[A-List] Iraq: poorly educated guesswork

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

And spot the casual smear of George Galloway.

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Guerrillas in Iraq led by King of Clubs
IAN BRUCE, Defence Correspondent
The Herald, October 31 2003

THE Pentagon claimed yesterday that a former general in Saddam Hussein's
inner circle is masterminding and financing the increasingly lethal
resistance to coalition forces in the Sunni Triangle north and west of
Baghdad.

Officials named Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, the King of Clubs in the "most
wanted" deck of cards issued to US troops to help identify fugitives from
the ousted regime, as the terror coordinator for the area.

They say al-Douri, the highest-ranking Iraqi still at large apart from
Saddam himself, has managed to combine the efforts of local fedayeen militia
with foreign Islamic jihadi volunteers to inflict a steady toll of
casualties on American forces.

The general met George Galloway, who was last week thrown out of the Labour
party following an interview on Iraqi TV, in December 1999, the day after
the Glasgow MP allegedly met an unnamed Iraqi intelligence officer.

Al-Douri later allegedly wrote the letter which purported to show the MP
linked with Iraqi intelligence. He was Baghdad's northern regional commander
before the allied invasion in March and was born in Tikrit, Saddam's home
town and centre of the guerrilla war which has claimed 117 US lives since
the end of major combat operations on May 1.

The Pentagon also said several prisoners captured in the last few days were
members of Ansar al-Islam, a terrorist group formerly based in northern Iraq
and suspected of having ties to the al Qaeda terror network.

Although the US has tried hard to establish links with al Qaeda to help
justify the war on Iraq, locals say Ansar was little more than a band of
brigands who made a living by smuggling over the border into Iran and from
protection rackets and intimidation.

Lieutenant General Rick Sanchez, the coalition commander in Iraq, said there
were "clear indications" former regime officials and foreign terrorists were
working together.

Robert Mueller, the FBI director whose agency is helping with investigation
of recent suicide attacks, was more cautious, saying that it would be
"premature to lay the blame for a wave of recent bombings at the feet of any
one entity."

The average number of daily attacks on US patrols and convoys is now 33,
double the rate of early September, and fatal casualties in the post-war
period have now outstripped the number killed during the war itself.

Insurgents continued the guerrilla war yesterday, blowing up a freight train
carrying military supplies near Fallujah west of the capital and setting
four wagons ablaze.
There were no casualties, but locals then looted the burning wreck, escaping
with computers, tents and bottled water. In Mosul, a soldier from the 101st
airborne division was slightly wounded by a roadside bomb.

The exodus of aid agencies also continued, with the UN announcing the
withdrawal of its remaining staff from Baghdad a day after the International
Committee of the Red Cross and Medecins Sans Frontieres pulled out of the
bomb-blasted capital.

Despite official claims of large-scale infiltration by Islamic militants via
Iraq's long desert borders with Jordan and Syria and its mountain frontier
with Iran, US ground commanders said yesterday they had seen little evidence
of an influx of volunteer fighters.

The US has put a bounty of more than £15m on the head of a man suspected of
orchestrating the bombing of the Jordanian Embassy in Iraq.

Abu Mus'ab al Zarqawi, who is described as having a "long standing
connection to senior al Qaeda leadership" figures appeared on the US State
Department-affiliated Rewards for Justice website.

He is also being tried in his absence for the killing of US diplomat
Laurence Foley in Amman, Jordan, last year.