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New york times alters article concerning baghdad blast { February 4 2007 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/04/world/middleeast/04cnd-iraq.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/04/world/middleeast/04cnd-iraq.html
February 4, 2007
After Deadly Blast in Iraq, Shiites Assail US Policy
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This article originally had this text:
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"Trucks are not even allowed in the small alleys of the market. I wonder how the truck made it in." It was a question that traveled through much of Baghdad today, in the wake of the deadliest single bomb blast since the American invasion in 2003.
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If you search for the text, "Trucks are not even allowed in the small" using news.google.com you get only this one article still on February 5, 2007.
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&q=%22Trucks+are+not+even+allowed+in+the+small%22&btnG=Search
See image capture of results. Yet if you click on the link, its not the same article anymore. The article was changed to this:
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February 4, 2007
Iraqis Fault Delayed U.S. Plan in Attack
By DAMIEN CAVE and RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
BAGHDAD, Feb. 4 — A growing number of Iraqis blamed the United States on Sunday for creating conditions that led to the worst single suicide bombing in the war, which devastated a Shiite market in Baghdad the day before. They argued that slowness in completing the vaunted new American security plan has made Shiite neighborhoods much more vulnerable to such horrific attacks.
The chorus of critics said the new plan, which the Americans have barely started to execute, has emasculated the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia that is considered responsible for many attacks on Sunnis, but which many Shiites say had been the only effective deterrent against sectarian reprisal attacks in Baghdad’s Shiite neighborhoods. Even some Iraqi supporters of the plan, such as Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi foreign minister who is a Kurd, said delays in implementing it have caused great disappointment.
In advance of the plan, which would flood Baghdad with thousands of new American and Iraqi troops, many Mahdi Army checkpoints were dismantled and its leaders are either in hiding or under arrest. With no immediate influx of new security forces to fill the void, Shiites say, Sunni militants and other anti-Shiite forces have been emboldened to plot the type of attack that obliterated the bustling Sadriya market in central Baghdad on Saturday, killing at least 135 people and wounding more than 300 from a suicide driver’s truck bomb.
“A long time has passed since the plan was announced,” Basim Shareef, a Shiite member of Parliament, said Sunday. “But so far security has only deteriorated.”
Moreover, new concerns emerged Sunday about the readiness of Iraqi military units that are supposed to work with the roughly 17,000 additional American soldiers who will be stationed in Baghdad under the new plan, which President Bush announced last month.
Iraqi and American military officials said the command structure of the Iraqi side had still not been resolved, although the plan is supposed to move forward this coming week. Naeem al-Kabbi, the deputy mayor of Baghdad and a senior official loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the powerful cleric who leads the Mahdi Army, said he believed the plan had been delayed “because the Iraqi army is not ready.”
American military officials have not laid out a precise timeline for the security plan, and would not say if undermanned Iraqi units had delayed its start. But American officials have said that Iraqi units arriving in Baghdad to fulfill their part of the new plan are only at 55 to 60 percent of their full strength.
With much of Baghdad devolving further into chaos, many Iraqis have begun to question whether the security plan has ambled along too slowly, setting up a situation in which American and Iraqi troops will be greeted with hostility rather than welcomed as protectors.
Concerns about the unintended consequences of the American security plan rippled through every level of the Iraqi government.
“People’s expectations went up,” said Mr. Zebari, “They were hopeful, optimistic that this new surge, this new plan would provide a better life for theme. And this daily killing — this bomb — they lose hope. Still the troops haven’t arrived.”
An American military official, responding to accusations that American efforts opened Shiite areas to attacks, said that American checkpoints around eastern and central Baghdad last October seemed to reduce the number of car bombs until the checkpoints were removed because of objections from Prime Minister Nuri Kamal Al-Maliki and Shiite officials loyal to Mr. Sadr.
Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the American military spokesman in Iraq, called for patience as the new security plan rolls out. “Give the government and coalition forces a chance to fully implement it,” he said in remarks carried by several news services.
His comments, however, came as more than a dozen mortars crashed on Adhamiya, a Sunni area of eastern Baghdad, in what appeared to be an act of retaliation from Shiites. At least 15 people were killed and more than 56 wounded, an interior ministry official said.
Clashes in western Baghdad between Sunni and Shiite militias left 7 dead, 11 wounded, and the authorities found 35 bodies throughout the city, many showing signs of torture.
Meanwhile in the streets of Sadriya, the poor, mostly Shiite area of central Baghdad where the bomb exploded, merchants and residents struggled to contain their anger.
“I saw with my own eyes young children flying from the windows of the apartments on top of the shops when the explosion arrived,” said Haydar Abdul Jabbar, 28, a car mechanic who was standing near a barber shop when the bomb exploded. “One woman threw herself out of the window when the fire came close to her.”
Mr. Abdul Jabbar said he rushed to collapsed buildings trying to help the wounded but finding mainly hands, skulls and other body parts. At one point, he discovered the remains of a close friend, who was engaged to be married.
“How would you feel if you were in this position?” he said Sunday. “The government is supposed to protect us, but they are not doing their job. I watch the TV and see the announcements on the imminent implementation of the security plan. Where is it for God’s sake?”
“I wish they would attack us with a nuclear bomb and kill us all,” he added, “so we will rest and anybody who wants the oil — which is the core of the problem — can come and get it. We can not live this way anymore; we are dying slowly every day.”
The truck exploded around dusk on Saturday at a market flush with crowded food stands. The crater from the blast was large enough to hold a sedan; the blast threw the truck’s gnarled engine block than 100 yards away.
As the sun rose on Sunday, the rescue effort continued with workers and relatives tugging concrete in a mad search for victims amidst the piles of debris where apartments and offices once stood. Processions heavy with death moved through the area: Men lashed simple wood coffins to the top of mini-buses for the long journey to cemeteries while families in the back of trucks wailed after collecting the bodies of relatives.
While the American military put out a statement saying that an Iraqi Army assisted at the scene, the area closest to the crater was controlled by the Mahdi Army. Between 8 and 15 men dressed in black, carrying AK-47s, waived reporters away Sunday morning.
The scene was thick with anger directed at the Iraqi government and American military for letting the people down and allowing such a devastating attack. When asked about the “tragedy” of the blast, one Mahdi guard responded: “The only tragedy was when we voted for weak officials.”
He then pointed toward the bombed out buildings and added, “This is the result.”
Later, when two American Humvees and an Iraqi patrol passed just after 1 p.m., one of the men in black called the soldiers “apes and cowards.”
“They’re the ones who brought us the catastrophe,” one of them said. “If they were not here such a thing wouldn’t happen to us.”
Mr. Abdul Jabbar, the car mechanic, was one of many Iraqis on Sunday who said that the American military would have been better off leaving the Mahdi Army in charge of Shiite neighborhoods.
Uday Ahmed, 31, a Sunni whose three restaurants at the market were obliterated by the blast, along with 20 of his workers, said that until a few weeks ago, Mahdi militiamen were more visible on the streets, checking vehicles, watching, offering to arbitrate disputes. After American and Iraqi officials arrested several top Mahdi commanders last month, he said, many of the Mahdi militants drifted into the shadows or fled.
He said their departure contributed to the recent spasm of violence in Shiite neighborhoods.
“The Jaish al-Mehdi are like protectors, but with the announcement of the start of the security plan the Americans really chased them, so they withdrew from these places and now we don’t see them,” he said, using the Iraqi term for the Mahdi army. “They don’t want to confront the Americans.”
He acknowledged that nothing may have stopped the truck bomber’s deadly mission. Massive blasts have killed scores in Baghdad long before the American security plan was announced.
Yet some Shiites in the area said that the truck could have been stopped at a checkpoint, decreasing damage from its payload. Hussein Ali, 57, said that Shiite militiamen might have recognized that the driver was not from the neighborhood.
“They don’t have any system or apparatus to check the cars,” he said. “But they know from looking at the faces who is supposed to com to Sadriya to bring vegetables or fruits. They have a relationship with the merchants.”
Iraqi officials , after meeting with American military commanders, were expected to announce as early as Monday that they have agreed on some of the details of the command structure for the new security plan.
American military officials say that the Iraqi officer who will lead the Iraqi forces participating in the new Baghdad security effort, Lt. Gen. Aboud Qanbar, will take command on Monday and that the Baghdad plan will implemented soon.
However, Iraqi and American officials said that there were still very serious issues that still needed to be resolved, including who exactly would fill a number of key leadership roles.
While Iraqi officials have repeatedly said that they will take the lead in implementing the plan, the exact nature of the “partnership” between American and Iraqi troops remains unclear.
Additionally, even as the first wave of additional American troops gets to work in Baghdad, many of the additional Iraqi troops have not arrived. The last major push to secure Baghdad was hobbled when Iraqi troops from other parts of the country failed or refused to come to this restive capital.
Reporting was contributed by Wisam A. Habeeb, Qais Mizher, Khalid W. Hassan, Marc Santora, James Glanz and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Baghdad, and Philip Shenon from Washington.
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