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 : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (10603)	2/2/2006 7:12:45 AM
From: epicure	Respond to of 541759

How to make friends and influence people....Not: U.S. Copter Fires Rockets Into Shiite Town By SINAN SALAHEDDIN, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 2 minutes ago BAGHDAD, Iraq - A U.S. helicopter fired rockets Thursday into a crowded Shiite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad during a battle with gunmen, killing a young woman and enraging residents and Shiite politicians. The U.S. military said the helicopter fired into the Sadr City neighborhood around 1 a.m. as U.S. troops were pursuing a "known terrorist associated with Ansar al-Sunnah," a Sunni Arab militant group that has claimed responsibility for numerous suicide attacks and beheadings. "As troops were leaving the area in a U.S. military helicopter, men on a nearby rooftop began firing at the aircraft," said military spokesman Sgt. Stacy Simon. "The helicopter returned fire with guns and rockets." The military had no details on casualties, but Sadr City resident Abdul-Hussein Shanoof said his 20-year-old daughter, Ikhlas Abdul-Hussein, was killed. Shanoof was also wounded, along with another woman and a 2-year-old child. Television footage showed Shanoof's house with a large hole through his roof and rubble scattered inside. Sadr City, the power base of radical anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, was the scene of fierce clashes between Shiite militiamen and American forces from 2004 to early 2005. But American forces have recently been holding up the neighborhood as a model of improving relations between the U.S. military and the Iraqi community. Transport Minister Salam al-Maliki, an al-Sadr supporter, condemned the U.S. attack and demanded compensation for the victims. "These military operations aim at weakening the supporters of the Sadrist movement, are considered provocative and represent a clear violation against the security situation in the country," al-Maliki told The Associated Press in the southern city of Basra. In Baghdad, another Sadr supporter, Shiite lawmaker Falah Hassan Shanshal, accused the United States of trying to "draw the Sadr movement into a new fight to affect our participation in the political process." The attack came as Saddam Hussein and his seven co-defendants refused to attend Thursday's session of their trial in protest of the new chief judge. The eight are accused of involvement in the 1982 killings of more than 140 Shiite Muslims in Dujail, north of Baghdad. Saddam's defense team wants judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman to step down after accusing him of having a "personal feud" with the former president because the judge was born in Halabja, a Kurdish village hit by a poison gas attack allegedly ordered by Saddam in 1988. Some 5,000 Kurds were killed, including several of Abdel-Rahman's relatives. U.S. and Iraqi authorities had hoped the Saddam trial would proceed smoothly and help calm Iraq's rampant insurgency, which is fanned mainly by loyalists of the former leader, Sunni Arab militants and opponents of the U.S.-led military presence. Violence continued elsewhere Thursday with a roadside bomb blast killing three Iraqi Army soldiers in eastern Baghdad's Ghazaliyah neighborhood, said army Maj. Moussa Abdul Karim. Insurgents also fired three mortar rounds at a northern Iraqi plant used for cleaning and processing crude oil, triggering a fire but causing no casualties, police Capt. Farhad Talabani said. The complex, located 30 miles west of Kirkuk, processes about 150,000 barrels of the crude oil a day from the northern oil fields before shipment to refineries, the Northern Oil Company said. Oil Ministry spokesman Assem Jihad said work at the complex had stopped about a week ago following an earlier attack of the main pipeline that feeds crude oil from the northern oil fields. Insurgents routinely target local security forces and oil installations in a bid to cripple U.S.-led attempts to rebuild the post-Saddam Iraq following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion