Top Insurgents Escaped Prison Days After Iraq Took Over

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By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS and OMAR AL-JAWOSHY
Published: July 23, 2010

BAGHDAD — An outsize ceremonial skeleton key traded hands last week in the official transfer of Camp Cropper, the last jail in Iraq that had been under American control. The Iraqi government was, one American general said, “equipped, prepared and poised to take over.”
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Maya Alleruzzo/Associated Press

Iraq’s justice minister, Dara Nurredin Dara, and Maj. Gen. Jerry Cannon on July 15.
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But it did not end the dark history of prisons in Iraq over the last seven years: Just five days later, four prisoners, at least three of them said to be high-ranking members in the nation’s most violent insurgent group, escaped. The warden and several guards are nowhere to be found.

“Leaders from the Islamic State of Iraq were able to escape from Cropper Prison,” read a statement that appeared Friday on a Web site that carries messages from the group, which is affiliated with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. “And no one from the apostates has been able to find them, 36 hours after their escape.”

Sunni extremists sometimes use the term “apostates” to describe the majority Shiites, who control Iraq’s government.

The July 15 transfer of Camp Cropper, which had held many of what the United States military considered “high value” inmates, was considered yet another milestone toward full Iraqi sovereignty, just over a month before America is scheduled to withdraw the last of its combat troops.

But institutions are being handed over to a political system in disarray. There is no new government nearly five months after parliamentary elections.

And while overall violence is relatively low, a deadly campaign of assassinations is under way against political figures, members of Awakening groups and people who had cooperated with Americans. The group to which the escaped prisoners belonged, the Islamic State of Iraq, claimed responsibility for one of the worst of these recent attacks: On Sunday, bombings killed at least 47 members of Awakening Councils, made up of former Sunni insurgents who switched sides.

The men escaped from the Camp Cropper prison complex, near Baghdad International Airport, on Tuesday, though Iraqi officials did not make the news public for 48 hours. The missing men include the group’s finance minister, its interior minister and its justice minister, the security officials said, without identifying them. The standing of a fourth escapee was unclear.

The men had been captured by American forces and had been held for about 15 months, the Iraqi police said Friday. On Friday, the United States military in Iraq declined to answer questions on the escape from the prison, where 1,500 inmates are held. In Washington, Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said: “U.S. forces are not involved in any aspect of running or securing the facility. The government of Iraq is investigating the circumstances surrounding the escape.” It is not known how the four men escaped the highly secured prison, but Iraq’s minister of justice, Dara Nurredin Dara, said Friday that the jail’s American-assigned warden, Omar Hamis Hamadi, was missing as well.

“We were told that he was trustworthy and had a good reputation,” Mr. Dara said.

Other security officials said that several guards had failed to report to work since the escape.

The prison system in Iraq has been consistently troubled since the United States military invaded Iraq in 2003. Seeking to tame an increasingly effective insurgency, American soldiers arrested thousands of suspects, many of them without proof, and held them for a year or longer.

The system began to change after the scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison, in which American jailers tortured and abused detainees. Experts say that many men became radicalized against Americans inside the prisons.

Experts also say that, as prisoners have been released and transferred to Iraqi authority, the system remains abusive. In April, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki ordered the closing of a secret prison that held hundreds of detainees from northern Iraq. Dozens of prisoners had been tortured before the country’s human rights minister and the United States intervened.

High-level suspects have disappeared from Iraqi detention with maddening frequency. On Friday, the British Embassy in Baghdad said the British foreign secretary had raised concerns with Iraq’s foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, about the recent disappearance of the man convicted in the 2004 kidnapping and murder of a British-Iraqi aid worker, Margaret Hassan. The man, Ali Lutfi Jassar al-Rawi, was in custody and appealing his conviction when he disappeared.

At Camp Cropper, the American military continues to operate one of the prison’s blocks at the request of the Iraqi government, overseeing about 200 inmates, including members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a homegrown Sunni group, and officials who had been part of Saddam Hussein’s government. The Iraqi government asked the Americans to hold on to some of the prisoners while Iraqi law enforcement officials determine their legal status. The men escaped from the Iraqi-controlled part of the prison.

In recent months, American and Iraqi security forces have captured and killed dozens of members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, including its top leaders. American generals, however, caution that while the organization has been significantly weakened, it continues to be capable of launching attacks that lead to mass casualties.

Duraid Adnan and Zaid Thaker contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Elisabeth Bumiller from Washington.

Hamas, Israel, and the Gaza flotilla: seven facts you need to know

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Amid a barrage of criticism of Israel, fair-minded observers should consider these seven facts before judging the flotilla raid.

By Nadav Tamir / June 3, 2010
Boston

In the torrent of rage and confusion generated by the loss of life when the Israeli Navy enforced the embargo on the Gaza Strip this week, there has been a regrettable overlooking of certain fundamental facts. As is so frequently the case, these facts have gotten buried in the rubble of political rhetoric. In order to prevent this incident from having a deleterious effect on the peace process going forward, the following must be understood:

Fact 1: The Gaza Strip is an armed camp, ruled with an iron fist by a repressive Hamas regime that has not only repeatedly pledged itself to the annihilation of Israel and the torpedoing of any prospects for Middle East peace, but has made good on its pledges by firing approximately 10,000 missiles, rockets, and mortar bombs at Israeli civilians over the past several years for the express purpose of killing or wounding those civilians or, at a minimum, terrifying them.

Fact 2: The United States, the European Union, and the international community have recognized that Hamas is a terrorist enterprise, which surely is beyond dispute.

Fact 3: When faced with an armed enemy committed to its destruction, which has done its very best to make war against Israeli civilians, Israel has two choices: to try to protect its civilians from those attacks, or to simply shrug its shoulders and hope that the attacks stop. There is, quite simply, no nation on earth that would choose the latter course, and no reasonable and fair-minded person who would expect it to.

Fact 4: In an effort to stop the missiles from being manufactured and used against it, and only for that reason, Israel has been forced to try to keep the materials used for that purpose out of the Gaza Strip. This is an obvious step needed to prevent the kind of war that caused so much destruction in 2008, when the increase in attacks by Hamas and its allies against Israeli civilians eventually triggered an Israeli response to stop them. There can be no real doubt that Israel is entitled to keep weapons of war from being used against it.

Fact 5: Israel repeatedly, and expressly, made clear to those who organized the effort to break the embargo that it would willingly take all of the humanitarian aid that was on their boats and transfer it to Gaza, without delay. All that Israel wanted was to be able to ensure that materials were, in fact, humanitarian aid, rather than the sorts of materials used for launching attacks that are supplied to Hamas by the Iranians and others. The organizers of the flotilla refused – because, of course, getting humanitarian aid to Gaza was not what their gambit was really about.

Fact 6: Israel regularly provides humanitarian aid to Gaza, and volunteering to get the humanitarian aid from the ships to Gaza was consistent with Israeli policy all along.

And Fact 7, which is now coming to light several days after the initial and predictable barrage of criticism of Israel: Those on at least one of the ships planned all along to attack Israelis when they sought to enforce the embargo, and indeed, their attack on the Israelis was brutal.

This fact has been starkly captured in video widely circulating around the Internet, showing the vicious beatings initiated by those on board one of the ships against Israelis, who for their part had been instructed to refrain from using any force if at all possible. Indeed, in Israel the military is being criticized for failing to adequately prepare its naval personnel to anticipate the attacks on them from the boats, and for being too passive, and too trusting, in its approach to the flotilla.

As for the evidence that certain individuals of those responsible for orchestrating this tragedy are linked to Al Qaeda and other representatives of the worst forces on the planet, the next days will likely yield more information.

But the larger issue is this: Has the desire to blame Israel in certain quarters reached such an irrational frenzy that the fundamental facts of any issue relating to the Middle East conflict will reliably be overlooked? Are those who are committed to a fair-minded and reasonable analysis of that conflict prepared to insist that others who like nothing more than jumping to conclusions stop, pause, think, and consider the actual evidence?

There will always be those who don’t let facts to get in the way of their biases. But fair-minded people examine the evidence before forming conclusions, especially when emotions run high. Israel – and the cause of peace in the Middle East – is counting on them to do just that.

Nadav Tamir is the consul general at the consulate general of Israel to New England.

Full body scanners arrive at airports - along with skepticism

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The expanded use of full body scanners at US airports raises familiar privacy concerns, but also questions about cost and efficiency.

By Daniel B. Wood Staff writer / March 5, 2010
Burbank, California

Waiting for her bags here at the Bob Hope International Airport baggage claim, Doris Kern is easily engaged on the subject of using body scanners to screen airline passengers.

“I will feel safer when more places use them,” says the mother of three. “But given the option, I’d rather take a pat down."

The TSA (Transportation Security Administration) announced Friday that nine more US airports will receive the machines in the next week as the Obama administration heightens security efforts in the wake of the attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas day ... by a man carrying explosives in his underpants.

Three machines will go online Monday at Boston's Logan International Airport, to be followed by units at Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; San Jose, Calif.; Columbus, Ohio; San Diego; Charlotte, N.C.; Cincinnati; Los Angeles; Oakland, Calif.; and Kansas City, according to the TSA's Lee Kair.

Experts say – and polls concur – that the rollout of body scanners at US airport security checkpoints will not be accompanied by the strong public resistance met in Europe. A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll released in January found that 78 percent of respondents said they approved of using the scanners, and 67 percent said they are comfortable being examined by one.

Some analysts, however, do agree with European aviation-security experts who remain unconvinced of the cost benefits.

“I think the magnitude with which they are deploying them is overkill,” says Bruce McIndoe, President of iJET Intelligent Risk Systems, a global risk and security company based in Annapolis, Maryland. The cost of the machines is high, and they have to be operated, calibrated, and maintained – which is very expensive on top of that purchase price, he says.

And others say the cost should be measured not only in dollars spent, but in time delays for passengers.

“This is not going to replace metal detectors anytime soon,” says Sam Kamin, an associate professor of criminal law at the University of Denver, who has written about high-tech scanning and detection at airports and the possible constitutional implications. “If this did, it would take you four hours to get on your flight, and it would cripple air travel," he says.

Passengers will have the option of accepting or declining a body scan. Those who do – and pass – will not have to pass through a metal detector or other security equipment. Those who decline must walk through a metal detector and submit to a pat down.

The scanners, which allow the TSA to see beneath a passenger's clothing to search for explosives and other contraband, have drawn fire from civil libertarians. The American Civil Liberties Union has denounced the use of them as a "virtual strip search."

The TSA counters that the images from the scanners are seen only by a security officer in a remote viewing room, that passengers' faces will be blurred, and that the images aren't stored.

Information from Associated Press was used in this report.

Coburn warns against majority-vote tactic in weekly Republican address

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By Jordan Fabian - 02/27/10 06:00 AM ET

Should Democrats use the budget reconciliation process to pass healthcare reform, it would fly in the face of public opinion, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said in the Republicans’ weekly address.

Coburn, a physician who attended this week’s bipartisan healthcare summit at the White House, repeated Republican calls to scrap the current healthcare proposals and start from scratch.

“Unfortunately, even before the summit took place the majority in Congress signaled its intent to reject our offers to work together,” he said. “Instead they want to use procedural tricks and backroom deals to ram through a new bill that combines the worst aspects of the bills the Senate and House passed last year.”

The White House and Democratic leaders in Congress have said that they will move forward with their existing reform proposals despite Republican calls to stop.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has not yet said whether or not he will use the maneuver that would allow Democrats to get around a GOP filibuster of the healthcare reform bill.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Friday that Obama will unveil the way he would like to proceed next week but did not say whether or not the White House would endorse the controversial use of the reconciliation tactic.

At the healthcare summit, Obama hinted at its use, saying that the public wants a majority vote on the proposals.

Coburn said that while the summit was not a waste of time, Republican claims often fell upon deaf ears.

“While we listened to one another, I’m concerned that the majority in Congress is still not listening to the American people on the subject of healthcare reform,” he said. “By an overwhelming margin, the American people are telling us to scrap the current bills, which will lead to a government takeover of healthcare, and we should start over.”

Despite Coburn’s staunch position against the Democrats’ health plans, he earned praise at the summit from members of the other party such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for offering “positive ideas.”

Coburn highlighted one of his healthcare proposals in his address, the Patients’ Choice Act he introduced with Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Reps. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Devin Nunes (R-Calif.)

“Our proposals to rein in the massive amount of fraud, waste and duplication in our healthcare system drew widespread praise from Democrats at the summit, including the president,” he said. “Democrats and Republicans agree that eliminating waste and inefficiency would lower costs and improve access tomorrow."

But Coburn said that lawmakers would not be able to capitalize on areas of bipartisan agreement if the Democrats move ahead with their plan, even though Democrats have said that they have adopted more than 100 GOP amendments to their bills.

“If the president and the leaders in Congress are serious about finding common ground they should continue this debate, not cut it off by rushing through a partisan bill the American people have already rejected,” Coburn said.
Source:
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/84019-coburn-warns-against-majority-vote-tactic-in-weekly-gop-address
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Iraq’s Known Unknowns, Still Unknown

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By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: February 23, 2010

From the very beginning of the U.S. intervention in Iraq and the effort to build some kind of democracy there, a simple but gnawing question has lurked in the background: Was Iraq the way Iraq was (a dictatorship) because Saddam was the way Saddam was, or was Saddam the way Saddam was because Iraq was the way Iraq was — a collection of warring sects incapable of self-rule and only governable with an iron fist?

Alas, some seven years after the U.S. toppled Saddam’s government, a few weeks before Iraq’s second democratic national election, and in advance of the pullout of American forces, this question still has not been answered. Will Iraq’s new politics triumph over its cultural divides, or will its cultural/sectarian divides sink its fledgling democracy? We still don’t know.

In many ways, Iraq is a test case for the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s dictum that “the central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.”

Ironically, though, it was the neo-conservative Bush team that argued that culture didn’t matter in Iraq, and that the prospect of democracy and self-rule would automatically bring Iraqis together to bury the past. While many liberals and realists contended that Iraq was an irredeemable tribal hornet’s nest and we should not be sticking our hand in there; it was a place where the past would always bury the future.

But stick we did, and in so doing we gave Iraqis a chance to do something no other Arab people have ever had a chance to do: freely write their own social contract on how they would like to rule themselves and live together.

With elections set for March 7, with America slated to shrink to 50,000 troops by September — and down to zero by the end of 2011 — Iraqis will have to decide how they want to exploit this opportunity.

I met last week with Gen. Ray Odierno, the overall U.S. commander in Iraq, who along with Vice President Joe Biden has done more to coach, coax, cajole and occasionally shove Iraqis away from the abyss than anyone else. I found the general hopeful but worried. He was hopeful because he has seen Iraqis go to the brink so many times and then pull back, but worried because sectarian violence is steadily creeping back ahead of the elections and certain Shiite politicians, like the former Bush darling Ahmed Chalabi — whom General Odierno indicated is clearly “influenced by Iran” and up to no good — have been trying to exclude some key Sunni politicians from the election.

It is critical, said Odierno, that “Iraqis feel that the elections are credible and legitimate” and that the democratic process is working. “I don’t want the campaigning to lead to a sectarian divide again,” he added. “I worry that some elements will feel politically isolated and will not have the ability to influence and participate.”

How might this play out? The ideal but least likely scenario is that we see the emergence of an Iraqi Shiite Nelson Mandela. The Shiites, long suppressed by Iraq’s Baathist-led Sunni minority, are now Iraq’s ruling majority. Could Iraq produce a Shiite politician, who, like Mandela, would be a national healer — someone who would use his power to lead a real reconciliation instead of just a Shiite dominion? So far, no sign of it.

Even without a Mandela, Iraq could still hold together, and thrive, if its rival Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish communities both recognize the new balance of power — that the Shiites are now the dominant community in Iraq and, ultimately, will have the biggest say — and the new limits of power. No community can assert its will by force and, therefore, sectarian disputes have to be resolved politically.

The two scenarios you don’t want to see are: 1) Iraq’s tribal culture triumphing over politics and the country becoming a big Somalia with oil; or 2) as America fades away, Iraq’s Shiite government aligning itself more with Iran, and Iran becoming the kingmaker in Iraq the way Syria has made itself in Lebanon.

Why should we care when we’re leaving? Quite simply, so much of the turmoil in the region was stoked over the years by Saddam’s Iraq and Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran, both financed by billions in oil revenues. If, over time, a decent democratizing regime could emerge in Iraq and a similar one in Iran — so that oil wealth was funding reasonably decent regimes rather than retrograde ones — the whole Middle East would be different.

The odds, though, remain very long. In the end, it will come back to that nagging question of politics versus culture. Personally, I’m a believer in the argument Lawrence Harrison makes in his book “The Central Liberal Truth” — culture matters, a lot more than we think, but cultures can change, a lot more than we expect. But such change takes time, leadership and often pain. Which is why, I suspect, Iraqis will surprise us — for good and for ill — a lot more before they finally answer the question: Who are we and how do we want to live together?

Skelton opposes repeal of 'Don't ask, don't tell'

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By Roxana Tiron - 01/15/10 02:30 PM ET

The leading House Democrat on military policy said Friday that he opposes repealing the law that bans openly gay people from serving in the military.

Seventeen years ago, Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) played a major role in crafting the controversial law known as "Don't ask, don't tell." When President Bill Clinton wanted to lift the ban preventing gay people from joining the military, Skelton opposed the move. The end result was a compromise under which gay service members would conceal their sexual orientation.

Now, after President Barack Obama pledged during his campaign and first year in office to repeal the law, Skelton finds himself on the opposite side once again.

"I am personally not for changing the law," he said during a C-SPAN "Newsmakers" interview that will air Sunday.

Because the military is engaged in two major conflicts, in Afghanistan and Iraq, changing the law would create "disruption" that can cause some "serious problems," Skelton said during the interview.

He said the full House Armed Services Committee won't hold a hearing on the repeal of the law. Rather, the Personnel subcommittee will hold the hearing at some point this year.

Skelton also said he would oppose efforts to repeal the law in Congress — setting the stage for a potentially intense debate within his own committee with Democrats who want to see the law repealed.

Meanwhile, Skelton's Senate counterpart, Carl Levin (D-Mich.), said that the Senate Armed Services Committee will hold a hearing on the issue at the end of January.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday that he and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen are prepared to testify before the Senate.

Gates said at a press briefing that there are continuing conversations within the Pentagon about "implementing the president's intent."

Obama has come under increasing pressure from gay-rights advocates to move on the repeal. Gay-rights advocates are eyeing the change in law for this year, but it is unclear how Obama will proceed. The Pentagon has moved slowly on the issue and there have been reports of internal dissent on how fast changes to the law should be instituted.

Giant tuna fetches $177,000 at Japan fish auction

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By SHINO YUASA
The Associated Press
Tuesday, January 5, 2010; 6:28 AM

TOKYO -- A giant bluefin tuna fetched 16.3 million yen ($177,000) in an auction Tuesday at the world's largest wholesale fish market in Japan.

The 513-pound (233-kilogram) fish was the priciest since 2001 when a 440-pound (200 kilogram) tuna sold for a record 20.2 million yen ($220,000) at Tokyo's Tsukiji market.

The gargantuan tuna was bought and shared by the owners of two Japanese sushi restaurants and one Hong Kong-based sushi establishment, said a market representative on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose the information.

Caught off the coast of northern Japan, the big tuna was among 570 put up for auction Tuesday. About 40 percent of the auctioned fish came from abroad, including from Indonesia and Mexico, the representative said.

Japan is the world's biggest consumer of seafood with Japanese eating 80 percent of the Atlantic and Pacific bluefins caught. The two tuna species are the most sought after by sushi lovers.

However, tuna consumption in Japan has declined because of a prolonged economic slump as the world's second-largest economy struggles to shake off its worst recession since World War II.

"Consumers are shying away from eating tuna ... We are very worried about the trend," the market representative said.

Apart from falling demand for tuna, wholesalers are worried about growing calls for tighter fishing rules amid declining tuna stocks.

The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas in November slashed the quota for the 2010 catch by about one-third to 13,500 tons (12,250 metric tons) - a move criticized by environmentalists as not going far enough.