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This just in (at least, it's news to us) .... Saddam's bodyguard reportedly has been captured in a U.S. raid:
U.S. soldiers captured one of Saddam Hussein's bodyguards during a raid early Tuesday in the former dictator's hometown, where hours earlier troops found enough anti-tank mines and gunpowder for a month of attacks on American forces.
....The military reported a U.S. soldier killed in an attack in the capital Monday, while guerrillas blew up a major civilian bridge in an attempt to disrupt the U.S. occupation.
During the pre-dawn Tikrit raid, soldiers fired two shots before storming a house to capture the bodyguard. He was escorted from the home minutes later, blood seeping through his hat. "We got our prime target," said Lt. Col. Steve Russell. "This man was a close associate of Saddam Hussein." He declined to identify the man, saying only that he was "one of Saddam's lifelong bodyguards."
Update: Saddam has released a new tape vowing revenge for the murder of his sons.
Update: Whoops, the U.S. retracts its claim of capturing Saddam's bodyguard.
It's official. Four U.S. soldiers have been charged with abusing POW's in May at a prison camp in Southeastern Iraq.
This is strange....Private Jessica Lynch has selected her co-author for her book about her ordeal in Iraq. It is former New York Times reporter Rick Bragg:
The irony is Bragg, pictured at right, resigned from the New York Times over questions about his reporting methods in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal. Blair wrote a story about Lynch wrongly claiming he was in her West Virginia hometown.
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Calpundit also sends us to Josh Marshall who reports that the issue of the Bush administration's credibility is about to explode on two fronts:
First is the SOTU Address and the misrepresentation of the Iraq-uranium connection, to which you can now add inter-agency strife caused by Tenet playing the blame game:
Until or unless the President steps in to provide leadership, the long-awaited showdown between the "neoconservatives" and the "pragmatists" will soon reach crisis proportions…this, due to CIA director George Tenet's extraordinary decision to name the President's staffers responsible for misleading, or false, pre-Iraq war intel, Administration sources confirm today. [Source: Nelson Report, we don't have a link for it.]
But now there is another problem--
The UPI reports that the 9/11 report to be released tomorrow shows no evidence that Saddam was either involved in the 9/11 attacks or supported Al Qaeda.
"The report shows there is no link between Iraq and al-Qaida," said a government official who has seen the report.
Jules Whitcover writes in the Baltimore Sun that Congress is missing the big picture on the war in Iraq.
In this whole saga of Iraq, congressional and other critics are focusing on the trees -- the individual questions about weapons of mass destruction, about hyped intelligence, about an unproven link between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein, even about whether the war is over.
In doing so, they are neglecting to address the forest. That's the much bigger and more significant question of Congress' responsibility to explore the wisdom, not to mention the constitutionality, of engaging in a pre-emptive war as part of a new and overarching American approach for dealing with the world.
....In any event, Congress needs to wake up and recognize that Mr. Bush's war in Iraq may be only the opening chapter in a foreign policy adventure that can have deep and destructive ramifications for America's role in the world and for domestic well-being and progress at home. Who will step back and examine what is being wrought?
The troops in Iraq are becoming increasingly frustrated with the Administration and speaking out. They are also discovering the limits placed on their first amendment rights:
Last week, several 3rd Infantry Division soldiers offered pointed criticisms of decisions by their chain of command. One called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Afterward, 3rd ID public affairs officers based at Baghdad International Airport barred a Stars and Stripes reporter from interviewing soldiers on the subject. They said there already has been too much negative publicity on the issue.
The U.S. Central Command’s top officer, Gen. John Abizaid, said July 16 at a Pentagon news briefing that some of the soldiers could be punished for their remarks. [link via Buzzflash]
Our President has found a new fall guy:
President Bush's number two national security aide on Tuesday took blame for a controversy over charges Iraq tried to buy African uranium, saying the CIA had warned him earlier that intelligence cited by Bush was suspect.
Stephen Hadley, deputy national security adviser, said he should have deleted a reference to Iraqi attempts to buy African uranium from Bush's State of the Union speech in January, because the CIA had asked him to remove similar language from an October speech by the president.
"It is now clear to me that I failed in that responsibility," Hadley told reporters. White House communications director Dan Bartlett said.
We hope people view Hadley's admission for what it is: a weakattempt to fall on his sword for the Administration. The responsibility for the SOTU address is not his, but the President's. That's where the buck stops. Bush should be ashamed of not stepping up to the plate and acknowledging his own responsibility.
Update: The dissembling continues. Read this Washington Post article:
The CIA sent two memos to the White House in October voicing strong doubts about a claim President Bush made three months later in the State of the Union address that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear material in Africa, White House officials said yesterday.
....Yesterday's disclosures indicate top White House officials knew that the CIA seriously disputed the claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium in Africa long before the claim was included in Bush's January address to the nation. The claim was a major part of the case made by the Bush administration before the Iraq war that Hussein represented a serious threat because of his nuclear ambitions; other pieces of evidence have also been challenged.
Anti-war groups have opened a peace office in Iraq to monitor human rights abuses.
A coalition of anti-war groups has opened an “Occupation Watch Center” in Baghdad to monitor alleged human rights violations by U.S. troops and the actions of corporations such as Halliburton in rebuilding Iraqi infrastructure. The coalition is also exploring the idea of advising U.S. soldiers in Iraq on how they can claim conscientious objector status so that they could be discharged and shipped home.
The military has confirmed it is investigating 7 soldier suicides that have occurred between the period of one week before the Iraq war began in March through the present time. All were deployed for the war. Five were in the army and one or two were in the Marines.
...the Army and the Marines have stressed suicide prevention in the past year after increases in suicides that may have been at least partially attributable to lengthy deployments and other strains following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington and the ensuing war in Afghanistan.
Overall, the military has not released an official count of possible suicides under investigation, and the total could be higher than seven, given a number of unexplained deaths included in the Pentagon's casualty statistics. The military has reported nine cases of accidental death that could include suicides, most of which were from "noncombat weapons discharges." In 12 other cases, the cause of death has been officially listed as "other" and described only as "noncombat injuries."
Editor and Publisher charges the media is underplaying the death of American troops in Iraq.
According to official military records, the number of U.S. soldiers who have died in Iraq since May 2 is actually 85. This includes a staggering number of non-combat deaths. Even if killed in a non-hostile action, these soldiers are no less dead, their families no less aggrieved. And it's safe to say that nearly all of these people would still be alive if they were still back in the States. Nevertheless, the media continues to report the much lower figure of 33 as if those are the only deaths that count.
Check the numbers at Iraq Civilian Casualty Count.
The New York Times reports that since the end of the combat in Iraq, incidents of rape and kidnapping have increased. Here's more from A Rational Animal.
The voices of members of the military opposed to the War in Iraq is growing stronger. TomPaine.com presents the story of a young marine who described his opposition to the war in an interview with Pacifica News Service the night before he left for Iraq, where he was killed.
In his interview with Pacifica, John expressed outrage that a legitimate public debate on the war had not occurred. Many alternatives to combat were available, he explained, such as using money being spent for war to finance a grassroots Iraqi democracy movement that would rival the Baath regime, or promoting democracy throughout the Middle East to show people alternative forms of government.
....He accused the administration of not talking honestly with the American public about potential consequences of a U.S. war on Iraq, such as the potential for urban combat, the psyche of the Iraqi people, the impact on the United Nations and the fate of the Middle East.
....But even as he expressed doubts about the Bush administration’s decision, he spoke eloquently about his patriotism, and looked to the highest ideals of the country for inspiration:
"I believe in the United States. I believe in the Constitution. I think it's perhaps one of the greatest documents ever written. I believe in the idea that we the people are sovereign and we determine our own destiny. We have a democracy and the Bill of Rights and freedom of expression, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and due process. Until the world is such a place that we can really live without the military, individual Americans have to step up and they have to serve."
There's lot's more, we recommend the entire article
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