Steve Quayle News Alerts

September 29, 2003

TIKRIT, Iraq — Iraqi security forces and U.S. military police on Monday teamed up in the hunt for those behind a series of deadly attacks against American troops -- their largest joint raid to date.

Backed up by dozens of soldiers from the U.S. Army's 720th Military Police Battalion , the 200-plus American-trained Iraqi police led the overnight raid in Saddam Hussein's turbulent hometown. The joint raids, along with U.S.-led raids conducted in other Sunni Muslim areas, netted 92 people and weapons including Kalashnikov rifles, mortars and their firing tubes, 155 millimeter artillery shells and multiple rocket launchers.

Among those arrested were 12 men suspected of being behind a series of recent attacks against U.S. troops in the Tikrit area, said 4th Infantry Division spokesman Maj. Gordon Tate

A U.S. commander credited the success of the joint operation to the leadership of the Iraqis.

"We think we are turning the corner with the police. This was completely led by the Iraqis," Lt. Col. David Poirier, who commands the 720th, based in Fort Hood, Texas, said. "We hope this operation has tightened the noose on the bad guys."

"These are the people responsible for that. This operation was designed to break the back of the Fedayeen," Poirier said. "They are off-balance, on the run, they know we are after them and that the Iraqi police are after them.

"We want to send the message that if you pull the trigger on the coalition, we will get you," he said.

In another incident, 4th Infantry Division troops late Sunday killed one Iraqi and captured three others in a shootout nine miles south of Balad, U.S. officials said. In the car, troops found two M-16 rifles which belonged to two American soldiers who were abducted and killed in June, officials said.

U.S. troops have carried out dozens of raids, mostly at night, over the past two weeks, arresting men who have funded those known by the U.S. military as the trigger-pullers. They also have uncovered weapons caches, including two of the biggest found to date last Saturday. They included nearly three-dozen heat-seeking anti-aircraft missiles, mortars and a ton of explosives used to make bombs.

The raids intensified after Iraqi resistance fighters shot and killed three Americans in an ambush two weeks ago just outside Tikrit. In a coordinated series of attacks and ambushes against U.S. forces last week, nine Iraqi fighters were also killed.

"We think all these people and weapons found in the past are linked. We think they are linked to the organized attacks and are also responsible for the assassination attempts against the Iraqi police as well," Poirier said.

The headquarters of the Iraqi provincial police, where a portion of the operation began just after midnight, had come under mortar attack three days before.

Driving through the sleepy streets of downtown Tikrit without headlights, the teams of Iraqi and U.S. Military Police fanned out through the narrow dirt alleyways, simultaneously storming all 15 houses, with the operation ending just after daybreak.

The operation was carried out after information received by the Iraqi police, and Poirier said the information was an indication that people in Tikrit have begun to tire of the near-daily violence.

"It's Saddam's hometown and there's a lot of family here. Some still believe he's going to return, but more and more they are realizing Saddam is gone and the old regime is dead," Poirier said. "Tikrit was a tough nut to crack. It's Saddam Hussein's hometown, but I think we have cracked it. That, of course, doesn't mean it's a safe place."

Another Iraq Intel Flap

Back on U.S. soil, controversy over the Bush administration's prewar intelligence on Iraq continued to swirl.

Leaders of the House intelligence panel said in a letter last week to CIA Director George Tenet that the White House's case for the Iraq war resulted largely from fragmentary and circumstantial evidence filled with uncertainties.

The Washington Post reported on the letter from committee chairman Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., and Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., the senior Democrat on the committee, prompting the White House to launch a counterattack on the Sunday morning news shows.

"There was enrichment of the intelligence from 1998 over the period leading up to the war," asserted national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on "Fox News Sunday."

"Nothing pointed to a reversal of Saddam Hussein's very active efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction, to have very good programs in weapons of mass destruction. It was very clear that this had continued and that it was a gathering danger," Rice said.

CIA spokesman Bill Harlow denied the committee leaders' allegations. "The notion that our community does not challenge standing judgments is absurd," he said in a statement.

The White House was also on the defensive over a Justice Department inquiry into allegations that officials revealed the identity of a CIA agent whose husband had questioned President Bush's claim that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Africa.

"I know nothing of any such White House effort to reveal any of this, and it certainly would not be the way that the president would expect his White House to operate," Rice said.

Rice would not go into further detail, but said the White House would fully cooperate with the investigation.

The flap over the uranium claims began in January, when Bush said in his State of the Union address that British intelligence officials had learned that Iraq had attempted to purchase yellowcake uranium in Africa.

In an opinion piece published in July by The New York Times, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson said he told the CIA long before the president's address that the British reports were suspect.

A week after Wilson went public with his criticism, syndicated columnist Robert Novak, quoting anonymous government sources, said Wilson's wife was a CIA operative working on the issue of weapons of mass destruction.

The administration has since said the 16-word assertion should not have been in the speech.

A senior administration official cited in a Washington Post report Sunday said that two top White House officials called at least a half-dozen journalists and revealed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife. Disclosing the name of an undercover CIA agent could violate federal law.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,98543,00.html