Welcome! Our goal at Winds of Change.NET is to give you one power-packed briefing of insights, news and trends from Iraq that leaves you stimulated, informed, and occasionally amused every Monday & Thursday. This briefing is brought to you by Joel Gaines of No Pundit Intended (Andrew Olmsted of Andrew Olmsted dot com is currently in the field and will return next month).
TOP TOPICS
- Terrorist leader Abu Massab al-Zarqawi has not been captured say US officials, contradicting an earlier rumor by a Kuwait - based newspaper.
- Two terrorists managed to gain entrance to the Green Zone before detonating the explosives they carried - killing ten and injuring twenty others. Zarqawi's terrorist group in Iraq claimed responsibility. The Green Zone - now known as the International Zone - was thought to be impregnable.
- As Ramadan begins, US forces pound insurgent strongholds in Fallujah. The residents of this city are beginning to turn on the insurgents, even as the police commander and a cleric leading negotiations are arrested. Belmont Club has a bevy of links to these stories and more!
- The brutal nature of the terrorists in Iraq is underscored in this first hand account by Muhammad Ra'd, a Lebanese national who was kidnapped in Iraq and later released. There is something else revealing in this interview - the Egyptian discussed was captured for tossing laser targeting discs onto the roofs of militant hiding places in Fallujah. Are the instances of "only civilians were killed" just propoganda or are the militants moving the targeting discs to the houses of people they want to be rid of? Or both? Hat Tip: A Collection of Thoughts
Other Topics Today Include: searching the bush for the enemy; unfortunately, mystery solved; Shell Oil LNG deal; WTO - Iraq wants in; small bank making big bond splash; election confusion; al-Sistani gets out the vote; al-Sadr entering mainstream politics; Iran infiltrating clerics and fighters into Iraq to stir up trouble; Bulgaria not pulling troops out after elections; Iraqi police graduations; hostage house destroyed, hostages freed; national guard soldiers, mutineers or heros; why are insurgent attacks increasing; Iraqi police shut down another hostage house
REPORTS FROM THE FIELD
- The soldiers waded through the thick bamboo and reeds of the dank, swampy canal - searching for the enemy and weapons caches. Vietnam? No - the canals near Baghdad. Read about this recent op of a 10th mountain division task force.
- Not long ago, there was some mystery surrounding two unidentified people who had been killed in Baghdad. There was a woman described as a European and a man who had been decapitated. The news reports at the time stated identification was taking some time, as there were no known European women missing. Unfortunately, Zeyad - at Healing Iraq - knows the victims.
RECONSTRUCTION & THE ECONOMY
- Shell Oil will be responsible for crafting the liquified natural gas (LNG) plans for Iraq. They will not be making any money from the planning, but it may give the Anglo-Dutch company a foot in the door of what will eventually be a lucrative oil and gas market worthy of foreign investment.
- The Iraqi Interim Governement has asked to join the World Trade Organization. This may seem somewhat ambitious, unless you consider it takes years, generally, for a country to be accepted into the organization. The WTO would allow Iraqi businesses to have access to markets and contract opportunities, which would not otherwise be available.
- Al-Warkaa Bank is buying mass quatities of Iraqi bonds and US investors, many of them soldiers, are backing the small bank with hard currency at exchange rates well above those offered by any other bank in the region. With significant enough hard currency purchases, the Iraqi dinar may again be worth more than the paper it is printed on.
IRAQI POLITICS
- Iraq President al-Yawer has recently expressed uncertainty that elections will occur on January 31st. Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and Ayatollah al-Sistani insist the elections must occur on time.
- Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most moderating voice in Iraq and the top Shi'a cleric in the country, called upon "all citizens eligible for voting, both males and females," to register to vote in the upcoming elections. Al-Sistani has always maintained the elections are Iraq's best chance at improving the security situation in Iraq and the quickest means of ridding the country of occupation forces.
- Muqtada al-Sadr - obscure, unaccomplished, young cleric has become part of the political mainstream in Iraq. He has gained prominence through a violent "grass roots" effort, which is reminiscent of the power politics of Mesopotamia 100 years ago.
THE INTERNATIONAL STAGE
- If there is any question at this point regarding Iran's role in continuing Iraq's instability, the fact they are infiltrating 800 clerics and Shi'ite theology students to stir up unrest and join Iranian fighters already operating in most Iraqi cities. The Iranians are poised to cause trouble in hopes of preventing the elections from taking place in January.
- Bulgaria says they will not withdraw troops from Iraq until the security situation on the ground allows it. This news contradicts recent rumors that the Bulgarian battalion-size infantry unit would leave Iraq after the January elections.
ETCETERA
- On October 14th, 32 Iraqi Police Service officers graduated from the Basic Criminal Investigation Course at the International Zone training center. There were also 85 graduates of the Iraqi Election Security Course. The courses are designed to augment the basic police training received by Iraqi Law Enforcement Officers.
- Two Lebanese men and their iraqi driver were freed, when the "hostage house" they were being held in was demolished by a coalition airstrike. All three men sustained injuries in the incident, but none of the injuries were life threatening.
- There are reports that members of a national guard unit are being investigated after they refused to continue on an unprotected convoy route, which would have them delivering deisel contaminated helicopter fuel. 19 soldiers were involved in the incident - several of them have been demoted and transfered to other guard units. The commander of the transportation brigade these soldiers were in has opened an investigation.
- Everyone who watches even an hour of television, picks up a newspaper, or listens to the radio on the way to work can tell you attacks against Iraqi governement success and multinational forces have increased. It is on the lips of nearly every news anchor in the world. What isn't being talked about is why. Hat tip: Q and O.
- You don't hear much about Iraq's Christian community, comprising about 3% of the Iraqi population - including Tariq Aziz, Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister under Saddam Hussein. Iraq's Christains have not been completely immune to violence, however. Several weeks ago, there were a series of attacks in Baghdad and Mosul, which left ten dead and fifty injured. This week, there were mortar attacks and bombings of several churches in Iraq. According to the linked article, Shari'ah prohibits the burning of non-muslim holy places or books.
- Iraqi police shut down a "hostage house" in Kirkuk - finding Iraqi and US Army uniforms, weapons and two bottles of an anestetic used to subdue hostages. One hostage was freed.
- The troops are still there. So is the Winds of Change.NET consolidated directory of ways you can support the troops: American, Australian, British, Canadian & Polish. Anyone out there with more information, contact us!
- Don't forget Chief Wiggles' Toys for Iraq drive!
Thanks for reading! If you found something here you want to blog about yourself (and we hope you do), all we ask is that you do as we do and offer a Hat Tip hyperlink to today's "Winds of War". If you think we missed something important, use the Comments section to let us know.
Could someone tell me what benefits members of the National Guard receive?
"thought to be impregnable" by whom? It's well known, AFAIK, that thousands of squatters / residents remain in a section where they took over buildings before the zone was closed, and even more thousands come in to work every day. Anyone who considered that "impregnable" probably believes in the rhythm method, too. We call them "young parents".
Joel Gaines, you list ~20 items here. I heard about one of them--the bombs in the Green Zone--on Friday. Watching the morning TV news over the weekend ("Today" on NBC), I saw lots of coverage and breathless interviews on one other topic: the Army reservists refusing convoy duty.
So this snapshot gives NBC a score of 2 out of 20.
Listening to the restrained-gleeful tone of the NBC reporters covering the reservists' story reminded me of reading Daily Kos, or Michelle Malkin, or Paul Krugman, or Ann Coulter. Not that what is presented is necessarily false, but that these accounts routinely omit crucial details unfavorable to the case that the storytellers wish to build.
If more Americans start thinking of mainstream media reporters as storytellers until proven otherwise (e.g. John Burns of the NYT), then some good will have come of their (overall) sorry performances.
AMac,
Thanks for the confidence! And just think, I am the "B" Team. Andrew Olmsted has been doing power-packed Iraq reports here for quite a time!
SJ,
Here is a source of info.
SJ
From the horses mouth although not all inclusive
US Code Title 10
and
US Code Title 10
I should note that benefits are sprinkled throughout the entire US CODE and are not listed all inclusively in a single area of code.
An update on the NG Soldiers who refused to go on a fuel resupply mission - or the other side of the story.
The short of it is a claim that the soldiers have not been disciplined (yet) or maybe un-disciplined would be more accurate. Another unit in the 343rd completed the mission. The helicopter fuel was not contaminated. The unit is on a stand down while all vehicles are inspected. They will assess armoring the vehicles.
I am highly incensed that this happened. While it may turn out to be true that they need better equipment- if I were in charge- the person who called her mother and told her to spread the message would be promptly sent home to begin to work to pay back all the benefits she had accrued. You don't want to serve, no problem but you can't have it both ways.
These people should be ashamed of themselves.
SJ
Within the military there is a right way and a wrong way to do things. I can tell you that our service men and women are taught to think for them selves and not blindly follow orders. They have every right to question an order based upon known facts and sharing those facts with their superiors.
I don’t have all of the information and can only speculate as to what went wrong. Until all the information becomes available it’s difficult to make a determination to say the least. At this point it wouldn’t be fair for me to give an opinion without all of the facts. I can say though that the reports in and of themselves don't present a consistent story.
Just wanted to bring up an item pointed out by AEBrain over on Command post (where this report is cross posted). According to Alan, there is no such thing as a laser targeting disc. I can't find anything on the internet to support that there is such a thing. I thought there was when I commented on that story, although I was under the impression that there was such a thing as a "disk-like object" that did GPS guidance for smart bombs. Maybe I am getting my facts and my Tom Clancy mixed up. If anyone has any information either way, I would be interested in learning what you have on this.
Joel, GPS works by triangulating off of signals from a system of satellites in geosynchoronous orbit. Specifically, GPS receivers infer location from the estimated distance to multiple satellites which broadcast time-stamped messages. The receivers calculate their distance from each satellite by measuring minute differences in the times it takes the radio signals to reach them. A mathematical technique called adaptive Kalman filtering is used to converge on a stable estimate of location at any given moment, so a GPS receiver is both a radio receiver and a special purpose computer.
It is possible to get very accurate results by adding a ground-based transmitter ("pseudo-satellite") at a known location. This is the method used e.g. at airports. However for obvious reasons we don't use it for guiding bombs or missiles. Even if we could set one up in hostile territory, it would be a sitting duck for destruction.
Surveyors get centimeter accuracy using a different technique that measures the Doppler effect in the satellite signals. These receivers take up to a minute or more to estimate location and are not useful in moving objects.
Don't know much about laser targeting systems but, as with pseudo-satellites, I'd be surprised if the US military deployed weapons systems that rely on our ability to mark a target that way before attacking. The laser beam itself is, so far as I know, the only input needed for laser-guided ordnance. But, unlike GPS, that's an area in which I have no hands-on expertise or experience, so I might be wrong in this case.
USMC- that's fair.