Al-Qaeda threatens war against Iran

The leader of an al-Qaeda umbrella group in Iraq, who was thought to have been killed by US forces, has threatened to wage war against Iran unless it stops supporting Shias in Iraq within two months.

Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, head of the Islamic State in Iraq, said his Sunni fighters have been preparing to wage a battle against Shia-dominated Iran.

Al-Baghdadi made the announcement in an audiotape that was posted on a web site commonly used by armed groups.

The 50-minute audiotape, which was released on Sunday, could not be independently verified.

US forces had earlier claimed to have killed al-Baghdadi.

Major General William Caldwell, the commander of the multinational force in Iraq, told a press conference in Baghdad that US forces had killed Muharib Abdulatif al-Juburi on May 1.

Brigadier General Abdel Karim Khalaf, operations director at the Iraqi interior minister, told state television that al-Juburi was also known as Abu Omar al-Baghdadi.

Audiotape

"We are giving the Persians, and especially the rulers of Iran, a two-month period to end all kinds of support for the Iraqi Shia government and to stop direct and indirect intervention ... otherwise a severe war is waiting for you," al-Baghdadi said.

Iraq's Shia-led government is backed by the US but closely allied to Iran.

The United States accuses Iran of arming and financing Shia militias in Iraq, charges Tehran denies.

In the recording, al-Baghdadi also gave Sunnis and Arab countries doing business in Iran or with Iranians a two-month deadline to cease their ties.

"We advise and warn every Sunni businessman inside Iran or in Arab countries especially in the Gulf not to take partnership with any Shia Iranian businessman, this is part of the two-month period," he said.

Al-Baghdadi said his group was responsible for two suicide truck bomb attacks in May in Iraq's northern Kurdish region. He said the attacks in Irbil and Makhmur showed the "Islamic jihad" was progressing in the Kurdish areas.

What this means:

That Al-Qaeda, at least in Iraq is Sunni.

The Sunni's are continually battling against militant Shiite groups in Northern Iraq.

The Government of Iraq is lead by a Shiite.

The Government of Iran is Shiite and has been sending weapons into Iraq to help the Shiites.

Bush has openly condemned the Iraqi Sunni:

"The enemy in Iraq is a combination of rejectionists, Saddamists and terrorists. The rejectionists are by far the largest group. These are ordinary Iraqis, mostly Sunni Arabs, who miss the privileged status they had under the regime of Saddam Hussein -- and they reject an Iraq in which they are no longer the dominant group."


The US claims to be `partners' with Iraq's current Shiite led government - however

US funding Al Qaeda Sunni Terroist.

Other Links:

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/D1B901E0-A9E5-4D3A-937B-7B5262BBE82C.htm

Bombs Explode & Accusations Fly : US - Iran War Ratchets Up a Few Notches.

Give us guns – and troops can go, says Iraqi leader

Give us guns – and troops can go, says Iraqi leader
Stephen Farrell in Baghdad
# Prime Minister wants change of US policy
# Mistakes over Saddam hanging, Times told

A mother comforts her daughter who was injured in the attack on university students in Baghdad, in which at least 60 people were killed (Ali Abbas/EPA)

America’s refusal to give Baghdad’s security forces sufficient guns and equipment has cost a great number of lives, the Iraqi Prime Minister said yesterday.

Nouri al-Maliki said the insurgency had been bloodier and prolonged because Washington had refused to part with equipment. If it released the necessary arms, US forces could “dramatically” cut their numbers in three to six months, he told The Times.

In a sign of the tense relations with Washington, he chided the US for suggesting his Government was living on “borrowed time”. Such criticism boosted Iraq’s extremists, he said, and was more a reflection of “some kind of crisis situation” in Washington after the Republicans’ midterm election losses. Mr al-Maliki conceded that his administration had made mistakes over the hanging of Saddam Hussein. But he refused to accept all criticism over the execution. When asked about the Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi’s attack on Iraq’s capital punishment laws, Mr al-

Maliki cited the Italians’ summary killing of Benito Mussolini and his stringing-up from a lamppost.

Asked how long Iraq would require US troops, Mr al-Maliki said: “If we succeed in implementing the agreement between us to speed up the equipping and providing weapons to our military forces, I think that within three to six months our need for American troops will dramatically go down. That is on condition that there are real, strong efforts to support our military forces and equipping and arming them.”

The US Government is wary of handing over large amounts of military hardware to the Iraqis because it has sometimes ended up in the hands of militias and insurgents.

Gordon Johndroe, the White House national security spokesman, conceded that some of Mr al-Maliki’s criticism was “valid”. The training and equipping of Iraqi troops would be speeded up, he said, adding that by “self-admission we have had to redo our training and equipment programme”.

Although Mr al-Maliki’s tone was measured throughout, he is clearly irritated at US criticism that he has failed to curb Shia militias. Robert Gates, the new US Defence Secretary, said that Mr al-Maliki could lose his job if he failed to stop communal bloodshed and Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, gave a warning that he was living on “borrowed time” and that American patience was running out.

Challenged on the point, Mr al-Maliki remarked acidly: “Certain officials are going through a crisis. Secretary Rice is expressing her own point of view if she thinks that the Government is on borrowed time, whether it is borrowed time for the Iraqi Government or American Administration. I don’t think we are on borrowed time.”

He added: “I wish that we could receive strong messages of support from the US so we don’t give some boost to the terrorists and make them feel that they might have achieved success. I believe that such statements give moral boosts to the terrorists and push them towards making an extra effort and making them believe that they have defeated the American Administration, but I can tell you that they haven’t defeated the Iraqi Government.”

He rejected the accusation that his Government was “lenient” with Shia militias, saying 400 al-Mahdi Army members had been arrested in recent days, in crackdowns in southern towns such as Karbala, Samawa, Diwaniya and al-Nasiriya.

And he insisted that he was prepared to fulfil his promises to Washington and confront the militias of Shia parties within his coalition, including Moqtada al-Sadr’s widely feared al-Mahdi Army. He conceded that some “sectarian” acts were being perpetrated. But he said there would not be a civil war because Sunni and Shia had lived in peace for many years.

Cheney admitts only one mistake in Iraq Invasion

Asked to describe the biggest mistake made by U.S. war planners, Vice President Dick Cheney said, "I think we underestimated the extent to which 30 years of Saddam's rule had really hammered the population, especially the Shia population, into submissiveness. It's very hard for them to stand up and take responsibility, in part because anybody who's done that in the past have had their heads chopped off."

Cheney on Wednesday dismissed as "hogwash" the suggestion that blunders may have hurt the administration's credibility on Iraq and led members of Congress on both sides of the aisle to question President Bush's plan to send more troops to Baghdad.

In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, conducted a day after Bush delivered his State of the Union address, Cheney was asked to respond to some Republicans in Congress who "are now seriously questioning your credibility, because of the blunders and the failures."

To that, Cheney answered, "Wolf, Wolf, I simply don't accept the premise of your question. I just think it's hogwash."

Cheney said the administration is committed to moving ahead with its plan to send more troops to Baghdad, even if Congress passes a resolution in opposition. (Read a transcript of the interview PDF)

"It won't stop us," he said. "And it would be, I think, detrimental from the standpoint of the troops."

If U.S. forces were to pull out of Iraq, "we would simply validate the terrorists' strategy that says the Americans will not stay to complete the task ... that we don't have the stomach for the fight. That's the biggest threat."

He added, "The notion that somehow the effort hasn't been worth it, or that we shouldn't go ahead and complete the task, is just dead wrong."

Cheney said the U.S.-led ouster of Saddam Hussein was the right move.