Iraq Notebook
Senators call for change in Bush policy

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WASHINGTON — Senators from both parties yesterday urged the Bush administration to face reality in Iraq and change its occupation policies.

"The fact is a crisp, sharp analysis of our policies is required. We didn't do that in Vietnam and we saw 11 years of casualties mount to the point where we finally lost," said Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Vietnam War veteran who is co-chairman of President Bush's re-election committee in Nebraska.

"We can't lose this. It is too important," Hagel said on CBS' "Face the Nation."

A major problem, said leaders of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was incompetence by the administration in reconstructing the country's shattered infrastructure.

The chairman, Sen. Richard Lugar, noted Congress appropriated $18.4 billion a year ago this week for reconstruction. No more than $1 billion has been spent. "This is the incompetence in the administration," Lugar, R-Ind., said on ABC's "This Week."

"Exactly right," interjected Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden, the committee's top Democrat. He said later: "This has been incompetence so far. Five percent of the $18.4 billion that George Bush keeps ... beating the other candidate up and about the head for how he voted and didn't vote, and he's released 5 percent."

Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said Bush had pointed out from the beginning the risks of combat in Iraq.

"I find it shocking that some people are surprised by the fact that it is a long and difficult conflict," Kyl said.

"What's important," he said, "is that you have a leader who recognizes that there are difficulties but who is committed to prevailing; who has a firm idea of what he wants to accomplish; confidence in his commanders in the field and who doesn't send mixed messages to the troops or to our allies, or most importantly, to our enemies."

Car bomb kills three, hurts seven near checkpoint
 
SAMARRA, Iraq — A suicide attacker detonated a car bomb yesterday near a joint U.S.-Iraqi checkpoint in the northern city of Samarra, killing three people and wounding seven, including four U.S. soldiers, the military said.

It was the first significant attack in Samarra since U.S. troops returned to the city earlier this month, claiming a success over insurgents who had made it a virtual "no-go" zone since May.

Under the pact with tribal leaders in Samarra, U.S. forces agreed to provide millions of dollars in reconstruction funds in exchange for an end to attacks on American and Iraqi troops.

But Thursday, insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades at U.S. and Iraqi forces guarding a city council building. There were no casualties.

Child-abduction gangs worsen ethnic tensions

KIRKUK, Iraq — The U.S. military is looking to break up a pair of kidnapping rings in this multiethnic city that specialize in holding Turkomen and Kurdish children for ransom, a U.S. Army officer said yesterday.

The gangs are apparently based in Sunni Arab tribal areas west of Kirkuk and have abducted 30 to 40 Kurdish or Turkomen children inside Kirkuk, holding them in nearby Arab villages, said Maj. Mario Diaz.

Families have negotiated release of some hostages while other children remain captive, said Diaz, operations officer for a battalion of the U.S. Army's 25th Infantry Division.

Arab parents have made similar claims of child abductions by Kurdish gangs, Diaz said, but there is little evidence to prove the claims.

The kidnappings do not appear linked to the abductions of foreigners by militant groups. But police are eager to crack down on the gangs for fear they are exacerbating ethnic tensions that could escalate into a civil war.

Kirkuk, which lies on an ethnic fault line that divides northern Iraq into Arab and non-Arab regions, is inhabited by four main ethnic groups: Arabs, Kurds, Turkomen and Assyrian Christians.

Also

U.S. warplanes and artillery pounded the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah late Saturday and early yesterday, killing four people and wounding six, hospital officials said. The military said it hit a checkpoint manned by militants.

Four insurgents were killed when a roadside bomb they were attempting to plant near the eastern Iraqi city of Suwayrah exploded shortly before midnight Saturday, a military spokesman said.