Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FaultLine who wrote (138139)	6/28/2004 9:38:31 AM
From: GST	Respond to of 281500

In Anger, Ordinary Iraqis Are Joining the Insurgency By EDWARD WONG Published: June 28, 2004 AQUBA, Iraq, June 27 — At a teahouse in this palm-lined city, jobless men sit on wooden benches talking about killing American soldiers. "Tell us one benefit they've given us since they've come here," Falah, a 23-year-old man in a shabby checkered shirt, said to an Iraqi reporter. Advertisement He boasted about driving a friend to stage attacks on American patrols. The two wait in a farm field by the main road. When the Humvees roll by, his friend fires a rocket-propelled grenade, Falah said. The two hit the ground. The soldiers open fire, but the Iraqis lie still until the patrol leaves. "I really didn't ask my friend whether they have a boss or not and whether they organize their work or not," he said. "I really don't care as long as I can take part and drive the Americans out of our country. We are all resistance." As Falah spoke, about a dozen men gathered around him. They nodded vigorously. This was Sunni-dominated Baquba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, where the resistance burns as fiercely as anywhere in Iraq. With just days to go before the transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis, American commanders concede that they are far from quelling a stubborn and increasingly sophisticated insurgency. It has extended well beyond Saddam Hussein supporters and foreign fighters, spreading to ordinary Iraqis seething at the occupation and its failures. They act at the grass-roots level, often with little training or direction, but with a zealousness born of anti-colonial ambitions. American commanders acknowledge that military might alone cannot defeat the insurgency; in fact, the frequent use of force often spurs resistance by deepening ill will. "This war cannot be won militarily," said Maj. Gen. John R. S. Batiste, commander of the First Infantry Division, which oversees a swath of the northern Sunni triangle slightly larger than the state of West Virginia. "It really does need a political and economic solution." But the new government will find it tough to hammer out solutions to problems like high unemployment and lack of electricity any time soon. It will continue to come under attack, American troops will remain exposed, and the elections scheduled for January 2005 could be at risk. The Americans hope that the resistance will view the new government as legitimate, but insurgents are already assassinating Iraqi officials, and violence continues to inflame virtually every corner of the country. On Saturday, black-clad insurgents here attacked the offices of the Iraqi National Accord, the party of the new prime minister, Iyad Allawi. The interim government has to persuade the people that it can protect everyone. The insurgents have a much easier task, one they have performed with considerable success so far: sow enough fear into people to undermine confidence in authority. General Batiste said he did not expect the violence to subside after the transfer of sovereignty on Wednesday. A jobless man can still make $100 by agreeing to plant a roadside bomb or shoot at the Americans. "It'll be a busy summer," the general said. American officials say Hussein supporters and foreigners like the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi are directing some cells and are suspects in the major car bomb attacks and recent beheadings. But much of the insurgency reflects street-level anger at the lack of progress in Iraq. The unemployment rate is still as high as 60 percent in many parts of the Sunni triangle, the region at the heart of the resistance. Iraqis complain about the chronic lack of power and clean water. Hard-line clerics are attacking the occupation in their sermons and are more popular than ever. At the teahouse here, a muscular 40-year-old who gave his name as Abu Meshaal said: "We have experts in explosives and bomb making, ex-officers who have experience with such missions. We are everywhere, and we will not stop our work until the last soldier leaves Iraq. "Each day, I get more enthusiastic when I hear that explosions are taking place here and there, in Baghdad and other provinces," he added. nytimes.com 1 \| 2 \| Next>>

To: FaultLine who wrote (138139)	6/28/2004 9:47:58 AM
From: GST	Respond to of 281500

Uncertainty About Interrogation Rules Seen as Slowing the Hunt for Information on Terrorists By DAVID JOHNSTON Published: June 28, 2004 ASHINGTON, June 27 — Confusion about the legal limits of interrogation has begun to slow government efforts to obtain information from suspected terrorists, American intelligence officials said Sunday. Doubts about whether interrogators can employ coercive methods, the officials said, could create problems at the start of a critical summer period when counterterrorism officials fear that Al Qaeda might attack the United States. Advertisement Interrogators are uncertain what rules are in effect and are worried that the legal safeguards that they had believed were in place to protect them from internal sanctions or criminal liability may no longer exist, the officials said. Some intelligence officials involved in the C.I.A.'s interrogation program have told colleagues that they are bitter because their superiors, in the months after the September 2001 attacks, had assured them that aggressive interrogation techniques were necessary and legal. Other intelligence officials have expressed a sense of resignation, saying they had a feeling that, from the early days in the war on terror, aggressive steps taken in an effort to protect the country from another attack would lead to criticism and internal investigations. The uncertainty follows the Bush administration's decision to review and revise the legal basis on which interrogations of high-level Qaeda detainees have been conducted. A Justice Department legal memo in August 2002 said the government had broad legal authority over detainees, approving tactics that stopped just short of a prisoner's death. The memo said interrogators would use extreme interrogation methods without violating international treaties or federal law, which bars inhumane treatment. Senior administration legal advisers announced last week that the legal memo, signed by Jay S. Bybee, head of the Office of Legal Counsel, had been disavowed. In repudiating the memo, they said it was too broad and created the false impression that the Bush administration condoned torture. The C.I.A.'s interrogation program has been troubled. A C.I.A. contractor has been indicted in North Carolina in the death of a detainee in Afghanistan. The Justice Department has been reviewing two other cases in Iraq in which C.I.A. personnel had contact with detainees who died. C.I.A. personnel had become increasingly wary of the interrogation methods used in 2002 and 2003 against some detainees, including sleep and food deprivation and procedures in which detainees were led to believe that they might be shot, drowned or hanged. The Washington Post reported on Sunday that the use of extreme measures had been halted while the government re-examined the law regarding how far interrogators could go in questioning terror subjects. A spokesman for the C.I.A. would not discuss the report, but other officials said that the status of a suspension was somewhat unclear and that the rules for interrogation were being reviewed but not necessarily rescinded. Intelligence officials say the C.I.A.'s detention system was designed to handle only the most important Qaeda operatives captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Less important captives from the war in Afghanistan, as well as Iraqi prisoners, have been held by the American military. With the approval of President Bush, the C.I.A. decided early in the war on terrorism to isolate top-level Qaeda detainees in remote and undisclosed locations outside the United States, keeping them far removed from the rules governing the American judicial system. The agency also decided to segregate them from the larger numbers of low-level Afghan and foreign fighters sent to a detention facility at the Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba. The C.I.A. wanted complete control over the so-called high-valuedetainees; at Guantánamo, officials from several United States agencies had access to the low-level captives. Abu Zubaydah, who managed Al Qaeda's recruiting system for its training camps in Afghanistan, was among the first Qaeda leaders to be captured, and his treatment in detention raised early concerns about the C.I.A.'s harsh tactics. After his April 2002 capture in Pakistan, he was believed to have been taken to Thailand, where the local government had agreed to allow the C.I.A. to establish a secret interrogation facility for important prisoners. The tactics used on Mr. Zubaydah prompted concern among some F.B.I. agents who were aware of how the C.I.A. was treating him. The Bybee memo was prepared after an internal government debate about the tactics used in Mr. Zubaydah's interrogation, and provided a legal basis for the use of coercive tactics used against other high-value detainees, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, believed to have been a planner of the Sept. 11 attacks. nytimes.com