These are the archives for the week ending 29th April 2005
Iraq government partially formed
Hoshyar Zebari was named Iraq's foreign minister and Ali Abd al-Amir Allawi finance minister as the National Assembly voted today in favor of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's partial cabinet list. Two deputy premiers have yet to be named, while the oil, defense, human rights, industry and electricity posts will be filed on a temporary basis because of disagreements among Shiite, Kurd and Sunni politicians. Former Pentagon ally Ahmed Chalabi is one of four deputy premiers and acting oil minister.
Bloomberg, 28/4/05
Leaked advice shows legal doubts
The Attorney General's doubts about the legality of the Iraq war were finally laid bare after his secret advice to the Prime Minister was leaked. The publication of Lord Goldsmith's report last night could prove to be the "smoking gun" that shows Tony Blair misled Parliament and the country over the war. Last night, Mr Blair - unaware that the report was about to be leaked - was caught out still claiming on Sky News that the advice from the Attorney General "didn't change".
Independent, 28/4/05
'War on terrorism' a failure
The number of serious international terrorist incidents more than tripled last year, according to U.S. government figures, a sharp upswing in deadly attacks that the State Department has decided not to make public in its annual report on terrorism due to Congress this week. Overall, the number of what the U.S. government considers "significant" attacks grew to about 655 last year, up from the record of around 175 in 2003.
Terrorist incidents in Iraq also dramatically increased, from 22 attacks to 198, or nine times the previous year's total -- a sensitive subset of the tally, given the Bush administration's assertion that the situation there had stabilized significantly after the U.S. handover of political authority to an interim Iraqi government last summer.
Washington Post,27/4/05
Resistance at same level as a year ago
Iraq's insurgency remains undiminished in its capabilities in the past year despite U.S.-led efforts to crush the rebels, the top American general said on Tuesday. "I think their capacity stays about the same," Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said of Iraq's insurgents during a Pentagon briefing. "And where they are right now is where they were almost a year ago."
Asked during the briefing "are we winning" the war, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld did not directly respond.
Reuters, 26/4/05
Bunker buster bombs for Israel
The Pentagon notified Congress on Tuesday of a proposed sale to Israel of 100 guided bunker-busting bombs, a move that analysts said could prompt concerns about a unilateral Israel strike against Iran.
Reuters, 26/4/05
Korea: US 'will not wait forever
America's chief envoy to North Korea has warned that the US will not wait forever for Pyongyang to return to six party talks on its nuclear programme. Christopher Hill accused the isolated North of stalling over the issue. "We are concerned that they're busily going ahead with their nuclear programmes," Mr Hill said - a move he described as unacceptable.
BBC News, 266/4/05
Blair: I was right
Mr Blair said of his decision to go to war: "I can't say I am sorry about it. I am not sorry about it. I think I did the right thing. I understand why some people think I didn't. But, for goodness sake, let's stop having this argument about whether it's my character or my integrity that's at issue here and understand the decision had to be taken."
The Times, 25/4/05
Blair: simply irritating
Mr Blair said he accepted that on Iraq some people will never forgive him for taking Britain to war: "I've come to the conclusion that for those people who are opposed to the war, the more I put my point of view, the more it simply irritates them"
Guardian 26/4/05
Bolton distorted Syria intelligence
John Bolton, President Bush's nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, clashed repeatedly with American intelligence officials in 2002 and 2003 as he sought to deliver warnings about Syrian efforts to acquire unconventional weapons that the Central Intelligence Agency and other experts rejected as exaggerated.
Former intelligence officials said that the prolonged and heated disputes over Mr. Bolton's proposed remarks were unusual within government, and that they reflected what one former senior official called a pattern in which Mr. Bolton sought to push his public assertions beyond the views endorsed by intelligence agencies.
New York Times, 26/4/05
Resistance becoming more sophisticated
Iraqi insurgents have shown improved coordination and greater tactical sophistication in a new surge of attacks following a sharp decline after national elections in January, US defense officials said. Attacks fell from about 90 a day before the elections to about 40 a day for several weeks after the vote, Pentagon officials said. But then about two weeks ago the number of attacks rose to about 50 a day.
More significant than the number of attacks is that the insurgent attacks are better coordinated than in the past and more sophisticated, said the senior defense official.
AFP, 25/4/05
Six reasons why war illegal
The Iraq war was thrust to the top of the election agenda last night after the Attorney General's advice to the Prime Minister over the legality of the conflict was leaked. The leak revealed that 12 days before Britain went to war, Lord Goldsmith warned Mr Blair in a 13-page memo of six reasons why the war could be illegal.
In spite of assurances that the Attorney General had been "unequivocal" in saying that the war would be legal, Lord Goldsmith said Britain could be challenged under international law because it was up to the UN, not Mr Blair, to decide whether Saddam Hussein was in breach of UN resolutions.
Independent, 25/4/05
Iraqi forces deserting posts
Iraqi army and police units are deserting their posts after the recent escalation in insurgent attacks, according to reports from around the country yesterday. The end of a relative period of calm after the election has posed the first real test for the embryonic security forces since coalition troops started cutting back on their military operations in February.
On the Syrian border, US troops in the Sunni city of Husaybah report mass desertions. An Iraqi unit that had once grown to 400 troops now numbers a few dozen who are "holed up" inside a local phosphate plant. In Mosul, which has been a hotspot since insurgents fleeing Fallujah effectively overran it last year, residents have complained to newspapers that police now rarely patrol and only appear in response to attacks.
Daily Telegraph, 25/4/05
US kills civilians with impunity
Many Iraqis do not survive casual encounters with US soldiers. It is very easy to be accidentally killed in Iraq. US soldiers treat everybody as a potential suicide bomber. If they are right they have saved their lives and if they are wrong they face no penalty. Every Iraqi has stories of friends or relatives killed by US troops for no adequate reason. Often they do not know if they were shot by regular soldiers or by members of western security companies whose burly employees, usually ex-soldiers, are everywhere in Iraq.
"We should end the immunity of US soldiers here," says Dr Mahmoud Othman, a veteran Kurdish politician who argues that the failure to prosecute American soldiers who have killed civilians is one of the reasons why the occupation became so unpopular so fast. He admits, however, that this is extremely unlikely to happen given the US attitude to any sanctions against its own forces.
Sunday Independent, 24/4/05
Western puppets may return to power
Iraq is facing a political crisis over the failure of the prime minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, to form a cabinet, raising the possibility that he may be forced to resign little more than a fortnight after his appointment. Under the interim constitution, he must form a government within a month or resign. Jaafari was appointed prime minister on April 7.
The deadlock has prompted speculation that he may be replaced by Ahmad Chalabi, a former Pentagon favourite and prominent figure in the UIA; or by Iyad Allawi, the former prime minister, who was heavily defeated in the election but who appears to be Washington's preferred candidate.
Sunday Times, 24/4/05
Bush fails to face facts
Hardly a day goes by without Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice or another senior administration official speaking publicly about the "march of freedom'' and the success of the Iraq invasion in securing peace. "There's a movement toward freedom around the world,'' Bush said in an interview with a Lebanese television station this past week. "I believe that a true free society, one that self-governs, one that listens to the people, will be a peaceful society -- not an angry society.''
The notion that the world is more peaceful as a result of the U.S. invasion, let alone that the mission was a success, is far from universally accepted. In the two years since Bush declared an end to "major combat operations,'' thousands of Iraqis and nearly 1,500 Americans have been killed; U.S. taxpayers have spent more than $200 billion to secure the peace; troops discovered no weapons of mass destruction, which was the principal reason stated by Bush to justify the attack; and a majority of Americans now say they disapprove of the president's handling of Iraq.
San Francisco Chronicle, 24/4/05
New wave of attacks
Violence is escalating sharply in Iraq after a period of relative calm that followed the January elections. Bombings, ambushes and kidnappings targeting Iraqis and foreigners, both troops and civilians, have surged this month while the new Iraqi government is caught up in power struggles over cabinet positions.
Many attacks have gone unchallenged by Iraqi forces in large areas of the country dominated by insurgents, according to the U.S. military, Iraqi officials and civilians and visits by Washington Post correspondents. More than 100 Iraqis and foreigners have died in the last week.
A US official, speaking anonymously, said this week that overall attacks had increased since the end of March. Roadside bombings and attacks on military targets are up by as much as 40 percent in parts of the country over the same period, according to estimates from private security outfits.
Washington Post, 24/4/05
British firm criticised
U.S. investigators have criticized Aegis Defence Services Ltd. for its work providing security in Iraq for contractors and U.S. government staff, saying the British firm had failed to verify that employees were properly qualified for the job. The Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction said Aegis had not complied with several areas of its $293 million contract, according to an audit report.
Among problems cited in the audit were that Aegis could not provide the correct documents to show its employees were qualified to use weapons and many Iraqi employees were not properly vetted to ensure they were not a security threat.
San Diego Union-Tribune, 22/4/05