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["Toni Hawryluk" <tonihawr AT msn.com>]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6099894/site/newsweek/<>

 

Article follows this information on who is doing what where - in the names of 
Allah and Dumbya, (the U.S. gawwwd) : will the most murderous win when voting 
time comes around .. ? And after the Iraqi vote - will the killing stop ? 
Dream on ....

 

>From jihadis to Baathists: rivals for power in the new Iraq.

 

Mahdi Army: Although only a few hundred men serve full-time in Moqtada 
al-Sadr's militia, April's ferocious Shiite street battles showed the radical 
cleric can rally--and arm-- thousands. 

 

Unity and Holy War Movement: Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi leads Iraq's deadliest 
terror group. Since April, the Qaeda-linked al-Zarqawi has claimed 
responsibility for killing hundreds--Nick Berg among them. 

 

Army of Muhammad: A Sunni umbrella group in Tikrit, Mosul and other cities, 
it is said to include former members of Iraqi intelligence. 

 

Fallujah Brigade: Patched together in April under U.S. auspices to restore 
order in Fallujah, this force of 2,500 fighters and ex-insurgents takes 
orders from Mohammed Latif--a former colonel under Saddam. Its loyalties are 
uncertain. 

 

Ansar Al-Islam: This Kurdish renegade group, blamed for bombing U.N. 
headquarters in Baghdad last August, has been linked to Al Qaeda and 
al-Zarqawi. 

 

Mujahedin Brigade: One of several Sunni insurgent groups to take 
responsibility for attacks on U.S. troops in Fallujah.

 

No Place Is Safe

Life in Baghdad: Some suicide bombings don't even get headlines anymore

By Rod Nordland

Newsweek

Oct. 4 issue - Bricks and plaster blew inward from the wall, as the windows 
all shattered and I fell to the floor-whether from the shock wave, or just 
fright, it wasn't clear. The blast was so loud it sounded as if the building 
couldn't possibly stand, but it did. Toaster-size chunks of twisted metal 
fell in the yard and banged off the roof; later they'd be identified as 
pieces of a U.S. Army Humvee, blown up by a suicide car bomb a full block 
away. No one was hurt in that building, which had been heavily 
blast-protected. But at an Iraqi house next door, several children were 
injured. Out on the street, at least one U.S. soldier was killed and three 
badly wounded; three Iraqi passersby were incinerated in their car, which was 
so badly mangled that it took wailing relatives more than a day to extract 
the corpses.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the incident was that it scarcely 
made the news. It was just another among a recent surge of terrorist attacks, 
one of two suicide car bombs that day in the Mansour neighborhood of Baghdad. 
Besides, everyone was focused on the discovery of the headless corpse of 
American Jack Hensley, 48, found floating in the Tigris River. Gruesome 
videos of Hensley's beheading and that of fellow American Eugene (Jack) 
Armstrong, 52, played on Islamic Web sites. Armstrong's body was later 
dropped off only five blocks away from his home, also in the upscale Mansour 
neighborhood.

In a way that bombs and bullets don't, the agony of the 23 hostages now being 
held hits hard with Westerners here. It's not difficult to imagine yourself 
blindfolded and kneeling in a jihadi snuff film. The 140 hostages taken since 
April include a score of nationalities and people of many professions. 
Truckdrivers, journalists, missionaries, businessmen-all have been targets. 
Many hostages have been released, but not recently. Of 28 people killed, 24 
had their final screams recorded on tape and bandied about the Web. It's a 
form of terrorism that's deeply personal and, as in Beirut in the 1980s, 
disproportionately effective.

The day after Hensley's body was found, his surviving colleague, Briton 
Kenneth Bigley, 62, was shown in a video as he wept and pleaded with his 
prime minister to help him. "Please, please," he said, "I need you to help 
me, Mr. Blair. You are the only one who can help me. I need to live, I want 
to live..." His captors are from the Tawhid and Jihad group, led by Abu 
Mussab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist with Qaeda ties. It was apparently 
al-Zarqawi-identified by the CIA from a voiceprint-who had personally cut the 
Americans' throats as they struggled and screamed; he then severed their 
heads and held them up for a bloody close-up-in one case, casually gouging 
out the victim's eye. Later, another group, calling itself Followers of 
Zawahiri (after the Qaeda No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri), boasted that they had 
beheaded two Italian antiwar activists, Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, who 
had been snatched from their Baghdad home on Sept. 7. But no film emerged, 
and Italian officials said they believed the claim to be a hoax.

Throughout Italy, people hung white sheets from their windows in reply to a 
Vatican appeal to show solidarity with the two Simonas. In Britain, Bigley's 
extraordinary plea stirred up strong antiwar feelings, putting Blair in an 
awkward position on the eve of Labour's party conference. "I feel desperately 
for Kenneth Bigley and his family," said the Conservative opposition leader, 
Michael Howard. "And I feel for Blair, too, who is in the most unenviable 
predicament." Blair telephoned Bigley's family twice to express his sympathy, 
but refused to give in to al-Zarqawi's demands.

That same day in Washington, President George W. Bush mentioned the 
beheadings only in passing, as he shared a podium with Iraqi interim Prime 
Minister Ayad Allawi in the White House Rose Garden. "We're sickened by the 
atrocities. But we'll never be intimidated. And freedom is winning." For his 
part, the Iraqi leader blamed the press for the bad images. "In 15 out of our 
18 Iraqi provinces we could hold elections tomorrow," he said. "Although this 
is not what we see in your media, it is a fact."

Much of that media, ourselves included, were in virtual hiding last week, as 
were nearly all foreign civilians-hostages have even included Russians, 
French and 12 Nepalese workers, who were assassinated without any plausible 
justification. Intelligence that criminal gangs are kidnapping foreigners and 
selling them to terrorist groups has increased fears about moving around 
Iraq. Heavily armed convoys of contractors' SUVs, once a common sight, have 
all but disappeared from busy roads. "The only serious reconstruction going 
on now," said one Western businessman, "is inside the Green Zone," the 
heavily fortified area that houses Iraqi government and American Embassy 
offices. "We're trapped in a rat's cage," said an ambassador from a 
non-Coalition country in Europe who no longer leaves his bunkerlike 
residential compound. "No area of Baghdad is risk-free." Many foreign 
companies have suspended operations. Even major news organizations are 
finding it difficult to staff the story: "We just can't find senior 
correspondents who will come to Iraq now," said the bureau chief for one 
major American newspaper.

Iraqis suffer most. In the same week the American hostages were taken and 
killed, at least 300 Iraqis died from terrorist attacks. Some 45 Iraqi 
translators working for the American military have been killed in Baghdad. 
The most recent case occurred last Monday, when a woman was gunned down in 
her car at 2 p.m. Terrorists also killed a top official of the state-owned 
Northern Oil Co. last week, while two moderate Sunni sheiks were kidnapped 
and killed in Baghdad.

U.S. officials say the climate of fear has not stalled rebuilding. "It's 
utterly, utterly untrue that we've abandoned reconstruction," said Col. 
Jeffrey Phillips, deputy director of the Project and Contracting Office at 
the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. "I wouldn't say it's put on hold," Phillips 
said. "I would say certain projects are put on hold, what they call the 'out 
years,' but we're still pressing ahead with projects closer to hand." 
Priority is given to projects where security is established. "If you build it 
up and they blow it up, it doesn't take the two of us to figure out it's 
counterproductive." U.S. officials denied speculation that many embassy 
staffers had been leaving Iraq recently. However, the State Department has 
had a hard time staffing the embassy in Baghdad, which is at only 50 to 60 
percent of authorized strength, one official said, despite pay bonuses of 50 
percent and more. "The only thing that will get people there is money," said 
an official in Washington. Everyone has to ask himself whether the risks are 
worth it.

With Joseph Contreras in Baghdad, Eve Conant in Washington, Barbie Nadeau in 
Rome, Emily Flynn in London and Eric Pape in Paris

© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.