- One hundred and fifty-six Iraqi police officers will graduate tomorrow in Amman, Jordan from a six-week course that prepared them for staff- and commander-level responsibilities in the Iraqi armed forces. Sorry, 156 Iraqi army officers will graduate tomorrow in Amman, Jordan. These officers were trained in leadership, law, planning, coordination, communications, tactics, operations and logistics. They will soon return to Iraq and assume command in staff- level positions within their army’s newly organized battalions and brigades.
- In the northern zone of operations, there were three attacks on Iraqi security forces in Mosul yesterday. In the first incident the Iraqi police service reported a drive-by shooting on an Iraqi police service patrol in Mosul at 17:00 with no injuries. Fifteen minutes later a drive-by shooting wounded a facility protection service employee at the Mosul television station. And at 17:30 the Iraqi police service reported a drive-by shooting on a traffic control point at Mosul, again with no injuries.
- This morning two bodyguards for the governor of Diyala Province and three bystanders were wounded in Baqubah when a suicide car bomber pulled up in a white Fiat beside the governor’s car and killed himself by detonating the car bomb. The bomb was estimated to consist of three to six artillery shells and approximately 25 kilograms of TNT. One truck, two vehicles and one building were damaged in the explosion. The wounded were taken to Baqubah Hospital, where their condition remains unknown, but the governor was unharmed. The Iraqi police are investigating the incident.
- In Baghdad, based on information provided by an Iraqi citizen, coalition forces raided a Baghdad safe house last night to capture Basim Ali Rahim and Khalid Mahmoud. Mahmoud (sp) is a former soldier in the Iraqi army and a former member of the Iraqi Interior Ministry, and he and Rahim are said to be directly responsible for the attack on the Berj Al Hyatt Hotel on 18 March. These personnel are also wanted for their involvement in a cell consisting of former regime elements operating in Baghdad.
- Yesterday coalition forces conducted a raid to capture a group of suspected bomb makers calling themselves the Medical City Group. The unit searched several houses in the area, capturing 11 personnel, seizing weapons, various containers of chemicals, books on bomb making, and poisons and assorted small-arms ammunition. Two of the prisoners tested positive for explosives with a vapor tracer device.
- Fallujah remains one of those cities in Iraq that just don’t get it. It’s a former Ba’athist stronghold. This was a city that profited immeasurably and immensely under the former regime. They have a view that somehow the harder they fight, the better chance they have of achieving some sort of restorationist movement within the country. They fight. We work with them.
It is a small minority of the people in Fallujah. Most of the people in Fallujah want to move on with their lives, want to move forward, want to be part of a new Iraq. There’s a small core element that doesn’t seem to get it. They’re desperate to try to hold out, desperate to try to turn back the hands of time, and that just isn’t going to happen.
Just like the 82nd Airborne Division and the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment behind it -- before it, the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force is dedicated to going into Fallujah at any time to restore order, to establish a safe and secure environment, and to get on with the progress that’s being denied to the vast majority of citizens in Fallujah.
- Rachel, to your second question, the people who pulled those bodies out and engaged in this attack against the contractors are not people we are here to help. They are people who have a much different vision for the future of Iraq than the overwhelming majority of Iraqis. They are people who want Iraq to turn back to an era of mass graves, of rape rooms and torture chambers and chemical attacks. They want to turn back to the era of Saddam Hussein. Those aren’t people we’re here to help, and it is not surprising that they are engaging in attacks as we increasingly make progress and we increasingly move along to handing over sovereignty and handing over a democratic Iraq at peace with itself, at peace with its own citizens, which is exactly what they’re fighting against. And that is just around the corner. That is happening on June 30th.
- Just adding on one point General Kimmitt made. We have completed approximately 18,000 projects, reconstruction, individual reconstruction projects, in this country over the past nine or 10 months. Some of them fall into the categories that General Kimmitt referenced: opening schools, installing generators in health clinics, building community centers, helping local police forces get stood up. It averages out to about 75 to 100 projects per day. So when the sun goes down today, 75 to 100 projects will be completed that weren’t completed when the sun went up this morning, and that’s despite the fact that there were attacks in this country today.
The fact is, this process moves forward, progress is being made at very impressive rates, and it will continue to move forward. And there will be more attacks, sadly and tragically, but as General Kimmitt spoke to, these individual reconstruction projects, the sum of which will contribute to our overall goal, will continue.
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