An American contractor held hostage in Iraq heads an Indiana company that has sold bottling equipment for water and edible oils in the country, according to reports on Wednesday.
U.S. officials in Washington identified the man as Jeffrey Ake after he appeared in a video broadcast by Al Jazeera television, holding up his passport as armed and masked insurgents stood at his side.
Ake is the president and owner of Equipment Express in Rolling Prairie, Indiana, according to the company's Web site.
Oooh, yeah. Like that's gonna happen.An Indiana man, scared and clutching his passport to his chest, was shown at gunpoint on a videotape aired by Al-Jazeera television Wednesday, two days after he was kidnapped from a water treatment plant near Baghdad.[...]
The video came on a day of bloody attacks, as insurgents blew up a fuel tanker in Baghdad, killed 12 policemen in Kirkuk, and drove a car bomb into a U.S. convoy, killing five Iraqis and wounding four U.S. contract workers on the capital's infamous airport road.
[...]
The station said he pleaded for his life and urged U.S. troops to quickly withdraw from Iraq.
Sure is.U.S. President George W. Bush's press secretary, Scott McClellan, said there would be no negotiating with the kidnappers."Anytime there is a hostage an American hostage, it is a high priority for the United States," he said "Our position is well known when it comes to negotiating."
The secret meeting is taking place in the bowels of a facility in Baghdad, a cavernous, heavily guarded building in the U.S.-controlled green zone. The Iraqi negotiator, a middle-aged former member of Saddam Hussein's regime and the senior representative of the self-described nationalist insurgency, sits on one side of the table.
He is here to talk to two members of the U.S. military. One of them, an officer, takes notes during the meeting. The other, dressed in civilian clothes, listens as the Iraqi outlines a list of demands the U.S. must satisfy before the insurgents stop fighting.[...]An account of the secret meeting between the senior insurgent negotiator and the U.S. military officials was provided to TIME by the insurgent negotiator. He says two such meetings have taken place. While U.S. officials would not confirm the details of any specific meetings, sources in Washington told TIME that for the first time the U.S. is in direct contact with members of the Sunni insurgency, including former members of Saddam's Baathist regime.
US and Shiite militia forces have agreed to withdraw from the holy Iraqi cities of Najaf and Kufa and turn over security there to police.
...Colonel Brad May, commander of the US 2nd Armoured Cavalry Regiment, said the Americans had agreed to move their forces "to the periphery of these sensitive areas" of Najaf and Kufa "while the police can move in".
In fact, I believe the word from Washington was that there was only one fate for al-Sadr: to be killed or captured. He's still apparently quite alive and well and vying for political power in the new government.Veteran diplomat and superb Arabist Christopher Ross, who is in the Coalition Provisional Authority's Outreach Department, has indicated a desire to meet with radical Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr for talks about the fate of the Mahdi Army militia. Previously the CPA had refused to deal with Muqtada directly, accusing him of having had rival cleric Abdul Majid al-Khoei killed in April of 2003.
Ross's request for a meeting may well be a sign that a more pragmatic set of officials from the State Department is beginning to take charge of such policies from the Neocon establishment that had dominated the Coalition Provisional Authority
Strikes me that now would be the best time for the resistance to capture and threaten beheadings of Americans in Iraq. I would think the American public would quickly get behind the troop pullout issue in the face of a new spate of kidnappings/beheadings now that we have supposedly brought democracy to the country and they have "their own government".
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments are moderated. There may be some delay before your comment is published. It all depends on how much time M has in the day. But please comment!