US forces poised to attack rebel Iraqi cities

FALLUJA, IRAQ, Oct 29: US marines prepared today for a "decisive" assault on the Iraqi cities of Falluja and Ramadi to crush Sunni Muslim insurgents and Arab militants behind suicide bombings and beheadings of hostages.

"We are gearing up for a major operation," Brigadier General Denis Hajlik told reporters at a base near Falluja. "If we do so, it will be decisive and we will whack them."

Hajlik, Deputy Commander of the 1st marine expeditionary force, said the expected operation against Falluja and Ramadi, west of Baghdad, would also involve Iraqi forces.

Iraq’s US-backed interim Government has vowed to pacify the whole country before nationwide elections due in January.

The US military has been pounding targets in Falluja for weeks to try to cripple what it says is a network of Iraqi and foreign fighters led by America’s top enemy in Iraq, Jordanian Abu Musab-al-Zarqawi, with bases in the city.

Zarqawi’s Al-Qaeda-allied group threatened on Tuesday to behead a Japanese hostage within 48 hours unless Tokyo withdrew its 550 non-combat troops from Iraq. Japan rejected the demand.

The deadline passed without any firm word on the fate of Shosei Kado, 24, but Japan’s Foreign Ministry said it was checking into a report that an Asian body had been found in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s home town.

Police in Tikrit confirmed on Friday they had found an unidentified body, but it seemed unlikely to be that of Koda.

The bullet-riddled body, with what appeared to be rope burns on the wrists, was found near Tikrit, 175 km north of Baghdad early n yesterday morning.

Police said the victim was dark-skinned, had a moustache and was dressed in a white shirt and baggy pants commonly worn in India and Pakistan, which does not fit Koda’s description.

Another Islamist group said yesterday it had kidnapped a Polish-Iraqi woman and demanded that Poland pull its troops out of Iraq. Warsaw said its contingent would stay put.

"Of course there is no question of negotiating with the terrorists about the withdrawal of troops or about any other issues," Polish Prime Minister Marek Belka declared.

The militants made no explicit threat to kill the woman, named by Polish media as Teresa Borcz Khalifa, but Al-Jazeera television aired a video of her seated between two masked men dressed in black, one pointing a gun to her head.

Poland has 2,500 soldiers in south-central Iraq and commands a multinational division of 8,000 troops.

Kidnappers in Iraq are also holding a British-Iraqi woman, two French journalists and a score of other foreigners from a dozen countries. Some may be held for ransom, others as part of a calculated campaign to drive foreign workers from Iraq.

They have stepped up demands for the withdrawal of foreign troops in the US-led multinational force with just days to go before Tuesday’s US Presidential election.

In new abductions, militants seized two truckers from Sri Lanka and Bangladesh working with US forces, Arabic Al-Jazeera television said yesterday.

Zarqawi’s Al-Qaeda organisation for holy war in Iraq has beheaded several foreign hostages and claimed responsibility for some of Iraq’s bloodiest attacks, including suicide bombings and last weekend’s slaughter of 49 unarmed Iraqi army recruits.

Marine intelligence officer Major James West said guerrilla violence could continue in Iraq even if Zarqawi was eliminated.

"Even if we get Zarqawi, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s over," he told reporters near Falluja.

West said Falluja’s population had dropped to 50,000 or 60,000 from 350,000 because many people had fled for safety.

Residents said the city was generally quiet on Friday after some overnight shelling in an eastern district.

The interim Government has told Falluja’s leaders they must surrender Zarqawi and allow Iraqi security forces to regain control of the city or face military action.

Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi urged the people of Falluja yesterday to seize what he said could be the "last chance" for a peaceful solution, but set no deadline.

Residents of the city say they know nothing of Zarqawi’s network.

Talks between the interim Government and a negotiating committee representing tribal and insurgent factions collapsed earlier this month, but on-off contacts have continued.

Falluja, 50 km west of Baghdad, and Ramadi, 110 km from the capital, have been cauldrons of anti-US insurgency since last year’s war toppled Saddam Hussein. (AGENCIES)

Bush Presidency marked by war on terror and Iraq

WASHINGTON, Oct 29: George W Bush’s Presidency was meandering along until the September 11 attacks gave it a purpose, and his vigorous response, drawing world praise that dissipated over his invasion of Iraq, ultimately shaped his quest for re-election.

Two wars after the attacks, Bush, 58, faces a closely divided electorate in his election battle on Tuesday with democratic Sen John Kerry of Massachusetts, hopeful Americans will agree with him his decision to topple Saddam Hussein makes him the best commander in chief.

"I had a choice to make. Do I forget the lessons of September 11 and trust a Madman, or take action to defend America? Given that choice, I will defend our country every time," was a frequent Bush refrain on the campaign trail.

Terror and war are the two themes hammered home day after day by Bush, who saw a rise in poll ratings after the republican national convention evaporate following his three presidential debates with Kerry.

The bad news from Iraq, whether missing explosives that can fall into the hands of terrorists or the latest casualty or beheading, never put Bush off his stride and only seem to heighten the personal attacks against Kerry.

"A political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as commander in chief," Bush told a crowd this week.

"Unfortunately that is part of a pattern of a candidate who will say anything to get elected," he added to cheers.

It was the Sept 11, 2001, attacks that created the most dramatic moments of the Bush Presidency and put an everlasting mark on Bush, who walked and talked with a Texas swagger that belies his family’s patrician east coast roots.

It was not yet a year since Bush had taken office after a bitter, 36-day recount battle in Florida was ultimately decided in his favor by the Supreme Court, even though democrat Al-Gore had won the popular vote in the 2000 election.

Americans, having seen Bush in action, were not all that impressed. He pushed through a big tax cut as promised but otherwise appeared to be coasting.

Caught out of town when the attacks on the world trade center in New York and the Pentagon near Washington killed about 3,000 people, Bush drew criticism for his initial, tentative response when he vowed "to hunt down and to find those folks who committed this act."

He then took a circuitous route back to Washington aboard air force one while Vice President Dick Cheney was making decisions in an underground bunker.

It was not until Sept 14 that the American people and the rest of the world would see another side to Bush, when he visited the smoking ruins at Manhattan’s ground zero, stepped up on a crumpled fire engine and addressed cheering police, firefighters and rescuers. "I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon," he said.

The attacks were condemned around the world on Oct 7, 2001, Bush ordered US forces into Afghanistan to dislodge the Taliban militia from control of the country and to destroy the Al-Qaeda network behind the September 11 attacks.

Bush divided the world into those who were with the United States in its quest to destroy terrorism and those who were not, revealing the good-versus-evil worldview that has won him ardent admirers and bitter enemies.

A fervent Christian, Bush stressed the war on terrorism was not a war on Islam, although he angered Muslims by initially describing the coming US response to the attacks as a "crusade."

A new sense of mission quickly transformed US foreign policy, with Bush labeling Iraq, Iran and North Korea an "axis of evil" and announcing a pre-emptive strategy that would attack foes before they could become a threat.

Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden escaped a US-British dragnet in Afghanistan and to Bush’s dismay remains at large, and a report on the attacks by a Bipartisan Commission investigating the Sept 11 attacks found there had been widespread intelligence failures about the attackers.

The attacks battered a US economy already sagging from the bursting of the stock market bubble at the end of the eight-year Clinton administration.

Bush’s re-election campaign struggled to put the best face on a lackluster economy in which job growth had failed to catch up with other economic indicators showing positive activity. He faced the possibility of being the first President since Herbert Hoover to suffer a net loss of jobs on his watch.

With the situation in Afghanistan seemingly under control, Bush turned his attention to the supposed threat presented by Iraq’s Saddam in late 2002, triggering a confrontation that would offset the international goodwill in response to the Sept 11 attacks.

Bush argued Iraq posed a grave and gathering danger and had to be dealt with, in the context of what happened on sept. 11. He built his case on intelligence that iraq possessed dangerous weapons and was prepared to use them.

US and British forces invaded Iraq in March and by May 1 Bush felt confident enough of victory to don a flight suit, climb into the cockpit of a military jet and land aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier where, with a "mission accomplished" banner behind him, he declared major combat operations over in Iraq.

That turned out to be premature, and US-led forces soon faced a guerrilla insurgency that has killed hundreds of US and allied troops. Many more have been wounded. Weapons of Mass Destruction have not been found.

Bush was the first Presidential son since John Quincy Adams in 1825 to follow his father into the White House.

For his first 45 years, Bush was not seen as Presidential timber. Until elected Governor of Texas in 1994, Bush was known as the undistinguished son of his distinguished father.

As Governor, Bush proved cautious and pragmatic, willing to reach across party lines to build alliances with democrats.

The eldest son of George and Barbara Bush, George Walker Bush was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1946.

After gaining a bachelor’s degree from Yale, Bush worked at several jobs, distinguishing himself in none, until years later when he became part-owner of the Texas rangers baseball team.

During the Vietnam war, he enlisted in 1968 as a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard and spent the war in the United States.

Bush gained an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1975. Two years later, he married Laura Welch, a Librarian who became a steadying influence on him. The couple have twin daughters, Jenna and Barbara. (AGENCIES)

Kerry rises from political ashes to face Bush

WASHINGTON, Oct 29: A tall, rugged, blueblood war veteran from Massachusetts with the initials JFK, senator John Forbes Kerry rose from the political dead to challenge President George W Bush for the White House.

An early bet as the democrats’ best hope, he was running far behind in last year’s pre-primary polls in Iowa and New Hampshire but recovered ground as voters took a second look at the field and rewarded him with a stunning comeback in the first two contests of the political campaign.

"They were saying ‘oh, Kerry’s dead. He’s dashed expectations. He can’t win," former President Bill Clinton said this week. "He just kept being John Kerry. ... And he won the nomination for President."

Despite breaking his party’s fund-raising records, raking in about 200 million dollars by tapping into the internet and a fervent desire among democrats to oust Bush, Kerry the nominee was once again all but written off.

"They said ‘oh, Kerry’s beat. He’s too far behind. He’s dead as a doornail,"’ Clinton recalled. " and then he gave us three magnificent performances in those debates."

Kerry, widely considered to have done well against Bush in all three debates, retooled his campaign’s message shop to bring in former White House aides who sharpened his focus and quickened his response to republican efforts to portray him as an irresolute northeastern liberal who flip-flops on important issues like the Iraq war.

The sometimes-stiff senator from Massachusetts with a deliberative decision-making style and a reputation as a fearsome closer in tight election races, hammered away at Bush’s economic and national security record with an ‘’eyes on the prize’’ Mantra.

Kerry applied the same laser-like focus when he trailed his opponents in the race for the democratic nomination. The decorated Vietnam war Veteran, who boasts a Yale education, two decades in the senate and a cadre of experienced advisers, never stopped fighting.

The 60-year-old senator’s problems then — and later in the general election campaign — sprang from his stance on the Iraq war. He voted to authorize the US-led invasion, but then criticized Bush for "rushing" into conflict without an international coalition or a Postwar plan.

Kerry explained his position by blaming the President for misleading Congress on the evidence used to justify the war.

In August, he complicated matters again by saying he would have voted to give Bush the authority to use military force even if he had known there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.

But it was another vote — and another explanation — that gave republicans valuable ammunition.

Kerry voted against the President’s 87 billion dollars request to support US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and pay for reconstruction after efforts to offset the cost by repealing some of Bush’s tax cuts failed.

"I actually voted for the 87 billion dollars before I voted against it," Kerry said in west Virginia.

While a delighted Bush team pounced on his statement, using it to raise doubts about his fitness to be Commander in Chief, a group called swift boat veterans for truth launched a well-funded AD campaign to discredit Kerry’s Vietnam service.

This was not the first setback Kerry has faced. Lagging in the primary season, Kerry shook up his staff and fired his campaign manager. A well-off man married to a multimillionaire, he opted out of the public campaign financing system and its accompanying 45 million dollars spending limits.

Helped by gaffes from Howard Dean, the former Governor of Vermont, and with a message of economic fairness and the need to mend fences abroad, Kerry scored a surprise win in the Iowa caucuses, rolled to victory in the New Hampshire primary and rode the momentum to the nomination.

The 6-foot-4 junior senator from Massachusetts, who says he was inspired by another new England blue blood — John F Kennedy — has labored in the long shadow of the former President’s brother and his senior counterpart, Sen Edward Kennedy.

Kerry’s background, too, is solidly patrician — he can trace his roots back to the first Massachusetts Governor, John Winthrop.

To help dispel the notion that he is a cerebral elitist who has trouble connecting with voters, Kerry has appeared on a late-night television show riding a motorcycle, shot geese on an Ohio farm, graced the cover of American windsurfer magazine in a wetsuit and used a four-letter profanity in an interview with rolling stone magazine.

"I have only done things in this campaign that have been authentic," he said in an NBC interview on Tuesday. "I’m going to be who I am."

Kerry is a strong abortion-rights advocate even though, as a Catholic, he is personally opposed to it and believes life begins at conception. He also has broken with his Church by supporting embryonic stem cell research.

He backs tax cuts for the middle class, minimum wage hikes, expanded health care and speaks passionately about protecting the environment. In 1995, he and republican Sen John Mccain of Arizona successfully pushed for normalisation of US relations with Vietnam.

Kerry is one of the senate’s richest members, thanks to his second wife’s sizable fortune. Ketchup Heiress and philanthropist Teresa Heinz Kerry is the widow of the late Pennsylvania republican Sen John Heinz.

The son of foreign service officer Richard John Kerry and rosemary Forbes Kerry, he spent time at a Swiss boarding school and attended a New Hampshire Prep School before entering Yale and graduating with a degree in political science. Like Bush, he joined Yale’s exclusive secret society skull and bones.

Instead of going straight to law school, Kerry enlisted in the navy as an officer and headed to Vietnam. Manning a gunboat in the Mekong delta, he was decorated with a silver star, a bronze star and three purple hearts.

The national spotlight first fell on Kerry in the early 1970s when, after his military service, he became an outspoken critic of the war, organized fellow Vietnam veterans for a protest march in Washington and memorably testified before Congress.

In 1972, he ran for the House of Representatives and lost. He went to Boston College Law School, became a county prosecutor and worked his way up the political ladder before winning his senate seat in 1984. (AGENCIES)

Holy water, prayers of peace for new Cambodian king

PHNOM PENH, Oct 29: Cambodia’s outgoing king, Norodom Sihanouk, anointed his son with holy water from Angkor wat today in a traditional Buddhist blessing ceremony to open a day of pageantry for the new monarch’s coronation.

The Octogenarian Sihanouk, one of the world’s most enduring leaders who has said he is finally ready to retire, choreographed the dawn ritual with the consummate skill of one who has trodden the international stage for more than 60 years.

Despite the accession of Norodom Sihamoni, 51, a previously little known ballet Aficionado who takes a formal oath of kingship in the afternoon, Sihanouk’s influence in the war-scarred southeast Asian nation is unlikely to diminish.

Sihamoni, dressed in a gold-braided white jacket and blue and gold silk trousers, entered the ornate gilt throne room carried on a golden throne by eight bearers for the ceremony that will make him king.

A procession of hundreds of silk-clad courtiers wound through the palace grounds in front of the monarch-in-waiting, carrying bowls of incense, flowers and ivory tusks.

Prime Minister Hun Sen, in official regalia of a white suit with gold braid, and members of the national Assembly waited in the throne room for the elaborate swearing-in ceremony.

Sihamoni takes over from his mercurial father, who led his country to Independence from France in 1953 and who has scotched reports he would be retiring to the provincial backwater of siem reap, in the shadow of the 800-year-old Angkor Wat temples, following his shock abdication.

"I think we will see the hand of Sihanouk on the tiller of the monarchy for some time to come — certainly until Sihamoni has found his feet," said one western diplomat.

Flanked by saffron-robed Buddhist Monks and black-suited North Korean bodyguards, Sihamoni, in traditional golden gown, began the daylong ceremonies with an early morning walk through the gardens of the royal palace where he and his father were once held captive by pol pot’s Khmers Rouges.

He ascended a red carpet to a throne set beneath a gilded Pagoda, before clasping his hands in Buddhist supplication and offering prayers to the sun rising slowly over the Mekong river.

Sihanouk, who flashed a broad grin to the banks of cameras present, then doused his shaven-headed son with nine jars of holy water brought specially from an Angkor spring.

Sihamoni is due to make his first television address to Cambodia’s 13 million people at 6:00 pm (1100 gmt), the first time most will have seen their new monarch, who has spent nearly all his adult life abroad.

At the same time, monks at Buddhist temples across the land have been ordered to bang giant wooden drums to usher in the new royal era.

Having never held political office, Sihamoni faces the daunting task as constitutional monarch of mediating in Cambodia’s fractious and often bloody politics, in which the legacy of the "killing fields" genocide still looms large.

His status as an almost complete outsider could be his most powerful tool.

"According to the constitution, the king must be politically neutral. He is the father of the nation, and not involved in politics," Sihamoni’s half-brother and royalist party leader Prince Norodom Ranariddh told reporters.

"I am so excited to see that his attitude and character is subtle and gentle. He is so appropriate to be the king of Cambodia," said Ranariddh, a former co-Prime Minister who was deemed too political to be monarch.

Ordinary Cambodians, for whom life is a daily struggle against some of the most acute poverty in Asia, are also praying the new monarch does not try to rock the political boat, something that often precipitates bullets and bloodshed.

"He is a good man — no politics," said taxi driver Cham Ly. (AGENCIES)

Iraq expected to dog next US President

WASHINGTON, Oct 29: The Iraq war that might have been President George W Bush’s defining glory may instead turn out to be his achilles heel — or democratic candidate Sen John Kerry’s complex inheritance.

No matter who wins the White House, the next US leader will be dogged by Iraq and its repercussions for years to come.

"I think all the trends that we see in the insurgency are that it’s not going to be defeated or perhaps not even contained in the coming one or two years regardless of the intensity of our military involvement," said Michael O’hanlon of the brookings institution.

Even as he extols a country on the rebound from Saddam Hussein’s oppression, facts on the ground in Iraq have created political problems for Bush before Tuesday’s election.

For example:

—US and Iraqi casualties are steadily rising, including this week’s massacre of 49 Iraqi national guard trainees —the guerrilla insurgency, experts say, now involves an estimated 20,000 fighters — up four-fold from a year ago —and could delay elections set for January.

— The bill for US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which Bush aides promised would cost America little, is now projected at 280 billion dollars or more through next year.

— This week it was revealed that nearly 380 tonnes of powerful conventional explosives was missing from one of Iraq’s most sensitive former military installations.

The next US President’s task involves steering Iraq toward elections, speeding training of Iraqi forces and making things stable enough for Iraqis to take over their own security as Americans depart.

Bush aides insist Iraq’s election will occur as planned but Kenneth Pollock, a former Clinton administration National Security official, said that given the instability, "I just don’t see how that’s going to possibly happen."

Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Adviser in the carter administration, has dismissed both candidates’ plans as unworkable and warned US actions could force Iraq’s moderate and extremist Muslims to unite in an anti-American civil war.

He wrote in the New York Times this week that this can only be avoided if Washington and Europe engage moderate Muslims in a "grand alliance" to solve three major flash points: Iraq, Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Stockpiles of Weapons of Mass Destruction — Bush’s main reason for invading Iraq — have not been found and an alleged connection between Baghdad and Al-Qaeda, which carried out the Sept 11 attacks, proved tenuous.

Yet Bush continues to insist war was justified and Iraq is essential to remaking west asia in America’s democratic image. Bush excoriates Kerry as lacking the resolve to complete the task in Iraq and win the "war on terror."

Kerry calls Iraq a diversion from the anti-terror war and faults bush for failing to assemble a broad allied coalition and lacking a comprehensive plan to win the post-war peace.

Kerry and others claim the presence of 138,000 US troops in Iraq has given Osama bin Laden and his allies a recruiting tool to woo new militants to their cause.

Bush backer Reuel Marc Gerecht of the American enterprise institute said it is too soon to know if this is true. More important is that the war and Bush’s vision for west Asia are encouraging talk of democratic reform in the region, he wrote in this week’s weekly standard.

If elected, Kerry has pledged to reach out to Europeans who opposed the war and might be persuaded to provide troops or money to relieve the US burden.

Some Kerry advisers acknowledge this may be a long shot.

As for the US presence in Iraq, Kerry has said he would like to withdraw forces by the end of his first four-year term. Bush has emphasized staying until the job is done.

But with the military overstretched and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld eager to withdraw, pressures may build to leave Iraq prematurely, a republican source said.

"Certainly Kerry and probably Bush doesn’t want his next four years defined by Iraq," he added. (AGENCIES)

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