Cole further reports:In the on-again, off-again saga of the Shiite hostages of Madaen, evidence surfaced Wednesday that the hostages had indeed been taken. The guerrillas who captured them appear to have executed them and dumped the bodies in the Tigris, according to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.
It seems likely that this tragedy in part implicates the heavy-handed response of Iraqi and US forces to the hostage crisis. They just dispatched troops to Madaen, which is always a good way to send the hostage-takers into a panic and get the hostages killed.
Violence is "off the charts" in the Iraqi border town of Husayba (pop.: 100,000), says the USA Today. The guerrillas there have the support of the townspeople, and criminal gangs and jihadis move freely, keeping the Marines pinned down. I doubt the article's optimism that things are different in Ramadi and elsewhere in the Sunni Arab heartland is actually warranted.[...]
General Hilmi Ozkok, the chief of general staff, launched a bitter attack on the US for failing to curb the PKK, the Marxist guerrilla movement, some members of which have taken refuge in northern Iraq. He also opposed sole Kurdish control of the oil city of Kirkuk, warning that if that city's ethnic tensions flare up, it could throw the whole region into turmoil.
[...]
Bill Gertz of the Washington Times reports that US intelligence officials are afraid that Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is trying to get a "dirty bomb" (a conventional bomb laced with radioactive materials). I find this report hard to believe, and find the likelihood that Zarqawi could do it low. But I guess it is alarming that anyone is even talking about it. Iraqi guerrilla groups have begun speaking of the need to hit the United States on its own soil in revenge for Fallujah and other operations.
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