Hundreds of policemen and civilians marched in Basra yesterday denouncing “British aggression” in the raid to free the two undercover soldiers arrested by Iraqi police on Monday.
The protesters, some carrying handguns and AK-47s, chanted “No to occupation” and waved banners calling for the two men be tried as terrorists. Soldiers and armed police watched the march but did not intervene.

Senior aides to Moqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi militia were at the heart of Monday’s events, hit back at what they said were “distortions and nonsense” designed to discredit the firebrand cleric. “What is all this talk of infiltration of the police and destabilisation of Basra by supporters of Moqtada?” asked Abbas al-Rubaei, a spokesman for Mr Sadr in Sadr city in eastern Baghdad.

“The real problem of stability in Basra was the fact that British forces attacked a police station and in doing so released 150 Salafists [Sunni militants] on to the streets.” He was referring to reports, denied by British forces, that 150 prisoners escaped when British tanks demolished a prison wall to rescue the two men.
guardian.co.uk

Fake Terrorism Is a Coalition’s Best Friend
The story sounds amazing, almost fantastical.

A car driving through the outskirts of a besieged city opens fire on a police checkpoint, killing one. In pursuit, the police surround and detain the drivers and find the vehicle packed with explosives – perhaps part of an insurgent’s plan to destroy lives and cripple property. If that isn’t enough, when the suspects are thrown in prison their allies drive right up to the walls of the jail, break through them and brave petroleum bombs and burning clothes to rescue their comrades. 150 other prisoners break free in the ensuing melee.

Incredible, no? Yet this story took place in the southern Iraqi city of Basra recently. Violence continues to escalate in the breakout’s aftermath… just not for the reasons you think.

You see, the drivers of the explosive-laden car were not members of an insurgency group – they were British Special Forces. Their rescuers? British soldiers driving British tanks.

BAGHDAD, Iraq – About 500 civilians and policemen, some waving pistols and AK-47s, rallied Wednesday in the southern city of Basra and denounced “British aggression” following London’s decision to use force to free two of its soldiers being held by Iraqi police.

Attacks by insurgents continued in and around Baghdad, with a roadside bomb wounding two U.S. soldiers. The blast came a day after the death toll for U.S. forces in Iraq rose to more than 1,900.

The demonstrators in Basra shouted “No to occupation!” and carried banners condemning “British aggression and demanding the freed soldiers be tried in an Iraqi court as “terrorists.”

Some of the protesters met with the Basra police chief, Gen. Hassan Sawadi, to demand a British apology, said police spokesman Col. Karim al-Zaidi. Heavily armed soldiers and police watched the protest but didn’t intervene. Al-Zaidi said the demonstration was arranged by some policemen, not by the force or its commander.

Clashes between British forces and Iraqi police have killed five civilians, including two who died of their injuries Wednesday in a hospital, authorities said.

The fighting occurred Monday night when British forces used armored vehicles to storm a Basra jail and free their two soldiers who had been arrested by police. During the raid, British forces learned that Shiite Muslim militiamen and police had moved the men to a nearby house. The British then stormed that house and rescued them.

Interior Minister Bayan Jabr disputed the British account. He told the British Broadcasting Corp. the two soldiers never left police custody or the jail, were not handed to militants, and that the British army acted on a “rumor” when it stormed the jail.

Britain defended its action, saying the men were first stopped by plainclothes gunmen, then moved by militiamen from a jail to a private home while British officials tried to negotiate their release with Iraqi officials.

Lisa Glover, a British Foreign Office spokeswoman in Baghdad, said Wednesday the two soldiers “were challenged by armed men in plain clothes … and they obviously didn’t know who there were being challenged by.” But “when Iraqi police asked them to stop, they did,” she said in an interview with The Associated Press.

She said British officials had been negotiating with Iraqi authorities in Basra for the release of the two soldiers with an Iraqi judge present. “When it became apparent they were no longer at the station, but had been moved elsewhere, we naturally became concerned.”

British Defense Minister John Reid said his forces were “absolutely right” to act. A spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said the operation was “very unfortunate.”

“At this time, where there are forces in Basra and all over Iraq, such things are expected to happen,” al-Jaafari said after talks with Reid in London. “As for us, it will not affect the relationship between Iraq and Britain, and we hope that together we will reach … the truth of the matter.”

Reid said “there has not been a fundamental breakdown in trust between the British government and the Iraqi government,” and he vowed British troops would stay in Iraq until the country was stable. “We will not cut and run and we will not leave the job half done,” Reid said.

After British armored vehicles stormed the jail to free two commandos, National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie said the operation was “a violation of Iraqi sovereignty.”

Al-Jaafari’s office in Baghdad issued a statement Tuesday afternoon, insisting there is no crisis in relations between the two countries.

At first, Basra police said the men shot and killed a policeman, but on Tuesday al-Jaafari’s spokesman, Haydar al-Abadi, said the men — who were wearing civilian clothes — were grabbed for behaving suspiciously and collecting information.

The British said the soldiers had been handed over to a militia. The Basra governor confirmed the claim, saying the Britons were in the custody of the al-Mahdi Army, the militia controlled by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

“The two British were being kept in a house controlled by militiamen when the rescue operation took place,” said Gov. Mohammed al-Waili.

“Police who are members of the militia group took them to a nearby house after jail authorities learned the facility was about to be stormed,” he said, demanding that the British soldiers be handed over to local authorities for trial. He would not say what charges they might face.

Britain’s position appeared to be strengthened by al-Rubaie, who acknowledged that one problem coalition forces face is that insurgents have joined the ranks of security forces.

“Iraqi security forces in general, police in particular, in many parts of Iraq, I have to admit, have been penetrated by some of the insurgents, some of the terrorists as well,” he said in an interview with the BBC on Tuesday night.

Officials in Basra, speaking on condition of anonymity because they feared for their lives, said at least 60 percent of the police force there is made up of Shiite militiamen from one of three groups: the Mahdi Army; the Badr Brigade, the armed wing of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq; and Hezbollah in Iraq, a small group based in the southern marshlands.

All militia have deep historical, religious and political ties to Iran, where many Shiite political and religious figures took refuge during the rule of Saddam Hussein.
news.yahoo.com

Nice how they add the touch about Iran at the end…

Israel is seeking to rally international support for a tough United Nations stand against Iran’s nuclear ambitions with a warning that it could have the knowledge to produce a nuclear bomb “within six months”.

As Israel tried to stiffen resolve among the members of the International Atomic Energy Agency who are meeting in Vienna, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon urged the US to take the lead in ensuring Iran was brought before the UN Security Council “as soon as possible”.

Mr Sharon told Fox News that Iran was “afraid of a Security Council meeting and sanctions that might be taken against them”.

Mr Sharon appeared to indicate that Israel was not contemplating a unilateral military strike on a nuclear plant in Iran, of the sort it carried out on the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981. While acknowledging that Israel cannot “live with” Iran as a nuclear military power, he added: “I don’t think [it] is the sole responsibility of Israel. I think this only can be an international pressure on Iran.”
independent.co.uk

Others say 6-10 years away, Israel says 6 months to ‘have the knowledge to produce a nuclear bomb’. What does that mean?

“Rogue elements” in Iraq’s police force must be rooted out, the head of the multi-national force in Basra has said.
Colonel Bill Dunham told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he wants to work with Iraqi authorities “to weed them out”.

This comes after the British Army said it had to rescue two of its soldiers after they were arrested in Basra and handed to a militant group by police.

UK defence chief John Reid is to discuss Basra tensions when he meets Iraqi prime minister Ibrahim Jaafari.

Chief of staff Col Dunham told BBC News of the need to “reinforce the good parts” of Iraq’s police service.
bbc.co.uk

Look at what this story has morphed into: ‘militant elements’ in the police force!
What about two British ‘elite special forces’ DRESSED AS ARABS IN A CAR PACKED WITH EXPLOSIVES’?? Getting set for a ‘suicide bombing’? How did the two Iraqi police end up dead? When in a spot, just flip the script and blame ‘them’. I presented the three articles from yesterday’s bog to a class and we went to town on them, especially the BBC one, with its o so civilized talk of ‘staging’ and ‘theater’ and clinical precision James Bond in and out…THEY BLEW OPEN A JAIL AND 150 PRISONERS RAN OUT! Why did they want those guys back so badly? The way they’re playing off the story here just raises suspicion that they have been caught attempting a faux-‘insurgent’ attack. If that’s not the case, why don’t they just explain? Instead they use the old strategy of blaming ‘them.’

UK Guardian:Military anger at delay to Iraq pull-out plan
Plans to withdraw substantial numbers of British troops from Iraq next month have been abandoned after the explosion of violence in Basra on Monday night. The decision has dismayed military commanders, who are concerned about growing pressure on their soldiers.

“We are not planning a withdrawal,” a senior defence source said yesterday, referring to a plan to hand over control of two southern provinces to the Iraqis.

The fragile situation in the south of the country was dramatically exposed when Iraqi police arrested two undercover British SAS soldiers on Monday and handed them over to militiamen before they were rescued. The incident came after months of concern that local security forces in the region had been infiltrated by radicals.

Both the left-wing rags, the Guardian and Independent, ran articles with the same theme: we need to get out. Another way to deflect. This particular ‘explosion of violence’ appears to have little or nothing to do with infiltration by ‘radicals’!

The New York Times take:
In Basra, the bizarre fight on Monday between some police officers and British soldiers threatened to further destabilize the region, a Shiite-dominated area that had been relatively calm but has had a surge of skirmishes among rival Shiite militias that control much of the Iraqi police and military forces there. The fight broke out when British forces attacked a police station after the detention of two British soldiers apparently disguised in local dress.

Offering new details about the incident, the British military accused the Basra police of turning over the soldiers to hostile Shiite militiamen. That action was a crucial factor in the decision to begin a rescue attempt and knock down the police station’s walls with armored vehicles, British officials said.

Pictures of the fighting included images of a British soldier aflame as he scrambled from his burning armored vehicle, and of hundreds of Iraqis throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at the troops. The British military said no soldiers were seriously wounded.

Ultimately, the two soldiers were not at the jail but were later rescued from a home in Basra, the British military said.

The governor of Basra Province, Muhammad al-Waili, was quoted by The Associated Press as saying militiamen loyal to the rebel Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr had taken custody of the soldiers because of the looming British attack on the police station. He also called for the soldiers to be handed back to the Basra authorities for trial.

This was buried deep in another story. At least they said the guys were ‘in local dress’.

Damn the blind eyes of anyone who still can’t see after Basra.

How it began:

“Two persons wearing Arab uniforms opened fire at a police station in Basra. A police patrol followed the attackers and captured them to discover they were two British soldiers,” an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua. The two soldiers were using a civilian car packed with explosives, the source said.

Here are the two while in Iraqi police custody. Reuters appended a note to each photo over the wire: “ATTENTION EDITORS – THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT REQUESTS THAT THE IDENTIFICATION OF THIS MAN IS NOT REVEALED, EITHER VIA PIXELLATION OF THEIR FACES OR BY NOT PUBLISHING THE PHOTOS.”

As you probably know, they didn’t remain in custody for long:

British forces using tanks broke down the walls of the central jail in the southern city of Basra late Monday and freed two Britons, allegedly undercover commandos, who had been arrested on charges of shooting two Iraqi policemen.

Witnesses said about 150 Iraqi prisoners also fled the jail.

Violence flared earlier in the day as demonstrators hurled stones and Molotov cocktails at British tanks; at least four people were killed.

The British Defense Ministry spun, but found it difficult to maneuver with its pants about its ankles. “We‘ve heard nothing to suggest we stormed the prison,” a defense ministry spokesman in London said. “We understand there were negotiations.” When it found some equilibrium, it changed its story to better comport with the undeniables: “We understand that the authorities ordered their release. Unfortunately they weren’t released and we became concerned for their safety and as a result a Warrior infantry fighting vehicle broke down the perimeter wall in one place.”

These hard men, likely SAS ops, must have had some stories to tell, otherwise tanks would not have negotiated their way through the prison walls of Britain’s reputed hosts so soon after their capture.

Walking into the untidied mess of this astonishing and grotesque and predictable story feels a bit like the British detective catching the killer red-handed: “Well well well, what have we here?” We have long had reason to suspect imperial instigation to Iraq’s sectarian violence, but here, as clearly as we’ve ever seen it, is the provocateur state revealed: two British “undercover soldiers” in Arab dress, caught firing upon police from a car laden with explosives. And the British government all but admitting its culpability by breaking them out of prison.

It doesn’t make sense? Only if you haven’t been paying attention. This is the subtext of the Iraq tragedy: blow up the Hajis and play the Sunnis on the Shias; create the chaos that introduces the conditions necessary for the long-game, and the long-held aspirations of the neoconservatives to divide Iraq into ethnographic bantustans.

I wonder what will be made of this story by those who think escalating bloodshed in Iraq is a measure of the failure of US policy, and not its success, and who believe black ops and false flags are figments of our paranoiac fantasies. Probably, as with so much that would bedevil their worldview if only they were intellectually honest enough to permit it, this too will be filtered out and forgotten. But our burden is we won’t forget. And damned if the Iraqis will.

A British soldier jumps from a burning tank which was set ablaze after a shooting incident in the southern Iraqi city of Basra September 19, 2005. Angry crowds attacked a British tank with petrol bombs and rocks in Basra on Monday after Iraqi authorities said they had detained two British undercover soldiers in the southern city for firing on police.
rigorouintuition.blogspot.com

Xinhua News:Iraqi police detain two British soldiers in Basra

BBC: Iraq Probe Into Soldier Incident

Looks like we might have some concrete proof that thos pesky ‘insurgents’ are US

The mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, has suspended the reopening of large portions of the city and ordered most people to evacuate as the latest violent storm closes in on the battered region.

Tropical storm Rita has gathered strength after passing through the Bahamas yesterday and is expected to hit the coast of Florida before possibly moving to areas already devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
guardian.co.uk

WASHINGTON, Sept. 19 – A senior White House budget official who resigned abruptly last week was arrested Monday on charges of lying to investigators and obstructing a federal inquiry involving Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist who has been under scrutiny by the Justice Department for more than a year.

The arrest of the official, David H. Safavian, head of procurement policy at the Office of Management and Budget, was the first to result from the wide-ranging corruption investigation of Mr. Abramoff, once among the most powerful and best-paid lobbyists in Washington and a close friend of Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader.

According to court papers, Mr. Safavian, 38, is accused of lying about assistance that he gave Mr. Abramoff in his earlier work at the General Services Administration, where he was chief of staff from 2002 to 2004, and about an expensive golf trip he took with the lobbyist to Scotland in August 2002.

Mr. Abramoff, a former lobbying partner of Mr. Safavian, was indicted last month in Florida on unrelated federal fraud charges. He is not identified by name in the court papers involving Mr. Safavian’s arrest. But “Lobbyist A” in an F.B.I. affidavit could only be Mr. Abramoff based on descriptive details in the documents filed in the Federal District Court here.
nytimes.com

He wasn’t an ‘ex-White House aide’ as of last Friday.

…et, as we see in Sen. Joe Biden’s (D) Washington Post op-ed today, top Democrats still can’t find the guts to push for withdrawing troops, and instead continue to drone on with the same split-the-difference posturing and weak-kneed whining that has marked their electoral decline in the last few years. As Atrios’s Duncan Black notes, all Biden and the D.C. Democratic Establishment seem to be able to muster is, “If only a bunch of stuff that won’t happen would happen, Iraq would be a lot of fun.”

This kind of pathetic cowering isn’t limited just to the Senate. Roll Call reports today that House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D) “has assembled a kitchen cabinet of fellow moderate Members to shape the Democratic strategy on national security issues.” What’s troubling is that every single member mentioned in the article as working with Hoyer recently voted against legislation to force President Bush to detail an exit strategy from Iraq. Similarly, nearly every member voted for the Iraq War (including Hoyer).

This apparent exclusion by D.C. Democratic Establishment types like Hoyer of those who want troops withdrawn from Iraq doesn’t seem inadvertent. In fact, it seems like Hoyer is going out of his way to put a thumb in the eye of the few courageous Democrats who are trying to get their party to take a real position on the war. As the article notes, Hoyer is unveiling his group’s agenda “just as some of the Caucus’ left-leaning Democrats are becoming ever more vocal about their opposition to the war in Iraq and heightening their call to bring U.S. forces home.”
commondreams.org

The United States will send four astronauts to the moon in 2018 in a return to its pioneering manned mission into space, NASA administrator Michael Griffin announced.

NASA is to design a new rocket based on the technology from its ageing shuttles that are to be retired in 2010, Griffin said Monday. The new rocket could be orbiting in space by 2014.

The last manned mission to the moon was the Apollo 17 rocket in 1972. But the new mission will enable preparations to set up a permanent base on the moon, Griffin said Monday.

The NASA chief estimated the cost of the moon programme at 104 billion dollars.

He said the new rocket would be “very Apollo-like, with updated technology. Think of it as Apollo on steroids.”
news.yahoo.com

The outpouring of billions of dollars in federal relief money to victims of Hurricane Katrina is raising concerns about the risks of corruption and cronyism, with Bush administration critics expressing the fear that the Gulf coast, like Iraq, could become another grand experiment in neoconservative ideology.

Already, no-bid contracts have been awarded to major Republican contributors including Kellogg, Brown & Root, the subsidiary of Vice President Dick Cheney’s old company Halliburton. President Bush has unilaterally lifted a protection law that makes it possible for contractors to pay sub-minimum wage rates to reconstruction workers.

Among provisions releasing more than $60bnto the disaster area meanwhile, is a rise in the limit on government-issued credits cards from $25,000 to $250,000. One Republican Senator, and the Democrats, have denounced this provision as outrageous and open to abuse.

Critics have been particularly disturbed by reports that Karl Rove, President Bush’s political brain who has no experience in disaster relief or urban planning, may be put in charge of the reconstruction effort. Since his speciality is fighting and winning elections, the concern is that he will want to redraw the electoral map of southern Louisiana and Mississippi before providing new homes or electricity and water.
independent.co.uk

Clinton Launches Withering Attack on Bush on Iraq, Katrina, Budget
On the US budget, Clinton warned that the federal deficit may be coming untenable, driven by foreign wars, the post-hurricane recovery programme and tax cuts that benefitted just the richest one percent of the US population, himself included.

“What Americans need to understand is that … every single day of the year, our government goes into the market and borrows money from other countries to finance Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, and our tax cuts,” he said.

“We have never done this before. Never in the history of our republic have we ever financed a conflict, military conflict, by borrowing money from somewhere else.”

Clinton added: “We depend on Japan, China, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and Korea primarily to basically loan us money every day of the year to cover my tax cut and these conflicts and Katrina. I don’t think it makes any sense.”