Replies to post #3585 on Foreign Correspondence

[otraque]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=1&u=/nm/20050511/ts_nm/iraq_dc
( i am in frenetic mode as i am in planting time---i am on boards is short bursts then run--Max:)

<<Four suicide attacks kill at least 71 By Andrew Marshall
21 minutes ago



BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Suicide bombs killed at least 71 people in Iraq on Wednesday, taking to nearly 400 the number of Iraqis killed in guerrilla attacks since a new government was unveiled two weeks ago.

In Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, a suicide car bomber blew up his vehicle among a crowd of mainly Shi'ite migrant laborers from southern Iraq who had gathered to look for work.(the tension just builds--the Sunnis will never accept Shi'ites in the north--imo--welles)

Police said at least 33 people were killed and 80 wounded in the attack, one of the day's four suicide bombings.

A policeman at the scene of the blast in Tikrit, 175 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad, said the explosion was near a police station but the target was the crowd of workers.

"What I saw was a tragedy," said Ibrahim Mohammed, a migrant worker from the town of Kut who witnessed the blast. "Some people had their heads torn off by the explosion, some were burned, some were ripped to pieces."

Iraqi militant group Army of Ansar al-Sunna claimed responsibility for the bombing in an Internet statement, saying the migrant laborers were working at nearby U.S. bases. It said the workers were "apostates who sold their religion and became slaves and agents of the crusaders."

Mainly Sunni guerrillas have often targeted Shi'ites, sparking fears they are trying to stoke sectarian civil war.

In the town of Hawija, southwest of the strategic oil city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq, a suicide bomber walked up to an army recruitment center and detonated an explosive belt, killing at least 32 people and wounding 34, hospital sources said.

A third suicide bomber blew up his vehicle near a police station in the southern Baghdad suburb of Dora, killing at least three civilians. Police said the bomber was trying to reach the police station but blew up his car before he got there.

A suicide car bomb attack on a police patrol in the Mansour district of Baghdad killed two policemen and a civilian, officials at the Interior Ministry said.

Gunmen attacked an Iraqi army patrol in western Baghdad, killing three soldiers, police said. And a mortar round hit the Oil Ministry in Baghdad but there were no casualties.

Insurgents have launched a blitz of attacks since Iraq's political leaders announced a new cabinet on April 28.

HOSTAGE CRISES

Insurgents have also snatched two more foreign hostages -- an Australian engineer captured in Baghdad in late April and a Japanese security contractor seized on Sunday in western Iraq.

The captors of Australian hostage Douglas Wood, 63, demanded that Australia pull its troops out of Iraq by Tuesday.

Canberra insisted it would not negotiate with kidnappers and the deadline passed with no word on his fate.

Last week, Wood's captors released video footage showing him looking distraught as two masked gunmen pointed rifles at him. His head had been shaven and he appeared to have a black eye.

The Japanese hostage, 44-year-old Akihiko Saito, was captured when a foreign security convoy was ambushed in western Iraq on Sunday evening. Army of Ansar al-Sunna, one of Iraq's most feared insurgent groups, said it was holding Saito.

Japanese media said Saito was a 20-year veteran of the French Foreign Legion and had spent two years in Japan's army.

Ansar al-Sunna has killed scores of hostages, including foreigners from countries with no connection to the Iraq war. Last August, the group killed 12 Nepalese migrant workers, beheading one and then riddling the others with bullets.

Japan and Australia, both firm allies of the United States in Iraq, insist they will not withdraw their troops. Japan has already had six of its citizens taken hostage in Iraq. Five were freed but one, backpacker Shosei Koda, was beheaded last year.

Insurgents have also kidnapped the Iraqi governor of the rebellious western province of Anbar and are demanding that his tribe release captured fighters loyal to Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of the al Qaeda network in Iraq.

Raja Nawaf, who only became governor of Anbar a few days ago, was abducted with four bodyguards on the road from the town of Qaim, near the Syrian border, to the rebel stronghold of Ramadi, his brother Hamed Nawaf told Reuters.

The U.S. military has launched a major offensive in the desert north of Qaim, which it says is a key base of foreign fighters entering Iraq from Syria. The military says it has killed more than 100 insurgents since Operation Matador began.

"The region is used as staging area for foreign fighters who cross the Syrian border illegally through smuggling routes," the military said in a statement.

"It is here that these foreign fighters receive the weapons and equipment to conduct attacks, such as suicide car bombs and assassination or kidnapping of political or civilian targets."

Three Marines have been killed during the operation, and overall since Saturday 14 American servicemen have been killed in Iraq, an unusually heavy toll for the U.S. military.

(Additional reporting by Amer Salman in Tikrit and Aref Mohammed in Kirkuk)

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[CoalTrain]

Moscow will remove the bases by 2008? LOL!!! For all the noise and hoopla in the western press both Georgia and the U.S. losing the battle in Georgia to Moscow. The S will have most likely hit the fan either economically or militarily by then. This is pretty much the kind of scenario I imagine playing out in Ukraine. Moscow will draw a line with the Black Sea naval bases and other military installations. I think Moscow would gladly let the far western part of Ukraine go to the EU but no way they give up the Naval bases. I think EU and certainly Hungary, SLovakia and Poland would see ceding of Western Ukraine an economic weapon in the short term and longer term they may view it as a military threat. The Ukrainian mafia in the west already causes lots of problems for its bordering "EU" countries. Georgia can't even keep grenades away form Bush. Jeeez!

[otraque]

Just heard a speech by Seymour Hersh on Democracy Radio, if one can get a replay i highly recommend, if nothing else but to catch what a sharp-witted and easy going sense of humour guy this is, that hides behind his print.
But the biggest key in his speech matches what i have been blasting out, and that is don't get any delusions that Bush will change--he basically describes him as a Wolfowitz without brains.
Of Wolfowitz he said, "if nothing else can be said for Wolfowitz, one can say he is smart."
I have taken the position that Bush is mentally unsound, Hersh dances around that notion without actually saying it.
Like " Does Bush think he is in communication with G-d? I don't know, but maybe." Hersh'es delivery is "impish"
He actually said Bush is almost a Trotskyite in terms of proceeding on basis of his vision of primitive revolution, that is, just go in tear a place apart and it will miraculously then all fall together just as he Bush has imagined it will.
He said Bush actually is not in a protective bubble he just IGNORES reality when ever it is presented him.
Hersh quotes someone of saying to Bush "We are LOSING this WAR in Iraq!" Bush said, "Not true, not true, we are not winning, that is all." Like that meant to him, Bush, "things are going great"---this is compatible with the logic of a "looney"---sorry folks but that thar is the reality we are in: that being a POTUS that can't comprehend reality.

[Amaunet]

Shootout in breakaway Georgian region


This violence the first in a long time involves U.S. controlled Georgia and occurs right before the first ever ‘stand alone’ trilateral meeting of foreign ministers of India, Russia and China. This is a meeting the United States is not happy about.

If you remember the Beslan school siege and slaughter of the Russian school children was timed to postpone Putin’s trip to Turkey and discussion of the Trans-Thracian pipeline which it did much to the delight of the United States.

One should note the airliner explosions preceding the Beslan school siege coincided with Putin’s Sochi meeting with President Jacques Chirac of France and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany, another event the United States did not want to take place.
#msg-4014279
#msg-3953878


NEW DELHI, MAY 29: In their first ever ‘stand alone’ trilateral meeting, foreign ministers of India, Russia and China will hold talks in Russia’s far-eastern Port city of Vladivostok next week on a whole spectrum of issues.

Official sources here said the meeting was expected to impart a new impetus to collaboration between the three countries.
http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=92337

-Am


Shootout in breakaway Georgian region


TBILISI, Georgia (AP) - A Georgian police officer and three suspected insurgents from South Ossetia were killed in an exchange of gunfire in the breakaway region Sunday, Georgian police and a representative of South Ossetia's separatist government said.

The gunfire broke out near a village north of the South Ossetia's capital, Tskhinvali, and was the first deadly violence reported in the tense region in months, according to police and a South Ossetian government spokeswoman.

South Ossetia broke away from central government control in a separatist war in the early 1990s, and tension has risen under Georgia's new president, Mikhail Saakashvili, who took office in January 2004 and pledged to bring South Ossetia and another breakaway region, Abkhazia, back into the fold.

Deadly fighting broke out between Georgian and separatist forces a year ago, but no deaths had been reported since two peacekeepers from a force that includes South Ossetians, Georgians and Russians were killed in October.

As in the past, the two sides accused each other of initiating Sunday's violence.

Vladimir Dzhugeli, chief of Georgian police for the region that technically includes South Ossetia, said a group of Georgian police were attacked by South Ossetian fighters near Kurta, a village 10 kilometres north of Tskhinvali. One officer was killed and three were wounded, and three of the attackers were killed, he said.

South Ossetian government spokeswoman Irina Gagloyeva said Georgian police opened fire on a car carrying South Ossetians, killing three and severely wounding another. She initially said the South Ossetians involved in the shootout were volunteer fighters, but later said she wasn't sure. Gagloyeva also said a Georgian policeman was killed.

Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili was heading to the vicinity of the shooting late Sunday.

South Ossetia receives informal support from neighbouring Russia despite Moscow's official recognition of Georgia's territorial integrity. Most residents of the region in northern Georgia have Russian passports, and its leader advocates uniting the region with the Russian province of North Ossetia, making it part of Russia.

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2005/05/29/1062083-ap.html