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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tonto who wrote (62403)	6/5/2005 4:36:17 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 81568

Huge underground hideout uncovered in Iraq Search in Anbar province yields large weapons cache Sunday, June 5, 2005 Posted: 3:09 PM EDT (1909 GMT) BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- U.S. Marines and Iraqi soldiers have uncovered a 503,000-square-foot underground insurgent hideout in central Iraq containing large stores of weapons, ammunition and supplies. The bunker -- the size of nine American football fields or six soccer pitches -- is the largest found in the past year, the U.S. military said Sunday. No insurgents were in the bunker, but Marines found fully charged cell phones and fresh food in the kitchen, said 1st Lt. Kate VandenBossche, a spokeswoman for the 2nd Marine Division. The bunker, which measured 902 feet (275 meters) by 558 feet (170 meters), also included furnished living spaces, two showers and an air conditioner, she said. Other rooms contained machine guns, mortars, rockets, artillery rounds, black uniforms, ski masks, compasses, log books and night vision goggles, she said. Marines on patrol found the bunker Thursday north of Karma, near the city of Falluja. The patrol was looking for weapons caches in Anbar province when they noticed a lone building in an old rock quarry in the middle of the desert, VandenBossche said. "In one room there was a large, chest-style electric freezer," she said. "The Marines moved it and found the hidden entrance to the underground quarry system." It is not yet known if the bunker was built by Saddam Hussein's regime or if the insurgents created it from the remnants of the quarry. "We don't know how long the bunker has been in use. We're still exploring the area and notating everything we find," she said. After Marines search the site, the weapons and munitions will be destroyed through controlled detonations, she said. It is one of a dozen weapons caches found in the area in the past four days, she said. 12 'documented cases' against Saddam With the potential for more than 500 cases against former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, prosecutors will focus on 12 "documented cases," the spokesman for Iraq's prime minister said Sunday. Laith Kubba said "there is no need to waste this effort" to prosecute all 500. "They might be over 500. However, the cases that are documented are 12, and the investigation judges are confident that the cases for which he will face the punishment stipulated by the law are 12," he said. According to The Associated Press, a spokesman for Saddam's legal team said the charges were illegal. "The appropriate channel is for the accusations to come through the court and for the lawyers to receive a copy of the indictment," Issam Ghazawi said, according to the AP report. Saddam heard seven charges against him during a July 1, 2004, appearance before a court that was formed by the Coalition Provisional Authority, a U.S.-backed body that no longer exists. He has not appeared before the Iraqi tribunal responsible for handling war crimes. At that time, the Iraq judge read preliminary charges that had been outlined in his arrest warrant. That warrant accuses Saddam of allegedly killing religious figures in 1974; gassing Kurds in Halabja in 1988; killing the Kurdish Barzani clan in 1983; killing members of political parties in the past 30 years; displacing Kurds during the 1986-88 "Anfal" campaign; suppressing the 1991 uprisings by Kurds and Shiites; and invading Kuwait in 1990. It was not immediately clear if those seven were among the 12 cases. Several of Saddam's top lieutenants face similar preliminary charges. Kubba said he believed Saddam's trial could begin within the two-month time frame given by interim Iraq President Jalal Talabani on Tuesday. "I don't see anything that would prevent it from happening in this short period," he said, "and the government's position is to push for and speed up the trial as quickly as possible." U.S. troops captured Saddam in December 2003, eight months after his government fell. He is in the legal custody of Iraq's government but under the guard of U.S. troops.