Thread: Iraq/Dinar News. 09/05 to 01/14/07

Reid: Brief troop increase OK in Iraq
2006/12


By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer 3 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Sunday he would support a temporary troop increase in Iraq only if it were part of a broader strategy to bring combat forces home by early 2008.

"The American people will not allow this war to go on as it has. It simply is a war that will not be won militarily. It can only be won politically," Reid said. "We have to change course in Iraq."

President Bush is considering several options for a new strategy in Iraq, such as a proposal backed by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., that would send tens of thousands of additional troops for an indefinite period to quickly secure Baghdad. There are about 134,000 U.S. troops in Iraq now.

Retired Gen. Jack Keane, a former Army vice chief of staff who is advising Bush to send an additional 30,000 to 40,000 U.S. troops, said it would take at least 1 1/2 years to secure Iraq.

"It will take a couple of months just to get forces in," he said.

Bush‘s former secretary of state, Colin Powell , said he was skeptical that any type of troop surge would be effective, noting that ultimately it is the Iraqis who must stand up and stop their growing sectarian violence.

Democr, , ) of Massachusetts, who is on the Senate Armed Services Committee , said there would be widespread opposition by members of his committee if Bush proposes a troop increase.

Regarding a temporary troop surge, Kennedy said, "I respect Harry Reid on it, but that‘s not where I am."

Howell Times and Transcript

The Baker-Hamilton Report: Undoing Kurdish gains

12/17/2006 KurdishMedia.com - By Dr Rashid Karadaghi
The Iraq Study Group Report is the last thing one would have hoped to see in the New World Order. Sadly, it seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Gone were the days, we thought, when the fate of a nation was decided by outsiders consulting with everyone and every nation except the one most affected by, and concerned with, the decision. Yet, that is precisely what happened with this commission. The President of Kurdistan received a telephone call from Baker a couple of days before the release of the report assuring him of taking Kurdistan's special status into consideration in the final report. President Barzani should have hung up the phone in Baker's face and told him where to go for insulting the people of Kurdistan like that. You don't decide the future of a nation in a mere telephone call after consulting with, and doing the bidding of, everyone else.

The lobbyists for Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Arab and Iraqi ultra nationalists in Washington must have had a great deal of input in the preparation of this report, for it is a blueprint for these countries' evil agenda in Iraq and Kurdistan.

This report belongs in the British and French colonial archives dating back to the days when these two imperial powers were running the world, not to the America of 2006. It is an insult to America and the noble goals of Operation Iraqi Freedom and everything we have come to expect of America. It is, above all, an insult to thousands of American and other Coalition nations' brave men and women who gave their life or limb to bring freedom and democracy, concepts unheard of in the Middle East, to the long-suffering people of Iraq and Kurdistan and, one would hope, in time, the rest of the nations of the region.

One wonders how ten grown individuals of impressive resumes could have gotten it so wrong! Did they spend their long lives on another planet? Surely, all of them were holding very important positions in the US government when the butcher of Baghdad buried a quarter of a million Kurds alive and killed thousands of Arab Iraqis in the south and middle of the country, not to mention his countless other crimes. Surely, they must have heard or read about the Anfal and scores of mass graves uncovered after the Liberation, and surely they must have seen pictures of the corpses of defenceless Kurdish men, women, and children gassed in Halabja. Yet, none of this moved them to do the right thing.

Yet, without any regard to all this bloody past, the authors of this report recommend, in effect, the re-establishment of a system akin to the one that brought about the Anfal and Halabja tragedies. How else is one supposed to interpret their recommendation to establish a strong central government, with a Saddam-like Strongman sooner or later, and no power to the regional governments? More alarming still is that since there is officially as of yet only one regional government, which is the Kurdistan Regional Government, it is this government whose powers the ISG wants to limit or abolish.

One dare say that apart from the desire to bring the troops home, which is the only legitimate part of the ill-conceived report, the main recommendations of the report deal with ways and means to put the Kurdish people back in the coop again. With the stroke of a pen the ISG has abolished the federal system, which Iraqis have chosen for themselves in the hope of curbing the tyranny of a strong central government, which Iraq has been plagued with since its inception. One wonders what the point of the war would be if America were to go back on every declared goal of the war. Can it really be called "Operation Iraqi Freedom" anymore if the ISG recommendations are implemented?


Whether the ISG recommendations will ever be implemented or not is not all that is at issue here. What is also at issue is the way the Kurdish people were dismissed as a weak and insignificant link in the Middle East equation as if their struggle and untold sacrifices for a whole century against state terrorism and racism by Iraq, Turkey, Iran, and Syria was for naught. This report has made America lose credibility with the Kurds -- for whatever that credibility is worth to America. (Given the fact that America not only doesn't have many friends in the region these days but it has a multitude of enemies, the friendship that the Kurds have offered America should be worth a lot.) If after all that the Kurds have done to support Operation Iraqi Freedom by being America's truest and most unequivocal Middle Eastern ally in the war on terror, thus bringing on themselves the wrath of practically everyone in the region threatening retributions once America leaves, America can sell them out that easily, then the unthinkable will always be thinkable, which is hardly the way to build on the trust that the Kurds were beginning to have in America after the very costly two previous betrayals of 1975 and 1991. This report is, indeed, as much a betrayal of America as it is a betrayal of the Kurds.

The Iraq Study Group Report recommends, in effect, dismantling every gain the Kurdish people have, at long last, made in the last seventeen years after untold sacrifices they have made since they were forced by the British into a cursed union with Iraq eighty or so years ago. This long-suffering nation, which should have been independent long ago like all the other independent nations on this planet, is being told by a group which is totally out of touch with reality and devoid of all moral values that freedom is too good for them because the enemies of freedom that occupy Greater Kurdistan say so. The ISG has openly and without shame sided with the victimizers against the victims. How can any self-respecting human being accept the role the ISG members have chosen for themselves by promoting the agendas of evil regimes against a nation that has never wished anything but the best for America? Decency and morality and, indeed, America's interest would have required this group to side with the oppressed, not the oppressor.

Even though we are concerned about all the ISG recommendations, we, as Kurds, are obviously the most concerned with the recommendations that directly affect and disenfranchise our people – and there are quite a few of them.

Recommendation 30 of the ISG report calls for a delay in the implementation of article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution, in effect abolishing or burying it. Article 140 stipulates the normalization of the situation in Karkuk through a referendum by the end of 2007 to decide whether the oil-rich province of Karkuk will be administered by the central government or by the Kurdistan Regional government This recommendation is an incredible concession to Turkey, which is adamantly opposed to the referendum. Turkey is being rewarded for betraying America when it refused to support Operation Iraqi Freedom and did not allow the passage of American troops and materiel through its territory, thereby costing many American lives and resulting in a big setback to the war effort, according to American officials themselves. If implemented, this recommendation means keeping in place the Arabization which Saddam practised from the beginning of his rule till his downfall. Never in history has a state had the audacity to interfere in the affairs of a city of a neighboring country the way Turkey is interfering in Karkuk. Most observers thought that Turkey's refusal to participate in liberating Iraq in 2003 meant that it would no longer have the green light from America to oppress the twenty million Kurds within its borders and bully millions more outside those artificial borders. The fate of Karkuk cannot be in limbo forever. Contrary to the ISG conclusions, it is the delay of the implementation of article 140, not its implementation, which will lead to more violence in the city.

Recommendation 28 of the report deals with the distribution of oil revenues. Since the discovery of oil in Karkuk in the thirties, oil has been extracted from Kurdistan by Arab Iraq and the revenues have not been used to provide services to the Kurdish people but to buy the most lethal weapons, including chemical weapons, to annihilate the Kurdish people with. What the people of Kurdistan demand is that they, not the central government in Baghdad, control the way oil revenues from Kurdistan's oil fields are spent. They will share the revenues with the people of Iraq, but they must retain control of these revenues to avoid a repeat of what happened in the past under all the Iraqi governments, including the ones before Saddam. Is there anything wrong with this demand? Well, to the ISG there is! The ISG, inspired by Turkey and ultra Iraqi and other Arab nationalists, who are no friends of America, says that the control of the oil revenues cannot be left to the Kurds!

Recommendation 50 amounts to disbanding the Peshmarga, which even Saddam with all his power and the terror he employed could not do. "Peshmarga" has been etched in the Kurdish people's consciousness as the most sacred word in the Kurdish lexicon because the Peshmarga have protected the Kurdish people's very being against all its enemies. The Peshmarga is the only insurance the Kurdish people have against enemies from within and enemies from without. One of the main reasons there is peace and stability in Kurdistan is the vigilance of these brave freedom fighters. Apparently, the ISG wants the same violence and chaos that reigns in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq to reign in Kurdistan, too, otherwise it would have recommended strengthening the Peshmarga, instead of disbanding it, to maintain the security of Kurdistan and protect its borders from external and internal enemies.

The Baker-Hamilton report serves the interests of the anti-democratic forces and the terrorists in the Middle East. It invites the regional powers to meddle in the affairs of Iraq and Kurdistan. It is designed to hurt the Kurds and help their enemies.

The Kurdish people are united in rejecting the Baker-Hamilton report totally because it does not take them into account at all in its calculations. They know full well, as their history has proven time and time again, that they cannot count on anyone but themselves -- and the ISG betrayal is the latest proof of this sad but true reality. They alone can safeguard the gains they have made and push for more until they become totally free from the terror of the states occupying their homeland.
The Baker-Hamilton Report: Undoing Kurdish gains

Iraq: American and Kurdish interests collide

12/17/2006 KurdishMedia.com - By Dr Mohammed M. A. Ahmed
The neighboring Arab states, Turkey, and Iran are deeply suspicious of U.S. Middle East ambitions and fearful of the spillover effect of the power struggle and constitutional changes in Iraq on their internal stability. The initial 2003 American war aim to turn Iraq into a launch pad to spread democracy angered America’s traditional Middle Eastern autocratic allies and shook them to their boots. Except for Israel, American friends and foes in the Middle East opposed the war and worked tirelessly to prevent it from achieving its core objective of building democracy in Iraq. While the two quasi- democratic elections of 2005 and the passage of the new Iraqi constitution in the October 15, 2005 referendum were major achievements for the Kurds and Shiites, they threatened neighboring Arab countries’ ruling classes, who had come to power through family lineage than the ballot box, except Iran.

The Kurds and Shiites, who had been suppressed under successive Sunni Arab minority governments in Baghdad for some 80 years, were the direct beneficiaries of the constitutional and institutional changes introduced following the downfall of Saddam Hussein. However, the well-trained and ideologically oriented former Iraqi military forces, joined by Islamic jihadists cum al-Qaida, have aggressively pursued occupation forces and their Shiite and Kurdish allies, whom they accuse being traitors.

As the struggle for power degenerated into sectarian cum civil war in the center, the Kurds continued to strengthen their de facto regional government and enshrine their national aspirations in the new Iraqi constitution in an effort to legitimize their newly acquired political power. From 1991 to 2003, the Kurds were able to articulate their vision for Iraqi Kurdistan within the framework of a decentralized federal system of government for Iraq. Kurdish peshmarga fighters were instrumental for maintaining peace and stability in the Kurdish region and isolating it from the escalating sectarian cum civil war in the center. Despite being the closest American ally in Iraq, Kurdish officials were surprised by the recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton report, which they considered a threat to their achievements since 1991.

Since the Baker-Hamilton report summarized earlier American positions on many issues, most of its recommendations did not cover new grounds. Yet, the Kurdish leadership angrily rejected the document for recommending a delay in the normalization of the status of Arabized Kurdish territories, reverting back to a centralized government, and placing natural resources under central government control. Despite being frequently wined and dined by Kurdish officials in Kurdistan, the American Ambassador, Zalmay Khalizad, neither endorsed a decentralized form of government nor supported normalization of the status of Arabized Kurdish territories. It was through sheer hard and diligent work that Kurdish politicians were able to win a constitutional recognition for their de facto state and plans for normalizing the status of Arabized Kurdish territories. While the Kurds were trying to firm up their demands in the constitution, both U.S. and British advisors were advising members of Arab political factions against Kurdish demands, which they often called excessive. Immediately following the occupation of Iraq, U.S. military officials cautioned Kurdish officials against the flow of the internally displaced Kurds back to homes and farms from which they were forcibly evicted by the former regime and assured Arab settlers, who were fleeing Kurdish homes and farms, that they would be protected if they returned.

U.S. and British officials initially endorsed the constitution, but later pressured the Kurds and Shiites to revise it in effort to appease Sunni Arabs, who oppose federalism, claiming it will deprive them of the oil-riches of the north and south, weaken the Arab identity of Iraq, and enable their arch enemy, Iran to gain a foothold in the Shiite south.

The Baker-Hamilton report, which favors mostly Sunni Arabs, seems to reflect Zalmay Khalilzad’s viewpoint or those of the neighboring states on the Kurdish question. It is likely that on Khalilzad’s advice that the Baker-Hamilton commission skipped visiting Kurdistan during their mission to Iraq. Behind the scenes, Khalilzad seems to be acting as the shadow of the former U.S. Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, in dealing with the Kurdish issue.

The U.S. administration shelved the recommendations of the Iraqi Study Group in less than ten days after they were released on the ground that they were impractical and unrealistic. Since the report was released, the administration has initiated a multi-dimensional review of the situation in Iraq and is considering several new options, including troop rearrangement and the creation of employment opportunities by rehabilitating idled Iraqi factories. The aim is to first boost troop numbers in an effort to gain control of Baghdad and possibly Anbar province, tame Shiite militias, and gradually draw down on combat troops and imbed them with Iraqi forces, without setting a timetable for troop withdrawal.

The U.S. failure to arrest the escalating violence has been attributed partly to the increasing anti-Americanism and partly to the reluctance of the neighboring states to arrest the flow of financial and military assistance to the insurgent and militia groups in an effort to sabotage the democratic experiment in Iraq. While the U.S. continues to point a finger at Iran and Syria for helping insurgent and militia groups in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Jordan and Turkey are equally guilty for their efforts to destabilize Iraq. For example, while Saudi Arabia and other Arab emirates see that their American protectors are profusely bleeding in Iraq, they continue sending large sums of financial and military assistance to Sunni Arab insurgent groups, including al-Qaida fighters. Recent reports indicate that so-called Saudi charity money is going to Iraqi insurgents, who are killing members of their American close ally in Iraq.

Salih al-Mutlaq, Iraqi Sunni Arab nationalist and lawmaker, was reported to be sponsoring large-scale purchases of Kurdish homes and farmland in Arabized Kurdish territories of Daquq, near Kirkuk. The escalation of violence and ethnic cleansing in Diyala, Kirkuk and Mosul is an integral part of former regime loyalists’ plan to finish the ethnic cleansing job they started under the former regime. Contributions are collected from Sunni Arab states by Iraqi Arab nationalists under the pretext that they are trying to prevent the emergence of another Israel in northern Iraq, Southern Kurdistan. The probable reason behind the Baker-Hamilton recommendation to postpone normalization of the status of the fertile Arabized Kurdish lands, including the oil-rich Kirkuk, is to give Sunni Arabs time to gain control of these areas. By doing so, the U.S. might be able win the trust and cooperation of Sunni Arabs regarding the future shape of Iraq.

Another close American strategic ally, Turkey, is feverishly trying to destabilize Iraqi Kurdistan, the only stable region in Iraq, by sending members of its special forces and propaganda material to Kirkuk, with a view to inciting Turkmans and Arab settlers against Kurds. Turkey recently sent a parliamentary delegation to Kirkuk to tell Kurdish officials that they should abandon implementation of Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution, which calls for normalizing the status of Arabized Kurdish territories. Turkey is fearful that Kirkuk’s oil resources might enable the Kurds to establish an economically viable Kurdish state in the future and set a precedent for its own 15-20 million Kurdish population to demand the same.

Jordan, another close American ally, which cannot survive without American aid and military assistance, is sheltering thousands of high-level Saddam Hussein loyalists, who are vigorously campaigning against American forces in Iraq and are trying to bring down the Shiite-dominated government. King Abdullah II of Jordan is helping Iraqi dissidents and insurgent leaders under the pretext that he is against the growing Shiite influence in the Middle East. Harith al-Dhari, leader of the Association of the Islamic Scholars in Iraq, is using Amman, Jordan, as his sanctuary to raise funds from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states for insurgents and their al-Qaida allies. Dhari has openly supported the American bitter enemy, al-Qaida, yet he is freely moving about in Amman.

Likewise, Syria is guilty of allowing the flow of fighters and financial aid to Sunni Arab insurgents just to punish U.S. for forcing them out of Lebanon. Syria is sheltering thousands of Iraqi Ba’athists and former regime officials, who are deeply involved in the ongoing insurgency and sectarian violence in Iraq. Because of its historical ties to Iraqi Shiites, Iran has been one of the major supporters of Shiite militias involved in sectarian violence.

The Kurdish vision for a federal Iraq that would grant them a large degree of autonomy and control over their natural resources is opposed by all of Iraq’s neighbors, including Turkey, Syria, Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia. The rulers of none of these states would like to see Iraq evolving into a democratic and decentralized state, fearing that would threaten the outmoded autocratic, undemocratic and central systems of government in the Middle East. Abandoning democracy in favor of a sustainable centralized government in Baghdad would mean the betrayal of the war’s initial objective, for which some 3,000 American troops have been sacrificed and $400 billion of American tax money spent.

Recent events in Iraq indicate that U.S. and British officials continue to manipulate the Kurds, as they have done before, in their own national interests. If the Kurds aspire to a Kurdistani state, they must learn how to control their own destiny and not let the U.S. or Britain use them as a bargaining chip to settle their scores with Arabs or Turks or Iranians. The Kurds continue to be without a reliable friend, except the Kurdistan mountains, to whom they could turn during calamities.
Iraq: American and Kurdish interests collide

I have a question about Adster's spreadsheet (thank you for sharing that with us and thank you to to the original creator from IIF). I just want to make sure that I am reading this correctly.

Let's say, for example, that a person has 1,000,000 dinar. That would mean that when the rate was 1470, the value of that dinar was $680.27. Now that the rate is 1400, the value according to the spreadsheet is $714.29. So am I reading this correctly to say that in the past month (approximately) that the value of dinar has gone up $34.02 per million ? For those with multiple millions, that is quite a gain over a period of a little over a month! Go Dinar!

If I am calculating this incorrectly or missing something, please correct me!

Also, what is the date of the beginning of Iraq's fiscal year?

FOUND THIS ON CBI WEB SITE, LOOKS LIKE ITS FROM TODAY
I AM GOING TO DIG AT IT AND SEE WHAT I CAN FIND


looks like its not new< just found date - august 2006

News

Statement Issued from the CBI

Concerning the Acceleration

Inflationary Phenomenon

(Arabic Version)

17/اب/2006

SOMEONE PLEASE TRANSLATE THIS pdf



A press statement from the Iraqi Central Bank on the phenomenon of inflation (witness annex )
http://www.cbiraq.org/News_AR.pdf


THANK YOU

By Lesley Wroughton 29 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said on Sunday he would support a short-term increase in U.S. troops in
Iraq being weighed by
President George W. Bush if it is part of a broader withdrawal plan.


Bush has been talking to experts about a new Iraq strategy and a short-term increase in U.S. troops to help make Baghdad more secure is one idea that has been presented to him.

"If it's for a surge, that is, for two or three months and it's part of a program to get us out of there as indicated by this time next year, then, sure, I'll go along with it," Reid, who will become the majority leader when Democrats take control of the Senate next month, told ABC's "This Week" program.

But fellow Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy (news, bio, voting record) of Massachusetts, when told of Reid's comments, disagreed.

"I respect Harry Reid on it, but that's not where I am," he said. "The generals who have testified before the Armed Services Committee think that we would add to being a crutch for the Iraqi civilian government in not making the right judgments and decisions. I think that is a persuasive case and is one that I support," Kennedy told Fox News Sunday.

Speaking from Iraq where he was meeting Iraqi and U.S. officials, Connecticut Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd (news, bio, voting record) also was cautious. Democrats won control of Congress in November in part because voters did not like the way the war was going.

"I'd be willing to support additional people if needed in order to get the job done, but in the absence of demonstrable evidence of that I will not support a surge of troops here," said Dodd, a member of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in a teleconference with reporters.

A bipartisan panel led by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton recommended the United States start planning to pull back the troops in Iraq.

But others, including Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) of Arizona, have said more troops are needed at least in the short run to give the political process a chance to work.

A PLEA FOR MORE TROOPS

Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashimi, a Sunni, said the United States should boost the size of its military presence in Baghdad where the worst violence is occurring.

"Troops are insufficient to handle the security as required in Baghdad, and you could see clearly in fact the increasing influence of the militia in Baghdad which makes things rather very, very difficult to the innocent people. So what I need, yes, definitely, in fact, I need more troops, in fact, to be in Baghdad," he told CNN's "Late Edition."

Asked if that meant more U.S. troops, al-Hashimi added, "U.S. troops, yes, definitely." He said Iraqi troops "are insufficient, incompetent, and many of them is corrupted."

But former U.S. Secretary of State
Colin Powell was not convinced that adding to the 135,000 troops in Iraq would quell the worsening security in Baghdad, where the military's presence has increased since June to stabilize the situation.

"I am not persuaded that another surge of troops into Baghdad for the purposes of suppressing this communitarian violence, this civil war, will work," Powell told CBS.

He said the U.S. Army was already stretched thin.

"If you surge now, you're going to keep troops who have already been kept there long even longer," he said. "And you're going to be bringing in troops from the United States who are going to be coming anyway but perhaps a little bit later."

(Additional reporting by John Poirier)

Reid backs temporary rise in troops in Iraq - Yahoo! News

By Ross Colvin Sun Dec 17, 11:59 AM ET

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The U.S. military plans to speed up the training of
Iraq's army by tripling its number of embedded trainers to about 9,000, while keeping a close eye on units' sectarian loyalties, a U.S. general said on Sunday.

Brigadier General Dana Pittard, whose Iraqi Assistance Group oversees training of Iraq's security forces, also said each of the nine police brigades would be taken off the streets over the next nine months for one month-long training.

A number of police units have been accused of colluding with, or being infiltrated by Shi'ite militia death squads targeting minority Sunnis. An explosion of sectarian violence since February has pushed the country toward all-out civil war.

"Over the next couple of months we will augment the transition teams to double or triple their size," Pittard said, noting that the teams training the Iraqi army were now 3,000-strong.

The bipartisan Iraq Study Group has recommended to
President George W. Bush that he accelerate the training of Iraqi forces to allow the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops by early 2008.

Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki agreed to this at a summit in Jordan last month. Maliki said then that Iraqi forces would be able to assume security control by next June. Pittard said he thought that was an achievable goal.

The general said the new trainers would be drawn from combat troops already in Iraq. He was unaware of reports that they might come from reinforcements heading to the region.

While analysts have questioned the effectiveness and sectarian loyalties of Iraq's 300,000-strong security forces, saying they could splinter if communal fighting worsens, Pittard said he had not seen much evidence of this.

"They rebel against the allegation that this is anything else but a national army that they are trying to build," he told journalists in Baghdad.

SHI'ITE OR SUNNI?

Nevertheless, the American training teams were asking soldiers whether they were Shi'ites or Sunni Arabs because it was crucial to know the religious affiliation of the units.

"But we are seeing comparatively a lot less sectarian leanings than in other security forces," he said, referring to the Iraqi national police. "It is a concern to us and to the Iraqi government."

He also highlighted three factors which he said were inhibiting the performance of the army. The absence of a Uniform Code of Justice meant that Iraqi commanders had no way of disciplining soldiers who went absent without leave.

The absence, too, of a national banking system meant that many soldiers whose units were far away from their families disappeared for days when they traveled home to give them their pay. Some simply deserted because the travel costs ate up much of their small salaries.

"If we had a banking system, that would help retention. At present there is a 12 to 14 percent attrition rate," he said.

Regional recruitment also meant that many soldiers were reluctant to serve in areas of the country that took them away from their families.

U.S. commanders have complained that Operation Together Forward, a major security crackdown aimed at reclaiming the streets of Baghdad from death squads, suffered because the Iraqi military committed too few troops.

U.S. to triple number of military trainers in Iraq - Yahoo! News

By Ross Colvin and Katherine Baldwin Sun Dec 17, 12:20 PM ET

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - British Prime Minister
Tony Blair said on Sunday British troops would stay in
Iraq "until the job is done" and pledged to support the country's weak government as it battles sectarian violence and a raging Sunni Arab insurgency.


Just before Blair landed in Baghdad for an unannounced visit, gunmen in police uniforms carried out a mass kidnapping at a Red Crescent office in the capital, highlighting Iraq's security challenges. Police said 10 to 20 people were seized but Red Crescent officials said more were snatched.

Blair said he and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had discussed the need for national reconciliation and building up Iraq's security forces to fight soaring Shi'ite-Sunni sectarian violence that has pushed the country close to all-out civil war.

"We stand ready to support you in every way that we can so that in time the Iraq government and the Iraqi people can take full responsibility for their affairs," Blair, who is touring the Middle East, told a news conference.

The visit by Blair, Washington's closest ally, comes as
President Bush is rethinking his Iraq strategy following the defeat of his Republicans in mid-term elections and in the face of mounting U.S. military casualties.

Blair defended London's plans for a gradual withdrawal of its 7,200 troops in the south, mostly in and around oil-rich Basra, as Iraq's fledgling security forces take over.

"This isn't a change of our policy," he said. "Don't be under any doubt at all. British troops will remain until the job is done."

Britain has transferred authority to Iraqis in two of the four southern provinces it took responsibility for after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. It has said it is confident it can hand over Basra to the Iraqis early next year and hopes to have brought thousands of troops home by the end of 2007.

"SADDAMISTS AND TERRORISTS"

Blair, on his sixth visit to Iraq since the 2003 invasion and with his legacy tarnished by Iraq, told reporters in Baghdad the bloodshed was being carried out by "Saddamists and terrorists" and appealed to Iraq's neighbors for help.

He later told British troops in Basra the conflict was now "about different groups of the local population fighting each other." Washington and London say Iraq is not in a civil war but other leaders, including former U.N. Secretary General
Kofi Annan, say Iraq is in a civil war.

Those snatched in the mass kidnapping in central Baghdad included Red Crescent employees, visitors and guards. Witnesses said gunmen arrived in pickup trucks. "They took all the men, separated them from the women and left," a witness told Reuters.

"We call for their immediate and unconditional release," said Antonella Notari, spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva.

She said at least 25 people had been taken by gunmen from among staff and visitors. ICRC carries out much of its work in Iraq through the Red Crescent. No ICRC personnel were snatched.

The Iraqi Red Crescent, the only Iraqi aid agency working in Iraq's 18 provinces, has 1,000 staff and 200,000 volunteers.

Baghdad is plagued by daily kidnappings, many of which are carried out by armed groups on either side of the conflict between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs.

Maliki's Shi'ite-led government is under pressure from Washington to do more to stem daily violence that U.N. officials estimate kills more than 100 people a day. The violence has complicated U.S. and British plans to withdraw their troops.

The U.S. military plans to speed up the training of Iraq's army by tripling its number of embedded trainers to about 9,000, while keeping a close eye on units' sectarian loyalties, U.S. Brigadier General Dana Pittard said on Sunday.

The violence in Iraq since the invasion has marred Blair's final years in office, dividing the British public and his party, hurting his popularity ratings and reducing Britain's credibility in the region, analysts say.

UK troops to stay in Iraq until job done: Blair - Yahoo! News

Well, I tried!

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