Tuesday 4 March, 2008
Coalition rolls up 100-woman suicide cell in raid of Iraq safe house
BAGHDAD — Iraq has captured an Al Qaida-aligned cell that recruited and deployed women for suicide operations.
On March 1, Iraqi and U.S. troops raided a suspected Al Qaida safe house in Al Makhesa, in northeastern Diyala. Officials said scores of suspected women operatives recruited as suicide bombers were arrested.
The women suicide cell was said to have consisted of 100 operatives. Officials said Al Qaida has increased its use of women for suicide operations.
The women cell was said to have operated in the Diyala province. Officials said some of the women were recruited by their husbands for suicide operations against Iraqi and U.S. forces.
The U.S. military also detained the commander of the women suicide cell. Officials said the male commander was based in Ghalibiya in western Diyala.
U.S. military commander Gen. David Petraeus reported a slight increase in suicide-vest attacks in Iraq. He said the suicide vests were being handed to women, regarded as being more capable of reaching their targets than car bombs.
"We are going after Al Qaida relentlessly wherever they are, and wherever we can find them, we put our teeth into their jugular," Petraeus said on March 2. My emphasis
- On Nov. 4, a woman detonated an explosives vest next to a U.S. patrol in Diyala´s regional capital, Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, wounding seven U.S. troops and five Iraqis.
- On Dec. 7, a woman attacked the offices of a Diyala-based Sunni group fighting al-Qaida in Iraq, killing 15 people and wounding 35.
- Dec. 31, a bomber in Baqouba detonated her suicide vest close to a police patrol, wounding five policemen and four civilians.
- Jan. 16 -- A woman wearing an explosives-packed vest killed seven people and wounded fifteen.
- 17 Feb 2008 Iraqi officials say a woman suicide attacker whose bomb detonated in a crowded area of central Baghdad killed at least three people.
- The latest outrage, on Monday 10 March was a female suicide bomber killed a prominent Sunni Arab Sheik and three others in the Diyala Province.
These combined thirty-four deaths are horrific - as are the many more injuries, but this was only five women bombers. (there are probably two or three more that I have missed in my research, as I remember seeing a quote of seven women bombers sometime last week).
Yet still, in all the above reports there is no mention of a 100 women cell.
Why the many inconsistencies?
One Hundred women? Not 97 women; or approximately 89; or nearly one hundred women, or could the author not simply have left it at the original “scores of women”? How come 100 Women? Is it a nice round number? Or might ‘scores’ only have been interpreted as two or three score by the targeted reader; hiding 60-something women in one safe house is hard enough...
The Safe House
One hundred women in one safe house? How do you get one hundred women into one house? Taking into account that there must also have been other people there also - trainers, minders (some of these women would have children) – all in one safe house.
Why has the WorldTribune.com report not filtered out to the Mainstream Media?
Where are the photos? Where are names? Who carried out this mission? Whoever ould have been straining atit was should be straining at the leash to get news out of their success.
By Saturday 8 March, no mainstream news organisation had picked the story up and run with it. About thirty-five Blogs and bulletin boards have repeated it, most while using it to bash Muslims and their treatment of women in general.
To date, Google search results only in WorldTribune.com as reporting this unattributed event with the usual nameless “officials” supplying the information.
A search of Associated Press of: "100 + suicide + women + Al Makhesa + northeastern Diyala," gave no results, and a similar negative result was obtained from Reuters.com.
The English paper Turkish Daily News (Ankara) has no mention of this report. Neither does Turks.us (Istanbul), TurkishPress.com, or The New Anatolian. Turkey is a next door neighbour of Iraq, with troops only recently returning from a mission in Northern Iraq.
First reported in NowPublic a week ago, in the last two days, NewsNow, a British news aggregator has added it to their lists.
Hatena:Antenna, a Japanese aggregator have also included it in their lists.
13 March, no Mainstream Media has picked it up - yet.
The last two paragraphs of the WorldTribune.com report.
The last two paragraphs of the WorldTribune.com report appear to have been cherry-picked from a report by Jim Garamone - General Petraeus Describes Factors Affecting Iraq Assessment - Monday, 03 March 2008, published on the Operation Iraqi Freedom site. During this report Petraeus stated, "-suicide vests are transportable and are now being handed to women."
On 29 February there is a report on the OIF site of the arrest of an "alleged deputy commander - of approximately 100 people." There is no mention of any 100 women suicide cell.
There was also an earlier report highlighting the targeting of recruitment of women on 21 February.
Then, on 1 March, there is this report: Coalition Forces detain suicide vest cell leader recruiting women (Ghailibiyah).
“A high level of intelligence led to the successful operation. Another criminal and his SVEST cell was removed from Iraqi society today” said Maj. Daniel J. Meyers, a spokesman for Multi-National Division – North.
No one was injured during the operation.'
General Petraeus made no direct statement about any of these successes.
- The WorldTribune.com raid on the safe house in Al Makhesa, Diyala happened on the 1 March.
The Operation Iraqi Freedom arrest happened 28 February - in Ghailibiyah, Diyala. - In the WorldTribune raid, the Commander and 100 women were arrested.
In the IOF report, the cell leader was arrested. No mention is made of what happened the leader's wife and the other woman. - In the WorldTribune report, the male Commander was based in Ghalibiya.
The IOF report said the leader of the cell was arrested in Ghalibiya. - Out of over 150 Daily and Feature stories and press releases on the IOF site since 28 February, there is no mention of 100 women being arrested.
By the time WorldTribune.com published their 100 women report on the 4 March it seems very likely there should have been some sort of linkage and re-reporting by the mainstream media.
But this didn't happen.
WorldTribune.com
There are two links at the bottom of the WorldTribune.com homepage
Geostrategy-Direct.com East-Asia-Intel.com
On entering Geostrategy-Direct.com’s home page it, also, has links at the bottom of its page.
These sites link to each other.
While TheGertzFile.com has only one prominent link to the East-Asia-Intel.com homepage, all these sites link to each other - select Breaking News, or News: Worldwide in Geostrategy-Direct.com or East-Asia-Intel, and it opens in the WorldTribune.com news pages. TheGertzFile.com does have a small external links list on its homepage - which include East-Asia-Intel.com, WorldTribune.com and Geostrategy-Direct.com - but it can only be found by scrolling down to the bottom of a very long page.
Apart from the TheGertzFile.com homepage, there is a Copyright Statement right at the very bottom of each of these sites homepages:
Copyright © 2008 East West Services, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Which pretty well explains everything.
It would be picked up by a visitor to any one of those sights, who would want to let others know of its contents through his own blog. Bloggers blog. It is what they do. And politically savvy bloggers are happy to share new information between each other - particularly if that information is a scoop, unusual in some way, or simply good news.
Round and round the blogs that article would go, until one of the keener news aggregators finds it. Next might be - this is a bit like the bird catching worm then the cat catching the bird.
More and more, Blogs are watched these days, probably by governments and certainly by the media. So it is highly likely that someone in a newsroom somewhere, during a quiet moment, picks up on our erronous article.
Maybe someone like Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Rielly would pick it up, and spread the good word..
If there were problems with such an article? Well it would be really hard to put the lid back on it. Wouldn't it?
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