[Chewbacca]

Some more and a new question: Are Westerners joining the resistance?:

Story

Are Westerners joining the Iraqi resistance? Some members of the coalition forces in Iraq, under steady attack by anonymous snipers and suicide bombers, have expressed fear that they are targets of an increasing number of assailants – from Saddam Hussein's loyalists, to foreign insurgents, to members of Al Qaeda. Now there is concern that ordinary Iraqis, and possibly even Westerners, could be added to the list. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of the US-led coalition in Iraq, told The Times of London on Wednesday that US forces now face revenge attacks from ordinary Iraqis increasingly angry over the occupation. "We have seen that when we have an incident in the conduct of our operations, when we killed an innocent civilian, based on their ethic, their values, their culture, they would seek revenge," he said. A day earlier, journalists discovered eight detainees in a prison outside of Baghdad claiming to be Westerners, according to the BBC. Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade, told reporters Tuesday that coalition forces in Iraq had detained six people claiming to be American and two others who said they were British. Held in Abu Ghraib prison, where Mr. Hussein locked up political opponents, the eight have been labelled "security detainees" since they are suspected of being involved in guerrilla attacks against US and allied forces. Coalition spokespeople later retracted the statements regarding the citizenship of the eight detainees as the story unfolded. "We actually do have six who are claiming to be Americans, two who are claiming to be from the UK. We're continuing the interviewing process. The details become sketchy and their story changes," Ms. Karpinski said Tuesday. She told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that the six prisoners asserting US citizenship spoke with American accents, but that their claims had yet to be substantiated. On Wednesday, CNN reported the detainees were no longer claiming to be Americans or Britons. Karpinski could not answer why they had dropped their original claims. A unnamed spokesman for the coalition military command in Baghdad told Fox News: "We have no evidence that we are holding American or British civilians" picked up for insurgency or sabotage. But he added that many of those taken into custody do not have passports. "We are always continuing to investigate identities." The incident points to a larger question about who, exactly, the coalition is facing as attacks continue in Iraq. The Associated Press compared the revelation that Westerners may be involved in some of the guerilla warfare in Iraq to the capture of John Walker Lindh in Afghanistan in 2001. Mr. Lindh, the Californian accused of fighting alongside the Taliban militia, was sentenced last year to 20 years in prison. Karpinski told CNN the coalition forces are holding some 240 non-Iraqis from over 20 countries in Iraq, but added that none of the prisoners are Westerners. "The truth is that the folks that we've scooped up have, on a number of occasions, multiple identifications from different countries," US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon press conference Tuesday. "They're quite skilled at confusing people as to what their real nationality is or where they came from or what they're doing." For now, the Bush administration continues to point fingers at insurgents coming from nearby countries. John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control, told a House International Relations Committee hearing in Washington on Tuesday that "Syria permitted volunteers to pass into Iraq to attack and kill our service members during the war, and is still doing so." And Britain's prime ministerial envoy to Iraq, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, told The Scotsman newspaper that Al Qaeda and Ansar al-Islam, as well as their offshoots, were now a "serious" long-term threat in Iraq. In a press conference in Baghdad Tuesday, Mr. Greenstock said, "There is no doubt that Al Qaeda and Ansar al-Islam are involved, but they are mutating all the time, making different arrangements and liaising with people and probably tying up with former loyalists to Saddam Hussein." After news began to circulate that Westerners may be held in Iraq, Karpinski disclosed the existence of as many as 4,400 Iraqi "security detainees," a new category distinct from prisoners of war or common criminals, Agence France-Presse reported. Karpinski said classifying the prisoners as security detainees gave the military the right to interview them, which it cannot do with prisoners of war. "It's not that they don't have rights," she said. "They have fewer rights" than prisoners of war. Meanwhile, a new audiotape purporting to carry the voice of Hussein was broadcast on Arab television stations Wednesday, calling on Iraqis to join the resistance against the US-led occupation and take to the streets in protests. George Monbiot, a columnist with the Guardian, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: I think there is a real danger of creating precisely the threat which President Bush claimed he was trying to deal with, which was of Saddam Hussein's people getting together with Osama bin Laden's people. ... If there's not a coalition already developed between the ex-Baathists and Al Qaeda, then it must be developing at the moment because it's the natural and obvious step for them to take. So we created the political and the physical space in which that very thing can happen. Far from making [a] safer place by invading Iraq, George Bush, Tony Blair, and John Howard have made it a far more dangerous one.