:eek someoen in iraq has some kickass weaponery!!! Shooting down a blackhawk is believeable but an apache? What are they doing!!!
Another US helicopter crashed in Iraq Tuesday, probably shot down by rebel fire, as a probe got under way in Washington into the use of official documents in a book accusing President George W. Bush of planning to invade the country all along.
Close on the heels of allegations by ex-treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, the US Army's War College has sharply criticized US strategy in the war on terrorism, calling the invasion of Iraq an unnecessary "detour" that diverted attention and resources from the battle against Al-Qaeda.
The Apache helicopter crashed near the hotbed town of Fallujah west of Baghdad, the third such incident in two weeks, as Iraq remains in the grip of insurgency exactly one month after the capture of Saddam Hussein.
"We are aware a helicopter went down," a US military spokesman said. "There is an initial report of enemy fire."
Two crew members survived but the US military said it did not know whether they had been injured in the crash, which happened around 10:00 amsome 35 kilometres (20 miles) northwest of Fallujah.
Nine US soldiers were killed when a Blackhawk helicopter was hit by "enemy fire" near Fallujah last Thursday, and one soldier died and another was wounded when ground fire struck a Delta Kiowa reconnaissance aircraft on January 2.
The coalition was also battling the fourth day of protests in the normally calm Shiite south of the country over a sluggish job market and widespread poverty.
In Kut, 100 protestors tossed grenades at Ukrainian soldiers stationed around city hall offices and who fired warning shots to disperse the mob, an AFP correspondent witnessed.
"Seven wounded were admitted to the emergency room -- five protestors and two female bystanders," said Dr. Taha Ali Abdul Hussein. Six suffered bullet wounds, including one of the women.
Meanwhile, US troops killed two Iraqis and wounded three in Fallujah Tuesday after they were reportedly attacked, a local police chief told AFP.
In other violence, two Iraqi policemen were shot dead by by two unknown attackers in the northern city of Mosul late Monday, police and doctors said.
The US Army also said an Iraqi Civil Defence Corps (ICDC) soldier and an alleged attacker were killed Monday in a firefight after security officials found a weapons cache in a vegetable truck in Tarmiyah, west of Baghdad.
In Washington, the Treasury Department said it was investigating whether O'Neill improperly used official documents in a book in which he accuses Bush of planning to invade Iraq from his earliest days in office.
Treasury spokesman Rob Nichols noted that a document marked "secret" was shown Sunday during an interview with O'Neill on the CBS television program "60 Minutes."
"We referred this today to the Office of the Inspector General," Nichols told reporters on Monday.
Bush refrained from criticizing O'Neill, while claiming that he inherited a policy of regime change in Iraq from his predecessor, Bill Clinton.
"Like the previous regime, we were for regime change ... We were fashioning policy along those lines and then all of a sudden September 11 hit," Bush told reporters in Monterrey, Mexico.
O'Neill insisted in the interview that Bush had been intent on ousting Saddam long before the September 11, 2001 attacks.
O'Neill was interviewed about his contribution to the book, "The Price of Loyalty," by former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind.
Criticism of Bush's Iraq policy also came in a paper published by the US Army's War College and posted on its website.
Author Jeffrey Record said the United States had made a cardinal error by presenting Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's Iraq as a single monolithic threat.
"This was a strategic error of the first order because it ignored critical differences between the two in character, threat level and susceptibility to US deterrence and military action," Record wrote.
"The result has been an unnecessary preventive war of choice against a deterred Iraq that has created a new front in the Middle East for Islamic terrorism and diverted attention and resources away from securing the American homeland against further assault by an undeterrable Al-Qaeda," he said.
In a disclaimer, the Army War College's Institute for Strategic Studies said the paper did not necessarily represent the views of the war college or the military.
Nevertheless, it raised for discussion within the military a critique of the Iraq war that has gained currency as US forces have failed to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and become embroiled in a contested, open-ended occupation.
In Moscow, a Russian company Tuesday denied selling military equipment to the Saddam regime following renewed US charges that Russian firms had violated UN sanctions against Iraq.
"Since we received in 1996 the right to independently go to the international arms market, KBP has never signed any contracts with Iraq and did not deliver any arms to this country," an official with KBP Tula told the ITAR-TASS news agency.
KBP Tula is one of the Russian companies which Washington accused of selling military equipment to Baghdad as the war against Iraq got underway in March 2003.
Iraqi Trade Minister Ali Allawi, meanwhile, said the interim government was preparing criminal cases in both Iraqi and international courts against individuals and companies that sold goods to the previous regime at "highly" inflated prices and under dubious contracts.
Allawi said most of the offenders were from "Near Eastern countries including Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt," which had "trade protocols" with Saddam's ousted regime.
AFP
Another US helicopter crashed in Iraq Tuesday, probably shot down by rebel fire, as a probe got under way in Washington into the use of official documents in a book accusing President George W. Bush of planning to invade the country all along.
Close on the heels of allegations by ex-treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, the US Army's War College has sharply criticized US strategy in the war on terrorism, calling the invasion of Iraq an unnecessary "detour" that diverted attention and resources from the battle against Al-Qaeda.
The Apache helicopter crashed near the hotbed town of Fallujah west of Baghdad, the third such incident in two weeks, as Iraq remains in the grip of insurgency exactly one month after the capture of Saddam Hussein.
"We are aware a helicopter went down," a US military spokesman said. "There is an initial report of enemy fire."
Two crew members survived but the US military said it did not know whether they had been injured in the crash, which happened around 10:00 amsome 35 kilometres (20 miles) northwest of Fallujah.
Nine US soldiers were killed when a Blackhawk helicopter was hit by "enemy fire" near Fallujah last Thursday, and one soldier died and another was wounded when ground fire struck a Delta Kiowa reconnaissance aircraft on January 2.
The coalition was also battling the fourth day of protests in the normally calm Shiite south of the country over a sluggish job market and widespread poverty.
In Kut, 100 protestors tossed grenades at Ukrainian soldiers stationed around city hall offices and who fired warning shots to disperse the mob, an AFP correspondent witnessed.
"Seven wounded were admitted to the emergency room -- five protestors and two female bystanders," said Dr. Taha Ali Abdul Hussein. Six suffered bullet wounds, including one of the women.
Meanwhile, US troops killed two Iraqis and wounded three in Fallujah Tuesday after they were reportedly attacked, a local police chief told AFP.
In other violence, two Iraqi policemen were shot dead by by two unknown attackers in the northern city of Mosul late Monday, police and doctors said.
The US Army also said an Iraqi Civil Defence Corps (ICDC) soldier and an alleged attacker were killed Monday in a firefight after security officials found a weapons cache in a vegetable truck in Tarmiyah, west of Baghdad.
In Washington, the Treasury Department said it was investigating whether O'Neill improperly used official documents in a book in which he accuses Bush of planning to invade Iraq from his earliest days in office.
Treasury spokesman Rob Nichols noted that a document marked "secret" was shown Sunday during an interview with O'Neill on the CBS television program "60 Minutes."
"We referred this today to the Office of the Inspector General," Nichols told reporters on Monday.
Bush refrained from criticizing O'Neill, while claiming that he inherited a policy of regime change in Iraq from his predecessor, Bill Clinton.
"Like the previous regime, we were for regime change ... We were fashioning policy along those lines and then all of a sudden September 11 hit," Bush told reporters in Monterrey, Mexico.
O'Neill insisted in the interview that Bush had been intent on ousting Saddam long before the September 11, 2001 attacks.
O'Neill was interviewed about his contribution to the book, "The Price of Loyalty," by former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind.
Criticism of Bush's Iraq policy also came in a paper published by the US Army's War College and posted on its website.
Author Jeffrey Record said the United States had made a cardinal error by presenting Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's Iraq as a single monolithic threat.
"This was a strategic error of the first order because it ignored critical differences between the two in character, threat level and susceptibility to US deterrence and military action," Record wrote.
"The result has been an unnecessary preventive war of choice against a deterred Iraq that has created a new front in the Middle East for Islamic terrorism and diverted attention and resources away from securing the American homeland against further assault by an undeterrable Al-Qaeda," he said.
In a disclaimer, the Army War College's Institute for Strategic Studies said the paper did not necessarily represent the views of the war college or the military.
Nevertheless, it raised for discussion within the military a critique of the Iraq war that has gained currency as US forces have failed to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and become embroiled in a contested, open-ended occupation.
In Moscow, a Russian company Tuesday denied selling military equipment to the Saddam regime following renewed US charges that Russian firms had violated UN sanctions against Iraq.
"Since we received in 1996 the right to independently go to the international arms market, KBP has never signed any contracts with Iraq and did not deliver any arms to this country," an official with KBP Tula told the ITAR-TASS news agency.
KBP Tula is one of the Russian companies which Washington accused of selling military equipment to Baghdad as the war against Iraq got underway in March 2003.
Iraqi Trade Minister Ali Allawi, meanwhile, said the interim government was preparing criminal cases in both Iraqi and international courts against individuals and companies that sold goods to the previous regime at "highly" inflated prices and under dubious contracts.
Allawi said most of the offenders were from "Near Eastern countries including Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt," which had "trade protocols" with Saddam's ousted regime.
AFP