BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Gunmen in Baghdad killed a judge working for the Iraqi special tribunal set up to try Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) and his top lieutenants, a setback in efforts to close the chapter on decades of oppression.

Elsewhere in the Iraqi capital, two car bombs killed 13 Iraqi soldiers and wounded dozens in attacks claimed by Al Qaeda's wing in Iraq (news - web sites), led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Judge Barawiz Mahmoud and his son, who worked as a lawyer, were killed as they left their home in north Baghdad Tuesday.

His death was the first assassination of a member of the special tribunal, which includes around 50 trial judges, investigating magistrates, prosecutors and appeals court judges.

Mahmoud's other son Maryon said the attack was politically motivated because his father was seeking to bring Saddam and former members of his Baath party to justice.

"I was sleeping and I heard shooting. I came out and saw blood running from my father's neck. My father was shot twice and my brother 11 times," he said near the scene of the shootings. A female relative wailed inside the home.

"We knew this was coming because of my father's work. He and my brother died holding their heads up high. This gives me comfort."

SECURITY FORCES UNDER ATTACK

One of Wednesday's car bombs was outside an Iraqi army base used as a recruitment center. Six soldiers were killed and 38 people were wounded, police said. A second car bomb targeted a convoy of Iraqi soldiers, killing seven and wounding two.

"On Wednesday morning, a lion from the martyrs' brigades of Al Qaeda Organization for Holy War in Iraq carried out a heroic attack on a center of the apostate guards," Zarqawi's group said in a statement which indicated it was a suicide bombing.

In a separate statement posted on Islamist Web sites, it claimed the attack on a convoy of "apostate guards."

Guerrillas fighting to overthrow the U.S.-backed government have repeatedly attacked Iraqi police and soldiers, as well as people lining up to take jobs in the security forces.

Monday, a suicide bombing claimed by Zarqawi's group killed 125 people south of Baghdad -- the deadliest single attack since Saddam's overthrow.

The judge's killing came a day after the tribunal referred its first charges against defendants, saying it had enough evidence to put five former Baath party officials on trial, including Saddam's half brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Hassan al-Tikriti and former Deputy Prime Minister Taha Yasin Ramadan.

The trial is not expected to begin for at least another seven weeks. Saddam, who briefly appeared before a judge last July, is expected to be tried next year on war crimes charges.

Iraqi officials involved with the special tribunal say they hope the trials of Saddam's top deputies will help build a case against the former dictator, captured in December 2003.

KIDNAPPINGS

Saddam loyalists and foreign Muslim militants, some loyal to Zarqawi, are behind most of the suicide bombings, kidnappings and beheadings plaguing Iraq.

A Swedish-Iraqi politician kidnapped and threatened with beheading said in a video he feared he would soon be killed.

Minas al-Yousifi, 59, appealed to Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf, Pope John Paul (news - web sites) and to all "patriotic and honest people in the world" for help.

"I have been transferred to the Death Brigade. This certainly means my death and execution," said Yousifi, standing in front of a black banner of Iraqi Vengeance Battalion, Martyr al-Isawi Brigade, the group that kidnapped him in January.

Iraqi militant group Army of Ansar al-Sunna said it had killed two Turkish truck drivers transporting cement to U.S forces in the north of Iraq, according to an Internet statement.

But General John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command, struck a positive note when he told the Senate Armed Services Committee (news - web sites) that improved Iraqi intelligence sources and "treason within his own organization" had led to successes against Zarqawi. "His days in Iraq are numbered," Abizaid said.

He said that on Iraq's election day on Jan. 30, when Zarqawi sent suicide bombers to attack polling stations, only around 3,500 insurgents took part in efforts to disrupt the poll.

"And we say to ourselves: 'Why didn't they put more people in the field? Where were they?' They threw their whole force at us, we think, and yet they were unable to disrupt the elections because people wanted to vote," Abizaid said.

(Additional reporting by Reuters Television in Baghdad and Ghaida Ghantous in Dubai)
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The more shit like this that continues to happen, the longer we're going to see US troops in Iraq. Fantastic.

Hadn't you heard? We're making progress over there! See, today a man got the job of presiding over Saddam's trial!

Workin' hard. Spreadin' freedom. Creatin' jobs. It's wonderful. I'm so glad we went trillions into debt to fund this whole operation; it's been soooo worth it.

The same shit just happened in Illinois. Send in the troops.

No oil in Illinois to secure...

Good call.

Solution:

Give him a speedy old west trial in which they read his name and what he is accused of, and then hang him.

[/end Saddam]

I'm sorry but I protested against the Iraq war but let's call a spade a spade here (I've heard from my insanely pc parents that the phrase comes from spades and not from the fact that blacks used to be called spades). The people who are bombing people (yes America done it too and one does not defend the other) and shooting judges, and kidknapped civilians, are not America. They're not even Iraqi. They're not decent people who just want foreign opressors out - they are pricely that. They are not Iraqis who want to see the people of Iraq treated like shit because of the pro-Al-Q shite they believe. Let's not absolve them of ALL the blame in this, ok?

Jesus, and I'm not even a Yank!

There's not that much oil in Iraq either. Iran = oil.

Actually Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia. They just don't currently have the infrastructure to get at it as efficiently.

--PunkDavid

Whoops, maybe not.

NBC BLAMES U.S. OFFICIALS FOR IRAQ-ASSASSINATION GOOF

By DON KAPLAN
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


March 3, 2005 -- NBC News blamed American officials for a flubbed report Tuesday night claiming the chief judge overseeing the trial of Saddam Hussein had been assassinated by Iraqi gunmen.
"It's very straightforward," an NBC News spokeswoman says. "We got the information from multiple, high-level sources who confirmed the story's accuracy.

"It was wrong, and we corrected it immediately."

With the report, anchor Brian Williams joins the list of major network news stars who have been caught up in broadcasting false information in recent months.

Williams and correspondent Jim Miklaszewski corrected the assassination mistake on the "Nightly News" last night for viewers on the East Coast who were not able to see the initial correction.

"Earlier, there was some confusing reports coming out of Baghdad, and U.S. officials told NBC News — and we reported — that the initial target of the assassination attempt was Raid Juhi," said Miklaszewski in Tuesday's on-air correction.

Juhi is the chief administration judge who was in fact seen in Saddam Hussein's initial court appearance last July.



"Juhi had been the target of several assassination attempts, and was under heavy armed guard. But tonight, administration officials tell NBC News that the judge apparently killed earlier today was actually Barbweez Mahmood and his son," said Miklaszewski.

Since last fall, embattled CBS News anchor Dan Rather has famously been at the center of a botched "60 Minutes" report that questioned George W. Bush's military record.





The conspiracy theorist in me envisions a Federal Dept. of misinformation that feeds bullshit stories to news networks that they then have to retract leading to further public distrust of the "liberal media" to the pt. that only Big Brother is trusted.

I just realized my last post doesn't contradict the original post as I thought it did.

I guess its a related issue but not what I thought originally.

You are right. One of the major problems is getting to these reserves. There isn't the technology to do it.

Not sure if the 15 billion barrels from the Caspian Sea Iran has is included in the reserves.

The Daily Show had a great segment last night about the NBC fuck up.

So wait, I don't understand. Was the guy and his son NOT killed? Was he killed but he wasn't a judge on the tribunal? WTFNBC?

--PunkDavid

The guy and his son were killed; initial reports from NBC were that a different person involved with the trial had been assasinated.

Ok, the reports I've heard were that the guy who was killed was a judge on Saddam's tribunal, and that his son was also a lawyer working on the tribunal. Are those facts true? To be honest, if they just got the name wrong, that doesn't affect me much over here.

--PunkDavid

I believe the original story I posted at the start of this thread is factually correct David.

Good, because that's the only one I've read. I guess I caught on to this story after the fix had already been made.