October 31, 2005, 9:33 am
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Gunmen killed the brother of Iraq Vice President Adil Abdul Mehdi and his driver early Sunday in eastern Baghdad, an Interior Ministry official told CNN.
Ghalib Abdul Mehdi, who was also an adviser to the Iraqi Ministries Council, and his driver were heading to work when gunmen attacked them.
The driver was killed and Mehdi was taken to a hospital where he died of his wounds, the official said. An official with the vice president's office confirmed Mehdi's death.
On Saturday, an Interior Ministry police official and his guard were killed when five gunmen stormed his home in the Shaab neighborhood.
Seven other Iraqis were killed in three other incidents Sunday in Baghdad, including two policemen who died during an attack on Deputy Trade Minister Qais al-Hasan. The minister and six others were wounded in the attack.
Bombing kills Marine
The U.S. military said Sunday a Marine died of wounds suffered a day earlier in a bombing attack on his vehicle during combat operations near Nasser Wa Salaam, just outside Falluja.
Falluja is in Anbar province, a hotbed of the Sunni-led insurgency, is 40 miles (64 kilometers) west of Baghdad.
The Marine was assigned to Regimental Combat Team 8, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force
The death brought to 2,015 the number of U.S. troops who have died in the Iraq war, including 82 this month.
The U.S. military death toll surpassed 2,000 last week, and President Bush said Saturday in his weekly radio address that "the best way to honor the sacrifice of our fallen troops is to complete the mission."
Three U.S. soldiers also died Saturday, authorities said.
Two Task Force Baghdad soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb while on patrol in a southern part of the capital, the U.S. military said.
The third soldier died after the vehicle he was riding in struck a land mine southwest of Bayji, near Tikrit.
Coalition troops foil ambush
Coalition troops killed six suspected insurgents and detained five other people Saturday night in Taji, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) north of Baghdad on the Tigris River, the U.S. military said.
According to a news release Sunday, coalition troops saw the suspected insurgents in an area where small-arms and rocket-propelled grenade attacks previously had taken place.
The suspected insurgents fired at military helicopters, causing the pilots to return fire, the statement said.
Pentagon says civilians bear brunt
A recent U.S. military report estimates that nearly 26,000 Iraqis were killed or wounded by insurgent attacks from January 1, 2004, through September 16, 2005.
"Approximately 80 percent of all attacks are directed against coalition forces, but 80 percent of all casualties are suffered by Iraqis," the report said.
The figure was extrapolated from a bar graph on page 23 of the report, which shows average daily causalities since January 2004.
The number did not include civilians who may have been killed or wounded in coalition attacks, nor did it include insurgents.
The 44-page report, "Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq," was submitted to Congress on October 13, two days before Iraq's constitutional referendum.
The report said 85 percent of insurgent attacks occurred in four provinces -- Anbar, Baghdad, Nineveh and Salaheddin -- where 42 percent of the population lives.
"Insurgents have learned to avoid head-to-head engagements with coalition forces, using stand-off or hit-and-run attacks instead," the report said. "Improvised explosive devices are the primary insurgent method of attack."
The Web site IraqBodyCount.net, which is operated by a group of volunteers that tracks media reports of civilian fatalities, estimates that between 26,732 and 30,098 Iraqi civilians have been killed since January 1, 2003.
Other developments
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani on Sunday urged Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari to move Saddam Hussein's half brother Barzan Tikriti to a hospital for "life-saving treatment for cancer." Tikriti, who has been charged with crimes against humanity, last week requested to be released from custody for treatment of spinal cancer. In his letter to Jaafari, Talabani did not support Tikriti's call for release. But, citing a long-standing relationship between the Talabani and Tikriti families, he backed moving Tikriti into a hospital.
A pickup truck carrying dates and packed with explosives blew up in a market Saturday in a small Shiite town north of Baquba, killing at least 25 people an Interior Ministry official said. At least 52 people were wounded in the attack that targeted civilians in the town of Hwaider, police said, and shops and restaurants were damaged.
October 31, 2005, 9:30 am
WASHINGTON -- The Senate minority leader said Sunday that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney owe the country an explanation of "what's going on" in the administration and called for White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove to be fired.
"I think not only should the president appear before the American public and explain what is going on and take a few questions from the press, but certainly the vice president should do that," Sen. Harry Reid said on CNN's "Late Edition."
The Nevada Democrat referred to past comments from the president that anyone found to have been involved in the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's name to the media would be fired.
Bush later amended his comments to say that anyone guilty of a criminal act would be fired.
"Everyone knows Karl Rove is involved," Reid said. "If the president is a man of his word, Rove should be history."
Rove is widely believed to have been named as "official A" in the five-count indictment handed up Friday against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Libby resigned Friday as Cheney's chief of staff after a federal grand jury indicted him on five charges related to the leak probe: one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury and two counts of making false statements.
A leading Republican cautioned that Rove hasn't been charged with any crime.
"Mr. Rove, like every other citizen, is entitled to the presumption of innocence, and until somebody says that he's done something wrong, he ought to be permitted to go about his business like anybody else," said Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said.
Rove was not indicted, but sources said he is not out of legal jeopardy.
Bush made a short statement Friday at the White House in which he called the legal proceedings "serious" and said the administration was focused on many issues.
"There was not a word of apology, not a word of explanation to the American people," Reid said. "The president's going to have to get a touch of reality."
Reid urged Bush to follow an example set by President Reagan when he was faced with the Iran-Contra scandal, and "clean house."
The two-year investigation into the leak raised questions about political retribution by the White House and one of its central points for going to war against Iraq -- the search for weapons of mass destruction.
Plame is married to Joe Wilson, a retired U.S. diplomat, who had publicly charged that Bush administration officials, intent on building a case to depose Saddam Hussein, hyped unsupported claims that the Iraqi dictator bought uranium for use in nuclear weapons in the African nation of Niger.
"Everyone knows that Vice President Cheney and the president do not like anyone criticizing anything they do," Reid said. "Joe Wilson criticized the basis for the war in Iraq."
Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said the investigation showed no one in the White House did anything illegal.
"Apparently, they didn't violate the law in setting the record straight," Graham told CBS's "Face the Nation." "The allegation is that when they told the grand jury about the process they made some misstatements and false allegations."
Sen. Charles Schumer, who appeared with Graham, said the nation's security was jeopardized by the leak.
"Lindsey is right. A criminal standard wasn't met. But that doesn't mean that real harm wasn't done," the New York Democrat said. "These agents risk their lives for us. They have operatives that risk their lives. And when you expose the name of such an agent, you do harm."
Schumer also called for the White House to make changes.
"They are at a real turning point," he said. "Thus far, they've admitted no mistakes at all. And that's not a good sign or a good attitude."
October 31, 2005, 9:27 am
MONTGOMERY, Alabama (AP) -- Rosa Parks was remembered Sunday by thousands of mourners in the nation's capital and in Montgomery for her defiant act on a city bus that inspired the civil rights movement and helped pave the way for other blacks, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Cascades of roses surrounded Parks' casket in a chapel bearing her name at St. Paul A.M.E. Church in Montgomery, where she was once a member. A separate wing was opened for the overflow crowd and hundreds more stood outside.
"I was here when Rosa Parks started and I just wanted to be here when she departed," said the Rev. Joseph Lowery, who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
The body of the 92-year-old Parks, who died Monday at her home in Detroit, had been lying in honor at the church since Saturday, when hundreds filed slowly past her casket.
From Montgomery, Parks' body was flown to Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport in Maryland. A motorcade escorted Parks' body, and her delegation, to the Capitol, where Parks will lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda, the first woman granted that honor.
President Bush issued a proclamation Sunday ordering the U.S. flag to be flown at half-staff over all public buildings on Wednesday, the day of Parks' funeral and burial in Detroit.
'She was a gentle giant'
At the memorial service in Montgomery, Rice said she and others who grew up in Alabama during the height of Parks' activism might not have realized her impact on their lives at the time, "but I can honestly say that without Mrs. Parks, I probably would not be standing here today as secretary of state."
Alabama Gov. Bob Riley credited Parks with inspiring protests against social injustice around the world.
"I firmly believe God puts different people in different parts of history so great things can happen," Riley said. "I think Rosa Parks is one of those people."
Parks was arrested in 1955 for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man. Among those who supported her was King, who led the 381-day boycott of the city's bus system that helped initiate the modern civil rights movement.
"She was a gentle giant," his son, Martin Luther King III, said at the memorial.
"I think she had a defining stand in the civil rights movement," said Estella Jernigan, 20, a student at Troy University, before the service started.
Lowery and the Rev. Jesse Jackson said the best way for blacks to carry on Parks' legacy would be to push Congress to renew the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which they said would be in jeopardy when it comes up for review in 2007.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, who was a year old at the time of Parks' arrest, said when he arrived in Montgomery for the memorial, he thought about "how if she had just moved her seat, how history might of changed."
Sharpton, a New York City activist, said national leaders such as Rice and former Secretary of State Colin Powell would have never reached their posts without Parks' symbolic act. Rice would be struggling in a racially charged Birmingham and "Colin Powell would be sitting in a segregated Army barracks," Sharpton preached to the cheering audience.
Johnnie Carr, a 94-year-old veteran of the bus boycott, said Parks was her childhood friend, a woman who "gave every ounce of her devotion" to fighting racial inequality.
"We have accomplished a lot, we've come a long way, but believe me, we have a long way to go," Carr said.
Outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, thousands of people stood in line, awaiting the hearse, motorcade and symbolic bus that would bring her body to be honored in a fashion fit for presidents and military leaders. Some carried signs that read, "Thank you, Rosa Parks."
Fred Allen, 59, who grew up in segregated Halls, Tennessee, brought his 20-year-old son to help him understand the civil rights era.
"He has no idea what it was like to grow up in the South, where you had to hold your head down," Allen said.
Robert Cunningham, 65, caught a flight from Atlanta with his wife, daughter and four grandchildren so they could pay their last respects. When they learned Friday night that Parks' body would lie in honor in the Capitol, Cunningham's wife said, "We have to go."
"She started the movement," Cunningham said of Parks, staring at the West facade of the Capitol. "She was the mother of the civil rights movement by simply saying, 'I'm tired of giving up my seat."'
