Is Ramadan Arabic for Tet?

This looks like part of a well-organized, systematic attack on all things related to the US occupation that I fear will increase in complexity in the coming days.
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Suicide Attacks Kill Dozens in Baghdad

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 27, 2003; 9:18 AM

BAGHDAD, Oct. 27 -- Powerful suicide car bombs exploded outside the local headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross and three police stations across Baghdad Monday morning, killing at least 34 people and wounding 224 in a series of sophisticated and apparently coordinated attacks on the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The bombings, which killed one U.S. soldier and wounded at least seven others, created a panorama of death and destruction unseen in the Iraqi capital since the end of the U.S.-led war that toppled Saddam Hussein's government, sparking panic and grief as Muslims began a month-long daylight fast.

At each blast site, the tableau of violence was eerily similar: Broken glass and twisted metal lined the street, bloodied victims milled about, edgy American soldiers and distraught Iraq police scoured the rubble for survivors, still-burning cars unleashed plumes of acrid smoke into the blue morning sky. The blasts occurred within an hour of each other, forcing siren-wailing ambulances and fire trucks to crisscross the city all morning.

The Red Cross said 12 people were killed in front of its offices in central Baghdad, including two unarmed guards. At least 22 people were killed in the three police station bombings, according to reports from police officials and hospitals that received casualties. Of the 224 injured, 159 were civilians, said Gen. Ahmed Ibrahim, the deputy interior minister.

Eight of the dead were Iraqi police officers, Ibrahim said. The U.S. military said one soldier was killed in the car bombing of the Bayaa police station in southern Baghdad. Military officials said at seven other U.S. military police officers were wounded in the bombings.

A fourth police station was targeted with a large car bomb but guards shot the driver before he could detonate the explosives. Police officials identified the driver, who was badly wounded, as a Syrian national. "He was shouting, 'Death to the Iraqi police! You're collaborators!' " Sgt. Ahmed Abdel Sattar was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.

The bombings occurred just hours after three other American soldiers were killed in overnight attacks in and around the capital, bringing to 112 the total number of U.S. military personnel killed in hostile acts since President Bush declared an end to major combat in Iraq on May 1. Two soldiers from the Army's 1st Armored Division were killed and two were wounded when their patrol passed by a roadside bomb, the military said. Another soldier died from wounds sustained in a mortar strike on the Abu Ghraib prison complex west of the capital.

On Sunday, the al-Rashid Hotel, which is home to hundreds of U.S. military and civilian reconstruction personnel, was hit by a barrage of rockets fired from a launcher disguised as a portable generator. A senior U.S. Army officer was killed and 17 people were wounded in the brazen strike at the core of the U.S. presence in Iraq. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz was in the hotel but was unhurt in the attack.

While Wolfowitz and other U.S. officials have blamed Hussein loyalists and other terrorists for the violence that has plagued Iraq under the U.S.-led occupation, Iraqis interviewed at the bombing sites expressed scorn at the American presence in their country, arguing that it is has been responsible for provoking the attacks.

"Things are getting worse and worse because of the occupation," said Amer Abbas, a shopkeeper whose store was destroyed by one of the police station blasts. "As long as the Americans are here, things will not improve."

A sense of frustration was clearly evident among military commanders surveying the wreckage. "This slows us down," said Lt. Col. Eric Nantz, a battalion commander with the 82nd Airborne Division's 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment. "It puts us back into combat operations. It's not where we want to be. It's not where the Iraqi people want us to be."

Brig. Gen. Mark Hertling, the assistant commander of the 1st Armored Division, which is responsible for Baghdad, said he believed the attacks may have been timed with the start of Ramadan in order to heighten tensions during the fasting month.

The first bomb exploded at 8:30 a.m. outside the Red Cross headquarters, a two-story house fortified with dirt-filled barriers and sandbags. Witnesses said a suicide bomber drove a vehicle that appeared to be an ambulance up to the security barriers and detonated explosives inside. The force of the blast ripped through a parking lot and blew off the front wall of the Red Cross building, sending debris flying for more than 200 yards.

Ten civilian passersby and two Red Cross guards were killed, Red Cross officials said. More than a dozen people were wounded.

"It was a terrible crime," said Ali Hussein Mudhim, a guard at the nearby office of the Iraqi Geological Survey, who helped drag wounded people away from a large fire caused by the explosion. "This is a disaster for our country."

The blast demolished a dozen cars in the area and broke a water main, flooding the streets. The inside of the building was littered with shattered glass, broken doors and toppled bookcases.

The attack stunned employees of the Red Cross, a non-political humanitarian organization that has generally been immune from attacks in other hostile areas. "We're shocked," said Nada Doumani, a Red Cross spokeswoman here.

"We were always confident that people knew us and that our work here would protect us," she said. "This is completely un-understandable."

The Red Cross cut its foreign staff from more than 100 to about 30 after a Sri Lankan technician was shot dead in July and after a suicide bomber devastated the U.N. headquarters in August, killing 22 people.

Shortly after the Red Cross bombing, explosions ripped through three police stations: one in the Shaab neighborhood in northern Baghdad, one in Khadra in the western part of the city and one in the Bayaa area to the south. All three were suicide bombings, police officials said. In at least one of the incidents -- in Bayaa -- the bomber drove a truck painted to look like an Iraqi police vehicle, which allowed him to pass through a checkpoint and a rung of barriers designed to protect the building from car bombs.

The blast at the Bayaa station, which occurred just yards away from the front door, sheared off the front of the two-story building and left an eight-foot-deep crater in the parking lot. More than 20 cars were destroyed, transforming the front parking lot into a junkyard of mangled and charred pieces of metal.

It was not immediately clear how many officers and civilians were killed and injured at the site, although witnesses put the number of injured in the dozens. Five military police officers at the station were wounded, American officers said. The police officers' Humvee vehicles were pocked with shrapnel and had their windows blown out.

 

So our success is measured in how many people the other guys kill?
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Bush: Desperation Spurred Attacks

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 27, 2003; 12:30 PM

President Bush this morning said the increasing attacks on U.S. personnel and supporters in Iraq are a sign of progress because the attacks indicate Iraqi opponents are getting increasingly desperate.

Meeting with the U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, in the Oval Office, Bush spoke after attacks on several police stations and a Red Cross facility killed at least 34 today in Iraq, following yesterday's attack on a hotel occupied by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz. Bush said terrorists in Iraq are reacting to American successes. "The more successful we are on the ground, the more these killers will react," Bush said.

Later, he expanded on that theme. "The more progress we make on the ground, the more free the Iraqis become, the more electricity is available, the more jobs are available, the more kids that are going to school, the more desperate these killers become, because they can't stand the thought of a free society."

Bremer, who has been accompanied on his Washington visit by Army Gen. John Abizaid, the leader of U.S. forces in Iraq, said that "a lot of wonderful things" have happened in Iraq since Bremer last met with Bush in July. Speaking of improvements to electricity, schools and hospitals, Bremer said: "We'll have rough days, such as we've had the last couple of days. But the overall thrust is in the right direction, and the good days outnumber the bad days."

In arguing that increasingly violent or brazen attacks are a sign of U.S. progress, Bush repeated an assertion that White House officials began to make back in August, when U.N. headquarters and a major mosque were attacked.

At his morning briefing, White House press secretary Scott McClellan sought to emphasize Bush's link between progress and heightened attacks. "We've always said the more progress we make, the more desperate the killers will become," the spokesman said. Asked how it could be determined that the attacks signaled desperation rather than sophistication, McClellan repeated: "The more progress we make toward a free and prosperous Iraq, the more desperate they will become."

Bush also pronounced that the donors conference for Iraq last week had been a success. Representatives of foreign governments, meeting in Madrid, offered about $13 billion in a combination of loans and grants toward the more than $50 billion the administration projects will be needed for reconstruction.

"We spent time talking about the success of the donors conference, the fact that the world community is coming together to help build a free Iraq, and we want to thank the world for the willingness to step up and to help," Bush said. The president did not repeat a veto threat, made by an aide, if Congress does not provide the $20 billion Bush requested entirely in grants rather than loans. "My attitude has been and still is that the money we provide Iraq ought to be in the form of grants," he said, "and the reason why is we want to make sure that the constraints on the Iraqi people are limited so that they can flourish and become a free and prosperous society."

The president also linked the attacks on the Red Cross and the police stations today to a toughening of targets involving U.S. personnel. Bush said the occupation authority is countering the attacks by training Iraqi security personnel -- McClellan said there are already 85,000 -- and "working hard with freedom-loving Iraqis to help ferret these people out before they attack and strike."

Bush, who returned Friday from a sweep through Asia and Australia, said he has a case of jetlag as he returns to work in Washington. "Do I ever," he said.

 

By the way, the soldier killed in the hotel rocket attack was a Colonel... highest ranking so far.

 

Bush is way ahead of you B-Bob. Here's his plan...

"The ambassador and the general were briefing me on the—the vast majority of Iraqis want to live in a peaceful, free world. And we will find these people and we will bring them to justice."

—George W. Bush
Washington, D.C., Oct. 27, 2003

 

Agree to a point. What those images showed the public is how badly and baldly they had been misled by the administration.

 

McCain makes the reference...
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Bush Says Attacks Are Reflection of U.S. Gains


By Dana Milbank and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, October 28, 2003; Page A01


President Bush yesterday put the best face on a new surge of violence in Iraq as his top defense aides huddled to discuss additional ways of thwarting the anti-American rebellion there before it becomes more widespread.

The president, speaking after attacks on police stations and a Red Cross facility in Iraq killed at least 35 people, said such attacks should be seen as a sign of progress because they show the desperation of those who oppose the U.S.-led occupation.

"The more successful we are on the ground, the more these killers will react," Bush said as he sat in the Oval Office with L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq. He added: "The more progress we make on the ground, the more free the Iraqis become, the more electricity is available, the more jobs are available, the more kids that are going to school, the more desperate these killers become, because they can't stand the thought of a free society."

While Bush argued that the latest violence -- attackers also hit the Baghdad hotel where Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz was staying Sunday -- was vindication of the administration's approach, Pentagon officials conferred about how to prevent such attacks from foiling its plan to transfer power to Iraqi police and security forces.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, meeting with Bremer, and senior military officials including Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top U.S. commander for the Middle East, brainstormed about how to stop the attacks on the very institutions that are needed to advance the U.S. occupation force.

The U.S. strategy is to turn over security missions to Iraqi soldiers and police forces as quickly as possible. "We're all doing a lot of thinking about it," said one official involved in the discussions. But, he said, no clear answers have emerged yet. In a sign of the matter's urgency, Rumsfeld scheduled another meeting for today with Abizaid, Myers and Bremer.

The deliberations are taking on increased urgency because U.S. intelligence and military officials are saying U.S. forces in Iraq have a limited time to break the resistance before the general population joins it.

A senior intelligence official told The Washington Post that the United States has a window of three to six months to put down the resistance. Iraqis generally are not aiding or abetting groups believed to be responsible for the violence. But, the official said, the anti-U.S. groups are trying to form a coordinated campaign across Iraq.

If successful, "they would be more effective and harder to prevent," the official said. "They would send a signal to the populace" that they are an alternative to the occupation.

Another senior intelligence official said the United States has not devoted enough attention to understanding the anti-American groups in Iraq because intelligence resources have been devoted to locating weapons of mass destruction. As a result, the intelligence community and the military have little precise information about the resistance. "I am not happy with the kind of information we are getting," the official said.

The military also believes that insurgencies like the one in Iraq coalesce into larger rebellions if allowed to fester. Adding to the need for rapid action, a senior U.S. military official involved in Iraq strategy said yesterday that the Pentagon expects to significantly pare its presence in Iraq when major troop rotations come in February. "The feeling is, get it done while we have the assets available," the official said.

Bush gave no hint of such backroom deliberations as he argued that the recent attacks only demonstrated foes' desperation. It was an amplification of a theme he struck after terrorists attacked the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad on Aug. 19, when he said, "Every sign of progress in Iraq adds to the desperation of the terrorists and the remnants of Saddam's brutal regime."

Democrats reacted with ridicule. Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), a presidential candidate, likened Bush's statement to the "light at the end of the tunnel" claims during the Vietnam War. "Does the president really believe that suicide bombers are willing to strap explosives to their bodies because we're restoring electricity and creating jobs for Iraqis?" Kerry asked in a statement.

Bush got a similar reprimand earlier from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has supported the president on Iraq. "This is the first time that I have seen a parallel to Vietnam, in terms of information that the administration is putting out versus the actual situation on the ground," he told Newsweek. White House press secretary Scott McClellan defended Bush's assertion, saying: "Our military leaders have said that some of these attacks have become more sophisticated, but what you're really seeing is that the more progress we make, the more desperate these killers become."

Bush's senior diplomats were somewhat more measured than their boss in their assessments of the Iraq situation. Bremer, at the meeting with Bush, said: "We'll have rough days, such as we've had the last couple of days. But the overall thrust is in the right direction, and the good days outnumber the bad days." Secretary of State Colin L. Powell later told reporters "it's been a bad 24 hours" in Iraq.

Powell expressed concern that contractors, aid groups and the United Nations will withdraw in significant numbers. "Their work is needed," he said. "And if they are driven out, then the terrorists win." As the Red Cross assessed its future, Doctors Without Borders said it would reduce its presence in Baghdad.

Though Bush's argument that the violence indicated progress struck some as counterintuitive, those sympathetic to the administration said there was logic to the claim. Thomas Donnelly of the American Enterprise Institute said that by attacking "soft targets" such as the Red Cross and the Iraqi police, the foes are demonstrating that "they don't have the strength" to inflict major losses on U.S. troops.

Experts in public opinion said it would be difficult for Bush to convince Americans that the violence was a byproduct of success. Jeremy Rosner, a Democratic pollster, said the public is "more and more worried as the drumbeat of casualties continues and the administration constantly shifts rationale and tactics." Frank Luntz, who has advised Republicans on use of language, said Bush's upbeat argument is "better than saying nothing, but it's not enough to say it. You've got to show the evidence."

Bush pronounced last week'sdonors conference in Madrid a success. Foreign governments offered about $13 billion in a combination of loans and grants toward the more than $50 billion the administration projects will be needed for Iraq's reconstruction. He did not repeat a veto threat, made by an aide, if Congress does not provide the $20 billion Bush requested entirely in grants rather than loans. "My attitude has been, and still is, that the money we provide Iraq ought to be in the form of a grant," Bush said.

The president linked the attacks on the Red Cross and the police stations to a toughening of targets involving U.S. personnel. He said the occupation authority is countering the attacks by training Iraqi security workers -- McClellan said there are 85,000 -- and "working hard with freedom-loving Iraqis to help ferret these people out before they attack and strike."

But several security experts said the latest round of attacks raises questions about the U.S. plan for an expeditious transfer of power to these Iraqi authorities.

"The attacks focus attention on our inability to provide security or prevent devastating attacks, and possibly deter collaboration by Iraqis and cooperation by outside actors," said Judith Yaphe, a former CIA analyst of Iraqi affairs who teaches at the National Defense University. "They strike with impunity -- and there seems to be little we can do to prevent them."

This nettlesome issue was on the agenda yesterday as Rumsfeld met with top defense officials. According to an official involved, the tone of the meeting was similar to that of the Rumsfeld memo that leaked last week. In it, the defense secretary called for bolder ways to counter terrorism and predicted that the U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan would be "a long, hard slog."

But, this official added, "there's no sense of panic." Mainly, he said, the top officials were reviewing the state of Iraqi security forces, including the timetable for their development and the quality of different institutions, such as civil defense units, police forces and the slowly emerging new Iraqi army.

Some specialists said they fear the Bush administration, lacking many fresh troops, is trying to turn over security tasks to Iraqis too quickly. "The strategy of trying to rush in newly trained Iraqi military and police isn't necessarily an adequate and sufficient response," said Robert Gelbard, a retired U.S. diplomat.

Expressing a sentiment held by many, Marine Gen. Joseph Hoar, a former head of U.S. Central Command, said, "Everyone knows you need more troops over there."

The National Intelligence Council, through which the CIA's 12 national intelligence officers provide analysis to the government's intelligence community, has been assessing the security situation in Iraq.

 

Iraq is, apparently, a dangerous place. From today's press conference...
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QUESTION: Mr. President, thank you.

In recent weeks, you and your White House team have made a concerted effort to put a positive spin on progress in Iraq. And at the same time, there's been a much more somber assessment in private, as with Secretary's Rumsfeld's memo. And there are people out there who don't believe that the administration is leveling with them about the difficulty and scope of the problem in Iraq.

BUSH: I can't put it any more plainly. Iraq's a dangerous place.

That's leveling. It is a dangerous place.

What I was saying is, there's more than just the terrorist attacks that are taking place in Iraq. There's schools opening, there are hospitals opening, the electricity -- the capacity to deliver electricity to the Iraqi people is back up to prewar levels, where nearly 2 million barrels of oil a day being produced for the Iraqi people.

So I was just saying we've got to look at the whole picture, that what the terrorists would like is for people to focus only on the conditions which create fear, and that is the death and the toll being taken.

Now, Iraq's a danger place and I can't put it any more bluntly than that. I know it's a dangerous place.

And I also know our strategy to root them out, which is to encourage better intelligence and get more Iraqis involved and have our strike teams ready to move, is the right strategy.

People are constantly taking a look at the enemy. And that was one of the hallmarks of this operation in Iraq, as well as Afghanistan, was the flexibility we've given our commanders. You might remember the stuck in the desert scenario, that -- during the dust storms that we were advancing to Baghdad and all of a sudden there was -- we got stuck.

But remember that at that period of time, it also became apparent that Tommy Franks had the flexibility necessary to adjust, based upon, in this case, weather conditions and what he found.

And that's exactly what's taking place on a regular basis inside of Iraq. The strategy remains the same. The tactics to respond to, you know, more suiciders driving cars, will alter on the ground.

More checkpoints, whatever they decide -- how to harden targets will change. And so we're constantly looking at the enemy and adjusting.

And Iraq is dangerous, and it's dangerous because terrorists want us to leave and we're not leaving.

 

More hilarity ensues at today's press conference...
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QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President.

You recently put Condoleezza Rice, your national security adviser, in charge of the management of the administration's Iraq policy. What has effectively changed since she's been in charge?

And a second question: Can you promise a year from now that you will have reduced the number of troops in Iraq?

BUSH: The second question is a trick question, so I won't answer it.

The first question was Condoleezza Rice. Her job is to coordinate inter-agency. She's doing a fine job of coordinating inter-agency. She's doing what her -- I mean, the role of the national security adviser is to not only provide good advice to the president, which she does on a regular basis -- I value her judgment and her intelligence -- but her job is also to deal inter-agency and to help unstick things that may get stuck. That's the best way to put it. She's an unsticker...

 

Just for you Deck, here's another gem...
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QUESTION: Mr. President, your policies on the Middle East seem so far to have produced pretty meager results, as the violence between Israelis and Palestinians...

BUSH: Major or meager?

QUESTION: Meager.

BUSH: OK.