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TechnoratiBAGHDAD, Iraq - Outraged Iraqi officials demanded an investigation into an early morning U.S. military raid Friday near the birthplace of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, saying the operation violated the terms of the handover of Karbala province to Iraqi security forces.
Karbala Gov. Oqeil al Khazaali said U.S. forces killed an unarmed civilian and arrested at least one person in the raid in the southern town of Janaja. The governor's brother, Hassanein al Khazaali, said late Friday that the Iraqi killed in the operation was a relative of the U.S.-backed prime minister.
The U.S. military command in Baghdad had no comment. Two senior aides to Maliki weren't available for comment; one was still in a meeting with the prime minister after midnight. The governor is said to belong to the prime minister's Dawa Party.
Iraqi officials in Karbala said the operation began at dawn Friday, when U.S. aircraft delivered dozens of American troops to the rural Shiite Muslim town of Janaja, which is populated mostly by members of the Maliki tribe.
Raed Shakir Jowdet, the Iraqi military commander of Karbala operations, said that four Apache helicopters and a jet fighter soared over the area. About 60 U.S. soldiers then stormed the town, "terrifying the families," he said.
Jowdet said that an unarmed civilian named Ali Abdulhussein was killed in his home. He added that the man detained in the operation, Hussein Nima, was visiting the area and didn't reside in Karbala.
"Not one Iraqi soldier took part in the airdrop, and the operation was not coordinated with any Iraqi authority," he said. "We are still looking for an answer as to why this has taken place, and we still have no logical explanation from the American forces."
Khazaali, the U.S.-allied governor, denounced the operation at a news conference, saying the U.S. military hadn't coordinated in advance with Iraqi forces, who assumed control of Karbala security in October 2007. The governor said the raid set "a dangerous precedent" for areas ostensibly under full Iraqi control.
"The airdrop confuses the agreements, and America should answer for this violation," Khazaali said.
Khazaali said the raid was based on false intelligence and that the U.S. military should "submit a report to clarify all the circumstances and to point out the killers and hand over the names of everyone who participated in the military operation in order for them to appear before the Iraqi judicial system."
At the time of the Karbala security handover, a joint statement from U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Army Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, praised Iraqi security forces in Karbala for "operating independently."
"Iraqi Security Forces in Karbala have been successfully operating independently, maintaining their own security for the past three months," the October 2007 statement said. "Working with local government officials, they have demonstrated their readiness to assume responsibility for the province. Today this responsibility is theirs."
Also Friday, the U.S. military announced the arrest of a suspect in connection with a suicide attack that killed more than 20 people, including three U.S. Marines and two military interpreters, at a meeting of allied Sunni tribal leaders Thursday in the western Anbar province. The military statement didn't identify the suspect, who was described as belonging to an extremist cell.
In Baghdad, gunmen assassinated Judge Kamil al Shwaili, who presided over the Risafa appeals court, the judiciary announced Friday. Abdulsattar al Bairaqdar, a spokesman for the Iraqi judiciary, said the judge was killed on his way home from work Thursday afternoon. He added that more than 40 Iraqi judges have been killed since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
Issa is a McClatchy special correspondent. Special correspondent Qassim Zein contributed from Najaf, Iraq.
© Copyright 2008, The McClatchy Washington Bureau
11 Comments so far
Show All" Munich June 28th, 2008 2:40 pm
Perhaps Nouri will awaken from his stupor to see that his country is being used as nothing more than a staging ground for the Neocon's deadly, and very costly wet dream of Middle East hegemony."
I referred to an article in my first post, above, a very important (actually crucial) piece or analysis by Max Fuller, and that article of his causes me to suspect that Nouri al-Maliki's publicly stated complaints be only for deceiving the public; possibly. The Daawa Party has, and all along, but very much working with the USA; the US controls the (puppet) Iraqi Interior Ministry; the Daawa Party is very present, involved there, and related to the crimes committed by the ministry's death squads and other murderous actors, assassins, kidnappers, etc., and NO, they're NOT all of the Badr Brigade, aka Organisation, which perhaps is guilty for a relatively small proportion of all of the crimes committed by the US Interior Ministry in Iraq (it's more accurate to call it this way). ETCETERA.
What PM al-Maliki's knowledge is of all of these very US controlled and orchestrated or commanded US Interior Ministry black ops amounts to is something I don't know. Maybe he's been kept very much out of the information loop. But maybe he knows more than enough to make him extremely guilty and not only a puppet, weak and manipulated, etcetera.
Arvy June 28th, 2008 2:10 pm
"Maliki deserves exactly what he's getting."
Well said Arvy. If Iraq were not a US colony they would have had the power to kick Blackwater out after they masaquered over a dozen innocnet civilians. That's what the Iraqis said there were going to do until they got a call from the boss in Washington.
Has anyone noticed the Dish Network commercials with the doofy guy sort of imitating George Bush's poor grammar?
It's fairly irreverent for telecom, especially during prime time.
(AP) JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Robert Mugabe's mother told him when he was a child that he had been chosen by God to be a great leader. No wonder he thinks only of divine power — not elections, not foreign critics, not a crumbling economy - - - Deja Vu, George?
Fairly dark imagery there Munich; well said.
A man's as good as his word. Ain't he George?
Maliki has just been awakened by horse head in his bed. As elucidated by John Perkin's Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, when one does not play ball with the military-industrial-media complex thugs, in this case to acquiesce to all Bush administration demands of the Status of Forces agreement, stuff can happen...to ones own family in this case. Should be interesting to see how this whole charade plays out. And remember, if Rove was Bush's brain then Cheney's still Bush's dick.
Perhaps Nouri will awaken from his stupor to see that his country is being used as nothing more than a staging ground for the Neocon's deadly, and very costly wet dream of Middle East hegemony.
Nouri my friend, you've done been Neoconed, punked by the bellicose chimp and the evil Dick. Shame on you.
Hopefully you won't get fooled again? However, it might already be too late. The US bases are now in place, the oil's being extracted by the huge corporations which helped to fund the very demise of your country. You lose! Thank you for playing Middle East hegemony.
Tune in next week when America's military might takes on Iran. Brought to you by Black water and by . . . Raytheon and GE, we bring good wars ta life
piltdownman wrote, "Kind of exposes the lie that Iraq is a sovereign country", and given that the article by Max Fuller far, far more describes that sovereignty for Iraq has been planned for termination and by the US and Britain all along, and since prior to the launch of this war, I strongly emphasize that the sovereignty is [dead] as of years ago, and that Fuller's article is [crucial] reading, a [must].
His article explains tremendously much and things by far most people have never heard or read of; and very well sourced the article is. He provides many links to supporting articles and US military documents, while the articles are from news sources you're all familiar with; some in the US, others in England, and maybe additional sources.
But given that WordPress loves to reject posts with links I provide when they're not to www.globalresearch.ca, I'll just say to use the following search keywords, which turns up the link to the article immediately and quickly. Google only returned two links, while the article I'm referring to is the first one, in the test I just performed.
"Ghosts of Jadiriyah" "A survivor's testimony" Max Fuller "brussels tribunal"
I suggest leaving the quotes as they are, using them in the Web search; just forgot to put 'Max Fuller' within quotes, but it doesn't matter.
The article is of Nov. 2006, but it remains ever pertinent to the continuing war on Iraq, for the US and UK certainly won't be making serious changes in their covert "management" of what goes on and what is permitted in Iraq.
The article begins with a very important testimony of a former Iraqi professor of Pedagogy (teacher of teachers or teaching), and then Fuller develops on the cover US counter-insurgency "intelligence" operations, etcetera. VERY IMPORTANT and should be treated as a [must read] by everyone who sanely cares about what this war is really all about and what's really behind the so-called "sectarian fighting" or attacks, "civil war", detentions and extreme torture of detained Iraqis who were totally innocent, and ETCETERA.
Definitely complementary, strongly so too, information is provided in two resources referred to in my following post; also. These are also important to read. And I apologise for the additional redirection to a June 25th post, but I have to post this quickly and then disconnect, and the following article provides all the preliminary info. needed, after which just look for the references the following refers to.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/27/9923/#comment-310389
Maliki deserves exactly what he's getting. It's just his first taste of the kind of thanks he can expect for selling out his own country and providing the occupiers with a blank cheque in the form of a so-called "Status of Forces Agreement". More of the same to follow.
Kind of exposes the lie that Iraq is a sovereign country. Iraq has the same kind of sovereignty Hungary and Czechoslovakia had while they were occupied by the U.S.S.R.