The Undoing Begins

By Dan Froomkin

Today's dramatic announcement from the White House that U.S. detainees are covered by the Geneva Convention is the first of what may be several major policy reversals forced by the recent Supreme Court decision curbing President Bush's assertion of nearly unlimited executive power in a time of war.

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Pentagon revises Guantanamo detainee policy
The White House said Tuesday that a new Pentagon memo concludes all detainees held in U.S. military custody around the world are entitled to protections under the Geneva Conventions.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13813974/from/ET/

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/world/11...artner=homepage

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060710/pl_af...anistanrumsfeld

Drug money fueling Taliban resurgence: Rumsfeld by Jim Mannion
Mon Jul 10, 3:46 PM ET



US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called on Russia and Europe to do more to stem drug trafficking from Afghanistan, warning that it is fueling a Taliban resurgence and threatens to undermine Afghanistan.

Rumsfeld, in comments at a news conference here and on the flight from Washington, acknowledged that the level of Taliban-inspired violence in Afghanistan is "higher than it has been."

"I'm concerned about the role that narcotics are playing in this sense: when there's that much money involved, you have to worry that it is going to be attractive," he told reporters traveling with him.

"And I do worry that the funds that come from the sale of those products could conceivably end up adversely affecting the democratic process," he said.

"Any time you have that much money floating around and you have people like the Taliban it gives them the opportunity to fund their efforts in various ways," he said.

At a news conference following his meeting here with President Emomali Rackmanov, Rumsfeld laid the blame for the drug problem on demand from Europe and Russia and said they should do more to stop it.

"The question was posed, 'What went wrong?' There are too many people demanding drugs and supplying large amounts of money to get them. That's what's going wrong," he said.

Dealing with it will require a comprehensive effort by the Afghan government including crop substitution, subsidies, eradication and stronger law enforcement.

"And I would submit that while it's in the interest of the Afghan government to work on the problem, it's also in the interest of Russia and Western Europe to recognize that it's partly their problem as well. And to increase their efforts to help deal with it," he said.

He said intelligence indicates that the Taliban are both reaping funds from the drug trade and by providing protection to drug traffickers.

Taliban-inspired forces have mounted larger, better coordinated attacks on US and NATO forces this year than at any time since their ouster in a US-led campaign in late 2001, US military officials have said.

Tactics borrowed from Iraqi insurgents -- notably roadside bombings and suicide attacks -- also are having a deadly effect.

The upsurge has come as NATO is expanding its presence in Afghanistan, moving troops into volatile Taliban strongholds in the south for the first time as part of a strategy to take over the lead from US forces by the end of this year.

The United States has 23,000 troops in Afghanistan. Rumsfeld put the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) at about another 15,000 to 20,000 and Afghan security forces at about 70,000.

"Will there be a need for more than that, that's the kind of thing General Eikenberry is looking at with the Karzai government," he said, referring to the US commander in Afghanistan, General Karl Eikenberry.




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U.S. Officials Condemn Video of Mutilated Soldiers
By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service


WASHINGTON, July 11, 2006 – U.S. officials are condemning a terrorist video reported to show the mutilated corpses of American soldiers.
The terrorists say the video is of two American soldiers captured near Yusifiyah, Iraq, June 16 and killed sometime later. The soldiers were members of the 1st Battalion, 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment, part of Multinational Division Baghdad.

"Multinational Division Baghdad condemns the release of the video in the strongest of terms," the command said in a news release. "It demonstrates the barbaric and brutal nature of the terrorists and their complete disregard for human life."

The video, uploaded on a terrorist Web site yesterday, shows the mutilated bodies of two men dressed in Army camouflage uniforms. The video shows the terrorists hoisting the severed head of one of the soldiers and makes the other soldier's identity clearly recognizable.

Officials called it ironic that the U.S. Congress and military are debating the nature of Geneva Accord protections as this grisly video is playing.

Terrorists know the value of videos like this, U.S. military officials in Baghdad said. They noted that snipers in Iraq often have videographers taping their murders and that people can buy DVDs of the murders in stores in Iraq and throughout the Middle East.

These videos are little more than "snuff films," officials said. The airing of the video on the Internet only reinforces coalition determination "to catch the perpetrators of this crime and bring them to justice," the release said.



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DAILY BRIEFING
July 11, 2006

The Clinger-Cohen Act: 10 Years Later
A four-part series

The Clinger-Cohen Act, 10 Years Later: The Five Percent Solution
By Wes Andrues
letters@govexec.com

Editor's Note: Ten years ago, Congress passed the Information Technology Management Reform Act, later renamed for its co-sponsors, Rep. William Clinger, R-Pa., and Sen. William Cohen, R-Maine. The Clinger-Cohen Act fundamentally changed federal procurement of information technology, requiring that IT purchases be handled as capital investments and that chief information officers be appointed to lead the process of planning, acquiring and managing technology. In this four-part series running over a month's time, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Wes Andrues, an IT policy consultant and CIO Certificate holder from the National Defense University, looks at the changes in the technology acquisition landscape in the years since the law was passed.
With the arrival of the Clinger-Cohen Act's 10th anniversary, it's worth pausing and asking: Are we better off? A decade on, has this legislation achieved its aims?

It may come as no surprise that there is no clear "yes" or "no" answer. The landscape of federal information technology is not a clearly defined plain of reference points that can be empirically studied in pure isolation. The CCA is just one of at least half a dozen major pieces of legislation with implications for IT. It shares space with a host of laws and memoranda and executive orders, all of which tend to make it difficult to issue tidy proclamations about where we are in terms of how well the government buys and uses information resources.

That said, there is a passage tucked within the CCA that provides some tangible scope to the legislation -- a tiny little nuance of a mathematical formula upon which to gauge the grand question of progress. "It is the sense of Congress," the passage reads, "that, during the next five-year period beginning with 1996, executive agencies should achieve each year at least a 5 percent decrease in the cost (in constant fiscal year 1996 dollars) that is incurred by the agency for operating and maintaining information technology, and each year a 5 percent increase in the efficiency of the agency operations, by reason of improvements in information resources management by the agency."

It's fitting that Congress only indicated its "sense" that this goal be achieved, because it defies objective measurement. Apparently, legislators simply wanted to impart their overall expectation that somewhere, somehow, the government should reap some tangible benefit as a result of the law. Nevertheless, the question persists: Have agencies achieved the CCA's pair of 5 percent directives - if not within five years, then in the 10 years since the law was passed?

Perhaps the easiest and most obvious means to address this is to look first at the anticipated reduction in costs. The steady rise in the aggregate IT budget line would certainly seem to mock Congress' intent. When the CCA was passed, the federal IT budget was $28 billion. It now stands at more than $64 billion, despite the fact that the price of a government PC has fallen more than 50 percent in the past decade. So while Congress envisioned a 5 percent spending decrease, the cost of IT is actually rising at an average of 9 percent a year.

To be sure, a host of both anticipated and unforeseen factors has contributed to the spending increases, including Y2K, homeland security efforts, military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and the heady requirements posed by major cybersecurity initiatives. Given the major changes in the world in the past decade, rising budgets can be forgiven, if not expected. What's more significant is how the money is being spent. A great deal of the expertise associated with the implementation of new and upgraded systems lies not in government but in industry, which has resulted in significant increases in outsourcing. According to a report by market research firm INPUT in Reston, Va.,, the outsourcing market is one of the most dynamic sectors of federal IT, expected to reach over $17 billion by 2010.

This growing outsourcing market could, in theory, be tempered by cost-cutting measures such as offshoring, but lawmakers are largely opposed to government operations being sent overseas. So, not only is federal IT governance expensive in and of itself, but exigencies have arisen that demand the commitment of more dollars, and the government cannot numb the bite by subscribing to the same cost-cutting measures available to industry.

DAILY BRIEFING
July 11, 2006
Review of Army combat program challenges need for lighter vehicles
By Megan Scully, CongressDaily


An independent analysis of the Army's Future Combat Systems concludes that the service will have no need to transport its future fleet of combat vehicles on a C-130 Hercules cargo plane, debunking a requirement set years ago by officials intent on creating a lighter, more easily deployable ground force.

In a recent congressionally ordered review of the $160 billion program, the Alexandria-based Institute for Defense Analyses found no operational scenario in which the service would need to airlift the vehicles on a C-130, which can hold just over 20 tons of cargo.

A Pentagon summary of the study, obtained by CongressDaily, was sent to Capitol Hill earlier this month, along with an independent cost estimate that put the total price tag to develop, build and operate the massive modernization program at $300 billion -- $175 billion more than initial projections.

The reviews delivered a double blow to FCS, a complex system of manned and unmanned air and ground vehicles linked by a high-tech network.

Lawmakers and Government Accountability Office officials have become increasingly wary of the program's management and its increased costs. The Army, too, is trying to restructure the program and remove any non-essential costs.

For the last several years, Army and industry officials have struggled to engineer a future vehicle, complete with new protection systems, that fits the stringent weight, height and width parameters for transport in the belly of a C-130. So far, the service has fallen far short of that requirement, with weight estimates for future vehicles projected at 24 tons to 28 tons.

Using armor and other technologies now available, the Army would have to sacrifice "too much lethality and survivability" to design a 20-ton FCS vehicle, a House Armed Services Committee aide said in a recent interview.

The study could help the Army ease its requirements a bit -- a move that could speed vehicle development and, ultimately, bring down program costs. The projected price tag for the so-called Manned Ground Vehicles, of which the Army intends to buy nearly 5,000, is $10 million each.

"If you're not constrained, if you take off an engineering constraint, you may be able to reduce some costs," a former senior Army official said.

The Institute for Defense Analyses also found that the military has an adequate number of C-17 Globemaster III and C-5 Galaxy, far larger cargo planes, to transport FCS. The Army will still depend heavily on ground and sea transport for FCS, easing demands for airlift.

"No additional investments above and beyond what is planned and programmed would be required for the air transport of MGV variants," according to the summary of the study.

Some top Army officials have long questioned industry's ability to design a 20-ton combat vehicle that meets all FCS requirements, stating that 24-ton variants are far more achievable.

But advocates of the requirement have argued that keeping the vehicles to 20 tons forces the service to design a platform for urban warfare -- one that can maneuver through narrow city streets and across bridges.

The Army has not altered plans for the size of the FCS ground vehicles.

"We will respond to Army requirements," said a spokesman for General Dynamics Corp., which is developing manned ground vehicles with BAE Systems. "Right now, the Army is providing requirements and we're moving ahead."

By comparison, the Abrams tank and Bradley Fighting Vehicle, lynchpins of the Army's legacy armored force, top the scales at 68 tons and 33 tons.

The comparatively new Stryker vehicle, considered the precursor to FCS, weighs in at 38,000 pounds. But even at that weight, the Army can only transport Stryker on a C-130 under ideal circumstances. Hot weather, for example, can strain the aircraft, already burdened with the heavy load.

Additionally, the Army had to secure waivers from the Air Force in 2002 to fly the combat vehicles aboard a C-130 because the Stryker's height and weight dimensions did not meet requirements.

Still, the service can fly only a pared-down Stryker on a C-130. Heavy add-on armor packages, attached to the Stryker vehicles used in Iraq and Afghanistan, cannot accompany the vehicle in flight.

US court asked for gag order in Iraq rape-murder
Tue Jul 11, 2006 1:21 PM ET

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A lawyer for a former U.S. soldier charged with killing a family of four in Iraq and raping one of them asked a judge on Tuesday for a gag order preventing officials from President George W. Bush on down from commenting on the case.

Without that, a court filing said, 21-year-old Steven Green will not get a fair trial. He pleaded not guilty last week to four counts of murder and one count of rape, and a Kentucky grand jury is currently considering the case against him.

"This case has received prominent and often sensational coverage in virtually all print, electronic, and Internet news media in the world," the filing in U.S. District Court in Louisville, Kentucky, said.

"Strong and inflammatory opinion is rampant, including the President in a nationally televised interview deeming the alleged conduct of the defendant to be a 'despicable crime' and opining that he was 'staining the image, the honorable image of the United States military'," the motion said.

The motion, filed by Scott Wendelsdorf, a public defender assigned to Green, also cited comments on the case from Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Green, discharged from the Army with a personality disorder, was charged with taking part in a home invasion, rape and murder in March in Mahmudiya, Iraq, while on duty with the Kentucky-based 101st Airborne.

Fourteen-year-old Abeer al-Janabi was raped and killed. Her parents and 6-year-old sister were also slain.

Four other soldiers still with the 502nd Infantry Regiment also face rape and murder charges and a fifth a charge of failing to report it.

A group led by al Qaeda in Iraq meanwhile has released gruesome footage of two corpses it said were U.S. soldiers killed in June to avenge the rape and murder of the Iraqi girl.

Since the military announced its investigation, Iraqis and their government have expressed mounting outrage over the case, which comes after several other murder probes involving U.S. troops. Many Iraqis have complained the troops can kill with impunity.



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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/natio...nevaconvdoc.pdf

Defense Department Memorandum on Detainees

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/world/mi...ast/11iraq.html

Violence
Insurgent Group Posts Video of 2 Mutilated U.S. Soldiers
By EDWARD WONG
Published: July 11, 2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 10 — Insurgents posted an Internet video on Monday showing the mutilated bodies of two American soldiers abducted in June and found murdered days later during a search by American and Iraqi forces south of Baghdad. A message with the video says the soldiers were killed out of revenge for the rape and murder of an Iraqi girl in March, a crime in which at least six American soldiers are suspects.

The video is the first released during the war that shows detailed and graphic mutilations of American soldiers. It also deepens the mystery surrounding the rape and killing of the Iraqi girl and the slayings of her parents and younger sister.

American officials have said that the soldiers implicated in that crime are from the same platoon of the 502nd Infantry as the two abducted soldiers, but investigators have yet to draw a direct link between the events.

“We present this as revenge for our sister who was dishonored by a soldier of the same brigade,” says a message in Arabic on a title card at the start of the nearly five-minute video. Militants had learned of the crime early on and “decided to take revenge for their sister’s honor,” the message says, according to a translation by the SITE Institute, which tracks jihadist Internet postings.

It is questionable whether the soldiers were actually killed out of revenge. Iraqis around Mahmudiya, where the rape and murders took place, believed at the time that the girl and the other three victims were killed by other Iraqis in sectarian violence, according to the mayor of Mahmudiya and American military officials. The mayor said the possible involvement of American soldiers only became apparent on June 30, when the American military announced it had opened an investigation into the crime.

The two abducted soldiers were Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, of Houston, and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, 25, of Madras, Ore. They were kidnapped June 16 when insurgents ambushed a traffic checkpoint they had set up in the hostile town of Yusufiya, near Mahmudiya. A third soldier was killed during the ambush. The military is investigating why the soldiers were operating alone in a vehicle outside their base, something virtually unheard of in Iraq.

The video shows two white bodies with tattered green Army uniforms drenched in blood. One of the soldiers has been decapitated, and the head sits next to the body, whose chest has been cut open.

The bodies lie on a bridge over a river, and at least three pairs of sandaled feet belonging to insurgents cluster around them. At one point, an insurgent’s arm picks up the decapitated head. Another insurgent steps on the face of the other soldier.

The video also plays old audio messages from both Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant who was killed in an American airstrike in early June. An umbrella group associated with Mr. Zarqawi, the Mujahedeen Shura Council, put out the video.

The soldiers’ bodies were discovered by American troops on a road around Yusufiya booby-trapped with homemade bombs. An Iraqi defense official said at the time that the soldiers had been “brutally tortured.”

The video emerged on a day when at least 30 Iraqis were killed in a spiraling cycle of sectarian violence, and after the American military released the names of five of the soldiers implicated in the rape and murder investigation. The military announced that the five soldiers had been charged and would face hearings that could lead to courts martial.

On June 30, a discharged private first class, Steven D. Green, was arrested by federal authorities in North Carolina for his role as the ringleader of the group and is scheduled to be arraigned in August.

Sergeant Paul E. Cortez, Specialist James P. Barker, Pfc. Jesse V. Spielman and Pfc. Bryan L. Howard have been charged with rape, murder and arson in the March 12 episode, the military said Monday.

Sergeant Anthony W. Yribe has been accused of dereliction of duty for failing to report the crime. “He was not there that day, but afterward had some tacit knowledge of it, as alleged,” said Maj. Gen. William Caldwell IV, a spokesman for the American military.

All five soldiers are being held in Iraq. The 502nd Infantry is part of the 101st Airborne Division, but has been deployed south of Baghdad and attached to the Fourth Infantry Division.

Two bombings in a Shiite enclave killed at least 10 people and wounded dozens on Monday, while gunmen executed seven civilians in a bus in a Sunni Arab neighborhood, plunging Baghdad into another round of daytime sectarian violence.


At least 13 Iraqis died in other shootings and bombings around the country, bringing the day’s death toll to at least 30 and highlighting the immense challenges facing the new government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. Such attacks have become the hallmark of what many Iraqis now call a low-level civil war.

The two explosions in the Sadr City neighborhood, a vast Shiite slum in eastern Baghdad, appeared to be retribution for a particularly brutal episode on Sunday in which Shiite militiamen rampaged through the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Jihad, pulling people from their homes and cars and shooting them in the head.

The death count from that violence has fluctuated wildly, with some Iraqi officials reporting more than 40 killed, while an American military spokesman said Monday that American troops knew of no more than 14 deaths.

The first bomb in Sadr City went off at about 9:40 a.m., inside a commercial building on a strip of shops and homes. A second bomb, planted in a car, exploded five minutes later as people were rushing to the scene, witnesses said. The explosions shattered the windows of storefronts for blocks around. Four cars erupted in flames.

“We want security,” said a white-bearded man, Lefta Enayid, as he hobbled around the charred scene in a robe. “We don’t want the government to remain handcuffed. We want the government to fight those who set off the car bombs. We’re so sick of this.”

On July 1, a suicide car bomber roared into a street market in Sadr City, killing at least 62 people in the deadliest explosion in Iraq in months. Sadr City is the home of the powerful Mahdi Army militia, and Sunni neighborhoods were raided by armed groups and attacked with mortars for days afterward.

The British ambassador to Iraq, William Patey, acknowledged on Monday that sectarian violence was on the rise. “Yesterday’s deliberate shooting of civilians in Baghdad’s Al Jihad district, last week’s bombing in Sadr City and an increasing number of sectarian killings are all horrific acts which the British government absolutely condemns,” he said in a written statement.

In a speech in Iraqi Kurdistan, Mr. Maliki called for unity among Iraqis without specifically addressing the latest round of killings. “Our fate is to work together to defeat the terror and the mutineers of our political process,” he said. “This can be achieved only by unity and adherence and commitment to the Constitution.”

Inside the fortified Green Zone, the trial of Saddam Hussein resumed, but in the absence of the top defendants. The lawyers for Mr. Hussein and three co-defendants said they were boycotting the proceedings unless a long list of demands were met, including improved security for the lawyers.

Mr. Hussein and seven co-defendants are being tried for the executions of 148 men and boys from the Shiite town of Dujail following what Mr. Hussein called an assassination attempt on him in 1982. The trial has been plagued by the killings of at least three defense lawyers, as well as a judge and his son.

The trial has entered its final phase, with the defense scheduled to make its final arguments this week; a verdict is expected in the fall.

On Monday, two minor defendants, Ali Dayih and Muhammad Azzawi, both former Baath Party officials from Dujail, made their arguments. Prosecutors have asked that Mr. Azzawi be acquitted for lack of evidence.

Mr. Azzawi, once a farmer in Dujail, defended himself by saying, “I am a man of honor and well raised, from a good origin, and it would not suit me to do such acts.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/washington/11jags.html

Military Lawyers Prepare to Speak on Guantánamo
By NEIL A. LEWIS
Published: July 11, 2006
WASHINGTON, July 10 — Four years ago, the military’s most senior uniformed lawyers found their objections brushed aside when the Bush administration formulated plans for military commissions at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. This week, their concerns will get a public hearing as Congress takes up the question of whether to resurrect the tribunals struck down by the Supreme Court.

“We’re at a crossroads now,” said John D. Hutson, a retired rear admiral who was the top uniformed lawyer in the Navy until 2000 and who has been part of a cadre of retired senior military lawyers who have filed briefs challenging the administration’s legal approach. “We can finally get on the right side of the law and have a system that will pass Supreme Court and international scrutiny.”

Admiral Hutson, one of several current and former senior military lawyers who will testify this week before one of the three Congressional committees looking into the matter, plans to urge Congress to avoid trying to get around last month’s Supreme Court ruling.

Beginning shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the military lawyers warned that the administration’s plan for military commissions put the United States on the wrong side of the law and of international standards. Most important, they warned, the arrangements could endanger members of the American military who might someday be captured by an enemy and treated like the detainees at Guantánamo.

But the lawyers’ sense of vindication at the Supreme Court’s 5-to-3 decision is tempered by growing anxiety over what may happen next. Several military lawyers, most of them retired, have said they are troubled by the possibility that Congress may restore the kind of system they have long argued against.

Donald J. Guter, another retired admiral who succeeded Admiral Hutson as the Navy’s top uniformed lawyer, said it would be a mistake for Congress to try to undo the Supreme Court ruling. Admiral Guter was one of several senior military judge advocates general, known as JAG’s, who after objecting to the planned military commissions found their advice pointedly unheeded.

“This was the concern all along of the JAG’s,” Admiral Guter said. “It’s a matter of defending what we always thought was the rule of law and proper behavior for civilized nations.”

One of the more intriguing hearings will be held Thursday as the current top military lawyers in the Navy, Army, Air Force and Marines testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The main issue at stake will be whether they express the same concerns of those out of uniform who have been critical of the administration’s approach.

Longstanding custom allows serving officers to give their own views at Congressional hearings if specifically asked, and some in the Senate expect the current uniformed lawyers to generally urge that Congress not stray far from the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the system that details court-martial proceedings.

Senator Bill Frist, the Republican leader, told reporters on Monday that he did not expect the Senate to take up any legislation on the issue until at least after the August recess of Congress.

The opportunity to rewrite the laws lies in the structure of the Supreme Court’s ruling, which emphasized that Congress had not explicitly approved deviations from ordinary court-martial proceedings or the Geneva Conventions.

The court majority said the military commissions as currently constituted were illegal because they did not have the same protections for the accused as do the military’s own justice system and court-martial proceedings. In addition, the court ruled that the commissions violated a part of the Geneva Conventions that provides for what it said was a minimum standard of due process in a civilized society.

In response, some legislators have said they will consider rewriting the law to make that part of the Geneva Conventions, known as Common Article 3, no longer applicable.

“We should be embracing Common Article 3 and shouting it from the rooftops,” Admiral Hutson said. “They can’t try to write us out of this, because that means every two-bit dictator could do the same.”

He said it was “unbecoming for America to have people say, ‘We’re going to try to work our way around this because we find it to be inconvenient.’ ”

“If you don’t apply it when it’s inconvenient,” he said, “it’s not a rule of law.”

Brig. Gen. David M. Brahms, a retired officer who was the chief uniformed lawyer for the Marine Corps, said he expected experienced military lawyers to try to persuade Congress that the law should not be changed to allow the military commissions to go forward with the procedures that the court found unlawful.

“Our central theme in all this has always been our great concern about reciprocity,” General Brahms said in an interview. “We don’t want someone saying they’ve got our folks as captives and we’re going to do to them exactly what you’ve done because we no longer hold any moral high ground.”

Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, which will hold its hearing on Tuesday, said: “The first people we should listen to are the military officers who have decades of experience with these issues. Their insights can help build a system that protects our citizens without sacrificing America’s ideals.”

Underlying the debate over how and whether to change the law on military commissions is a battle over the president’s authority to unilaterally prescribe procedures in a time of war. The Supreme Court’s decision was a rebuke to the administration’s assertions that President Bush’s powers should remain mostly unrestricted in a time of war.

Most military lawyers say they believe that few, if any, of the Guantánamo detainees could be convicted in a regular court-martial.

Lt. Col. Sharon A. Shaffer of the Air Force, the lawyer for a Sudanese detainee who has been charged before a military commission, said she was confident that she would win an acquittal for her client, who is suspected of being an accountant for Al Qaeda, under court-martial rules.

“For me it was awesome to see the court’s views on key issues I’ve been arguing for years,” Colonel Shaffer said.

The majority opinion, written by Justice John Paul Stevens, said the two biggest problems with the commissions were that the military authorities could bar defendants from being present at their own trial, citing security concerns, and that the procedures contained looser rules of evidence, even allowing hearsay and evidence obtained by torture, if the judge thought it helpful.

Colonel Shaffer said she was restrained under the rules from calling as a witness a Qaeda informant whose information had been used to charge her client. “I’m going to want for my client to face his accuser,” she said, “and for me to have an opportunity to impeach his testimony.”

Iraq’s Civil War Spins out of US and Iraqi Government Control

DEBKAfile Exclusive Military Report

July 11, 2006, 7:39 PM (GMT+02:00)


Four essential factors underlie the deadly upsurge of Shiite-Sunni sectarian savagery in Baghdad this week:

1. No one, including US forces, has stepped in to halt the sectarian cleansing operation engulfing Baghdad in the last six months, the largest of its kind the world has seen in recent years.

Shiite fighters, many in the uniforms of the new Iraqi national army or Iraqi security forces, are battling Sunni gunmen, in defiance of their duties to - and the authority of – the Nouri al-Maliki government. This conflict is nothing but outright civil war.

First the two hostile camps fought one another for Baghdad suburbs. In early June, they clashed over the control of streets. Now they are dueling for single buildings that overlook strategic sections or installations in the capital. Some streets are consequently ruled half and half, and any Sunni or Shiite venturing into the wrong end of the street takes his life in his hands.

2. The most powerful military force in Baghdad today is the radical Shiite cleric Moqatada Sadr’s Mehdi Army militia. With an estimated 15,000-20,000 men under arms, the Mehdi Army outnumbers the government’s military and security forces’ strength in the capital.

3. In contrast, the Sunni’s command only a few thousand fighting men. Most belong to the various insurgent groups and Islamist terrorist organizations linked to al Qaeda, which are also responsible for attacks on the American Army and Iraqi officials and institutions.

The Sunni groups seek to compensate for their numerical inferiority in three ways:

First, they are drawing Sunni fighters from all over Iraq - albeit with small and variable results.

Second, they are perpetrating large-scale massacres of Shiites as a deterrent to their militias spreading out to more sectors of the capital.

Third, they have enlisted prominent Sunni clerics for decrees ordering all Sunnis to rally for the war on their Shiite compatriots.

Last week, they persuaded Sheikh Yusuf Qardawi, the most prominent Sunni Muslim religious authority today, who is obeyed even by al Qaeda, to publish a dispensation permitting all Sunni guerrilla fighters to join the ranks of Iraqi security forces and police for the sake of saving Sunni positions in Baghdad. Incredibly, notorious al Qaeda and Sunni insurgents are ready to join the forces pledged to hunt them down, on the authority of an imam of high repute, because they are convinced that the last Sunni stand in the heart of Baghdad is impending.

Fourth, the fortified Green Zone, nerve center of the Iraqi government and high command, and seat of the US embassy and military headquarters, goes on functioning calmly in the eye of the storm of civil warfare and apparently divorced from its violent currents. However, intelligence sources estimate that, after the bloody struggle is decided, the Green Zone will find itself held to siege by the winning side.

The descent of Sunni-Shiite duel in Baghdad into sheer brutality was highlighted on Sunday, July 9. Shiite gunmen in Iraqi police uniforms put up fake roadblocks, stopped cars for inspection and pulled the passengers out. When the names on their identity cards proved the terrified passengers to be Sunnis, they were shot dead on the spot. Altogether 41 Shiites, including women and children, were mercilessly murdered in this way.

DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources report that Shiite militiamen committed this slaughter in revenge for the killing of Abu Dar’a by the Sunni commandos of the 37th Battalion of the Iraqi government’s special operations force a few days earlier.

Abu Dar’a was condemned to death during Saddam Hussein’s rule as a murderous robber chief. He was awaiting sentence in March 2003, when the US-led invasion of Iraq began. Saddam then opened the prison doors and let hundreds of hardened criminals loose on the streets. Abu Dar’a, given a new lease of life, took up residence in Baghdad’s Sadr City, joined Muqtada Sadr’s militia and embarked on a career as terminator of Sunni Muslims in the area north of Baghdad. His savagery earned him the soubriquet of the “Shiite Zarqawi.”

The Medhi Army, burning to avenge his death, was responsible for the furious Shiite rampage against Sunnis of the last few days.

This fresh crisis sent prime minister Maliki speeding to Irbil, the Kurdistan capital Monday, July 10, for what was officially designated as a visit to the Kurdish parliament. Maliki went there to plead urgently with Iraq’s Kurdish president Jalal Talibani and the Kudistani prime minister Masoud Barzani, for several thousand Kurdish peshmerga commandos, as the only force capable of saving Baghdad. He appears to have given up on an American forces coming to the rescue.

DEBKAfile’s Iraq sources reveal that the two Kurdish leaders were in no hurry to respond to the Iraqi prime minister’s appeal. They see no profit in intervening in a Shiite-Sunni civil conflict, especially when the Kurdish community is itself split into Shiite and Sunni Muslims. Furthermore, whereas they are not keen on seeing central government in Baghdad collapse, neither are they willing to fight for its survival. And lastly, Maliki offered the Kurdish no real incentives for sending their best troops to fight in Baghdad.

In the absence of a competent army available to stem the bloody spiral of death gripping the heart of the Iraqi capital, Shiite-Sunni violence will probably intensify in the days to come and threaten to spill out into the rest of Iraq.

http://govexec.com/dailyfed/0706/071106cc.htm

Rethinking Embattled Tactics in Terror War

By Dana Priest

Five years after the attacks on the United States, the Bush administration faces the prospect of reworking key elements of its anti-terrorism effort in light of challenges from the courts, Congress and European allies crucial to counterterrorism operations.

To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...er=emailarticle

GUARD TROOPS SLOW TO FILL PRESIDENT'S ORDER AT BORDER
By Stephen Dinan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
-----------------------------------------------------------
The Bush administration said yesterday that 2,834 National Guard troops are on assignment to the U.S.-Mexico border, though most of them are still in transit or training and not actively helping support the U.S. Border Patrol.

About 300 are part of the Joint Task Force headquarters, and another 912 are "forward deployed," meaning they are active in supporting the U.S. Border Patrol, the Guard said. The more than 1,600 remaining troops are still in training or transit.

Although only one-third of the forces are forward-deployed, the administration said, that ratio will build gradually as other troops complete training.

President Bush in May called for 6,000 National Guard troops to work on the border in a support role, conducting surveillance and helping build infrastructure such as vehicle barriers. The administration promised 2,500 troops by the end of June and 6,000 by August, to be stationed until more Border Patrol agents can be hired.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said yesterday that the deployment of Guard troops "has freed up nearly 200 Border Patrol agents already to spend more time literally walking the borders."

He said that action and Mr. Bush's other border security moves have reduced illegal immigration. "Immigration into the United States across the Mexican border has actually been declining since the year 2000, and it's down dramatically in the last few months. So it's working," he said.

The Guard was credited with helping apprehend 518 illegal aliens, 21 vehicles, 4,770 pounds of marijuana and 18.5 pounds of cocaine as of yesterday. The Guard also helped rescue 10 illegal aliens and provided support duty to allow 187 Border Patrol agents to conduct patrols, administration figures show.

Lt. Col. Mike Milord, a spokesman for the National Guard, said most of the 300 or so troops at the headquarters will be assigned for one or two years, while the other troops are more likely to be filling their yearly training commitments.

Training lasts anywhere from five days to several weeks, depending on the tasks, he said.

The Associated Press, quoting Guard officials in border states, said last week that the administration would fall short of its goal of 2,500 guard troops assisting by July 1.

Mr. Bush's credibility on immigration enforcement is at stake as he negotiates with members of Congress on a reform program. Republicans in both the House and Senate have wondered whether the president is serious about border security.

"Where have you been the last five years while your administration failed to secure the border and enforce immigration laws?" House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, said last week after Mr. Bush said he wanted to help employers verify their workers.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20...04835-7886r.htm
Copyright © 2006 News World Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Cong...r=1&oref=slogin

GOP Lawmakers Propose Weapons Sanctions
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: July 11, 2006
Filed at 6:31 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Responding to North Korea's missile tests, congressional Republicans urged greater efforts to build a national missile defense system and proposed new sanctions on nations doing weapons business with North Korea.

''We have to have a defense that allows us to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles,'' said House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., at a news conference Tuesday.

House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, also said the North Korean test-firing last week of seven missiles including one that potentially could reach the United States underscored the need for a U.S. missile defense system.

''We and the rest of the world would feel much safer if in fact we had a missile defense system up and operating,'' he said.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said he planned to introduce legislation that would add North Korea to a nonproliferation act that currently outlines sanctions against foreign individuals who supply weapons technology to Iran and Syria.

''North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons and its possession of long-range missiles that could potentially hit the U.S. is a grave threat to the security of the American people and to peace and stability in East Asia,'' Frist said in a statement.

The nonproliferation act, passed in 2000, originally applied only to Iran. It was expanded to include Syria in 2005.

Under the measure, the president can impose sanctions on any foreign person who transfers goods and technologies to those countries that contribute to their ability to produce missiles, nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction. Foreign persons who acquire such items from those countries are also subject to sanctions.

The sanctions for such people could include a ban on their obtaining U.S. government contracts or U.S. export licenses.

Hunter said he planned to confer with Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., about putting more money for missile defense in a defense spending bill now being negotiated between the House and Senate so the country can ''move ahead with these systems as rapidly as possible.''

Americans, he said ''are in a race against time'' in defending themselves against threats such as the North Korean Taepodong-2 missile, which failed its July 4 test but is thought to have been designed to be capable of hitting the western United States.

The Pentagon says the current system is capable of defending against a limited number of missiles in an emergency, and President Bush earlier said the United States had a ''reasonable chance'' of shooting down the North Korean long-range missile had it not failed.

More than $100 billion has been spent on the program since 1983, including $7.8 billion authorized for the current fiscal year.

Hunter criticized Democrats who opposed Bush's 2001 decision to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and who have annually sought cuts in the administration's missile defense spending proposals.

In May the House defeated a Democratic-supported amendment that would have cut $4.7 billion from the $9.1 billion allotted for missile defense in the 2007 defense bill.

''It's time for the Democrats to stop fighting the ghost of Ronald Reagan,'' Hunter said. Reagan was an early supporter of a missile defense system, that opponents derided as ''Star Wars.''

But Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., author of the amendment to cut missile defense spending, said numerous government studies have come out against building a weapons defense system that has yet to be proven reliable in test runs.

Spending billions on a system before it has been adequately tested would give Americans a false sense of security, he said. ''It's too bad people are choosing to politicize this issue.''

Hunter acknowledged the missile interception system is still in an ''immature state.''

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jul2006/20060711_5632.html


Iraqi Ambassador: U.S. Sacrifices Have Given Iraqis New Hope
By Samantha L. Quigley
American Forces Press Service


HOLMDEL, N.J., July 11, 2006 – U.S. military men and women have given the Iraqi people hope, Iraq's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations said during a July 9 ceremony here at the New Jersey Vietnam Veterans' Memorial.

Molly Morel, an American Gold Star Mother from Tennessee, talks with Ambassador Feisal Amin al-Istrabadi, Iraq's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations. Photo by Samantha L. Quigley (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available.

Feisal Amin al-Istrabadi spoke to a group of American Gold Star Mothers, mothers who have lost a child in the service of the United States. The women listened intently as Istrabadi expressed deep gratitude on behalf of his country.

"I know that there's no particular word of condolence or consolation that would mean very much in comparison to the loss that you have suffered, and so I'm not going to try to console you for that loss," he said.

Instead, the ambassador painted a picture of what his country was like after Saddam Hussein came to power and what he has seen happen in recent years, thanks in part to the Gold Star Mothers' children.

He told of his parents' two exiles from their country, the most recent in 1970, just after Saddam came to power. Istrabadi's father decided to leave Iraq shortly after an televised hanging of 13 men interrupted family programming on the equivalent of the eve of a major Islamic holiday. "I will forget many things in my life, but I will never forget the faces of those 13 men," he said.

Over the next three and a half decades, Iraq was ruled by perhaps the most tyrannical regime on the face of the earth since fascism gripped Europe, Istrabadi said. Two million Iraqis were killed by Saddam's regime and, to date, 270 mass graves with the remains of 400,000 people have been discovered.

"Political prisoners were being executed en masse in my country, the country in which the rule of law, itself, as a concept, originated thousands of years ago," Istrabadi said.

Though Saddam was growing older, the hope for regime change was slim. Saddam's grandson, Mustapha Qusay Hussein al-Tikriti, 14, was an heir apparent, the ambassador said.

The Iraqi people had every reason to believe that the next 50 years were going to look very much like the previous 35, Istrabadi said. That all changed on July 22, 2003, when Saddam's two son's and the grandson, Mustapha, were killed in a firefight with U.S. troops in Mosul. U.S. troops had moved into the country as a liberating force on March 19, 2003.

"The intervention of the United States in my country has been a lifeline for us," Istrabadi said. "It has restored hope for us that our future will be very different from our past."

That past included state-sanctioned torture chambers and rapes. The regime was so controlling that Iraqis were required to have a license to own a simple typewriter, Istrabadi said.

Iraq does not have a perfect democracy yet, he admitted, describing democracy as a process. That process is working in Iraq as evidenced by changes resulting from two successful elections and a referendum that created a permanent Iraqi constitution, he said. He participated in those elections, voting for the first time as an Iraqi citizen at age 42.

The political changes that came with the elections are reflected in the Iraqi people, he said.

"I can't explain it, really, but you could see in their faces there was a change," he said of his first trip back to Baghdad after the fall of Saddam's regime. "They were more relaxed. They weren't just going about their business and hurrying back. You would hear laughter in the streets again."

Istrabadi admitted that speaking to mothers who have lost children fighting on behalf of his country is perhaps the hardest thing he's had to do. He expressed regret over those deaths, but assured the mothers their losses were not in vain.

"You have given us the opportunity to remake our country into a decent place to live, a place to raise our children, (a) place of which we can be proud again, rather than cringe every time that we have to admit that we are Iraqis," he said. "Words of thanks seem to me to be insufficient to convey to you the thanks of a country, a grateful nation, which has lingered too long under tyranny.

"For me and for my country, our gratitude to the United States and to the sacrifices of its sons and daughters and its mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters and children, will be eternal," Istrabadi said.

After his speech, mothers who had lost children fighting in Iraq hugged Istrabadi and thanked him for his words. They almost didn't hear them, however, because he had considering canceling the appearance after his own mother recently fell ill.

Istrabadi said his mother urged him to keep his appointment. "(She said,) 'This event you are going to is extremely important. You must go,'" he said.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editor...ok/4032404.html

Krauthammer: Logic went AWOL in high court ruling on tribunals
By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

OUR big wars, 1861, 1941, 2001 — and the war on terror ranks with the
big ones — have a way of starting in the first year of a decade.
Supreme Courts, which historically have been loath to intervene against
presidential war powers in the midst of conflict, have tended to give
the president until mid-decade to do what he wishes to the Constitution
in order to win the war.

During the Civil War, Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus —
trashing the Bill of Rights or exercising necessary emergency executive
power, depending on your point of view. But he got the whole
troublesome business done by 1865 and the Supreme Court stayed away.

During World War II, FDR interned Japanese-Americans. He, too, was left
unmolested by the court. But Roosevelt also got his war wrapped up by
1945. Had the current war on terror followed course and ended in 2005,
the sensational just-decided Hamdan case concerning military tribunals
for Guantanamo prisoners would have either been rendered moot or drawn
a yawn.

But, of course, the war on terror is different. The enemy is shadowy,
scattered and therefore more likely to survive and keep the war going
for years. What the Supreme Court essentially did in Hamdan was to say
to the president: Time's up. We gave you a half-decade of emergency
powers, but that's as far as we go. From now on, the emergency is over,
at least judicially, and you're going to have to operate by peacetime
rules.

Or as Justice Anthony Kennedy, the new Sandra Day O'Connor, put it,
Guantanamo (and by extension, war-on-terror) jurisprudence must
henceforth be governed by "the customary operation of the Executive and
Legislative Branches." This case may be "of extraordinary importance,"
but it is to be "resolved by ordinary rules."

All rise: The Supreme Court has decreed a return to normality. A lovely
idea, except that al-Qaida has other ideas. The war does go on. One can
sympathize with the court's desire for a Harding-like restoration to
normalcy. But the robed eminences are premature. And even if they
weren't, they really didn't have to issue a ruling this bad.

They declared illegal Bush's military tribunals for the likes of Salim
Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's driver and bodyguard. First, because
they were not established in accordance with congressional authority.
And second, because they violated the Geneva Conventions.

The first rationale is an odd but fixable misreading of congressional
intent. The second is a grotesque and unfixable misreading of the
Geneva Conventions.

The court feels that the president slighted Congress by unilaterally
establishing military commissions. What is odd about this
solicitousness for the powers of the legislature is that Congress,
which is populated entirely by adults, had explicitly told the
judiciary just six months ago that when it comes to Guantanamo
prisoners, the judiciary — every "court, justice, or judge" — should
bug off.

The Detainee Treatment Act in December 2005 not only implicitly
endorsed what the administration was doing with prisoners, it
explicitly told the judiciary to leave the issue to Congress and the
president to resolve, as they have historically.

The court's wanton overriding of Congress and the president is another
in a long string of breathtaking acts of judicial arrogance. But it is
fixable. The Republican leadership of the Senate responded to the
court's highhandedness by immediately embarking on writing legislation
establishing military tribunals.

The unfixable part of the Hamdan ruling, however, is the court's
reading of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. The Geneva
Conventions, which were designed to protect civilian populations and
those combatants who respect them, were never intended to apply to
unlawful combatants, terrorists of the al-Qaida kind. The court
tortures the reading of Common Article 3 to confer upon Hamdan — and by
extension the man for whom he rode shotgun, bin Laden — the kind of
elaborate legal protections that one expects from "civilized peoples."

This infinitely elastic concept will allow courts to usurp from
Congress and the president the authority to fashion the procedures for
military tribunals — an arrogation that mocks the court's previously
expressed solicitousness for congressional authority.

But no matter. Logic has little place here. The court has decreed:
There is no war — or we will pretend so — and henceforth it shall be
conducted by the court. God save the United States. (This honorable
court can fend for itself.)

Krauthammer is a Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist based in
Washington, D.C. (letters@charleskrauthammer.com)

http://www.dod.mil/news/Jul2006/20060710_5619.html


Iraqi Tells Gold Star Mothers Their Sacrifice Not in Vain
By Samantha L. Quigley
American Forces Press Service


HOLMDEL, N.J., July 10, 2006 – More than 40 American Gold Star Mothers and their guests from around the country came together here yesterday to honor the children they've lost in the country's conflicts.

Members of American Gold Star Mothers Inc., are escorted by New Jersey State Troopers to the New Jersey Vietnam Memorial. A ceremony at the memorial July 9 honored the mothers and the children they lost in America's conflicts. Photo by Samantha L. Quigley (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available.

The ceremony, held at the New Jersey Vietnam Veterans' Memorial here, included a roll call honoring servicemembers from World War I through the global war on terrorism. Mothers who lost children in Vietnam and the global war on terrorism, including operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, placed wreaths near the center of the memorial.

Feisal Amin al-Istrabadi, Iraq's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, served as keynote speaker and thanked the mothers for the sacrifices their sons and daughters have made for his country.

"We were a country without hope," Istrabadi said. "The intervention of the United States in my country has been a lifeline for us. It has restored hope for us that our future will be very different from our past."

Hearing laughter in Iraq's streets again and no longer feeling the need to cringe when admitting their heritage is part of what America's intervention has given back to his country, he said.

"These are not small things. These are things for which this country, and you as individuals and your children, have earned our tremendous gratitude," Istrabadi said. "Words of thanks truly seem to me to be insufficient to convey to you the thanks of a country, a grateful nation, which has lingered too long under tyranny."

Iraq's gratitude to the United States and the families who have sacrificed personally "will be eternal," he said.

While Istrabadi spoke directly to events in Iraq, his message resonated with all the Gold Star Mothers: Their children did not die in vain.

Among those inspired by his words was Renate DeAngelis, a New York Gold Star Mother delegate who lost her son, 22-year-old Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Christopher W. DeAngelis, when the USS Stark was attacked on May 17, 1987. He was one of 37 killed when the Iraqis hit the guided-missile frigate with two missiles during the Iran-Iraq War.

"It was absolutely beautiful," DeAngelis said of yesterday's ceremony. "(It was) very moving."

DeAngelis, who has lived with her grief for more than 19 years, said older Gold Star Mothers help those with more recent losses deal with their grief. "With the younger mothers, it's too new," she said.

All participants in yesterday's ceremony got the opportunity to acknowledge a friend or family member who died while serving the nation.

The visit to the memorial began with a viewing of "Twilight's Last Gleaming," a short movie dedicated to Gold Star Mothers.

The group will conduct its annual business meeting today and tomorrow in Mount Laurel, N.J.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/lib...0711-irin01.htm
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
11 July 2006


AFGHANISTAN: UN concerned at deteriorating security
KABUL, 10 Jul 2006 (IRIN) - The United Nations’ top envoy to Afghanistan has expressed concern at the deteriorating security situation in the south and called for more development work as well as further military and diplomatic intervention to curb the growing threat of insurgency in the country.

“These are difficult times for Afghanistan. They are difficult times for the south but backing away is not an option,” Tom Koenigs, the UN Secretary-General's Special Representative to Afghanistan told reporters on Monday in the capital, Kabul.

Afghanistan is suffering its worst level of Taliban-led violence since the militia was ousted by US-led coalition forces in late 2001. More than 1,100 people, including nearly 50 foreign troops, have lost their lives in insurgency-related violence this year alone, particularly in the south of the country.

US led-coalition troops and Afghan forces killed more than 40 insurgents in a raid in southern Afghanistan, the coalition reported on Monday. An Afghan soldier was killed and three coalition soldiers are said to have been wounded in the operation which took place in Oruzgan province.

On Sunday, a Canadian soldier in the coalition was killed during fighting in Kandahar province. Two Canadians were among a number of coalition and Afghan troops wounded on Saturday.

“I think the analysis of the situation in the south makes it obvious that support is more needed than ever,” he said. “One policeman for every 1,500 Afghans is not enough.” Koenigs praised the UK for plans to send extra troops to Afghanistan.

Nearly 900 extra British troops are to be sent to Afghanistan, UK Defence Secretary Des Browne announced. He said the reinforcements, which will boost troop levels to 4,500, will help security and reconstruction efforts in the southern province of Helmand. More helicopters will also be provided – travel by road in the south is becoming increasingly risky .

Commenting on recent remarks by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who called for rooting out terrorists and insurgents beyond the boundaries of Afghanistan, the UN envoy said: ”Insurgency should be equally addressed outside Afghanistan as it has been addressed inside the country.”

Karzai’s government has repeatedly pointed the finger at neighbouring Pakistan as being behind the current wave of insurgency in Afghanistan.

[ENDS]

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/lib...711-rferl01.htm

Afghanistan: Foreign Minister Attacks Pakistani Support For 'Terrorism'
By Ahto Lobjakas

Afghan Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta used an appearance before the European Parliament's foreign affairs committee in Brussels today to appeal for greater international support. Spanta identified intensified insurgent attacks -- mainly in the south of the country -- as the main danger. He also made it clear Kabul thinks Pakistan is behind what he described as "terrorists" bent on destroying his country.

BRUSSELS, July 11, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Minister Spanta's comments are the latest iteration of a message that has been coming out of Kabul for some time and that he stressed during a recent U.S. visit. Identifying the intensifying insurgency in the south of the country as the main threat facing Afghanistan, he firmly placed its roots outside his own country.

Most of the time today, Spanta spoke in general terms about "other countries" where "terrorists" receive training, funding, and ideological support. He said only a small share of arrested insurgents came from Afghanistan itself. The rest are from the Middle East, North Africa, Chechnya, and Uzbekistan, but their majority comes "from one neighboring country."

But in other, more innocuous contexts, the Afghan foreign minister made no secret he means Pakistan. He said Afghanistan appreciates Pakistan's support but said Kabul also has a "legitimate expectation" that the country do more to fight terrorism.

A 'Symptom'

Spanta said the insurgency in Afghanistan was only a "symptom," and said the international community must fight the "sources" outside -- clamp down on countries that fund, train, and ideologically support terrorists.

The minister went further, suggesting "some neighbors" are using terrorism to try and subvert Afghanistan's sovereignty.

"Some countries have still not realized that Afghanistan is not a military-strategic [adjunct] of any country, but a neighbor, a brother of equal standing and a neighbor," Spanta said. "And neither we nor the international community have yet succeeded in getting this realisation into the heads of policy makers in some neighboring countries. That is, the creation of a kind of protectorate in Afghanistan remains a kind of foreign policy [objective] and these countries use terrorism as an instrument of foreign policy."

Again, Spanta left little doubt that he means Pakistan. He praised cooperation with Iran and other major regional countries.

Fingering Islamabad

Spanta also pointedly said that Afghanistan had shown "goodwill" in stopping what he described as an earlier "media war" against Pakistan. He also said Kabul will not allow parts of Afghanistan to become involved in separatist-linked violence in Pakistan's Baluchistan region -- and expects the same in return.

The minister said he believes the increase in fighting in Afghanistan has been partly sparked by certain recent "geostrategic developments." He said the rapprochement between the United States and India is being seen by "some regional countries" as highly dangerous. These countries now want to show their strength and demonstrate that without their cooperation "no country is in a position to bring stability to Afghanistan."

Government Overmatched?

Spanta vowed that Afghanistan will defend its sovereignty and democratic government, but he said the means for that fall woefully short. He said the Afghan National Army numbers only about 36,000 troops, while the police force has an estimated 26,000 men. Yet, he pointed out, Afghanistan is twice the size of Germany.

He said that most of the security forces are very poorly equipped, while their adversaries have access to modern technology.

"A simple example: In the Sangin district in Kandahar [province], there live more than 40,000 people, but we have 41 policemen with three very outmoded Russian jeeps, while the terrorists who come from the other side [of the border] to attack drive [Toyota] Landcruisers, Japanese cars [equipped] with climate control," Spanta said.

He appeared to give support to efforts to resuscitate local, pro-government militias. He said the best way of protecting local people was by mobilizing locals -- albeit within the law and under Kabul's coordination.

NATO In The South

The minister fielded a number of questions from EU deputies suggesting the extension of NATO forces in the south of the country has served as a "provocation" for the local population. He rejected the suggestion, saying the vast majority of Afghans, while not "happy" about the presence of foreign troops, would not want them to leave for fear of what would follow their departure.

Spanta reiterated the view often expressed by Afghan and NATO officials that the insurgents represent only a small minority of the population.

"We have a small minority, a very well-organized minority with strong links to other countries, [with] a fanatical ideology which hates and is bent on destroying all the achievements of humanity in terms of democracy, human rights, [and] women's emancipation," Spanta said.

He described the conflict as a battle between moderates who want a stable Afghanistan and those who want a "land without a country" to spread international terrorism.


Copyright © 2006. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. www.rferl.org

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060711/us_nm/iraq_usa_rape_dc

US court asked for gag order in Iraq rape-murder Tue Jul 11, 1:21 PM ET

A lawyer for a former U.S. soldier charged with killing a family of four in Iraq and raping one of them asked a judge on Tuesday for a gag order preventing officials from President George W. Bush on down from commenting on the case.

Without that, a court filing said, 21-year-old Steven Green will not get a fair trial. He pleaded not guilty last week to four counts of murder and one count of rape, and a Kentucky grand jury is currently considering the case against him.

"This case has received prominent and often sensational coverage in virtually all print, electronic, and Internet news media in the world," the filing in U.S. District Court in Louisville, Kentucky, said.

"Strong and inflammatory opinion is rampant, including the President in a nationally televised interview deeming the alleged conduct of the defendant to be a 'despicable crime' and opining that he was 'staining the image, the honorable image of the United States military'," the motion said.

The motion, filed by Scott Wendelsdorf, a public defender assigned to Green, also cited comments on the case from Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Green, discharged from the Army with a personality disorder, was charged with taking part in a home invasion, rape and murder in March in Mahmudiya, Iraq, while on duty with the Kentucky-based 101st Airborne.

Fourteen-year-old Abeer al-Janabi was raped and killed. Her parents and 6-year-old sister were also slain.

Four other soldiers still with the 502nd Infantry Regiment also face rape and murder charges and a fifth a charge of failing to report it.

A group led by al Qaeda in Iraq meanwhile has released gruesome footage of two corpses it said were U.S. soldiers killed in June to avenge the rape and murder of the Iraqi girl.

Since the military announced its investigation, Iraqis and their government have expressed mounting outrage over the case, which comes after several other murder probes involving U.S. troops. Many Iraqis have complained the troops can kill with impunity.




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71 Iraqis Killed in 15 Attacks, a Shi'i Group Joins Sunnis in Demanding a Timetable for US Withdrawal from Iraq

AP Headline: Attacks Across Iraq Kill at Least 47

By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA Associated Press Writer

Jul 11, 2006, 1:05 PM EDT

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) --

Sunni Arab representatives said Tuesday they will end their boycott of Iraq's parliament following a call for reconciliation by a Shi'i cleric and promises that a kidnapped colleague will be released.

The easing of tensions in the government came on a day of violence. Bombings and shootings killed at least 47 people nationwide.

Gunmen seized an Iraqi diplomat on leave from his post in Iran as he was driving near his Baghdad home. Iraq's Foreign Ministry said Wissam Jabr al-Awadi was a consul in the Iranian city of Kermanshah, a city with a large Kurdish population near the border with Iraq.

The Iraqi Accordance Front suspended its participation in parliament meetings earlier this month after one of its members, Tayseer al-Mashhadani, was kidnapped in a Shi'i neighborhood in Baghdad. Many Sunnis blamed cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, although the organization has denied any involvement.


Al-Sadr has called for unity. A leading Sunni politician said the bloc was responding, in the first sign of accommodation by both sides amid a sharp rise in sectarian tensions.

"We have decided to attend the meetings as of tomorrow in response to the call by Muqtada al-Sadr," lawmaker Adnan al-Dulaimi told The Associated Press. Two of al-Mashhadani's guards were released last week.

Noureddine al-Hyali, another member of the bloc that holds 44 seats in the 275-member parliament, said that contacts had been made with the kidnappers and "we have received promises ... that Tayseer al-Mashhadani will be released within days." He quoted the kidnappers as saying "she is our guest," indicating that she was being treated well.

Earlier this month, Sunni politician Ayad al-Samarra'ie said a group claiming to be holding al-Mashhadani demanded the release of 25 Shi'is detained by U.S. forces in return for her freedom. The group also purportedly called for a timetable for withdrawing coalition troops, the release of all detainees, and a halt to attacks on Shi'i mosques.

Al-Sadr aide Awas al-Khafaji denied that the Mahdi Army was behind the violence and accused the U.S. of trying to stoke sectarian tensions.

"What is happening in Iraq is a U.S. plot to target the patriotic elements in Iraq and this is shown through the attempts to create a gap between al-Mahdi Army and the Sunnis," he said in the holy city of Najaf.

A series of brazen attacks struck the Baghdad area and northern Iraq, killing at least 47 people and wounding 65.

A parked car bomb followed by a suicide attacker on foot struck a restaurant frequented by police near the heavily guarded Green Zone, killing at least five people and wounding 10, Lt. Mohammed Khayoun said, although there were conflicting accounts.

The U.S. military said three bombs exploded, including two suicide bombers wearing explosive vests, followed by another bomb. It said 15 local civilians and an Iraqi policeman were killed and four Iraqis were wounded. Iraqi soldiers and coalition forces responded to the scene, according to a statement.

The blast occurred about 200 yards from the entrance to the Green Zone, the fortified area that houses the U.S. and British embassies and Iraqi government offices.

AP Television News video showed U.S. and Iraqi forces at the site of the blast, with rubble piled outside the restaurant. Three Iraqis carried a body in a blanket.

A female Shi'i lawmaker from al-Sadr's bloc, Gufran al-Saadi, said the explosions occurred as her convoy was entering the Green Zone. "I suspect that some groups are targeting me," she said. "I have received threats from groups that I cannot name now."

The ministers of interior and defense were called to parliament in order to explain why the government's security plan has failed to curb violence in Baghdad.

The security situation has not improved since Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki unveiled a major security plan in Baghdad last month.

Gunmen in the capital intercepted a minivan with Shi'i passengers planning to carry a coffin to Najaf. All 10 people on board were killed in the attack in the southern neighborhood of Dora, police Lt. Thaer Mahmoud said.

A bomb planted under a fuel tanker exploded between a market and a medical center in the southeastern Baghdad suburb of Nahrawan, killing two people and wounding 18, Lt. Bilal Ali said. It set off a fire that was extinguished, Ali said.

A bomb in a parked car also exploded in the central Baghdad neighborhood of Karradah, killing two people and wounding six, he said.

Gunmen in three cars attacked a Saudi Arabian import/export company in the upscale Mansour neighborhood in western Baghdad, killing five Iraqi employees before fleeing, Capt. Jamil Hussein said.

Northeast of Baghdad, gunmen in a speeding car fired randomly at textile shops in Baqouba, killing two shop owners and wounding four others, police said.

Clashes between Iraqi forces and Iraqi resistance fighters broke out near the northwestern city of Mosul. Brig. Khalaf al-Jubour said 10 policemen who were part of an oil-protection force were killed in the fighting near Sharqat, 45 miles south of Mosul.

Police also said gunmen opened fire on an Iraqi army convoy near Sharqat on Monday evening, killing nine soldiers and wounding three.

A parked car bomb later exploded in a busy bus and taxi depot in the city, killing at least two people and wounding six, police said.

Gunmen killed an engineer with Iraq's North Oil Co. and his driver in Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad.

Gunmen ambushed a minivan in Taji, 12 miles north of the capital, killing one passenger and wounding five, Lt. Mohammad Khayoun said.

Gunmen broke into a bakery in Baghdad, killing two workers.

A bomb in a parked car struck a house being used by Iraqi police in southwestern Baghdad neighborhood of Sadiyah, killing three policemen and wounding seven others. A mortar round hit a house elsewhere in the neighborhood, wounding one civilian.

A bomb exploded near the private clinic belonging to the wife of the governor of the dangerous Salahuddin province in Tikrit. Dr. Amira Qassim al-Rubai'ie later died of her wounds and two of her aides were seriously wounded.

A bomb in a parked car targeting a police patrol exploded in front of a Shi'i mosque in Baghdad, wounding three policemen and three civilians.

---

Associated Press writers Sameer N. Yacoub, Qais al-Bashir and Bassem Mroue contributed to this report in Baghdad.

http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/review/ar...ervice_ID=11652

Image of the U.S. falls again
7/10/2006 3:30:00 PM GMT

By: Daniel Ellsberg

According to recent opinion polls, most Iraqis don't believe that we're making things better or safer in their country. What does that say about the legitimacy of prolonged occupation, much less permanent American bases in Iraq?

What does it mean for continued American armored patrols such as the one last November in Haditha, which, we now learn, led to the deaths of a Marine and 24 unarmed civilians?

Questions very much like these nagged at my conscience at the height of the Vietnam War, and led, eventually, to the publication of the first of the Pentagon Papers in June of 1971, 35 years ago.

As a former Marine Commander and defense analyst in 1970, I had exclusive access to highly classified defense documents for research purposes.

They came to be known as the Pentagon Papers and constituted a 47-volume, top-secret Defense Department history of American involvement in Vietnam titled, "U.S. Decision-making in Vietnam, 1945-68."

The Pentagon Papers made it very clear that I, like the rest of the American public, had been misled about the origins and purposes of the war I had participated in - just as are the 85% of the troops in Iraq today who still believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11 and that he was allied with Al Qaeda.

That period had several similarities to this one. Congress was debating the withdrawal of U.S. armed forces from Indochina while President Nixon was making secret plans to expand, rather than exit from, the ongoing war in Southeast Asia - including a major air offensive against North Vietnam, possibly using nuclear weapons. Today, the Bush administration's threats to wage war against Iran are explicit, with officials reiterating regularly that the nuclear "option" is "on the table."

Americans saw the color photographs of the My Lai massacre; now we are seeing photographs eerily similar to those from Haditha: women, children, old men and babies, all shot at short range.

What was it that prompted me to begin copying 7,000 pages of highly classified documents - an act that I fully expected would send me to prison for life? I came to the conclusion that the system I had been part of, giving my unquestioning loyalty to for 15 years, as a Marine, a Pentagon official and a State Department officer in Vietnam, was a system that lies reflexively, at every level, from sergeant to commander in chief, about murder. And I had the evidence to prove it.

The papers showed very clearly how we had become engaged in a reckless war of choice in someone else's country - a country that had not attacked us - for our own domestic and external purposes. It became clear to me that the justifications that had been given for our involvement were false. And if the war itself was unjust, then all the victims of our firepower were being killed without justification.

That's murder.

Today, there must be, at the very least, hundreds of civilian and military officials in the Pentagon, CIA, State Department, National Security Agency and White House who have in their safes and computers comparable documentation of intense internal debates - so far carefully concealed from Congress and the public - about prospective or actual war crimes, reckless policies and domestic crimes: the Pentagon Papers of Iraq, Iran or the ongoing war on U.S. liberties. Some of those officials, I hope, will choose to accept the personal risks of revealing the truth - earlier than I did - before more lives are lost or a new war is launched.

Haditha holds a mirror up not just to American troops in the field, but to our whole society. Not just to the liars in government but to those who believe them too easily. And to all of us in the public, in the administration, in Congress and the media who dissent so far ineffectively or who stand by as murder is being done and do nothing to stop it or expose it.

Americans must summon the civil courage to face what is being done in their name and to refuse to be accomplices. The Voters' Pledge is one way to do this. The Voters' Pledge is a project comprising many of the major organizations in the antiwar movement, including United for Peace and Justice, Peace Action, Gold Star Families for Peace, Code Pink, and Democracy Rising, as well as groups with broader agendas like the National Organization for Women, Progressive Democrats of America, AfterDowningStreet.com, and magazines including the American Conservative and The Nation.



The goal of this coalition is to build a base of antiwar voters that cannot be ignored by anyone running for office in the United States. We want millions of voters to sign the pledge and say no to pro-war candidates.

You can help right now by visiting www.VotersForPeace.US and immediately signing the Voters' Pledge.

Daniel Ellsberg is a former American military analyst who helped bring about an end to the Vietnam War when he released the Pentagon Papers, the U.S. military's account of its scandalous activities during that war.

Rumsfeld to Afghans: U.S. isn't leaving - Yahoo! News

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060711/ap_on_re_as/rumsfeld_18

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff07112006.html

Krauthammer and Justice Davis
Does a State of War Give Bush a Right to Commit War Crimes?
By DAVE LINDORFF

Right-wing columnist Charles Krauthammer has weighed in against the Supreme Court's latest ruling in Hamdan, claiming that the Court erred in barring President Bush from denying Guantanamo detainees the protections of the Third Geneva Convention. The basis for his argument is that the U.S. is at war, and that traditionally "supreme courts have been loath to intervene against presidential war powers in the midst of conflict."

Let's look at this assertion for a minute.

First of all, the fact that in the past, presidents have grievously abused their power during wartime, and damaged the Constitution in the process, is hardly grounds for letting this president do so again. Krauthammer cites, for example, President Lincoln's famous revocation of the age-old common law right of habeas corpus--the right to have one's imprisonment brought before a judge--to justify Bush's current denial of habeas corpus to captives in Guantanamo Bay.

Well, what Krauthammer fails to mention is that in 1866, the Supreme Court slapped down the administration of the assassinated President Lincoln, overturning the detention and execution order (never carried out) of one Lambdin P. Milligan, who had been arrested on orders of the president on a charge of treason and denied habeas rights. In that ruling, the Justice David Davis wrote:

The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times and under all circumstances. No doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government. Such a doctrine leads directly to anarchy or despotism, but the theory of necessity on which it is based is false, for the government, within the Constitution, has all the powers granted to it which are necessary to preserve its existence, as has been happily proved by the result of the great effort to throw off its just authority. (Milligan, 71 U.S. 2 (1866))

Those stirring words should be mailed to every member of Congress as they now consider the Supreme Court's Hamdan ruling, with many Republicans clamoring to pass a law exempting the Guantanamo detainees from the Geneva Convention's jurisdiction.

Second, let's examine Krauthammer's (and the Bush administration's) premise that the nation is at war, and that therefore the president can claim special powers.

Is the country at war?

Certainly it's not at war in Afghanistan, where there is an elected government, and where U.S., British, French, German, Canadian and other military forces serve at the invitation of the government. To call the small-scale fighting against remnant Taliban fighters a war would be to say that the U.S. is always at war, for U.S. military forces have been in combat situations somewhere in the world almost constantly, especially since World War II. Consider Korea, Indochina, El Salvador, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, etc. (have I forgotten any?). If these situations, in which U.S. forces were shooting and being shot at, were all to be called states of war, then by Krauthammer's faulty "logic," the U.S. should have been under presidential rule, with the Constitution suspended, for several generations already.

Clearly this is absurd. For the term "war" to have any meaning, it must refer to a condition in which the nation itself is in jeopardy. Certainly it was this threat to America's very existence that led Lincoln to declare martial law in some jurisdictions, and to suspend the protections of the Constitution, rightly or wrongly.

Happily, nothing like that kind of threat pertains today.

Neither the fighting in Afghanistan, nor the larger fighting in Iraq--which was certainly a war (with us as the invader!), but which is now a police action at the request of a sovereign government, in the words of our president himself--is a war.

The only "war" that can be at issue then, is the so-called "war on terror." But is this in any way a real "war"? Unless one believes the self-serving clap-trap of the administration that the soldiers in Iraq are fighting in the war on terror--an absurdity because there were no terrorists in Iraq before the U.S. invaded that country, and now what is called "terrorism" in Iraq, at least as directed against U.S. interests, is nothing but garden variety guerrilla warfare against a foreign army (ours)--the answer has to be no. As Bush famously declared back on April 30, 2003, major combat ended in Iraq over three years ago. There is no war in Iraq.

That leaves the global "war" on terrorism. But let's get real. This is no more a war than was the "war" on drugs or the "war" on poverty. Sure, there may be a few soldiers who are involved, but mostly it's about spying, monitoring, infiltrating and arresting suspected terrorists. To call that kind of thing a war is to debase the currenty of the language beyond recognition. (The truth is there are probably more actual U.S. military forces involved in the so-called "war" on drugs than there are involved in the so-called "war" on terror.)

Moreover, while terrorists certainly can threaten the lives and safety of Americans, they cannot threaten the survival of or the territorial integrity of the United States, which is after all what wars are all about.

Furthermore, Krauthammer speaks of presidents needing to be able to suspend Constitutional rights and to claim special extra-constitutional powers during wars, and of the tradition of them then restoring those rights after a conflict ends. But the administration has made it clear, in between stirring calls for "total victory," that there will be no end to this "war" on terror. And indeed there cannot be, for there will always be those who will seek to disrupt or punish a global power like the U.S. through the use of terror. To accept the argument that fighting against such threats requires a suspension of rights and a president with dictatorial powers is to say that the Constitution, with its separation of powers and its Bill of Rights, is finished.

Like the administration he serves, Krauthammer is simply wrong, and surely in making such a preposterous claim has surrendered the right to call himself a conservative.

Justice Davis, writing at a time right after the nation had fought a four-year war for its very survival, a year after the president had been slain by an agent of the enemy, and while forces of resistance in the South were continuing to battle U.S. occupation troops, had it exactly right when he said: "The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace."

Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new book of CounterPunch columns titled "This Can't be Happening!" is published by Common Courage Press. Lindorff's new book is "The Case for Impeachment",
co-authored by Barbara Olshansky.

http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/183865.php

Beheading Desecration Video of Dead U.S. Soldiers Released on Internet by al Qaeda (Video/Images)
A brutal video showing the desecration of the bodies of two U.S. soldiers has been released on the internet by an al Qaeda linked group. The Jawa Report has obtained a copy of the video. The video and images from it are posted at the end of this article. Go to Link for the video.

This video shows the true face of the enemies we fight. However you feel about the war in Iraq, this should enrage you. They are ruthless barbarians who boast about killing those they have taken hostage.

We show you these images so that you will understand what it is we are up against. The video and images should enrage you. If you do not have righteouss anger after seeing this, you are beyond hope. Update: Or, as reminded by Jason in the comments, they ought to at least give you clarity and resolve to defeat them.

Update: John at Powerline laments that POTUS has not followed Putin's example, and ordered the killing of the AQ scum who did this. However, I have received several e-mails from officers serving in Iraq who wanted the video.

One Air Force officer told me he was about to do a brief and wanted to show it to his men. So, if POTUS hasn't directly ordered revenge, I have a feeling the military is about to take it upon themselves to find and kill the AQ bastards who did this.

Vengeance may not always be swift, but it is always sweet.

UPDATE II: Allahpundit over at Hot Air had put up most of the vid that we sent him, but Michelle Malkin asked him to take it down. It was very disturbing, so we understand. Images still posted below.

Update III: With Allahpundit's help, we have posted a shortened version of the video below. Scroll all the way to the end of this post. Very graphic.

Links to original vid will be sent via e-mail to members of intel community, bloggers, or media on request. Please e-mail Rusty (not Vinnie) directly.

UPDATE: SITE now reporting:

The Mujahideen Shura Council in Iraq issued today, July 10, 2006, a 4:39 minute video that shows the mutilated corpses of the two American soldiers the group stated to have captured on June 19, 2006. The extremely graphic footage is preceded by an audio clip of a past Usama bin Laden speech, and an audio track from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is heard over the scenes in which the Mujahideen display and prod the corpses.

A message introducing the video states that this video is presented as “revenge for our sister who was dishonored by a soldier of the same brigade,” referencing the rape and murder of an Iraqi girl and her family by a group of American soldiers in al-Mahmoudiya.

UPDATE II:MSM now reporting:
Here is a film on the remains of the bodies of the two American soldiers kidnapped near Yussufiyah (south of Baghdad). We are showing it to avenge our sister who was raped by a soldier belonging to the same division as these two soldiers," said a preamble by the Mujahedeen Al-Shura Council, an al-Qaeda dominated alliance of armed Sunni groups in Iraq.

When guerillas learned of the rape, "they repressed their sighs to avoid news of the affair spreading but they swore to avenge their sister", the council said on its usual website.

"Praise God, they captured two soldiers from the same division as this vile crusader. Here are the remains ... to rejoice the hearts of the faithful," the statement said

WARNING: Graphic description, images & video below.

The two victims, Kristian Menchaca and Thomas Tucker, were members of the 101st Airborne division abducted by al Qaeda in Iraq. A third soldier died in the attack.

Their bodies were later recovered not far from where they had been kidnapped. The US military now says that their corpses were found tied together with a bomb between them. Three roadside bombs were planted around the bodies. The bodies had been decapitated.

The video bears the logo of The Mujahadin Shura Council and al Qaeda in Iraq. Contrary to reports by al Qaeda and in the MSM, the video appears to show that the two soldiers were already dead before at least one of them was beheaded.

After a brief introdcuction with an image and the voice of Osama bin Laden, the video shows the two dead soldiers lying on a bridge. Both are already dead.

One of the men has already been beheaded, the other man is dead. An al Qaeda member holds the severed head of one of the dead soldiers.

One of the two soldiers appear to have been shot, the other has multiply wounds but appears to have also been hit by an explosive.

The video also blurs out one of the dead men's genitels, apparently al Qaeda believes showing that would be over-the-top.

Later, an image of the now dead leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, is superimposed over the film. Zarqawi had personally murdered several people by beheading and then released those films on the internet.

The entire video has a voice over of what sounds like Abu Musab al Zaraqawi [UPDATE: Confirmed by MSM] calling Muslims to jihad. A nasheed, or Islamic jihad song, can also be heard in the background.

The new head of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, had claimed that he had personally "slit the throats" of Tucker and Menchaca. The video seems to suggest otherwise and that the al Qaeda leader is lying. But, it's possible that he happened to be at the ambush. Not likely, but possible. Update 7/11: George tells me that Rita Katz at SITE now confirming that Abu Hamza al-Muhajir's claim is bogus. Not that it took a rocket scientist to figure that out. But it is interesting that the new leader of al Qaeda would want to tie himself to the old leader who did personally behead his victims.

UPDATE IV: And so the media frenzy begins. The NY Times, yes the NY Times actually questions the validity of the "Mahmudiya rape-murder" defense by al Qaeda. More then that, the NY Times actually questions whether the U.S. soldiers accused of the mass-murder were actually involved at all.

UPDATE 7/11: Greyhawk points out to me that my interpretation here is off. The villa