Five New York Times Pieces Describe Iraq Today
As Many as 60 Bodies Are Found in Baghdad
Congress Is Told of Failures of Rebuilding in Iraq
Iraqi Journalists Add Laws to List of Dangers
Iraqi Violence Is Growing, Author Says
Poll Says Most Iraqis Want U.S. Out
More below.
September 29, 2006
After Burst of Violence, as Many as 60 Bodies Are Found in Baghdad
BAGHDAD, Sept. 28 --As many as 60 bodies, many of them shot in the head at close range and bearing signs of torture, were discovered across the city on Thursday, an Interior Ministry official said.
The death toll was one of the highest in weeks and came as American and Iraqi troops continued to sweep Baghdad's most dangerous neighborhoods in a broad effort to control the capital. Killings of this kind, often driven by sectarian hatred, increased sharply here after the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February.
Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, a United States military spokesman, said Wednesday that such killings and other murders continued to claim more people in Baghdad than suicide bombings. Military officials had predicted a rise in violence with the advent of Ramadan, the holy month that began earlier this week.
Also on Thursday, an Islamist Internet site posted an audio clip of a man it identified as Hamza al-Muhajir, an Egyptian who the American military has said is Al Qaeda's new chief in Iraq. In the 20-minute clip, the man exhorts fellow Sunni fighters to "work hard in this holy month to capture some Christian dogs," to trade for an Egyptian sheik, Omar Abdel Rahman, who is imprisoned in the United States. Sheik Abdel Rahman, a blind Muslim cleric, was convicted in 1995 of plotting to blow up several New York City landmarks.
Congress Is Told of Failures of Rebuilding Work in Iraq
By JAMES GLANZ
WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 -- In a sweeping new assessment of reconstruction failures in Iraq, a federal inspector told Congress on Thursday that 13 of 14 major projects built by the American contractor Parsons that were examined by his agency were substandard, with construction deficiencies and other serious problems.
The final project, a prison near the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriya, was terminated for other reasons, said the inspector, Stuart Bowen, who heads the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. Delays and cost overruns led to its cancellation.
Whether because the political stakes in Iraq have risen with the approach of the November elections, or simply because of the scope of the problems, Mr. Bowen's testimony set off outrage on both sides of the political aisle on a topic -- reconstruction failures -- that previously was mostly in the sights of Congressional Democrats.
"So when they get the construction right, something else goes wrong?" said Representative John M. McHugh, Republican of New York, referring to cost and schedule problems that had plagued many projects.
"Wow -- thank you," Mr. McHugh said, seemingly speechless for a moment after Mr. Bowen answered in the affirmative.
Work by two of the other largest contractors in Iraq -- Bechtel and KBR, which was formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root and is a subsidiary of Halliburton -- also came in for severe criticism during the lengthy hearing.
September 29, 2006
Iraqi Journalists Add Laws to List of Dangers
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
BAGHDAD -- Ahmed al-Karbouli, a reporter for Baghdadiya TV in the violent city of Ramadi, did his best to ignore the death threats, right up until six armed men drilled him with bullets after midday prayers.
He was the fourth journalist killed in Iraq in September alone, out of a total of more than 130 since the 2003 invasion, the vast majority of them Iraqis. But these days, men with guns are not Iraqi reporters' only threat. Men with gavels are, too.
Under a broad new set of laws criminalizing speech that ridicules the government or its officials, some resurrected verbatim from Saddam Hussein's penal code, roughly a dozen Iraqi journalists have been charged with offending public officials in the past year.
Currently, three journalists for a small newspaper in southeastern Iraq are being tried here for articles last year that accused a provincial governor, local judges and police officials of corruption. The journalists are accused of violating Paragraph 226 of the penal code, which makes anyone who "publicly insults" the government or public officials subject to up to seven years in prison.
Iraqi Violence Is Growing, Author Says
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:44 a.m. ET
NEW YORK (AP) -- Violence in Iraq is greater than the White House has acknowledged, and the outlook is even bleaker for 2007, author and journalist Bob Woodward said in comments to air Sunday night on CBS television's ''60 Minutes.''
Woodward, the Washington Post reporter whose third book on the Bush administration, ''State of Denial,'' comes out next week, said U.S. troops and their allies are being attacked, on average, every 15 minutes.
''It's getting to the point now where there are eight, 900 attacks a week. That's more than a hundred a day. That is four an hour attacking our forces,'' Woodward said.
''The truth is that the assessment by intelligence experts is that next year, 2007, is going to get worse and, in public, you have the president and you have the Pentagon saying, 'Oh, no, things are going to get better.'''
September 29, 2006
Poll Says Most Iraqis Want U.S. Out
By REUTERS
WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 -- About three-quarters of Iraqis believe that American forces are provoking more conflict than they are preventing in Iraq and that they should be withdrawn within a year, according to a poll conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes, a group from the University of Maryland.
The poll of 1,150 people, conducted Sept. 1 to 4, had a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points. It found growing support for attacks against American-led forces, with a majority of Iraqis now favoring them.
....
The poll found that 78 percent of Iraqis believe that the American military presence causes more conflict than it prevents, including 97 percent of Sunnis, 82 percent of Shiites and 41 percent of Kurds.
Among Iraq's three main communities, only Kurds tended to see the American military presence as a stabilizing force, with 56 percent agreeing with that statement versus 17 percent of Shiites and 2 percent of Sunnis.
Most Iraqis -- 71 percent -- said American soldiers should be withdrawn within a year, but only 37 percent favored an American withdrawal in the next six months. Only Sunnis wanted American forces out within six months, and only Kurds favored a longer United States presence, as much as two years or more.
The poll also found growing support for attacks on American forces, with 61 percent of the respondents saying they approved, compared with 47 percent in January. Support for the attacks was strongest among Sunnis, at 92 percent. But support among Shiites rose to 62 percent in September from 41 percent in January. Only 16 percent of Kurds favored attacks on American troops.