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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: unclewest who wrote (20732)	12/21/2003 6:11:35 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793955

"On through the Hail, Like a pack of angry wolves on the trail, We are after you!" (Rose Marie) Even Reuters has to admit things are going well. U.S. Crackdown Nets More Insurgents in Central Iraq Sun December 21, 2003 04:37 AM ET By Nadim Ladki BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. troops intensified a crackdown on anti-American insurgents across restive central Iraq Sunday, as score-settling killings raised fears of more violence in the south of the country. U.S. forces have pursued the hunt for guerrillas in the last week, buoyed by the capture of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein near his hometown of Tikrit on December 13. Only one U.S. soldier is known to have been killed by hostile fire since the announcement of Saddam's arrest. Saddam loyalists and Islamist fighters have killed 200 U.S. soldiers since Washington announced an end to major combat on May 1. Western security sources warn that the threat of attacks has not diminished. Intelligence indicates more attacks are planned against U.S. and Western targets in Iraq over the Christmas period. A roadside bomb exploded in Baghdad shortly before midnight, just missing a U.S. patrol and slightly injuring two Iraqi passers-by. Witnesses said on Sunday U.S. troops were conducting a second day of house-to-house searches in the town of Rawah, close to the Syrian border. Soldiers manning checkpoints were stopping cars from entering the town. Residents said scores, some former Baath party members, had been arrested. Witnesses in the town of Falluja, 30 miles west of Baghdad, said five people were arrested in a pre-dawn raid on a number of houses. There were no details on those held. In the defiant town of Samarra to the east, the U.S. military said Saturday night 111 people had been arrested within 48 hours as part of "Operation Ivy Blizzard" to flush out guerrillas. It said 15 of those arrested were targeted as prominent figures in anti-U.S. activities throughout the area. Caches of weapons and ammunition were also seized. In the northern town of Mosul, soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division detained a suspect for Baath Party activities, including continuing to hold Baath Party meetings, planning possible attacks on U.S. forces and for "possible war crimes to include torture and murder," the military said. BAATHISTS KILLED Violent score-settling raged with attacks on Saturday on two former members of Saddam Hussein's toppled Baath Party in the Shi'ite Muslim holy city of Najaf in southern Iraq, police said. Dhamya Abbas, a teacher said by residents to be a senior Baath Party official in Najaf during the crushing of a 1991 Shi'ite uprising, was walking to school with her eight-year-old son when gunmen opened fire, killing him and wounding her. Baathist Ali Kassem, who residents said was an informer for Saddam's feared security agents, was killed in another attack. In a surprise pre-Christmas trip Saturday, Spain's Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar made a morale-boosting visit to Spanish troops in Iraq. "I fully back the work that our compatriots are doing here. This is a fight for a just cause, the cause of freedom, democracy, stability and respect for international law," Aznar said during his short stop at the southern Diwaniya town on his first trip to Iraq since the U.S.-led war. Despite strong opposition to the war among the Spanish public, Spain has 1,300 soldiers in Iraq who are still reeling from a huge blow in November when Iraqis killed seven Spanish intelligence officers. Another U.S. ally, Japan, is set to send hundreds of troops to the area and the leader of the junior party in Japan's ruling coalition said after a visit to southern Iraq that it seemed relatively safe. "It is more peaceful than I imagined before I went," Takenori Kanzaki, whose Buddhist-backed New Komeito party had expressed reservations about the sending of troops, said in Kuwait after a brief trip to the town of Samawah, where Japanese ground troops will be based next year. "I did wear a bullet-proof jacket, but the atmosphere seemed relatively peaceful." reuters.com

To: unclewest who wrote (20732)	12/21/2003 6:19:11 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793955

The number one soldier in this Terrorist war is a Forensic Accountant. These are the people that will win it for us world wide in both the War on Iraq and the War on the Terrorists. The Islamists will never run out of potential candidates to be Terrorists. We have to shut down their money and organization. Same thing you do with any criminal organization. More Than $1 Billion in Iraqi Assets Found in Foreign Banks By Susan Schmidt Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, December 21, 2003; Page A26 U.S. authorities have identified more than a billion dollars in Iraqi assets in banks in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan and are pursuing hundreds of leads in the United States concerning possible illicit financial transactions with the former Iraqi government. Treasury, Internal Revenue Service and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have spent nine months poring over financial records recovered from the vault of the Central Bank of Iraq, including records they say show how Saddam Hussein's government diverted at least $1.8 billion from the United Nations' humanitarian oil-for-food program and moved some of that money to foreign banks or used it to buy weapons components. Officials are pressing the hunt for many billions more Hussein is believed to have moved out of Iraq, worried that those funds are going to terrorist groups or are financing Hussein loyalists' attacks on U.S. troops. "There was a staggering amount of plunder as a result of the oil-for-food program and other schemes," said the Treasury Department's recently departed general counsel, David Aufhauser, who until this month helped direct the search. "While some was spent on ostentatious palaces, most is unaccounted for." Investigators said they have identified $3.3 billion Hussein generated since June 2000 in violation of U.N. sanctions. ICE agents who set up shop in the vault of the largely demolished central bank found records showing the diversion and movement of funds, agency officials said. Iraqi officials, they said, did not bother to disguise illicit money transfers or weapons purchases. "They weren't worried about covering up with front companies," one ICE official said. The result is that investigators have launched about 40 ongoing probes of U.S. entities or individuals suspected of exporting weapon components or dual-use technology, as U.S. News & World Report first reported Thursday, in violation of export laws and U.N. sanctions barring trade with Iraq. In the first criminal case to result, two U.S. men were charged in October with brokering the manufacture of six armored patrol boats for the Iraqi military -- a transaction detailed in a contract ICE agents recovered at the central bank. A special Iraqi ICE task force in Washington is pursuing hundreds of other leads generated in Baghdad about possible illegal business transactions by U.S. individuals and entities. ICE agents also have been teamed with the U.S. military to recover Hussein's weapons arsenals and try to learn their provenance, an effort that dovetails with the search for Iraq's missing billions. Michael T. Dougherty, ICE director of operations, said ICE agents have interviewed captured Iraqi officials and developed informants, adding that it is "the first time civilian investigative teams have been deployed with combat teams." Among those interviewed by financial investigators are former senior Baath Party members and Iraqi military officials. Treasury and ICE officials have tracked $495 million in funds belonging to four Iraqi entities, including a bank and an oil company, to more than 30 banks in Lebanon, officials said, and they believe $800 million to be in banks in Jordan. Those countries have frozen the accounts, and negotiations are underway to return the money for the rebuilding of Iraq. U.S. officials believe the biggest cache, $2 billion, was socked away in banks in Syria, which remains on the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism. In October, Syria allowed a team of Iraqi and U.S. investigators to examine records in Damascus, where they found $260 million. Syrian officials have maintained the Iraqi funds there totaled $175 million, and have not agreed to return the funds to Iraq. But some in the United States involved in the hunt said they believe that individuals close to the Syrian government have plundered much of the $2 billion. Syria did a large amount of unsanctioned commerce with Iraq and is suspected of having controlled billions of Iraqi funds banked in Lebanon, according to a source familiar with U.S. investigative efforts. Other Iraqi assets were stashed in accounts around the world, officials said, with significant sums in Japan, Europe and Southeast Asia as well as the Middle East. The biggest amount of money recovered was found in Iraq in May, when the U.S. military and ICE agents discovered $788 million -- money Hussein authorized his son Qusay to withdraw on March 19 from the central bank. In a letter to the bank's governor, Saddam Hussein asked for the release of $920 million U.S. dollars and $90 million euros to his son and a companion, "to protect and save them from American aggression." U.S. financial investigators have been tracing the serial numbers on those bills, as well as on millions more in currencies found under the central bank vault. The information may help them trace the funds' origin and learn which banks, entities and nations did business with the Iraqi government. ICE officials are preparing to learn whether $750,000 of Qusay Hussein's money was taken off the street with his father's arrest last week. They will compare serial numbers from the money recovered in May with the numbers on Saddam Hussein's bills. Either way, $132 million of Qusay Hussein's cache is still missing -- an amount that U.S. officials worry could keep the insurgency well armed. washingtonpost.com