GI SPECIAL 3C94:

HOW MANY MORE FOR BUSH'S WAR?

U.S. Army soldier 1st Lt Nancy Negron, left, is helped as she hands a flower down to a worker to place on the coffin of her late husband, fellow U.S. soldier Lt Carlos Diaz, at his burial in Yauco, Puerto Rico, Aug. 31, 2005. Diaz was killed two days earlier in a bombing attack in Iraq. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

2,000 Gone;

Asshole Military Spokesman Dismisses Importance;

Just An "Artificial Mark On The Wall"

October 25, 2005 TheKansasCityChannel & AP

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The U.S. military has announced the death of an American soldier who was wounded in Iraq.

That brings the U.S. death toll to 2,000.

The toll compiled by The Associated Press reached 2,000 with the death of an Army sergeant who was wounded by a roadside bomb north of Baghdad. He died last weekend in Texas.

Staff Sgt. George Alexander of Killeen, Texas, was wounded last week in Samarra, north of Baghdad. He was based at Fort Benning in Georgia.

As for the 2,000 death, military spokesman Steve Boylan said "It is an artificial mark on the wall set by individuals or groups with specific agendas and ulterior motives."

"LETS NOT GIVE IN TO THEM"

"LET ALL THE TROOPS REST IN PEACE"

[This is a message to Americans from Rose Gentle received today. Her son was killed in Iraq. She leads a campaign to bring all the Scots and other troops home from Iraq, now. T]

From: Rose Gentle

To: GI Special

Sent: October 25, 2005

Subject: its hard

2OOO, TROOPS  KILLIED  GOD  WHEN WILL  THIS  STOP

ALL  I CAN  SAY  TO  AMERICA, IS  WE  ARE  THINKING  OF YOUS

I AM  FEELING  SO  SAD  TO  DAY, WHEN  I LOOK  AT  THE  PHOTOS

OF  ALL  THE ONES  THAT  HAVE  GOT  KILLIED,  JUST  FOR  LIES,

I  WOULD  LOVE  TO  GET  A HOLD  OF  BUSH, AND BLAIR,  AND

GIVE  THEM  HELL,  WE WILL  SOON  GET  TO  100,  I HOPE

WE  NIVER  GET  TO IT , BUT WE ALL  KNOW  WE  WILL

THINKING   OF  YOUS  ALL, LETS  NOT  GIVE  IN  TO  THEM.

 LET  ALL  THE  TROOPS   REST  IN PEACE,

                                              ROSE X

IRAQ WAR REPORTS

Four, Not Two, U.S. Troops Killed Friday At Al Amariyah

HEADQUARTERS UNITED STATES CENTRAL COMMAND NEWS RELEASE Number: 05-10-34C

CAMP FALLUJAH, Iraq  Two Marines assigned to Regimental Combat Team 8, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward), were killed in action while conducting combat operations against the enemy when their vehicle was attacked with an improvised explosive device near al Amariyah on Oct. 21.

In addition, the initial release erroneously states that two Marines had died. Further review shows that they were a Marine and a Sailor.

Final Bradley Crew Members Identified

Oct. 25, 2005 BY MICK WALSH, Staff Writer, Knight Ridder Newspapers

After watching the invasion of Baghdad on television in 2003, then 28-year-old Jeffrey Corban chose to give up a promising career in retail sales to join the Army and participate in the war on terrorism.

He was to give up a lot more than that.

Spc. Corban and four of his team members were killed Oct. 15 when an enemy's rocket-propelled grenade exploded inside their Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

It would be days before officials could identify the bodies.

"They were 99 percent sure when I was notified the evening they were killed," his wife, Joy Ellen Corban, said. "Due to the condition the bodies were in, they couldn't be 100 percent certain."

A graveside service for Corban, a resident of Elkhart, Ind., is scheduled today at 1 p.m. at the Main Post Cemetery. Visitation will be held at McMullen Funeral Home from 10 a.m. to noon.

Corban died along with fellow Bradley soldiers Staff Sgt. Vincent Summers, Spc. Richard A. Hardy, Spc. Thomas H. Byrd and Spc. Timothy D. Watkins. The five were members of the 2nd Battalion, 69th Armor Regiment, which is attached to the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward).

Corban probably didn't have to be in Iraq. His enlistment test scores were high, but he chose the Infantry over other options, said his wife. And he had to overcome two knee surgeries, a stress fracture and subsequent shoulder surgery just to gain clearance to rejoin his battalion.

"He wasn't a quitter," Joy Ellen Corban said. "The Army was hard on him, physically. But it didn't deter him from going to Iraq."

His shoulder surgery kept him from leaving in January with the rest of the 2-69. But in March, he rejoined his unit, which at the time was stationed in Baqouba with the rest of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team.

In mid-July, the 2-69 was attached to the Marines in the Ramadi area.

"And they've been paying the price ever since," Joy Ellen said.

The couple would have celebrated their ninth wedding anniversary on Christmas Eve.

Staff Sgt. VincentSummers

Summers' funeral is Saturday at 2 p.m. in Killeen, Texas, the home of Fort Hood. His burial, with military honors, will follow at the Killeen City Cemetery.

A native of Detroit and an Army veteran of 18 years, Bradley commander Summers was on his third deployment to Iraq, having served in Desert Storm and in Operation Iraqi Freedom I in 2003.

"He was Army all the way," said his mother-in-law, Brenda Williford, who is staying with Summers' widow, Melissa, 33, and the couple's 7-year-old son, Preston.

Out of uniform, Summers, 38, enjoyed racing remote-controlled trucks. "He was passionate about a lot of things," Williford said. "But that was his latest passion."

Summers and Melissa, a native of Killeen, had been married 8 1/2 years.

Spc. Richard A. Hardy

Funeral arrangements also have been completed for Hardy. He will be buried Friday in St. Stephen's Catholic Cemetery in Bolivar, Ohio, after a funeral Mass at the Church of the Holy Trinity in nearby Zoar.

A graduate of Timken High School in Canton, Ohio, Hardy, 24, was on his second tour of duty in Iraq when he was killed.

Hardy's father Rick, who lives in Dennison, Ohio, told a Canton, Ohio, newspaper that his son's favorite pastime was riding dirt bikes.

"He was all over the place," his father said. "The other thing was barbecue. Every time he came home, he had to have a barbecue. He said it beat the MREs (meals ready to eat). He said there was nothing like a home-cooked meal."

Richard Lebold, owner of the Lebold Funeral Home in Bolivar, which is handling arrangements, said, "I believe he is the first boy from the county to be killed in action. We are expecting two to three hundred people for the funeral."

Spc. Thomas H. Byrd

Mykel Byrd, Spc. Byrd's widow, spent Monday making arrangements for her husband's funeral in their hometown of Tucson. The two were high school sweethearts at Santa Rita High School, Tucson.

A memorial service for the soldiers is tentatively scheduled for 11 a.m. Thursday at the Kelley Hill Chapel.

Four Mercenaries Killed At Ramadi

Oct 25, 2005 By DPA

Baghdad - Four foreign nationals believed to be U.S. security staff were killed by a roadside bomb targeting a convoy close to the western Iraqi city of Ramadi, police said Tuesday.

Police said the bomb detonated at midnight, completely destroying one vehicle. U.S. troops immediately sealed off the region and arrested 11 suspects.

U.S. Patrol Targeted In Baghdad:

Casualties Not Announced

Smoke rises from the site of a car bomb blast targeting a joint U.S. military and Iraqi police patrol in Baghdad October 25, 2005. (Ceerwan Aziz/Reuters)

REAL BAD PLACE TO BE:

BRING THEM ALL HOME NOW

U.S army soldiers stand in the sand while waiting for a helicopter landing at Forward Operation Base Ramagen in Tikrit, Iraq, October 23, 2005. (Jorge Silva/Reuters)

TROOP NEWS

Majority Of Americans Now Say Iraq War Wrong Thing To Do

10.25.05 AFP News

For the first time, a majority of Americans believe the Iraq war was the "wrong thing to do", according to a poll published in The Wall Street Journal.

In the Wall Street Journal poll, 53 percent of those surveyed said they felt that "taking military action against Iraq was the... wrong thing to do", against 34 percent who thought it was correct.

The percentage of people opposing the US-led invasion of the country in March 2003 was up from a figure of 49 percent in a parallel poll in September, rising above 50 percent for the first time since the surveys began.

Sixty-one percent were not confident US policies in Iraq would succeed, two points higher than in September.

The latest poll also found that 66 percent of Americans believed President George W. Bush was doing a "poor" or "only fair" job of handling Iraq, against 32 percent who deemed it "excellent" or "pretty good".

U.S. Armed Forces Incapable Of Fighting Insurgencies:

The Good News;

Useful In Natural Disaster Work

Oct 25, 2005 (Reuters)

Western military powers are being forced to rethink strategy because conflict in Iraq has shown the limits of their conventional armies, the International Institute of Strategic Studies said on Tuesday.

In its annual report on global military might, "The Military Balance", the London-based think-tank said strategists had hoped new technology would let them target enemies accurately from ships and planes, avoiding protracted ground battles.

But it said conventional armies have been sucked into messy conflicts, often in towns, where they face enemies invulnerable to the advanced gadgetry that was supposed to dissipate the fog of war and herald a new era in warfare.

"Iraq, Afghanistan and Chechnya demonstrate the limitations of modern conventional forces in complex environments that demand more of them than traditional warfighting," wrote Editor Christopher Langton in the introduction.

"The conflict environment of the early 21st century certainly does represent a new era in warfare: but not the era that Western military planners expected," it said in its handbook which lists the size and capabilities of the world's armed forces.

The institute said one bright spot for Western conventional armies was that they were still unrivalled in their ability to respond quickly to natural disasters, such as the Tsunami.

Bush Regime Opposes More Pay For Reservists;

Tells Another Stupid Lie

October 25, 2005 By Rick Maze, Army Times staff writer

One hundred members of Congress have written the House Appropriations Committee asking it to stand fast in the face of a veto threat over pay-gap legislation for mobilized reservists who work for the federal government in their civilian lives.

The letter, organized by Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., asks the House committee to support a Senate-passed provision to the 2006 defense appropriations bill requiring the federal government to make up any difference in military and civilian salaries when federal workers are mobilized for National Guard or reserve duty.

The Bush administration opposes that idea, saying it would be bad for the morale of active-duty members to have the government provide more pay to some federal workers.

[These silly assholes want people to think that a regular army soldier is going to foam at the mouth because a reservist who is called up and loses his civilian pay, can't support her family, can't pay the mortgage, and risks financial ruin, could get some financial help.

[These silly assholes don't have the slightest understanding of anything about military service. Every active duty troop who sees that reservists or Guard members will get some help will be absolutely delighted, because after finishing active duty, they may end up in either the Guard or reserves, and will see that they too will get help if called up. Duh! Bush has billions to shovel out to his war-profiteer friends like Halliburton, but when it comes to a few dollars for called up troops in financial hardship, they have one simple message: fuck 'em. The enemies are in Washington DC, not Iraq.

[One of the best reasons to bring all our troops home now is to help protect us from the people who run the government.]

The White House Office of Management and Budget has warned that Bush may veto the defense funding bill if the provision remains in it.

"John Was Against This War But Did His Job"

Melanie House, of Simi Valley, California, whose husband, Petty Officer 3rd Class John D. House, age 28, was killed in a helicopter crash near Ar Rutbah, Iraq, on January 26, 2005.

25 October 2005 By Scott Galindez, Truthout Special, [Excerpt]

Melanie House, of Simi Valley, California, whose husband, Petty Officer 3rd Class John D. House, age 28, was killed in a helicopter crash near Ar Rutbah, Iraq, on January 26, 2005, speaks with t r u t h o u t.

t r u t h o u t: Please introduce our readers to John.

Melanie House: John was a devoted husband, a proud father and a loving son and brother. He was the love of my life, my soul mate, and my best friend. We met 11 years ago and literally grew up together. We were married for 5 years.

John had a tough exterior, covered in tattoos, and loved riding his Harley. However, he was a sweet, gentle, caring person who would have done anything for a friend or loved one. He was the biggest Johnny Cash fan in the world but loved so many different kinds of music. He loved to barbeque with friends and family, go to the beach, play darts and spend time with his wife. John had the best sense of humor ... sometimes seen as sarcastic or dark ... but he always made people laugh.

And even though he acted pretty reserved on the outside, he loved practical jokes and being silly with friends and family. He loved working with his hands, either mowing the lawn or woodworking or even playing horseshoes. He wanted nothing more in the world but to be a father, and family was so important to him.

When we found out we were pregnant, he was the happiest man alive and wanted to tell everyone he knew. He carried around pictures of the ultrasound in his pocket with him everywhere he went.

He was an amazing corpsman (medic) and was highly respected and well liked among sailors and Marines. Even though he was thought to be a smart-ass at times he always did his job the best he could and gave 100%. "His Marines" in Iraq meant the world to him, and he did everything he could to make sure they were healthy and safe.

What kept him going while in Iraq was knowing that he would meet his newborn son when he returned home.

John was against this war but did his job in the very best way that he could. He saved Marines' lives, limbs and kept their spirits up.

He never did get to meet his son, James Cash (named for Johnny Cash) who was just 4 weeks old when John was killed.

We had dreams of travelling and having more children and growing old together. My life will never be the same without him, and I will never stop grieving for losing my soulmate. My heart is so broken without him.

TO: What about advice for families who have loved ones considering joining the military?

MH: I completely support the troops and always have, and always will.

However, I am concerned with President Bush lying to our troops about our mission in Iraq and why we are in Iraq in the first place. Personally, I wouldn't want my son to join ... although it is very honorable, and I am so proud of my husband and all of the service members ... I just believe that our troops aren't given proper equipment, training or preparation for war, nor the truth about why we are at war.

TO: I remember your mother-in-law reading from a letter from John - please tell us what John thought about the war ...

MH: After 9/11, John was very pro-war. But as time went on and the American people started learning more about 9/11 as well as the reasons why we were at war, he soon started questioning it.

After learning of Iraq having no weapons of mass destruction and that there were no ties with Iraq to 9/11 he wanted to know why we were at war.

This was before he even found at he was going to go.

Once he found out he had orders to Iraq, he struggled with it tremendously because he wanted to do his job ... "take care of his Marines"... however, he didn't know why people were dying in Iraq every day (Americans, our allies and Iraqis alike).

When he was over there, he ultimately made his decision that America should not be there. He said he saw many terrible things ... most of which he couldn't tell me about over the phone, but that he would tell me when he returned (however, he never had the chance to do so).

We were pregnant at the time and he said he didn't know how to explain to our baby why he had to miss his birth and why he had to go to war (and now ultimately, why he never got to meet our son).

He felt like they were so unprepared for what they encountered.

And he spoke to several Iraqis through interpreters and he learned that the Iraqi people felt no safer nor that their country was any better after America was there. He told me that when he got home, he wanted to get involved with Operation Truth, so that he could speak out about what he saw and went through over there.

Every letter he wrote to me included how he prayed for peace and dreaded that more of his friends wouldn't come home alive. Ironically, he didn't get to either.

Petty Officer 3rd Class John D. House

The Short Life And Violent Death Of Sgt Chris Hickey, 1st Battalion, The Coldstream Guards

[Thanks to NB who sent this in. He writes: Read this please - don't weep, only wonder how the lives of such men as this can be sacrificed by such boobies.]

23 October 2005 By Severin Carrell, Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

Life was looking up for Christopher Hickey. He had a job he loved, and family and friends who loved him. He was due to come home to Britain tomorrow after his second tour of duty with the Coldstream Guards in Iraq.

He would see Gemma, his wife of two years. He would be nipping out for a pint with his mates at his old local. After closing time, he might even get to the nearby Chinese restaurant for his favourite meal of crispy duck, soy sauce and pancakes.

But all the things young men might have been and might have done were frozen in time last Tuesday night when Chris Hickey walked into trouble on a dusty street in Basra, southern Iraq.

Recently promoted to sergeant, he was on a routine patrol, leading his 30-strong platoon through the streets of the city. Hickey pressed on ahead of his men, reconnoitring a quiet street to ensure there was no ambush. A bomb exploded. His men rushed to give Sgt Hickey first aid.

Medical workers battled to save him in a military ambulance. A helicopter was scrambled to airlift him to the British military hospital in Shaiba. During the flight, Sgt Hickey died from his injuries. He was 30 years old.

But who was Christopher Hickey? What had taken him from the streets of East Brierley, a picturesque village on the outskirts of Bradford, with a chestnut-lined green, to the violent uncertainty of the streets of Iraq? This is the story of Christopher Hickey, an unknown soldier to all but the people of his home town.

As rain dripped from the eaves of the East Brierley cricket club, Robert Spence sat on a bench last week and thought about his best friend. In front of him were the Pennines, covered in a dense, grey sheet of rain and low clouds. And beyond, the lights from cars as people hurried along the M62 motorway.

Hunched against the cold, his face tense and tired, Spence became more relaxed as he remembered old times and high jinks with his mate. As kids, they used to run races over their neighbours' back gardens, vaulting the hedges as parents shouted after them.

There was Hickey, the teenager, who used to try his best at picking up girls in the area. "He never got very far, but he tried," said Robert. "To be fair, he was a scrawny little kid."

There was the Hickey he used to make illegal cocktails with, by mixing Taboo with lemonade. And there was his dress sense. "He liked owt with a zip," said Robert, shaking his head ruefully. "Bad for zips, he were. If it had a zip on it, he would wear it, really bad jumpers with zips."

He remembered other landmarks in his young friend's life: the time he bought an ancient white BMW convertible, which he called his "pimp mobile", a joke at his own expense on account of his failures chatting up girls. That car, his friend said, was so ugly "it was offensive".

He had other eccentric - and endearing - habits. He loved yoghurt and rarely went anywhere without a pot in his pocket. He once provoked fury among stuffier members of the cricket club by strolling over the ground's pristine wicket one day, nonchalantly scoffing a yoghurt.

Remembering this made Robert grin. Speaking as if Hickey were still alive, he said: "He's mad on yoghurt. Loves yoghurt ... On several occasions, when we were out drinking, he would pull a yoghurt out and just drink it, and get the rest out with his fingers. Yoghurt's good for you, he would say."

Hickey "were the life and soul", Robert added. "He had a wacky sense of humour; he were just funny, and as we got older, his sense of humour just got worse. He knew everybody. It were weird. He was always going to some wedding or some do or some birthday when he was home. Everybody in the village knew him. If he didn't wash their cars, they just knew him."

Although an unremarkable pupil with little interest in school - he was disciplined on his first day at Whitcliffe Mount - Hickey showed as remarkable a talent for entrepreneurship as he did for having fun.

As a boy, he was always looking to make a few quid. He built up a thriving business washing his neighbours' cars on Saturday and Sunday mornings, walking the streets with a bucket in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He made up to #50 a week, which wasn't bad for a teenager 15 years ago. He also worked at an Italian restaurant, as a kitchen boy washing dishes, and odd-jobbed.

Immediately after leaving school, Hickey tried several jobs, including working as a mechanic. But he could not settle, and felt himself drifting. He had seen schoolmates sliding into crime and drug abuse. One day, he got up, got dressed, went to the local Army careers office and signed up. For 22 years. He was serious. Like generations of his young countrymen, Hickey joined the Army to find out about himself and find his own place in the world.

"He thought if he stayed around here he would've ended up getting into trouble," Robert said. "I never thought he would make it in the Army. I thought he would be back, but when he passed out, me and our mate Matthew went down for the passing-out parade, and he was one of the best new recruits. He won an award for being fittest recruit or something." All of Hickey's friends shared Robert's surprise and misgivings about Hickey's new career. It seemed entirely out of character, the disciplined, structured life of a Guards regiment was a long way from the anarchic, irreverent and wacky Hickey they had grown up with.

Sam Metcalfe, another of his closest friends, said: "He joined the Coldstream Guards, which was hilarious because I didn't think he would last a minute. We never thought he'd make it. But it turned him around, didn't it?" And now, looking back, it all fitted into place. Hickey badly wanted to make it work. When he applied to the Army, he was too skinny. The recruiting office told him he needed to put on weight, so he came home and ate like a horse.

"I remember he wanted to join when he was 16 but they told him he was too light, so he went away, put on half a stone and went back when he was 17," said Robert. "He just loved it. He thrived on it. He would come back and he was always the same Chris, but the stories he would tell; how much he had enjoyed it."

Hickey's jump into adulthood and a new-found sense of responsibility was also evident from his marriage to Gemma two years ago. He had met her at a nightclub near Catterick training camp in North Yorkshire. Brought up near the base, she had been prepared to move wherever he went, embracing the upheavals and uncertainties of being an army wife. "She was his life," Robert said. "She had packed up everything to move with him. She would've gone wherever she wanted, and she was more than happy to go."

With Gemma in mind, since she had never been to the United States, the couple and Robert and his wife had planned their Christmas holiday in Florida. Robert expects the trip to be cancelled. Gemma was too grief-stricken to talk publicly about her husband's death last week.

There was only one topic his friends were unwilling to discuss last week: the politics of the Iraq war, due chiefly to his parents' strong wishes. Robert Spence's father, Kenneth, is adamant about that. "That's one thing we do know for certain: that there's no political side to this at all. He was a professional soldier. He went where he was told, and he did his job, and was good at his job. His family don't want to put any political slant on whether we should be there or shouldn't have been there."

But the political background to Hickey's death was never far from the conversation around the lager glasses in the snug at the New Inn, where Hickey should have been enjoying a pint this week.

Chris Hickey's death has given life to a growing anti-war sentiment among some people in the village, and increased resentment of Tony Blair's government. This is a naturally Conservative neighbourhood, says Joyce Geary, the popular landlady of the New Inn pub for the past 10 years. Hickey was a regular at the New Inn, the hub of his social life in the village.

Suddenly, with his death, Mrs Geary and other villagers have a face and person to put to the name and the number of war dead. "It just brought it home," she said. "How many more of our lads are going to die like this? They've done what they wanted to do, and it's time that they brought them home, all of them. Let them fight amongst themselves, but don't involve our lads any more."

Mrs Geary, trim and smartly dressed, with a ready smile, has contempt for the Prime Minister and is derisive about his relationship with the US President, George Bush. "He's like a lapdog isn't he? Wagging his tail, just following Bush around. Everything he says 'Yes' to, and he's sending our lads over there. If the Americans want to do it, let them get on with it."

Sam Metcalfe agreed. "I have never encountered a lot of death in my family. It's my first taste of grief. This is my first friend who's died. It's not like he had an illness. We were expecting him home. When you heard a soldier got killed, a month or two ago, you always feel it's going to be someone else, not one of your mates. It's shite, really. You know what I mean?

"I think it's a waste, because he's a hell of a good mate of mine. But at the end of the day, Chris was doing his job: 'I've been sent and I know what I have got to do.' Chris was a soldier through and through."

The word "waste" crops up often, the waste of a great friend. What his mates remember were his pranks and his pratfalls.

"People say once someone has been killed they grow wings and they're suddenly special, but he actually were," added Sam. "He was one of the best lads I've ever known. I never saw him fall out with anybody. He got done for drink driving, but he could make that funny. There wasn't a bad bone in his body."

IRAQ RESISTANCE ROUNDUP

GUESS WHAT HE'S THINKING

An Iraqi boy looks at a US soldier from the First Battalion, 17th Infantry in an alleyway as his platoon conducts a sweep in neighborhoods close to downtown Mosul. (AFP/Cris Bouroncle)

Assorted Resistance Action

Iraqis watch the remains of a suicide car bomb which exploded near a regional government ministry in a predominantly Kurdish province of Sulaimaniyah, near Kirkuk, Iraq, Tuesday, Oct. 25, killing at least nine people and wounding four, a security official said.(AP Photo/Yahya Ahmed)

October 25, 2005 TheKansasCityChannel & YAHYA BARZANJI, AP & By DPA & Reuters & AFP News

Police said a policeman in Baghdad and a policewoman in Mosul were killed in drive-by shootings.

In Baghdad, insurgents used three bombs and five shootings on Tuesday to kill a policeman - and wound 34 Iraqis, most of them police officers, officials said.

A blast in Sulaimaniyah occurred on the outskirts of the city right outside the ministry that houses Kurdish forces known as peshmerga.

It killed six peshmerga and three civilians and wounded two peshmerga and two civilians, said Lt. Col. Taha Redha, a peshmerga official.

About 45 minutes earlier, a car bomber rammed his vehicle into a seven-car convoy carrying Mullah Bakhtiyar, a senior Kurdish official in President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party, said police Col. Najim Al-Din Qader. Bakhtayar was slightly injured

The blast in Sulaimaniyah city wounded two of the convoy's guards and damaged two of its cars, Qader said.

Sulaimaniyah - the city and province have the same name - is where the PUK party is based, and it is considered one of the most peaceful areas of Iraq. [Not any more, right?]

The bodies of eight Iraqi border guards, blindfolded and with their hands bound behind their backs, were found near the Saudi border in western Iraq on Tuesday, police said.

RAMADI - Three corpses of Iraqi army soldiers wearing civilian clothes were found in Ramadi. Doctor Hamdi al-Rawi from Ramadi General hospital said the bodies had gunshot wounds to the head.

BAGHDAD - Two policemen were killed and another seven wounded when gunmen ambushed a vehicle transferring prisoners in the western Ghazaliya district of Baghdad, police said. It was not clear if there were casualties among the prisoners. [Translation: the prisoners were freed.]

Two security officials shot dead in the violent southern neighborhood of Dura.

FORWARD OBSERVATIONS

"It's An Unreal, Unspeakable Pain"

25 Oct 2005 PRESS RELEASE: Vigil On Staten Island TOMORROW To Mark 2000

US Troops Killed In Iraq, WAGE PEACE CAMPAIGN Co-Sponsored by Gold Star Families for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, and Military Families Speak Out

"My husband who has served in the Army National Guard for over 23 years and counting, serving and protecting our country, was sent to Iraq for a year and a half where he lost many many friends and comrades.

"Althouh he is home now, he will never be the same. For the families of those soldiers lost in Iraq, it's an unreal, unspeakable pain", said Debra Anderson, organizer of a weekly vigil at Staten Island's Borough Hall - across from the Ferry Terminal.

"My Army Right Now Is Truly In Bad Shape"

"Problems Are Brewing"

19 october 2005 Interview with Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Former US State Department Chief of Staff. New America Foundation American Strategy Program Policy Forum. [Excerpt]

We may have to do that anyway because my army right now is truly in bad shape - truly in bad shape.

And I'm not talking about the billions and billions of dollars of equipment it's burning up in Iraq at a rate 10 or 15 times the rate its life cycle said it should be burned up at, but I'm also talking about when you have officers who have to hedge the truth, NCOs who have to hedge the truth.

They start voting with their feet, as they did in Vietnam, my war.

They come home and they tell their wife they've got to go back for the third tour and the fourth tour and the wife says, uh-uh, or the husband says, uh-uh, and all of a sudden your military begins to unravel.

And the signs are very concrete right now that the Army and the Marine Corps - to a lesser extent the other services because they're not quite as involved in the deployments that we're talking about here and the frequency thereof, the op tempo as we say it - problems are brewing. Problems are brewing.

Wanted: Moral Avengers

October 17, 2005 by Samuel Bostaph, LewRockwell.com

The other day the editorial page of my local newspaper included a letter to the editor expressing bewilderment at the continued media coverage of Cindy Sheehan's speeches and actions. The letter writer accused the media of an anti-war or anti-Bush bias, and said that it was time for Cindy to return to obscurity.

It's not that time, and Cindy's not going. All you have to do is look in her eyes and see the obvious sorrow, and the absolute conviction that she is right to do what she is doing, to know why the interviews and speeches will not stop.

This is also the reason why Cindy Sheehan continues to get media coverage: Cindy is for real. She's not running a game like so many of the other public figures who cluster about her in public meetings, basking in the celebrity and looking for an opportunity to plump for their own rackets.

What the letter writer, and those who agree with him, fails to see is the remarkable rarity and attractiveness of a public figure who is not only intelligent and articulate, but also is possessed of an absolute clarity and integrity of purpose.

Many interviews with Cindy Sheehan have been published since she caught the attention of the media during her vigil in Crawford, Texas, last August. There is a unifying thread among the longer ones: the reporters are captivated by her. In the October 14 issue of LA Weekly, Judith Lewis classes Cindy's charisma with that of Bill Clinton and Warren Beatty in an attempt to explain Lewis's own attraction to a woman who possesses none of the artificial glamour and studied poise that Hollywood and politics rewards with the limelight.

Lewis is wrong about Cindy, just as she demeans her subject with the comparison.

Cindy Sheehan's honest face and the depth of her sincerity simply break through the skepticism of those who interview her. Prepared through long experience to be both user and used in the game of politics and public advocacy, and jaded by that past experience, they succumb to her basic humanity.

They also know that George Bush can't answer the question Cindy Sheehan puts to him.

All of his past excuses for the war and occupation have fallen by the wayside, one by one. Bush's public speeches make it clear that he doesn't know the answer; he lacks clarity himself. And if the President of the United States cannot give a truthful and coherent explanation of why he broke his oath to uphold and preserve the Constitution of the United States by waging an undeclared war, then Cindy Sheehan speaks for all of us in demanding that he bring our troops home so that no more pointless casualties will occur.

In what she has done, as overused as the term is now, this lone woman has become a modern hero.

Her son's death may have been the spur for her demand that George Bush explain his actions.

The fact that the most powerful man in the world can't do it, and runs from her, is what keeps her in the news.

Cindy Sheehan is a moral avenger and those are rare in the public life of our time. This is our misfortune.

Legal Nonsense:

The "War on Terror" Devoid Of Substance

October 13, 2005 An Interview with Prof. Francis Boyle, J.D., Ph.D. [Excerpts. In the posting, LID is not identified, and no publication source was given.]

Francis Boyle: Let's be clear about all this. Bin Laden is our guy.

The Carter administration, as well as the Reagan people, worked hand-in-glove with bin Laden and the CIA. That's where he and al-Qaeda came from! As long as he was fighting the Soviet Union, he was "a freedom fighter," part of the Mujahideen.

But once these Islamic warriors turned against the U.S. and its view of the world - assuming that they ever believed it - they became "terrorists" overnight.

LID: You mentioned that one of the real problems making this war on terror so vague, so sweeping and so meaningless - to the point of allowing it to encompass just about anything the Bushites want it to - is that all the normal protections afforded to people on the opposite side of an armed force can be twisted, manipulated, or just dispensed with.

FB: It's dehumanizing to Arabs, Blacks, Muslims, Asians, Coloreds. We cannot forget the racist element of the war here, very much like Vietnam.

In Vietnam, we had to dehumanize them in order to kill them - so we called them "gooks."

Now instead of looking at these people as human beings, with grievances and a cause that they have not made known to our people but might like to, we call them "terrorists."

We dehumanize them in order to make it easier for the American people to do terrible things to them that we otherwise would not be doing in all likelihood. I doubt seriously that we would be treating white Christians or white Jews this way.

These terrorists, as we call them, are throwaway people.

LID: On a side (but related) note, one of the pretexts we have heard that was supposed to have justified our aggression in Afghanistan is the phrase, "Afghanistan is a failed state." It appears everywhere in the political literature on the subject and it seems to say that, as a consequence, the norms of international law between one sovereign State and another simply don't apply. Would you say that is gibberish?

FB: Yes, it means nothing. It's just a category, a description, pulled out of thin air and developed.

LID: The Afghans don't see things the way we do, so they can be dismissed as a nonentity, right?

FB: Yes. In fact we were actually negotiating with the Taliban government in