Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
May 30, 2008 By Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Stephen Farrell
BAGHDAD — An American marine guarding a checkpoint on the western outskirts of Falluja handed out coins with an Arabic translation of a biblical verse to Iraqis entering the city, angering residents and city leaders who denounced it as a serious affront to Islam and an attempt to convert them to Christianity.
As the Marines quickly apologized on Thursday for the episode, Sunni guerrillas struck several times in northern Iraq, killing at least 19 people in two suicide bombings. Gunmen near Tikrit also used a water tanker to attack an Iraqi checkpoint, but the Iraqi security forces repelled the assault and killed 14 attackers.
In Falluja, a city just west of Baghdad, the Marines pledged to discipline the marine who handed out the coins, which were inscribed with one of the Bible’s most widely known verses, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”
American military officials in Baghdad emphasized Thursday that military regulations barred service members in Iraq from “proselytizing any religion, faith or practices.”
The incident risked gravely offending residents of Falluja, which was the most fortified bastion of Sunni guerrillas and religious extremists before a Marine invasion in November 2004.
Long after that battle, Falluja remained a deadly place for American service members, though it has calmed over the past year after the Marines and local leaders banned vehicles and instituted strict security and screening measures. But guerrillas still covet the city, and there were fears they would use this episode to rally support.
The controversy, first reported by McClatchy Newspapers, cropped up only a week after the military and President Bush apologized for an American soldier’s use of a Koran for target practice near Baghdad. The bullet-ridden Koran was found by the Iraqi police on May 11.
“The clerics and people of Falluja are very unhappy,” said Sheik Abdul Rahman al-Zobaie, a powerful tribal leader in the city. He said that the Marines promised him on Thursday that the marine who handed out the coins would be disciplined, and that they asked for patience while they completed their investigation.
The controversy gathered steam on Wednesday when Fallujans met to discuss the earlier uproar over the shooting of the Koran. At that meeting, Dr. Mohammed Amin Abdul Hadi, leader of the Sunni Endowment in Falluja, which oversees Sunni mosques, showed the coins to people in attendance and denounced the marine’s actions as an “anti-Islamic campaign.”
The cleric tied the matter to the Koran shooting and warned that it had already had a “severe impact on the people in the city.”
Mike Isho, a Marine spokesman, confirmed the incident but said it involved only one marine who handed out a limited number of coins. The marine in question, he said, had been removed from his duties and taken to a base east of Falluja.
In a day of renewed violence in Iraq, insurgents converted a water tanker into a latter-day Trojan horse to carry out a surprise attack on a checkpoint near Saddam Hussein’s birthplace, Awja, Iraqi police said Thursday.
They said the police responded with heavy fire, killing 14 attackers, while two officers were seriously wounded. The American military said the police killed eight insurgents. Also dead was the truck driver, who detonated a suicide vest.
The attackers hid inside a Mercedes truck originally built to carry drinking water and cattle, which had been modified to hide the gunmen, a police spokesman said in Tikrit.
An American military spokesman in Tikrit said the truck initially attacked a checkpoint manned by Sunni volunteers near Awja, where Mr. Hussein is buried. But when Iraqi and Arab fighters emerged from the interior and opened fire on the checkpoint, the volunteers were joined by Iraqi police officers and soldiers who killed all the attackers and destroyed the truck.
In Sinjar, an ethnically mixed Yazidi and Sunni town 60 miles west of Mosul, in northern Iraq, the police said a bomber wearing an explosive belt blew himself up outside the town’s police station, killing 16 would-be recruits.
The police said volunteers were lined up outside the office hoping to join the force, even though recruitment had been halted at the time because of an earlier warning about possible attacks on recruiting stations.
Among the people killed in the attack on Thursday were two policemen. Fifteen others were wounded, including five police officers.
Dakhil Qassim, the mayor of Sinjar, told The Associated Press that many lives were spared because the security services had been tipped off about an attack on police recruiting centers, and had issued a notice the day before warning people to stay away.
But some had insisted on waiting for recruiting to start again, he told The Associated Press.
The Sinjar police station commander was later dismissed for failing to protect the volunteers, a Ministry of Interior official said.
In a separate attack in Mosul, where government forces have been clamping down on Sunni insurgents this month, the battalion commander of a police rapid intervention force said a suicide bomber, driving what appeared to be a police car packed with explosives, attacked his convoy by steering the car into the line of vehicles and blowing himself up, killing three people.
Nobody claimed immediate responsibility for the attacks. But Sunni insurgents have been responsible for most of the recent violence in and around Mosul, American officials said.
Reporting was contributed by Riyadh Muhammad, Anwar J. Ali and Tareq Maher from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Falluja, Mosul and Diyala.
May 30, 2008 By Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Stephen Farrell
BAGHDAD — An American marine guarding a checkpoint on the western outskirts of Falluja handed out coins with an Arabic translation of a biblical verse to Iraqis entering the city, angering residents and city leaders who denounced it as a serious affront to Islam and an attempt to convert them to Christianity.
As the Marines quickly apologized on Thursday for the episode, Sunni guerrillas struck several times in northern Iraq, killing at least 19 people in two suicide bombings. Gunmen near Tikrit also used a water tanker to attack an Iraqi checkpoint, but the Iraqi security forces repelled the assault and killed 14 attackers.
In Falluja, a city just west of Baghdad, the Marines pledged to discipline the marine who handed out the coins, which were inscribed with one of the Bible’s most widely known verses, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”
American military officials in Baghdad emphasized Thursday that military regulations barred service members in Iraq from “proselytizing any religion, faith or practices.”
The incident risked gravely offending residents of Falluja, which was the most fortified bastion of Sunni guerrillas and religious extremists before a Marine invasion in November 2004.
Long after that battle, Falluja remained a deadly place for American service members, though it has calmed over the past year after the Marines and local leaders banned vehicles and instituted strict security and screening measures. But guerrillas still covet the city, and there were fears they would use this episode to rally support.
The controversy, first reported by McClatchy Newspapers, cropped up only a week after the military and President Bush apologized for an American soldier’s use of a Koran for target practice near Baghdad. The bullet-ridden Koran was found by the Iraqi police on May 11.
“The clerics and people of Falluja are very unhappy,” said Sheik Abdul Rahman al-Zobaie, a powerful tribal leader in the city. He said that the Marines promised him on Thursday that the marine who handed out the coins would be disciplined, and that they asked for patience while they completed their investigation.
The controversy gathered steam on Wednesday when Fallujans met to discuss the earlier uproar over the shooting of the Koran. At that meeting, Dr. Mohammed Amin Abdul Hadi, leader of the Sunni Endowment in Falluja, which oversees Sunni mosques, showed the coins to people in attendance and denounced the marine’s actions as an “anti-Islamic campaign.”
The cleric tied the matter to the Koran shooting and warned that it had already had a “severe impact on the people in the city.”
Mike Isho, a Marine spokesman, confirmed the incident but said it involved only one marine who handed out a limited number of coins. The marine in question, he said, had been removed from his duties and taken to a base east of Falluja.
In a day of renewed violence in Iraq, insurgents converted a water tanker into a latter-day Trojan horse to carry out a surprise attack on a checkpoint near Saddam Hussein’s birthplace, Awja, Iraqi police said Thursday.
They said the police responded with heavy fire, killing 14 attackers, while two officers were seriously wounded. The American military said the police killed eight insurgents. Also dead was the truck driver, who detonated a suicide vest.
The attackers hid inside a Mercedes truck originally built to carry drinking water and cattle, which had been modified to hide the gunmen, a police spokesman said in Tikrit.
An American military spokesman in Tikrit said the truck initially attacked a checkpoint manned by Sunni volunteers near Awja, where Mr. Hussein is buried. But when Iraqi and Arab fighters emerged from the interior and opened fire on the checkpoint, the volunteers were joined by Iraqi police officers and soldiers who killed all the attackers and destroyed the truck.
In Sinjar, an ethnically mixed Yazidi and Sunni town 60 miles west of Mosul, in northern Iraq, the police said a bomber wearing an explosive belt blew himself up outside the town’s police station, killing 16 would-be recruits.
The police said volunteers were lined up outside the office hoping to join the force, even though recruitment had been halted at the time because of an earlier warning about possible attacks on recruiting stations.
Among the people killed in the attack on Thursday were two policemen. Fifteen others were wounded, including five police officers.
Dakhil Qassim, the mayor of Sinjar, told The Associated Press that many lives were spared because the security services had been tipped off about an attack on police recruiting centers, and had issued a notice the day before warning people to stay away.
But some had insisted on waiting for recruiting to start again, he told The Associated Press.
The Sinjar police station commander was later dismissed for failing to protect the volunteers, a Ministry of Interior official said.
In a separate attack in Mosul, where government forces have been clamping down on Sunni insurgents this month, the battalion commander of a police rapid intervention force said a suicide bomber, driving what appeared to be a police car packed with explosives, attacked his convoy by steering the car into the line of vehicles and blowing himself up, killing three people.
Nobody claimed immediate responsibility for the attacks. But Sunni insurgents have been responsible for most of the recent violence in and around Mosul, American officials said.
Reporting was contributed by Riyadh Muhammad, Anwar J. Ali and Tareq Maher from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Falluja, Mosul and Diyala.