Iraq Notebook
Three al-Qaida members held in Iraq

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About 10 members of Ansar al-Islam — an Islamic group U.S. officials believe has al-Qaida links in northern Iraq — also have been arrested by U.S. troops in the past seven months, said Col. Joe Anderson, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division.

Asked if troops had captured members of al-Qaida, Anderson — whose brigade controls Mosul — replied: "Three, two weeks ago."

Anderson said he believed the captured al-Qaida men were Iraqi nationals, who had been transferred to Baghdad for further interrogation.

The Bush administration has asserted that bin Laden's terrorist network maintained links with the government of deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Lieberman says U.S. must stop global religious war

WASHINGTON — Iraq is the testing ground that will determine whether fanatical Muslims go to war against other religions, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Lieberman said yesterday.

"There is no substitute for victory here. We must pull together across party lines, here in the United States, and we have to pull together with the rest of the world in a way that President Bush has not been able to accomplish yet," said Lieberman, an early and strong supporter of the invasion of Iraq.

"This is a battle to stop al-Qaida, Saddam Hussein and every other enemy of freedom and modernity from turning the beginning of the 21st century into what is truly unbelievable, which would be a global religious war.

"We can't let that happen, and this is where we're going to stop it."

Clark praises Bush Iraq trip but says strategy lacking

WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark praised President Bush yesterday for visiting U.S. troops in Baghdad on Thanksgiving Day but said the surprise trip did not make up for "a failed strategy" there.

The retired four-star general said Bush did "absolutely the right thing" by going to Iraq, then added, "But I'll tell you this, ... a visit, a photo op, or whatever it was to Baghdad, does not make up for a failed strategy.

"What our soldiers really need is not a one-hour or two-hour morale-boost visit from the president. They need a strategy for success. That's what this administration hasn't given them."

Nuclear scientist: Peers lied to Saddam about Iraq bombs

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraqi scientists never revived their long-dead nuclear-bomb program, and in fact lied to Saddam Hussein about how much progress they were making before U.S.-led attacks shut the operation down for good in 1991, a key Iraqi physicist says.

Before that first Gulf War, the chief of the weapons program resorted to "blatant exaggeration" in telling Iraq's president how much bomb material was being produced, physicist Imad Khadduri writes in a new book.

Other leading physicists said the hope for an Iraqi atomic bomb was never realistic. "It was all like building sand castles," said Abdel Mehdi Talib, Baghdad University's dean of sciences.

Enemy fire may have caused helicopter collision, U.S. says

MOSUL, Iraq — The U.S. military said yesterday for the first time that the collision of two Black Hawk helicopters Nov. 17 in Mosul — the single deadliest incident of the war for American forces — may have been caused by enemy fire. Seventeen soldiers died in the collision.

"It appears to be that one helicopter was hit by a (rocket-propelled grenade)," said Col. Joe Anderson, a commander with the 101st Airborne Division.

The ground fire apparently caused one Black Hawk to slam into the other, Anderson said.

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