Iraq Notebook
U.S. opts to expand civil force

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BAGHDAD, Iraq — Faced with persistent attacks from Iraqi insurgents, U.S.-led coalition forces have decided to expand an Iraqi civil-defense force to free occupation troops for more targeted offensives.

The coalition has been using Iraqi Civil Defense Corps recruits to perform labor-intensive security operations such as manning roadblocks and performing security checks. U.S. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said the coalition was pleased with the effectiveness of the newly recruited Iraqis and would boost their numbers from 13,000 at present to 40,000 by April.

Sanchez said that despite the dangers of guerrilla attacks against Iraqis cooperating with the coalition, there were plenty of applications to join the force. Unemployment continues to afflict many Iraqis, and the attraction of regular dollar wages apparently overcomes fear of insurgent reprisals.

Sanchez said security troops from political parties would be welcomed but only as members of a unified corps. Shiite and Kurdish politicians have been lobbying for inclusion of their security detachments as autonomous units within the corps.

Meanwhile, on the way home today from a one-day stop in Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he has asked senior commanders in Iraq to review their estimates that 220,000 Iraqi security forces would be adequate when a sovereign Iraqi government takes over next summer.

"I raised that question not because I have conviction that we need more, but because I worry that budgets will begin to get committed, and we may not know if we need more until sometime, for example, in February or March or April," he said. By then, he said, the money might not be available.

In addition to the civil-defense forces, Iraqis are being trained as police, border guards, site-security guards and for the new Iraqi army.

20 soldiers sent stateside after getting 'Baghdad Boil'

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The Army's 101st Airborne Division, based in the northern city of Mosul, has sent 20 soldiers to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington for treatment for a skin disease transmitted by bites from sand flies, the military said yesterday.

About 150 U.S. soldiers in Iraq have been diagnosed with the disease, but hundreds more may be infected because it can take months in incubation. The disease is known as "Baghdad Boil" to U.S. soldiers and can leave disfiguring lesions on the skin for months.

Maj. Trey Cate, division spokesman, said the U.S. military took measures against the sand flies before deploying soldiers in Iraq, issuing insect repellent to soldiers and treating their uniforms and insect netting with permethrin, an insecticide. Vaccines and drugs for preventing infections are not available.

Remaining South Korean crew decides to leave job in Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq — A week after two of their countrymen were killed in an ambush, the remaining 60 South Korean contract engineers and technicians working for the U.S. government to fix electrical-power lines north of Baghdad have decided to leave the country.

It is the largest known defection of contractors over security issues. The decision is likely to delay one of Iraq's most critical reconstruction projects.

The workers are subcontractors for Washington Group International, a construction firm based in Boise, Idaho, that has a $110 million contract with the Army Corps of Engineers to repair sections of Iraq's power grid.

Angry Iraqis have pointed to the fact that many parts of the country still get only a few hours of electricity a day as evidence that the coalition has failed to live up to its promises.

Question of faulty intelligence 'moot point,' Bush aide says

WASHINGTON — President Bush's chief of staff, Andy Card, has dismissed as "a moot point" any lingering question about whether Bush relied on faulty intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Card deflected questions about the intelligence that led Bush to issue the warnings that Iraq was a threat to the United States because of its illegal weapons. "When you go there today, and you see some of the mass graves of the dead, where he murdered his own people, you just can't help but think that we are much better off," Card said on CNN's "Late Edition." "So I think it's a moot point. The good news is Saddam (Hussein) is no longer a threat to his own people.

"We think there's evidence of some programs that they had," he said. "I can't speak to whether they were ongoing or not ongoing. All I can tell you is his intent was not very good."

Arrests of family members illegal, some experts say

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The arrests of the wife and daughter of a former Saddam Hussein deputy violate international law, some experts say.

U.S. forces detained Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri's relatives in a Nov. 26 raid in the central Iraqi city of Samarra. A longtime Saddam aide, al-Douri has been blamed for organizing guerrilla attacks on U.S. troops, and the arrests seemed intended to pressure al-Douri into surrendering or to gather information that might lead to his capture.

A spokesman for the 4th Infantry Division, which made the arrests, described the detentions as "similar to (those of) a material witness" held for questioning.

A number of experts say such detentions violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, which says: "No protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited."

Arresting a relative to get information on the whereabouts of a wanted person, or to put pressure on the fugitive to turn himself in, also violates the U.N. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, said John Quigley, an international-law professor at Ohio State University. "Under human-rights law, there is a principle that arrest cannot be arbitrary," he said.

U.S. forces have detained other relatives of wanted Iraqi officials to try to glean information or negotiate a surrender, a defense official said in Washington.

The official said they have all been released within a short time if investigators determine they were not involved in attacks on Americans.

Also ...

Responding to reports that four U.S. divisions scheduled to be withdrawn from Iraq next spring may take up to six months to regain full combat capability, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the soldiers are fit to return to a war zone if called upon. "Our force today is as trained, equipped, experienced, combat hardened" as in any recent time, he said.

... Just over a month before suicide bombers blew up Italian military headquarters in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah on Nov. 12, killing 19 Italians and 11 Iraqi bystanders, Italian intelligence officers warned three times of an imminent attack on their country's contingent in the city, according to intelligence reports. The warnings were communicated up the Italian chain of command but resulted in no new security precautions at the headquarters, Western sources said. The Italian government has denied receiving specific warnings of an impending attack.

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