GWOT Media Summary Jan 22

[RAMESES the Great]

U.S. Joint Forces Command
GWOT Media Summary
Operations Iraqi Freedom/Enduring Freedom/Noble Eagle
Current as of January 22, 2008

 New Developments
 Suicide Bomber Kills 17 At Ceremony Near Capital. A suicide bomber killed 17 people in Salahuddin Province north of Baghdad on Monday in the latest suicide attack outside the capital. Meanwhile, in the wake of a suicide bombing on Sunday near Falluja in Anbar Province, local tribesmen burned the house of the young suicide bomber’s family and prevented a female cousin from collecting the bomber’s head for burial. In the attack on Monday, a suicide bomber in the village of Hajaj near the northern oil refinery town of Baiji entered a communal hall where a feast was under way, observing the end of the seven-day mourning period for the uncle of a high-ranking security official in the Salahuddin provincial government. The bomber detonated his explosive vest, demolishing the hall. Seventeen people were killed and 11 wounded, according to a senior official. (New York Times – see attached)
 U.S. Helping Pakistan Tackle Extremism 'In Its Own Way': Envoy. The United States is working to help Pakistan deal with extremism "in its own way," a top U.S. diplomat for the region said in the town of Asadabad near the Pakistan border. The envoy, Richard Boucher, was responding to a question about reports that the United States could send troops into the Pakistan tribal belt bordering Afghanistan to root out extremists, including from Al-Qaeda, based there. Pakistan has said any unauthorized military strike by international forces against Al-Qaeda militants on its soil would be considered an "enemy act" and tantamount to an invasion. "It is their country, their problems, and we are going to try to help them deal with it in their own way ...," Boucher told reporters Monday after meeting officials in Asadabad. (Google/AFP)
 UN Envoy Applauds Cut In Iraq Violence. The top U.N. envoy in Iraq on Monday welcomed recent improvements in security and tentative steps towards national reconciliation, urging all parties to maintain the positive momentum. "It needs to be sustained by political activities and dialogue among the Iraqis," Staffan de Mistura told the Security Council. He said much depends on whether the government can enact key legislation and quickly provide economic benefits and essential social services for the Iraqi people – electricity, water and sanitation. De Mistura briefed the council on Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's recent report in which the U.N. chief welcomed the reduction in attacks across Iraq and called for similar improvements in the political arena. (The Oregonian/AP)

 Military Coverage
 Speculation Surrounds Petraeus's Next Job, Potential Successors. Since assuming command of U.S. forces in Iraq nearly a year ago, Gen. David H. Petraeus has become the public face of the war effort, leading the troop increase, offering a pivotal progress report to Congress last September and implementing a counterinsurgency strategy that he helped devise. For the past two months, however, there has been discussion in military and government circles about whether Petraeus may become the U.S. European Command chief, who also serves as the supreme allied commander of NATO. In that role, he would oversee NATO's military operations – including the war in Afghanistan – as well as U.S. forces in Europe. Insiders emphasize that no decision has been made on Petraeus's future assignment and that a sharply different course – including staying in Iraq longer – is possible. (Washington Post – see attached)
 Hopes For Vehicle Questioned After Iraq Blast. From the blast and the high, thin plume of white smoke above the tree line, it looked and sounded like any other attack. The bare details were, sadly, routine enough: a gunner was killed and three crew members were wounded Saturday when their vehicle rolled over a homemade bomb buried beneath a road southeast of Baghdad. Yet, it was anything but routine. Over a crackling field radio came reports of injuries and then, sometime later, official confirmation of the first fatality inflicted by a roadside bomb on an MRAP, the new Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected armored vehicle that the American military is counting on to reduce casualties from roadside bombs in Iraq. (New York Times – see attached)

 Homeland Security
 ID Rules To Change For Canada Crossings. Defying Congress, the Department of Homeland Security is pushing to tighten identification requirements at U.S. land borders starting Jan. 31, when it no longer will allow Americans or Canadians to enter the country by presenting a driver's license or declaring their citizenship. The shift at the northern border comes despite legislation approved by Congress last month that bars DHS from implementing a post-Sept. 11 regulation that requires all travelers entering the United States to present a passport or similar secure form of identification and proof of citizenship. That rule, passed in 2004 and set to take effect this month, was delayed until June 2009. (Washington Post – see attached)

 World Developments
 Iranian Rift Prompts Supreme Leader's Opinion. Iran watchers sought to make sense Monday of a spat between the conservative speaker of parliament and the country's hard-line president over a budgetary issue that found Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei issuing a rare but opaque opinion. The incident was the latest sign of discord with the Islamic Republic's byzantine ruling system, which combines elements of a democratically elected republic with a theocracy headed by Shiite Muslim clerics, with Khamenei over both. Parliament Speaker Gholam Ali Haddad-Adel on Monday read from the text of the supreme leader's opinion, which the lawmaker said backed his position in a dispute with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "The implementation of all bills that follow constitutional channels is mandatory for all branches of the state," the statement read. (Los Angeles Times – see attached)
 Gazans Fear Crisis After Four Days of Blockade. Four days into an Israeli blockade that has cut off food and fuel to the Gaza Strip, residents contemplated Monday how long it would be until disaster hit. One family of 13, shivering in the cold, counted its eight remaining candles. A bakery that normally feeds thousands had three days' worth of flour. Hospital generators with enough fuel for three days and no spare parts powered incubators in which twin boys born 2 1/2 months prematurely were being kept alive. Israel agreed Monday to allow in a one-time shipment of fuel, food and medicine on Tuesday, after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak telephoned Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak to appeal on behalf of Gaza's 1.5 million people. But Israel gave no indication when it planned to fully lift the blockade, imposed Friday in response to escalating rocket attacks from the Palestinian territory. (Washington Post – see attached)
 UN Security Council To Hold Emergency Meeting On Gaza Tuesday. The UN Security Council was to meet in emergency session Tuesday on the humanitarian crisis triggered by Israel's crippling blockade of the Gaza Strip, in response to the firing of rockets into the Jewish state. The 15-member body was to meet at 10:00 a.m. (1500 GMT) at the request of Arab UN ambassadors and the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference. The decision to hold the emergency session was made during closed-door consultations late Monday amid a growing international outcry at what the European Union termed the "collective punishment" of Gaza's 1.5 million residents. The strong international reaction and warnings of a humanitarian crisis led Israel Monday to ease its blockade of Gaza, allowing in some fuel and medicine. (Agence France Presse)
 Foreign Ministers To Discuss Iran, France Hopes For Resolution Deal. Foreign ministers from six key powers meet Tuesday to coordinate their positions on Iran's nuclear program, with France saying it expects quick agreement on a new draft U.N. resolution to increase pressure on Tehran. The meeting at the Foreign Ministry in Berlin brings together the foreign ministers of the five permanent U.N. Security Council members – the U.S., Britain, France, Russia and China – plus Germany, as well as EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana. It comes in the wake of last month's U.S. intelligence assessment that Tehran stopped active work on a nuclear weapons program in 2003. That appeared to stiffen resistance from veto-wielding Russia and China to a quick and harsh third round of sanctions; however, Western nations have stressed the need to keep up the pressure. A senior French diplomat said that an agreement on a draft resolution was very close. (International Herald Tribune/AP)
 Militants Attack Pakistani Fort. Militants have attacked a Pakistani security force fort in the troubled South Waziristan region on the Afghan border, killing five soldiers. Militants attacked the Ladha fort and an observation post at 0100 (2000 GMT Monday), military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said. At least seven soldiers have been wounded, he said. Maj-Gen Abbas said he did not have the exact number of militants killed in the clash. Last Thursday, hundreds of pro-Taliban militants overran the Sararogha fort in the same district. A day later, Pakistani troops abandoned a fort at Sipla Toi military post (a remote tribal area in South Waziristan) fearing an attack by the militants. (BBC)
 Musharraf Pledges Free Election. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president, promised on Monday that his country’s forthcoming parliamentary elections, delayed by a month after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the opposition leader, would be free and transparent. At the start of an eight-day swing through Europe, Musharraf also told European Union leaders that Pakistan would not waver in its efforts to root out “terrorism and extremism” in its region. It is Musharraf’s first foreign trip since Bhutto was killed on December 27 and is intended partly to allay EU concerns about Pakistan’s stability in the light of the assassination and the president’s earlier imposition of a state of emergency – now lifted. Musharraf told business leaders in Karachi last week that he would order his army and paramilitary forces to shoot any “miscreants” who tried to disrupt the February 18 elections, which had originally been scheduled for January 8. (London Financial Times)
 British Envoy Gets A Dressing Down Over Kenyan Election. The British High Commissioner to Kenya was called in for a dressing down by the country’s Foreign Minister Monday in a sign of increasing tension between the two countries over last month’s disputed elections. Adam Wood was asked to explain why ministers in London have said they will not recognize the government of President Mwai Kibaki. Raila Odinga, the main opposition leader, accuses President Kibaki of stealing the election. Last week Meg Munn, Foreign Office minister, told the House of Commons: “Our Government have not recognized the [Kenyan] Government and are calling on both leaders to co-operate in a process of mediation.” Her comments received widespread coverage in the Kenyan media and provoked accusations that the country’s former colonial ruler was meddling in affairs that no longer concerned it. (London Times)

 Public Opinion
 Poll: Public Distrust Media's Iraq Coverage. Nearly half of Americans think the situation in Iraq is better than the national media are reporting, according to a recent poll, while significant majorities think the news media are damaging troop morale and prospects for victory. The Sacred Heart University poll surveyed 800 Americans nationwide about media coverage of the Iraq war and about media trustworthiness in general. In most categories, the news media faired poorly among respondents. The poll was released Jan. 8. It found that 49.1% agreed that "things are likely going better for the U.S. (in Iraq) than the U.S. media portrays." Almost 60% of respondents said that negative media coverage damages prospects for success in Iraq, because it encourage terrorists, while slightly more than 70% think negative coverage damages troop morale. (Cybercast News Service)

*AP = Associated Press UPI = United Press International KR = Knight Ridder

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Suicide Bomber Kills 17 At Ceremony Near Capital
New York Times
January 22, 2008

A suicide bomber killed 17 people in Salahuddin Province north of Baghdad on Monday in the latest suicide attack outside the capital. Meanwhile, in the wake of a suicide bombing on Sunday near Falluja in Anbar Province, local tribesmen burned the house of the young suicide bomber’s family and prevented a female cousin from collecting the bomber’s head for burial. In the attack on Monday, a suicide bomber in the village of Hajaj near the northern oil refinery town of Baiji entered a communal hall where a feast was under way, observing the end of the seven-day mourning period for the uncle of a high-ranking security official in the Salahuddin provincial government. The bomber detonated his explosive vest, demolishing the hall. Seventeen people were killed and 11 wounded, according to a senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.

The level of anger on Monday in Albo Issa, the village where the Sunday bombing took place, laid bare the intensity of the blood feuds and vengeance killings that often characterize the violence in the provinces. As women keened in the courtyard and men sat somberly in a separate house, family members talked about those they had lost. “After this crime, we will never allow any of those people to stay in our area,” said Mohammed Hadi Hassan, 20, whose father was killed. “Not even their women and children. We will not permit anyone with such an ideology to stay in our village.” The bombing took place at a celebratory lunch among members of the local Awakening Council, the American-backed movement of Sunni Arab tribes opposed to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. According to witnesses, the suicide bomber, a boy of 13 or 14 identified as Ali Hussein Allawi al-Issawi, detonated his vest just after handing chocolates to his host. Four people were killed, including the bomber.

On Sunday night, some of the men who lost relatives in the bombing set his house on fire, Mr. Hassan said, setting off explosions because of the amount of ammunition stored there. Mr. Hassan, an AK-47 on his lap, spoke tearfully on Monday about his father, Hadi Hussein al-Issawi, and the split within the Issawi tribe to which he belongs. The tribe has long been divided between a majority who fiercely oppose Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and a minority who support the militants, he said. Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is a homegrown militant group that American officials say has foreign leadership. The two tribal factions live close to each other in Albo Issa; the bomber’s house lies about 500 yards from the house of Mr. Hussein, the victim. Soon after members of the tribe joined with the Americans to fight Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, more than a year ago, the men in the area who supported the group fled north, leaving behind their women and children, Mr. Hassan said.

“The bomber’s father was one of the senior leaders in Al Qaeda, which here they call ‘the Islamic State of Iraq,’ ” Mr. Hassan said. “He left his house a long time ago. The child disappeared 10 months ago, but he reappeared 10 days ago. We told the police forces about his return as soon as he got back, but they took no action.” A boy, who was among those mourning the victims, said he remembered the bomber as a normal child. “He was my classmate in school as well as in the neighborhood,” said Dhaher Hussein Ali, 13. “He was very calm, and we used to play together. He joked with all of us. Ten months ago, he disappeared. When he came back recently, he kept to himself and he did not even say hello to us.” Another cousin of Mr. Hussein’s, Ghazi Feisal Hashem al-Issawi, 30, said Mr. Hussein had not recognized the young boy at the lunch gathering. He said that as the boy handed Mr. Hussein the chocolates, Mr. Hussein asked him who he was. “The bomber told him, ‘I am Hussein Allawi’s son,’ then he detonated himself,” he said.

As the sun began to set on Monday, gunshots rang out in the village. Relatives of Mr. Hussein were trying to keep a female cousin of the bomber from approaching the house where the explosion occurred. She had wanted to retrieve the young boy’s head so that it could be properly buried. But no one would allow her to approach. The military announced on Monday the deaths of two American soldiers in combat. Both died Saturday. A marine was killed in Anbar province and a soldier was killed by an improvised explosive device while on patrol in Arab Jabour, south of Baghdad, in a new Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected armored vehicle that the military has turned to as a way to reduce deaths and injuries from roadside bombs. Seven unidentified bodies were found in Baghdad and two in Mosul. Two Iraqi civilians were killed near Samarra when an improvised explosive device detonated beneath their vehicle.

Speculation Surrounds Petraeus's Next Job, Potential Successors
Washington Post
January 22, 2008

When Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, meets with influential Iraqi leaders, he is often accompanied by a key deputy: Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who leads secretive U.S. Special Operations units working in Iraq. Petraeus turns to him for the ground truth about various regions of Iraq where McChrystal's forces conduct raids against "high-value" targets, such as the Sunni extremist group al-Qaeda in Iraq, whose leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was tracked down and killed by McChrystal's men in 2006, U.S. military officers and officials said. For that and other reasons, McChrystal is one of the leading candidates to take over should Petraeus leave his post as part of a series of high-level military personnel changes under discussion, the officials said.

Since assuming command of U.S. forces in Iraq nearly a year ago, Petraeus has become the public face of the war effort, leading the troop increase, offering a pivotal progress report to Congress last September and implementing a counterinsurgency strategy that he helped devise. For the past two months, however, there has been discussion in military and government circles about whether Petraeus may become the U.S. European Command chief, who also serves as the supreme allied commander of NATO. In that role, he would oversee NATO's military operations -- including the war in Afghanistan -- as well as U.S. forces in Europe. Insiders emphasize that no decision has been made on Petraeus's future assignment and that a sharply different course -- including staying in Iraq longer -- is possible. With President Bush entering his final year in office, however, the discussions raise questions about the military leadership that will guide the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan under a new administration. Petraeus is said to favor the move, which would enable him to focus on Afghanistan, where violence has escalated over the past year, as opposed to improved security in Iraq.

A spokesman for Petraeus declined to comment on the possibility of a new assignment, which was reported Monday by the New York Times. "Trying to guess General Petraeus's next assignment is the most popular parlor game in the Pentagon these days," said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell. "Where and when the general goes next is up to Secretary Gates and President Bush, and they have not yet decided those matters," he said, referring to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. With a new president scheduled to take office next January, any reshuffling of U.S. military leadership becomes more complex, as Bush might be seen as preempting decisions better left to his successor. While in theory a new commander in chief could undo such decisions, any moves of wartime military leaders must be weighed carefully because of their impact on how campaigns are waged.

The six-year-old war in Afghanistan has revealed some strains within NATO, with Washington and its European allies recently clashing over relative troop contributions and disparate missions. Those supporting Petraeus's potential move stress that he has worked with NATO before -- as assistant to the supreme allied commander in the late 1980s and later with the NATO Stabilization Force in Bosnia -- and note that he holds a doctorate in international relations from Princeton. Previous top U.S. commanders in Iraq have served for varying lengths of time. If Petraeus departs, there are three top candidates to replace him, according to U.S. military and government officials and sources. The first is McChrystal, whom officers credit with improving cooperation between his troops and conventional Army units and with conducting an effective counteroffensive against al-Qaeda in Iraq. Moreover, his experience would be particularly relevant, as Special Operations forces are expected to remain active in Iraq even after tens of thousands of conventional U.S. troops withdraw.

The second candidate is Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, who was the No. 2 commander in Iraq in 2005 and is now Gates's senior military assistant. His closeness to the defense secretary is seen as an advantage, but some influential figures argue that Chiarelli was part of the failed pre-"surge" strategy in Iraq that emphasized a quick transition to Iraqi security forces, and that he should not preside over the new strategy, which stresses slowing that transition and making the protection of Iraqi civilians the top priority of U.S. forces. The third candidate is Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the second-ranking officer at U.S. Central Command, the military headquarters for Iraq and the rest of the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa. But one person involved in the discussions said that nothing has been set and that very different decisions may be made.

For example, he said, Petraeus could be promoted next year to take over Central Command from Adm. William J. Fallon. Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, who has been the chief of day-to-day operations in Iraq for the past year under Petraeus, might then replace Petraeus as the top commander there. Odierno is also being considered to become the next Army vice chief of staff, replacing Gen. Richard A. Cody, military officials said. Nevertheless, early speculation over such top-level shifts often proves inaccurate. In the months before Petraeus was sent to Iraq, the rumor was that he would be put in charge at Central Command. Instead, that job went to Fallon. Also, not long before stepping down as defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld appeared close to sending Petraeus to Afghanistan, according to a person familiar with the deliberations.

Hopes For Vehicle Questioned After Iraq Blast
New York Times
January 22, 2008

From the blast and the high, thin plume of white smoke above the tree line, it looked and sounded like any other attack. The bare details were, sadly, routine enough: a gunner was killed and three crew members were wounded Saturday when their vehicle rolled over a homemade bomb buried beneath a road southeast of Baghdad. Yet, it was anything but routine. Over a crackling field radio came reports of injuries and then, sometime later, official confirmation of the first fatality inflicted by a roadside bomb on an MRAP, the new Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected armored vehicle that the American military is counting on to reduce casualties from roadside bombs in Iraq. The military has been careful to point out that the new vehicle is not impervious to attack, and that a sufficiently powerful bomb can destroy any vehicle. Still, a forensic team was flown in immediately to inspect the charred wreckage, from which wires and tangled metal protruded, to determine whether the bombing had revealed a design flaw.

“It’s a great vehicle, but there is no perfect vehicle,” said Lt. Col. Kenneth Adgie, commander of the battalion that lost the soldier. Three of the four people aboard suffered only broken feet and lacerations. Pending the results of an investigation, it is unclear yet whether the gunner was killed by the blast or by the vehicle rolling over. But officers on the scene noted that he was the member of the crew most exposed, and that the vehicle’s secure inner compartment was not compromised and appeared to have done its job by protecting the three other crew members inside. “The crew compartment is intact,” said Capt. Michael Fritz. He said the blast would have been large enough “to take out” a heavily armored Bradley Fighting Vehicle. Roadside bombs have been the single deadliest weapon insurgents have directed against American forces in Iraq, and have grown increasingly sophisticated and powerful over the years. As a result, reducing the carnage from the bombs became a strong military and political imperative for the Bush administration.

So important is the mine-resistant vehicle to the United States military that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates singled it out in his holiday-season message in December, saying, “To ensure that troops have the best protection available on the battlefield, MRAPs became the military’s highest acquisition priority, and thousands of these vehicles are in production and en route to theater.” On Friday, Mr. Gates toured an assembly facility for the vehicles in Charleston, S.C., where he described them as “a proven lifesaver on the battlefield.” He cited Army reports that there had been 12 attacks on the vehicles with homemade bombs since a push began last summer to send more of them into combat zones, mostly in Iraq. No soldiers died in those attacks, he said.

The vehicles have distinctive, armored V-shaped hulls that are designed to deflect the force of the explosion from roadside bombs out and away from the vehicle, sparing the occupants in the compartment. The underbody sits about 36 inches off the ground, higher than the Humvees that have proved susceptible to roadside bombs despite the additional armor added to many of them in combat zones. The vehicles are much bigger than Humvees, standing 12 feet high, weighing up to 18 tons, and carrying 6 to 10 soldiers, depending on the model. There are more than 1,500 of them in Iraq now, and the military plans to purchase more than 15,000 of them at a cost of $22.4 billion.

Saturday’s deadly attack came on the first day of an operation to clear insurgents from southern Arab Jabour, a rural, overwhelmingly Sunni area less than 10 miles southeast of Baghdad on the Tigris River. The primary target is Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown extremist group that American intelligence says is foreign led. The bomb went off at 4:45 p.m., as engineers were driving beside an irrigation ditch to support soldiers of the First Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, Second Brigade Combat Team, Third Infantry Division, who had been clearing farmhouses and villages since a dawn air assault. The blast threw the vehicle into the air and spun it 180 degrees, with its shattered nose coming to rest beside the ditch. Pvt. Matthew Hall, 19, saw the bombing while standing on the roof of a nearby farmhouse. “I heard a loud boom,” he said Sunday. “I looked over and I saw pieces of vehicle and smoke. I saw a tire flying into the field.”

Several vehicles in the convoy had already passed over the same spot, but failed to set off what officers say they was a deeply buried, homemade bomb, which the military calls an improvised explosive device, or I.E.D., made from about 300 pounds of fertilizer and set off with a pressure device. Infantrymen who had spent the day carefully maneuvering on foot through fields and ditches heard the blast and saw the smoke. “That was another I.E.D.,” said Capt. John Newman, the commander of Company B, to groans from his men who had walked close to the blast site earlier that morning. Two minutes later came another report. “It was an MRAP, totally destroyed,” the radio operator said. Two rescue helicopters arrived minutes later to evacuate the wounded. Dismayed, their colleagues carried on with their patrols, detaining insurgent suspects and searching for other bombs in farmyards and vehicles.

The threat from buried bombs was well known before of the operation. To help clear the ground, the military had dropped nearly 100,000 pounds of bombs to destroy weapons caches and I.E.D.’s. Colonel Adgie, the battalion commander, stressed that the full details of the attacked vehicle’s destruction would not be known until an investigation was completed, but said initial examination suggested a “deep-buried I.E.D.,” which was there for some time, rather than one set off by remote control. Commanders had received intelligence about a bomb buried there, he said, but could not be certain about the report, and were unable to explode or find it despite repeated attempts from the air, and with metal detectors. He said many of the devices were hard to find and could be set off by a vehicle moving over them at a slightly different spot or at a different angle than previous vehicles had.

“We had cleared it once and cleared it a second time,” he said. “A lot of vehicles had gone over it already, and it was the second-to-last vehicle that got hit. You try your best to find them and roll them up, but we didn’t find that one.” Rear Adm. Greg Smith, a spokesman for the American military in Baghdad, confirmed that the attack was “the first death resulting from an I.E.D. attack on an MRAP,” but said that he could not comment on specific damage to the vehicle “for force protection reasons.” Admiral Smith said the new vehicle had proven “in its short time here in Iraq that it is a much improved vehicle in protecting troops from the effects of improvised explosive devices.” “However,” he added, “there is no vehicle that can provide absolute protection of its occupants.”

A few hours before the explosion, Captain Newman’s company was led by a farmer to a similarly large device nearby. It was safely detonated. Captain Newman said that his battalions had been using the new vehicles for about two months, and that this was the first time one had been hit with a bomb. “Unfortunately we knew our time would probably come,” he said. “It was just a very, very big amount of explosives. You can break anything with a big enough hammer.” That sentiment was echoed by other soldiers in the area. “Before this, lots of soldiers thought the MRAP was indestructible, but nothing is indestructible,” Specialist Matthew Gregg, 24, an MRAP gunner, said after driving past the wreckage. “To drive past it three or four times now, it reminds you that everything is unpredictable out here.”

ID Rules To Change For Canada Crossings
Washington Post
January 22, 2008

Defying Congress, the Department of Homeland Security is pushing to tighten identification requirements at U.S. land borders starting Jan. 31, when it no longer will allow Americans or Canadians to enter the country by presenting a driver's license or declaring their citizenship. The change is expected to worsen travel delays and backups along the U.S.-Canada border, which recorded 72 million crossings in 2007. The U.S.-Mexico border is even busier, with 226 million crossings, but noncitizens already need extra documentation to enter the United States there. The shift at the northern border comes despite legislation approved by Congress last month that bars DHS from implementing a post-Sept. 11 regulation that requires all travelers entering the United States to present a passport or similar secure form of identification and proof of citizenship. That rule, passed in 2004 and set to take effect this month, was delayed until June 2009.

In pressing ahead, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff restated his belief that failure to act will lead to "another 9/11 Commission" investigating a future attack by foreign intruders. But he also took a shot at critics in Congress, border states and trade organizations that have opposed the program, called the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative. "It's time to grow up and recognize that if we're serious about this threat, we've got to take reasonable, measured, but nevertheless determined steps to getting better security," he told the Associated Press. The secretary's remark raises the ante in a simmering battle with congressional leaders from border states, including Sens. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.). They have threatened to challenge the legal basis of DHS's action and are drawing support from allies in Canada and powerful industry groups in both countries.

Noting that Chertoff's department was forced to temporarily suspend a similar requirement for air travelers last summer when the rule caused a massive U.S. passport backlog, Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (R-N.Y.) said the secretary "frankly has as much credibility on telling people to grow up as Geoffrey the giraffe." Leahy said that "with concerns about a recession on the way, the timing for clamping down on billions of dollars in trade and travel could not be worse. I can think of nothing that would push the northern border states over the edge more surely than this heavy-handed, ill-timed and misguided government mandate." Under the rule, people 19 and older will be asked to present a passport or, once they become available, an enhanced driver's license or border pass card. Otherwise, both a regular driver's license and a birth certificate or other citizenship document will be required.

In letters Thursday to Leahy and Schumer, Chertoff said DHS had authority under earlier laws passed by Congress to tighten identification requirements at borders. Schumer aides took aim at the birth-certificate requirement, noting that Chertoff pointed out in June that such documents are issued by many jurisdictions and are easy to forge. Roger Dow, head of the Travel Industry Association, said DHS should require people to present only a driver's license until a better alternative is ready in coming months. The State Department is scheduled to roll out more secure passport cards this spring. A 2005 Conference Board of Canada study estimated that the travel initiative would cost the two countries and border communities $2.5 billion a year in reduced travel. Chertoff said travelers must become accustomed to using the fewer forms of acceptable ID, rather than the 8,000 types now allowed, and that the United States must end the "honor system" of allowing people to declare citizenship at the border. Over the past three years, DHS reported 31,060 cases of individuals trying to enter the country by falsely claiming to be U.S. citizens, including 1,517 in the past three months. The department did not say how many were caught on the northern border.

Iranian Rift Prompts Supreme Leader's Opinion
Los Angeles Times
January 21, 2008

Iran watchers sought to make sense Monday of a spat between the conservative speaker of parliament and the country's hard-line president over a budgetary issue that found Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei issuing a rare but opaque opinion. The incident was the latest sign of discord with the Islamic Republic's byzantine ruling system, which combines elements of a democratically elected republic with a theocracy headed by Shiite Muslim clerics, with Khamenei over both. Parliament Speaker Gholam Ali Haddad-Adel on Monday read from the text of the supreme leader's opinion, which the lawmaker said backed his position in a dispute with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "The implementation of all bills that follow constitutional channels is mandatory for all branches of the state," the statement read.

Some analysts and news reports described the statement as a slap at Ahmadinejad and his camp by Khamenei ahead of parliamentary elections March 14. But others sharply disagreed. "It's a dispute within the government because Ahmadinejad's been unable to deliver" on the economy, said Bijan Bidabadi, an economist and consultant. "This has nothing to do with the supreme leader." A rift has emerged among conservatives, who worry about how they will fare in the upcoming vote in light of Ahmadinejad's poor economic performance, said another analyst. "It shows that among the hard-liners the gap is widening," said Saeed Allah-Bedashti, a politician close to the camp of the liberal-minded former President Mohammed Khatami. "But the gap is between Haddad-Adel and Ahmadinejad, not between the supreme leader and Ahmadinejad."

The world's fourth largest oil exporter, Iran and its state-dominated economy suffer from chronic unemployment estimated at up to 20 percent and an official inflation rate of 19 percent. Monday's budgetary quarrel came amid an extraordinary cold snap across the Middle East that has depleted natural gas supplies and caused heating-supply shortages throughout Iran, especially in rural hamlets, which are the conservatives' base of support. Iranian lawmakers voted to divert $1 billion to buy more natural gas. Ahmadinejad, apparently worried that pouring more cash into the economy would spur inflation, refused to implement the plan, calling parliament's decision unconstitutional. Haddad-Adel turned to Khamenei, who issued an opinion that said all government branches must follow the constitution. Under Iran's legal system laws are vetted by a committee of clerics called the Guardians Council, not the president. Disputes between parliament and the presidency must be mediated by the Expediency Council, which is led by Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani -- a powerful cleric and politician who leads a faction opposed to Ahmadinejad.

Some saw Khamenei's intervention as a rare public rebuke against Ahmadinejad, who has largely tried to disregard the parliament since he took office in 2005, sometimes implementing rules and dissolving agencies without seeking lawmakers' approval. Others read the supreme leader's statement as an attempt to restore some balance between a weakened parliament increasingly worried by the government's lack of progress on the economy and a president who tries to rule by fiat, at least on the economy. Though Khamenei by and large has stood by the president publicly, he is under pressure from factions within Iran's ruling circle to rein him in, analysts in Tehran said. The incident was also seen as parliament standing up for its rights -- though cautiously. "In the past three years, (Haddad-Adel) saw the mismanagement and did nothing about it," said Emad Afroogh, a member of parliament critical of Ahmadinejad. "Even here, instead of delivering on his own constitutional responsibilities, he utilizes the supreme leader."

Gazans Fear Crisis After Four Days of Blockade
Washington Post
January 22, 2008

Four days into an Israeli blockade that has cut off food and fuel to the Gaza Strip, residents of the strip contemplated Monday how long it would be until disaster hit. One family of 13, shivering in the cold, counted its eight remaining candles. A bakery that normally feeds thousands had three days' worth of flour. Hospital generators with enough fuel for three days and no spare parts powered incubators in which twin boys born 2 1/2 months prematurely were being kept alive, their thin chests heaving convulsively. Israel agreed Monday to allow in a one-time shipment of fuel, food and medicine on Tuesday, after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak telephoned Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak to appeal on behalf of Gaza's 1.5 million people. But Israel gave no indication when it planned to fully lift the blockade, imposed Friday in response to escalating rocket attacks from the Palestinian territory.

In the neonatal intensive care unit of Gaza City's main hospital Monday, physician Radwan Hassouna tapped the plastic incubator of Karam al-Namy, one of the 1 1/2 -pound twins, and ticked off the electrical equipment keeping the baby alive. "He has a ventilator. He has an oxygenator. He has photo therapy," or light to keep him from developing jaundice, Hassouna said. An intravenous pump, he added. And monitors. If the generators broke down, Karam and his twin brother, Kareem, would die in an instant, Hassouna said. Leaving the hospital after seeing his young sons, Ashraf al-Namy said he feared he would never see them alive again. "I'm afraid when the electricity goes off," he said. "They only live on artificial respiration. What is going to happen to them?"
Israel closed the border crossings into Gaza on Friday to enforce its demand that the armed Hamas movement that controls Gaza bring a halt to rocket attacks into Israeli territory. From Tuesday to Friday last week, more than 150 rockets were fired from Gaza. None caused any fatalities, although Palestinian gunmen killed an Ecuadoran farmhand working in a field near Gaza on Tuesday, the day Israeli forces unleashed large-scale ground and air assaults against targets in the northern part of the strip. Israeli military operations from Tuesday to Sunday killed more than 30 people in Gaza, most of them gunmen, Palestinian officials said. "As far as I'm concerned, Gaza residents will walk, without gas for their cars, because they have a murderous, terrorist regime that doesn't let people in southern Israel live in peace," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told lawmakers from his Kadima party earlier Monday. Rocket attacks into Israel have declined from more than 30 a day last week to five on Sunday. By late Monday, at least eight rockets and mortar shells had landed.

Israel has limited the flow of supplies to Gaza since Hamas seized power here in June, routing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement, Hamas's partner in a short-lived unity government. Stores of medicine, fuel and other staples had dwindled even before the blockade, Palestinian doctors and engineers here said. Shlomo Dror, spokesman for Israel's Coordinator of Activities in the Territories, has said repeatedly since Friday that Israel would not allow a humanitarian crisis to occur in Gaza. By Monday, however, the people of Gaza had had more than a glimpse of what such a crisis would look like. Gas stations had closed, having exhausted their fuel supplies. Some bakeries had run out of flour. The U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which distributes food rations to 860,000 Palestinian refugees in Gaza, said Monday that without fuel it would have to suspend operations by Friday. The World Food Program, whose rations help feed another 270,000 Gaza residents, said it would have to stop distributions by Thursday unless it gets more fuel.

The Gaza Strip's power plant, which supplies electricity to about 500,000 people in Gaza City and elsewhere, ran out of fuel Sunday night and was shut down, Palestinians in charge of the electrical system said. The power plant provided about 25 percent of Gaza's total electricity. Five power lines from Israel supply another 70 percent, Palestinian and Israeli officials said. Except for one power line damaged before this week, the Israeli power supply to Gaza has not been affected, Israeli and Palestinian authorities said. However, there is little connection between the grids that carry the electricity from the power plant and the grids that carry Israeli power, said Rafiq Maliha, the project manager of the power plant. Additionally, the Gaza City network is operated manually, requiring a worker to throw a breaker to connect each area, Maliha said. That makes it difficult to feed electricity from other networks to the one that had been supplied by the power plant.

Power at the main Gaza City hospital came on without notice Monday afternoon, for the first time in about 18 hours. Gaza City moved in and out of blackout through Monday night. "Gaza is dying slowly," said Ahmed Bahar, a Hamas official, with "an international silence, an Arab silence." On Monday, Hamas officials urged neighboring Egypt to open its Rafah crossing into the Gaza Strip to allow supplies to enter. Egypt has kept the crossing closed since June, in solidarity with Abbas's government in the West Bank. There were signs Monday that the blockade was eroding popular support for Hamas. The movement organized a march by children and medical workers Monday to protest the blockade. The march consisted almost entirely of young boys waving Palestinian flags as they streamed through Gaza City alongside a few Hamas officials and other adults.

Few people along the route joined the march or even appeared to look up as they went about on foot, bicycles and donkey carts, or in the relatively few automobiles still on the road, to search for food. Wooden stands with cauliflower, tomatoes and other goods grown in Gaza still appeared on street corners. Boys with donkey carts offered fruit brought in earlier from Israel. Meat was twice the price it was 10 days ago. With some bakeries closed, the normal five-minute wait for bread grew to an hour at one of the bakeries open Monday. "People say this all started after George Bush visited," observed Hisham al-Ashrami, 31, speaking over his shoulder as he scooped freshly baked loaves off a conveyor belt and into his customers' plastic sacks. The line of people waiting for bread snaked out the door. "They say he gave Israel the green light," Ashrami said.

Other Gaza residents echoed his comments, suspecting a link between Bush's visit to the Middle East this month and the Israeli crackdown on Gaza. "Why do you think that is?" Ashrami said. "These are all civilians here," he said, gesturing at the bundled-up men, women and children crowded before his bread trays. He estimated the bakery had enough flour left for three days. Haya al-Serraj, 25, left the shop with a sack stretched to bursting by loaves of bread for her extended family of 13. The family still has enough food but only two boxes of candles -- eight in all, Serraj said. "Enough for two days, I hope," Serraj said cheerfully, then shook her head. "I don't think so." Serraj plays games with her brother and sister, ages 2 and 3, to distract them during nights without heat, lights or TV, she said. Last week, when Israeli airstrikes were heaviest, she tried to soothe the children, she said. "But you can tell, as much as you sing them songs and play with them, they must still be starting to figure out what's going on," she said. "They already know. They know this isn't normal."