated the attempted attack was not on the plane the day of the incident and has reportedly left the country.

Some have claimed this incident is an attempt by the Chinese government to frame the Uighurs — especially given that Beijing has long invoked the Uighur threat. Although the Chinese government is sophisticated in its propaganda operations — and it certainly is capable of orchestrating such an event — this incident appears to have too many ragged edges to have been a professionally spun frame-up. In such a fabricated case, the Chinese authorities would have had everything neatly tied up and packaged for world media consumption. Everything would be crisp, clear and readily evident; it certainly would not be as murky as this case.

Furthermore, if a Chinese government employee had been assigned with manufacturing such an incident, he or she would have conjured up a more menacing substance than gasoline. For example, the government could have claimed that the woman planned to detonate two 12-ounce cans of PLX or Astrolite liquid explosives. The authorities could then have said the claim had been verified by a government laboratory — and nobody outside of China would ever have been the wiser. In other words, a fabricated scenario could have made the plot appear much more threatening.

Also lending credence to the Chinese government’s claim is the reaction to the incident by Chinese civil aviation authorities. On March 13, China’s General Administration of Civil Aviation (CAAC) implemented tighter security measures designed to guarantee passenger safety. The measures include a ban on liquids in carry-on items, increased hand luggage inspections and body checks. CAAC also ended express check-in services for frequent flyers. The woman involved in the March 7 incident reportedly used one of these inspection points to board the aircraft with soft drink cans that had been emptied of their contents and refilled with gasoline using a syringe. The tiny access holes in the cans were then patched.

China’s new security measures are similar to those implemented in the United Kingdom in August 2006 — and then across the West — immediately after the disruption of a plot to destroy airliners using liquid explosives. International security measures were later relaxed to current regulations that allow travelers to carry small bottles of liquids that can fit inside a clear one-liter plastic bag. It is interesting to note that the restrictions just imposed on travelers in China clearly seem to be a natural knee-jerk reaction by aviation security authorities to a real threat. They do not appear to be what one would expect to see in a calculated response to a ruse.

Tactical Aspects

In addition to citing the political environment surrounding this incident, some security analysts doubt this plot was the real thing because of the method of attack. They argue that using an accelerant to start a fire is an unusual and impractical weapon.

It is important to understand that fire is extremely dangerous aboard aircraft. This not only is because of the oxygen-rich environment aboard a plane, the sensitive nature of avionic controls and the presence of thousands of gallons of jet fuel, but also because of the toxic smoke that results from burning plastics and other materials that make up an aircraft. Examples of deadly fires aboard aircraft include the September 1998 incident involving Swiss Air Flight 111, in which all 229 people aboard were killed after the crew members were overcome by smoke, and the May 1996 Value Jet crash in the Florida Everglades. In a case similar to the one at hand, a June 1983 fire that started in the restroom of Air Canada Flight 797 resulted in the deaths of 23 of the 46 passengers on board. Autopsies showed that most of them died as a result of smoke inhalation.

In fact, because of the danger presented by fire and smoke on aircraft, an arson attack aboard a commercial flight could prove even more deadly than an attack involving a small improvised explosive device (IED). Many small IED attacks on airliners have not resulted in catastrophic failures of the aircraft. On the contrary, several have produced only a few casualties. Cases in point include the bombing of TWA flight 840 in April 1986, which killed four people, and the bombings of Pan Am flight 830 in August 1982 and Philippines Airlines flight 434 in December 1994, both of which killed one person.

An aircraft lavatory is an ideal place to start a fire because paper products that can be used as secondary fuel for the fire are in abundance. It also allows the perpetrator to lock the door, thus impeding the crew’s ability to extinguish the blaze quickly. Additionally, if a fire could be established behind the plane’s plastic wall panels, it could spread quickly and be very difficult to extinguish. A fire created by 24 ounces of gasoline and fed by large quantities of paper towels and toilet paper could prove to be catastrophic to an aircraft. Had the March 7 attack succeeded — and it very well could have had the woman not backed out at the last minute — it could have been the deadliest terrorist attack in recent Chinese history, given the plane was carrying more than 200 passengers and crew.

Although some have said that using gasoline or other accelerants is not in the jihadist playbook, the explosive-actuated incendiary devices employed in London and Glasgow, Scotland in June 2007 suggest otherwise. Jihadists also have attempted to use timed incendiary devices in Germany and have successfully used incendiary devices to conduct a deadly attack against a train in India.

Incendiary devices are not only quite deadly if properly employed, they also have the advantage over explosive devices of involving readily available materials such as gasoline and kerosene. Even the aluminum powder and iron oxide required to manufacture a more advanced incendiary compound like thermite can be easily obtained, or even produced at home.

Others have suggested that “genuine terrorists” would not take down a plane in the middle of nowhere — as the March 7 plot likely would have done. A historical review of attacks against aircraft, however, shows that most of them have been brought down in the middle of nowhere and not over cities. Certainly the airliners hijacked on 9/11 were flown to attack targets in cities, but in other bombing cases — such as Pan Am 103, Air India 182 and the dual August 2004 suicide bombings involving airliners in Russia — there was no effort to destroy the aircraft over populated areas. Even Richard Reid’s December 2001 attempted bombing of American Airline flight 63 occurred over the Atlantic Ocean.

Clearly, militants repeatedly have taken down airliners over sparsely populated areas, so not aiming for an urban area does not in and of itself suggest the plotters were incapable of causing great destruction.

A Sign of Things to Come?

Jihadists, lone wolves as well as those associated with al Qaeda, its regional affiliates and other groups have long demonstrated a fixation with destroying commercial aircraft in flight — and they have been quite creative in their efforts. Before 9/11, few people thought jihadists could commandeer planes armed with only box cutters and then use those planes to destroy the World Trade Center towers and attack the Pentagon. Their past plots involving improvised explosives hidden in dolls, shoes and even liquid explosive mixtures also highlight their outside-the-box thinking.

Given the vulnerability of aircraft to the dangers posed by fire and smoke, it is important that this threat not be dismissed. This is precisely the type of unconventional attack that one can expect from jihadist planners, and we anticipate that as security measures make it more difficult to obtain explosives and smuggle them aboard aircraft, we will see more attempts to attack aircraft with flammable liquids or, in the face of bans on liquids, with highly flammable solids or powders.

Tell Fred and Scott what you think

The Mexican Response to U.S. Health Care

International Living Postcards--your daily escape
http://www.internationalliving.com

Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Merida, Mexico

Dear International Living Reader,

The U.S. health care system is overpriced and out of reach for millions of Americans…and Mexico has the answer.

According to Mexican news sources, Carlos Slim, Mexican business magnate and second-richest man on the planet, is planning a system of high-quality hospitals in Mexico specifically to cater to U.S. baby boomers.

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One of Slim’s companies, Ideal, has purchased a 49% stake in Grupo Star Medica, a Mexican national hospital chain. Plans are underway for new, high-quality medical centers in Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, and Los Cabos on the Baja California peninsula to cater to U.S. baby boomers who are buying second homes in Mexico…or who simply want to come to Mexico for cheaper health care than they can find in the United States.

It is estimated that vacation homes sales in Los Cabos increased 30%, and in Puerto Peñasco increased 45% in the last three years. Claudia Velazquez, an analyst for Softec, a real estate market analysis firm, said companies like Grupo Star Medica are just filling niches created by those new homeowners and vacationers. And, she adds, "[Baby boomers] are also choosing Mexico because its health system is much cheaper than in the United States.”

Slim isn’t the only Mexican businessman who sees an obvious opportunity in the failing U.S. health system. And plans are underway to get more U.S. private insurance companies to pay for medical treatment in Mexico.

"For a U.S. insurance policy to pay for medical treatment, the treatment has to comply with certain quality control standards, and we are going to participate with products to serve this niche," said Jaime Jimenez, general director for Mexico Trane, another company following Slim’s lead.

It’s hard to blame smart Mexican businessmen for capitalizing on such an obvious opportunity. If the United States hadn’t let its health care system get so bloated and profit-hungry that 40 million Americans can’t even afford health insurance, there wouldn’t be a need to outsource it.

Remember what your dentist used to say? “Ignore your teeth, and they will go away.” Well, the United States has neglected health care reform for so long that its users really are going away…to Mexico!

Dan Prescher
Publisher, International Living

P.S. The next issue of Mexico Insider includes a special report on health care in Mexico. You’ll learn how to get quality health care coverage for $300 a year. Plus, we tell you about the top 10 hospitals in Mexico. Sign up to Mexico Insider now, and you’ll be in time to get this special issue.