Iraqi Governing coucil leader Assasinated

[siceone]

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- American-led coalition forces in Iraq found sarin gas in an artillery round that was rigged as an improvised explosive device, U.S. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said Monday.

The device went off before it could be disabled, Kimmitt said, causing a "small dispersal" of the nerve agent. Two members of an explosives ordnance team were treated for minor exposure, he said.

Kimmitt said the artillery round was of an old style that Saddam Hussein's regime had declared it no longer had after the Persian Gulf War. He said it was designed to explode after being fired from an artillery piece and that its effectiveness as an improvised explosive device was "limited."

Kimmitt did not say where the weapon was found nor did he say if it originated in Iraq.

News of the discovery came hours after Iraqi Governing Council President Izzedine Salim was killed by a suicide bomber in central Baghdad, the U.S. Army said.

Salim, who was head of the Islamic Da'wah Movement in the southern city of Basra, was a key moderate on the U.S.-appointed, 25-member council.

The council has selected Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawar, a civil engineer who would have assumed the rotating presidency June 1, to complete Salim's term.

A Sunni Muslim from Mosul, al-Yawar will serve until the handover of sovereignty June 30 to an interim Iraqi government.

"We will not retreat from the march to which he devoted all of his life, the march toward freedom for our people, the march toward building a democratic and a unified Iraq," al-Yawar said.

"All those criminals should be ashamed of all they have done, which will increase the suffering of our people and extend the occupation."

Lakhdar Brahimi, U.N. special envoy to Iraq, condemned the killing, which he said "has taken the life of one of Iraq's most loyal and patriotic citizens, a man who made every sacrifice for his country, who worked sincerely and selflessly so that Iraq may regain its sovereignty and strength."

Da'wah party member Adnan Ali said Salim's death was "a very, very sad day for the Iraqis and for Iraq."

"We have lost a great member who had donated a long time of his life for serving Iraq and the Iraqis," Ali said.

The attack on Salim took place Monday morning near Baghdad's "Green Zone" -- home to the American-led Coalition Provisional Authority headquarters. The blast killed seven Iraqis and wounded five Iraqis and two U.S. soldiers, U.S. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said.

It damaged at least a dozen vehicles near a coalition checkpoint, leaving a crater 5 feet wide and 3 feet deep. Salim's car was in line at the checkpoint at the time of the attack.

Kimmitt said it appeared artillery rounds were packed into the back of the attacker's car.

Thick black smoke billowed over central Baghdad shortly after the blast. Fire equipment, ambulances, Iraqi police and American soldiers raced to the scene.

A senior coalition military official said the bombing had the hallmarks of an attack by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- an al Qaeda associate who has been tied to numerous attacks in Iraq. The official noted that al-Zarqawi-style attacks are typically a spectacular, symbolic suicide bombing.

Ali said he thinks it is likely that the attack on Salim, also known as Abdul Zahra Othman Mohammed, was not a coincidence.

"I think it is more likely that he was targeted as he has been warned for the last couple of months," he said. "This is a very dangerous [check]point, and they can target any [governing council] member who leaves from the residence and enters into the Green Zone."

A Shiite Muslim, Salim was the editor of numerous newspapers and magazines. He is the second governing council member to have been killed in an attack.

Aquila al-Hashimi died in September from wounds suffered in an ambush near her Baghdad home. Also a Shiite, she was the leading candidate to become Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations.

"What this shows is that the terrorists and insurgents in Iraq are trying to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power from the occupiers to the Iraqi people," said British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. "These terrorists are the enemies of the Iraqi people themselves." (Full story)

Kimmitt said the handover of sovereignty must remain on schedule.

"Days like today convinced us even more so that this must stay on track -- absolutely affirms that the process of handing over sovereignty to the people of Iraqi must happen," he said.

Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmed Chalabi called on the militias of Iraq's political parties to step up and protect the country and its people in the wake of the suicide bomb attack.

Chalabi, at one time a favorite of the U.S. Defense Department, said the coalition is not providing adequate security.

"The Iraqi Governing Council must take action. We have Iraqi forces who struggled and fought Saddam. They are now available and ready to provide security."

Other developments

Two Russians abducted by guerrillas in Iraq have been freed on the southern outskirts of Baghdad, Russian news agency Interfax reports. Russian news reports Monday said the men identified themselves as Andrei Meshcheryakov and Alexander Gordiyenko. They were kidnapped May 10 in an ambush in which one of their colleagues was killed. (Full story)


The United States has notified South Korea it plans to move 4,000 infantry troops from the country to Iraq, a senior Pentagon official said Monday. The troops will come from the 2nd Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division. It is not immediately known when the troops will move to Iraq.


A U.S. soldier was killed and two others wounded Sunday in a firefight south of Baghdad, the coalition said. Since the start of the war, 783 U.S. troops have died, including 570 under hostile circumstances.


The Abu Ghraib prison scandal was not the result of actions by a few misguided soldiers, but of a decision last year by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to expand a clandestine operation against al Qaeda to the treatment of prisoners in Iraq, according to a report in The New Yorker magazine. Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita sharply rejected the article's conclusions, calling the assertions "outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture." (Full story)

[igloo]

Brutal and sad......Expect to see more of this as the June 30th deadline approaches....

There are finally some signs that ordinary Iraqi's are tiring of outsiders, extremists, and Baathists that are a minority who are hijacking their chance of a free and democratic society, and are standing in the way of reconstruction...

For example, I already posted news (underreported) how Iraqi's took to the streets against Al Sadr and even residents in Fallujah want "outsiders' kicked out...


As Retired Maj. Gen. Mohammed Abdul-Latif said, who is now running Fallujah:

"We can make them (Americans) use their rifles against us or we can make them build our country, it's your choice," Latif told a gathering of more than 40 sheiks, city council members and imams in an eastern Fallujah suburb.
Latif, speaking in Arabic to the sheiks, defended the Marines and the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

"They were brought here by the acts of one coward who was hunted out of a rathole - Saddam - who disgraced us all," Latif said. "Let us tell our children that these men (U.S. troops) came here to protect us.

"As President Bush said, they did not come here to occupy our land but to get rid of Saddam. We can help them leave by helping them do their job, or we can make them stay ten years and more by keeping fighting."
Latif also told the insurgents to "stop doing stupid things."

"Those bullets that are fired will not get the Americans out, let them finish their job here so that they can return to their country," Latif said.

"Our country is precious, stop allowing the bad guys to come from outside Iraq to destroy our country."

Latif, a former military intelligence officer said to have been imprisoned by Saddam and exiled, praised the former Iraqi army.