Antiwar.com Blog

Comical Allawi, the man without a military, is threatening “military action” against the people of Fallujah:

13 October 2004 — Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is threatening military action against the main insurgent stronghold of Al-Fallujah if residents don’t hand over Jordanian-born militant Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi and his comrades.

“If al-Zarqawi and his group are not handed over to us, we are ready for major operations in Fallujah,” Allawi said. “We are determined to safeguard the Iraqi people, because there are forces that want to inflict harm on the Iraqi people. I hope they [people in Al-Fallujah] will respond. If they don’t, we will have to use force.”
[…]
Meanwhile, a group led by al-Zarqawi posted a video on the Internet that showed two Iraqi intelligence officers beheaded.

I guess upping the bounty for Zarqawi from ten million to twenty five million hasn’t worked any better than it has for capturing Osama bin Laden. Of course, massive force didn’t work against bin Laden either. Massive force is usually counterproductive in a guerrilla conflict anyway, since inevitably large numbers of civilians get killed, which turns more of the population into insurgents or rebel-sympathizers, which is why guerillas try to provoke the massive use of force – sort of like what Zarqawi is doing to Allawi and the US military.

Anyway, how do they know he’s in Fallujah? More of that whiz-bang “intelligence?”

The United States tried twice to rescue the two Americans and one British citizen held hostage in Iraq, according to a U.S. official with direct knowledge of the attempts.

The attempts involved deploying U.S. military as well as other government personnel on two occasions. Intelligence led the rescue teams to two locations in Baghdad, the official said.

Both times, the source said, the missions came up with “dry holes.”

For those who may have been wondering where the US disappears their super-secret captives, Haaretz is claiming to know:

Most of the Al-Qaida detainees who were arrested in Afghanistan in the course of the war or its aftermath were transfered to the American base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A minority were held in Pakistan, where some had been picked up, and were later moved to Jordan.

It is not known where precisely in the Hashemite kingdom they are being held, but they are thought to be at a secret facility belonging to Jordanian intelligence or at a secret base.

Their detention outside the U.S. enables CIA interrogators to apply interrogation methods that are banned by U.S. law, and to do so in a country where cooperation with the Americans is particularly close, thereby reducing the danger of leaks.

According to the Human Rights Watch report, the CIA was granted special permission by the U.S. law enforcement authorities to operate “other laws” at the secret facility with regard to interrogation methods.

Detainees are subjected to physical and psychological pressure that includes the use of simulated drowning, loud music, sleep deprivation, and sensory deprivation. Some of these methods were exposed with the revelation of torture techniques used by American interrogators at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

The CIA’s prisoners at the facility in Jordan include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, considered Al-Qaida’s head of operations and number three in the Al-Qaida hierarchy after Osama bin Laden and Aiman al-Zawahiri, who have eluded capture.

On this topic, zeynep at Under the Same Sun makes this perceptive observation:

Human Rights Watch has tracked down 11 people that the U.S. won’t even acknowledge are in custody. The fact that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed as well as Abu Zubaydah are amone the eleven will make many people think, oh, well — those are bunch of terrorists. Frankly, I’d find it hard to get excited about anyone who planned the mass murder of thousands of people. But this is not about them, but about what kind of society are.

In fact, people’s reluctance to respect the rights of the guilty –or those perceived to be guilty as those freed from death-row will testify– is why we have courts and laws. How do we know it’s only eleven people who’ve disappeared down this Gulag? How do we know they’re guilty? Why can’t they be brought to justice, be tried in court? What are they hiding?

History is crystal clear on this topic: once a society okays the disappearance of a few without accountability, the unaccountable inevitably widen their scope of operations. We’ve been warned.

Senators Jim Bunning (R, Ky.) and Mark Dayton (D, Minn.) are convinced al-Qaeda is out to get them. Why al-Qaeda would bother with either of these clowns is anyone’s guess, but please remember their names the next time someone calls you paranoid for objecting to the PATRIOT Act (which Bunning and Dayton support, of course.)

Europe need no longer cringe in fear of being 45 minutes from a WMD strike from Iraq! Whew!

A big Antiwar.com welcome to our newest blogger, Kevin Michael Grace. Kevin is a Canadian paleocon who has his own show over at The Ambler. We got tired of copying and pasting from his site, so we decided to just go ahead and invite him over. Enjoy!

Titan Corp. contractors beheaded

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) An Islamic Web site on Monday showed the beheading of two hostages one a Turkish contractor and the other an Iraqi Kurdish translator wearing a badge of the Titan security company. A statement said the two were killed by the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, which also claimed responsibility for slaughtering 12 Nepalese workers and three Iraqi Kurds on Aug. 31

Titan Corporation

On a related topic:

KIRKUK, Oct 11 (AFP) – A spike in the number of kidnappings of Turkish tanker drivers delivering fuel to Iraq has plunged the northern city of Kirkuk in an energy crisis, an oil executive said Monday.

“For the first time, Kirkuk is facing a severe fuel shortage because Turkish drivers are refusing to come to Iraq because of the threat of kidnapping and attacks on the road between the two countries,” said Ali Sahin, director of the General Oil Products company during a city council meeting.

He said the Kirkuk refinery was in no position to meet all of the region’s demand, especially with winter approaching.

Two other beheaded bodies were found near Mosul today, but were not identified.