Insurgents launch deadliest attacks since Iraqi elections; 19 killed

[Judi Lynn]

Insurgents launch deadliest attacks since Iraqi elections; 19 killed
By Jason Keyser, Associated Press, 2/3/2005 06:05

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) Insurgents struck back with a vengeance following a post-election lull, waylaying a minibus carrying new Iraqi army recruits, firing on Iraqis heading for work at a U.S. base and gunning down an Iraqi soldier in the capital, officials said Thursday. Two U.S. Marines were killed in action.

At least 20 people, including the Marines, died in insurgent-related incidents starting Wednesday night, according to U.S. and Iraqi reports. Insurgents had eased up on attacks following Sunday's elections, when American and Iraqi forces imposed sweeping security measures to protect the voters.

In the deadliest incident, insurgents stopped the minibus south of Kirkuk, ordered army recruits off the vehicle and gunned down 12 of them, said Maj. Gen. Anwar Mohammed Amin. The rebels allowed two of the soldiers to go free and ordered them to warn others against joining Iraq's U.S.-backed security forces, he said.

The assailants identified themselves as members of Takfir wa Hijra, an Islamic group that emerged in the 1960s in Egypt, rejecting society as corrupt and seeking to establish a utopian Islamic community.
(snip/...)

http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=19990201&s=kornbluh

[Botany]

1. Inside Job on the recruits.

How did the know that the minibus was coming?


:bounce:

[leftchick]

3. absolutely

why else would they have let two go free? This will happen repeatedly and to US soldiers as well. Time to get them the fuck outa there.

[truthisfreedom]

2. sad.

more sad than usual.

[cthrumatrix]

4. how does the election change any of this carnage....what a farce!

[Nancy Waterman]

5. Please fix the link

You have the wrong article linked

[leftchick]

6. Hey Judi Lynn, Here is a correct link!

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050203/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq&cid=540&ncid=1480

:)

[Judi Lynn]

8. Oh, JEEZ, leftchick. Thanks for the tip. Too long without sleep here.

I went and found the right one, am editing and posting. Good grief!

Here's the one I meant to use:

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/034/world/Insurgents_launch_deadliest_at:.shtml

[SheilaT]

7. Since the election. As if

that was more than a week ago.

[NNN0LHI]

9. Iraqi soldiers dragged off bus and shot

http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5513774

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Insurgents dragged Iraqi soldiers off a bus and shot 12 of them dead in the bloodiest attack on
security forces since last weekend's historic election, the Iraqi army says.

Two soldiers survived and fled to a nearby village after their bus was ambushed near the northern oil city of Kirkuk late on
Wednesday. The soldiers had been returning from vacation.

Two U.S. Marines were also killed on Wednesday in Anbar province west of Baghdad, a hotbed of anti-American militancy.

The deaths took the number of U.S. military and Pentagon personnel killed in action in Iraq since the invasion of March 2003
to 1,102. Including non-combat deaths the toll is 1,438.

more

[adigal]

10. I don't see this in the MSM

or did I just miss it?

[Supersedeas]

13. no, the focus is on celebrity trials

[sabra]

14. 20 dead as Iraq insurgents launch fresh attacks

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6874656/

[tanyev]

11. Will they ever be able to release the election results?

The winners might as well paint a target on themselves.

[ckramer]

12. Has everyone checked out this old story yet?

U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote

Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3-- United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.

According to reports from Saigon, 83 percent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.

The size of the popular vote and the inability of the Vietcong to destroy the election machinery were the two salient facts in a preliminary assessment of the nation election based on the incomplete returns reaching here.

Pending more detailed reports, neither the State Department nor the White House would comment on the balloting or the victory of the military candidates, Lieut. Gen. Nguyen Van Thieu, who was running for president, and Premier Nguyen Cao Ky, the candidate for vice president.

A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam. The election was the culmination of a constitutional development that began in January 1966, to which President Johnson gave his personal commitment when he met Premier Ky and General Thieu, the chief of state, in Honolulu in February.

The purpose of the voting was to give legitimacy to the Saigon Government, which has been founded only on coups and power plays since November, 1963, when President Ngo Dinh Deim was overthrown by a military junta.

[yorkiemommie1]

15. i'd seen it and forgotten where i saw it

thanks for posting as i wanted to send it on!

[saigon68]

22. Yes-- 83% Voted in the election of 1967 in Viet-Nam

Peace and justice were on the march and especially Freedom Reigned </SARCASM>

[yellowcanine]

16. Bush's "Mission Accomplished Victory Lap" Interrupted by Reality

The Iraqi insurgents showed what they thought of the purple finger pointing nitwits. Damn, after the phantom WMDs, the looting and IEDs instead of flowers and candy, the "Mission Accomplished" that turned into "Mahem Accomplished", one would think the Bushbots would have at least figured out by now that maybe, just maybe, they ought to stifle the urge to gloat until they see how things pan out on the ground in Iraq.

[yorkiemommie1]

17. gloating, taunting and threatening and belittling...

what the rw does best!

[starroute]

18. Takfir wa'l-Hijra sounds like really bad news

http://www.nmhschool.org/tthornton/takfir_wa.htm

"In Egypt in 1977, members of the Islamist separatist group Takfir wa'l-Hijra ("Condemnation and Migration"), also known as the "Society of Muslims," attacked night clubs in Cairo during a more general series of food riots that had broken out. A few months after this, Takfir kidnapped a moderate Islamic preacher, Sheikh Muhammad al-Dhahabi, and subsequently murdered him."


http://www.meib.org/articles/0001_l1.htm

"Syrian and Lebanese forces have simultaneously moved to crush clandestine Sunni Islamic fundamentalist movements in both countries over the last month in an apparent bid to eliminate potential opposition to peace negotiations with Israel. ... A press release by Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami (The Islamic Liberation Party) claimed that approximately 800 people have been arrested by security forces, adding that many relatives of its party members were seized as hostages to put pressure on them to surrender."


http://massmurder.zyns.com/abbas_baqir_abbas_02.html

"Funerals have been taking place for 20 people massacred as they attended evening prayers at a village mosque in Sudan. A gunman opened fire at worshippers on Friday with a Kalashnikov assault rifle at the mosque on the outskirts of Omdurman, near the capital Khartoum. ... The gunman belonged to the militant Al-Takfir wa al-Hijra (Renunciation and Exile) faction, state television said, quoting a police statement."


So these guys are the most radical of the radical, they're into mass murder, and they're operating (at the very least) in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Sudan. And now we've invited them into Iraq as well? Way to go, guys.

[starroute]

21. Oops, quoted the wrong bit from one of those articles

Here's the relevant part:

http://www.meib.org/articles/0001_l1.htm

"At the same time, Syrian officials ordered the Lebanese Army to prepare for action against an obscure band of 200-300 Sunni militants calling themselves Takfir wa al-Hijra who had established themselves in the mountains of Dinnieh, east of the north Lebanese port city of Tripoli. ... Very little information is available about the Takfir wa al-Hijra movement. Although this same name was used in the early 1980s by the militant Egyptian Islamist group responsible for the assassination of President Anwar Sadat, there does not appear to be any explicit connection between the two. There was virtually no mention of Takfir wa al-Hijra in the Lebanese media until the group allegedly bombed four Orthodox Christian churches in and around Tripoli in October and November of last year.

The group's membership is extremely multifaceted. Although most are Lebanese, there are also a significant number of Palestinians, Syrians, and others from elsewhere in the Arab world. Most have been previously affiliated with anti-Syrian Sunni Islamist movements such as Jama'a al-Islamiyya and Al-Tawhid al-Islami. The Lebanese-born leader of Takfir wa al-Hijra, Bassam Ahmad Kanj (also known as Abu A'isha), and many of its members reportedly fought with the Afghani mujahidin against occupying Soviet forces in the 1980's. According to one report, Kanj received financial support from fellow Afghan veteran Osama bin Laden through bank accounts in Beirut and north Lebanon."

[jmcgowanjm]

19. Which of these versions sounds more credible

A car bomb exploded at a house used by U.S. military snipers
in Qaim, near the Syrian border, witnesses said. Other
U.S. troops responding to the scene opened fire, hitting
some civilians, the witnesses said. A U.S. military
spokesman had no immediate information.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050203/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq&cid=540&ncid=2100

In a separate development, Aljazeera learned that an 
unknown number of US soldiers were killed and wounded
when a house used as a US military headquarters
was destroyed in al-Qaim city in western
Baghdad.

Witness reported other US troops firing back hitting several civilian bystanders.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/66BF7ED2-DA98-4CBE-A1AB-ADFA56D6DD48.htm

[shrike]

20. I figured as much

I would love to see the Iraqi people govern themselves -- lord knows they've been through enough. But one election is not going to change things -- at least not as long as an occupying army (us) is on their soil.