Militants killed five police officers -- including a police commissioner -- on the second anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, as the insurgency pressed on with its tactic of targeting Iraqi security forces, Shiites and Kurds and focusing less on US troops.
Newly elected Shiite and Kurdish leaders marked the March 19, 2003, start of the war with a fresh promise to form a government by the end of the month, when the National Assembly convenes for only the second time, nearly two months after lawmakers were elected.
In Waco, Texas, US President George W. Bush said "the Iraqi people are taking charge of their own destiny."
PHOTO: AP
In his weekly radio address, Bush saluted the more than 1,500 troops who have died in the war.
"I know that nothing can end the pain of the families who have lost loved ones in this struggle, but they can know that their sacrifice has added to America's security and the freedom of the world," he said. "Because of our actions, freedom is taking root in Iraq, and the American people are more secure."
In violence Saturday, gunmen killed Ahmed Ali Kadim, a Baghdad regional police commissioner, as he traveled to his office in the Doura neighborhood. In the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk, attackers killed a policeman, then bombed his funeral procession, killing three other officers, including the cousin of Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish leader pegged to become Iraq's next president.
A suicide attacker trying to kill US troops in the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, 112km west of Baghdad, prematurely detonated his car bomb, killing only himself, Iraqi police and the US military said.
Despite the continuing attacks, the top US general in Iraq, Army General George Casey, said recently that the level of violence against US troops had dropped significantly since the Jan. 30 elections. That appeared to be the result of a tactical shift by the insurgency, made up mostly of Sunni Arabs who were dominant under Saddam, to focus violence on majority Shiites and Kurds, two groups persecuted under the dictator's Baath Party rule.
The Jordanian-born terrorist mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his al-Qaeda in Iraq group have said they hope their relentless wave of bombings, kidnappings and beheadings will lead to a sectarian war.
Shiites make up about 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million people, while Sunni Arabs make up about 20 percent of the population. Kurds, who are Sunni but mostly secular, make up 15 to 20 percent.
Sunni Arabs mostly stayed away from the elections, either because they feared reprisals or because they chose to boycott them.
"The terrorists have one policy. They want to prevent the formation of a democratic government and want to draw the people of Iraq into a sectarian war," said Ali al-Faisal, a member of the Shiite clergy-backed United Iraqi Alliance.
"In the past, they were targeting the American forces because they were in charge of security. After the new Iraqi army and police were established, and succeeded in maintaining security and began annihilating them, they shifted their attacks. But they will fail because there is a real intent to fight terrorism," al-Faisal said.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
RSS