Dawn Patrol

• Wounded terror chief flees Iraq for emergency surgery

  IRAQ?S most wanted terrorist has fled the country for emergency surgery after an American airstrike left him with shrapnel lodged in his chest, according to a senior insurgent commander in close contact with his group.
  

  • Al-Qaeda thrives despite body blow
    ABU Musab al-Zarqawi has long been viewed as the key figure in the insurgency sweeping Iraq. By capturing him it was once thought that the new government would gain control of even the most hostile areas of the country
  • Zarqawi said to be in good health after injury
    Al-Qaeda's frontman in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, is in good health after his reported wounding, his organisation said, as seven people were killed in a car bombing in Saddam Hussein's hometown
  • AL ZARQAWI'S FAMILY SAID TO BE PREPARING EPITAPH
    The family of injured Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - al-Qaeda's pointman in Iraq - is already preparing his obituary, the Saudi daily al-Watan said on Friday, quoting sources close to the family. Al-Zarqawi's close relatives, all of whom live in the Jordanian city of Zarqa, are reported to be in state of high tension over the conflicting reports circulating over his state of health, and are only waiting for officials to confirm his death before releasing the death notice.Jordanian security forces have surrounded the Ramzi quarter of Zarqa where al-Zarqawi's family lives, al-Watan said. Relatives have confirmed that al-Zarqawi's wife and four children fled to Iraq in secret six months ago.
  • Public enemy
    He is an American nightmare, an Islamic mass killer who haunts the national psyche. He has masterminded a bombing campaign in Iraq that has cost hundreds of innocent lives. He has a $25 million bounty on his head and is blamed for terrorist atrocities that span the globe. He is Abu Musab Zarqawi.
  • AL-ZARQAWI MYSTERY THICKENS
    For some days now al-Qaeda sources, Western intelligence, Middle Eastern governments and journalists have been agreeing on one thing - Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most wanted man in Iraq, has been wounded. The only ones to express doubts are anti-terrorism experts from al-Zarqawi's home country, who argue that it might all be a sophisticated disinformation campaign.

• Slayings deepen rift in Iraq; bloodshed rooted in religion ...
  The mutilated bodies of Shiite men have been turning up in Sunni areas. The mutilated bodies of Sunni men have been turning up in Shiite areas. Cries for revenge have gone up on both sides.
  
  • Shiite, Sunni groups to cooperate
    Two of Iraq's most influential Shiite and Sunni groups agreed Saturday to try to ease sectarian tensions pushing the country toward civil war as the government prepared to take its battle against the insurgency to Baghdad's streets.

• 50 Iraqis, 2 GIs Killed in Attacks
  Two of Iraq's most influential Shiite and Sunni organizations agreed to try to ease sectarian tensions pushing the country toward civil war as the government prepared to take its battle against the insurgency to Baghdad's streets. The new effort to make peace came Saturday as attacks killed two U.S. troops and at least 50 Iraqis since Friday ? including 10 people returning from a religious pilgrimage in Syria whose bodies were left in the border city of Qaim. A Sunday suicide car bomb attack near the northern city of Kirkuk killed two and wounded nine.

• On Way to Baghdad Airport, One Eye on the Road and One on the Insurgents
  Iraqis call it Death Street. To American soldiers, it is "I.E.D. Alley," after the improvised explosive devices - bombs - that are lethally common on the 10 miles of expressway and city streets that make up Baghdad's airport road.

• And now, for the rest of the story....
  The media is an industry; but their business is not to report news. The industry needs a captive audience to beat the bottom line. The product is advertisement.
  
  • Clarification
    Recent messages and articles have promulgated a belief that I work for the Associated Press. I have no affiliation with the AP or any other organization. I am a freelance author, by choice

• Iraqis Try to Find Carefree Moments
  Women in strapless dresses and men in tuxedos were twirling to Kurdish folk music at a wedding party, while their children clapped hands in excitement, when a blast rattled the hall's windows and the electricity flickered and died.

• Iraqi Softball
  Members of the Baghdad softball team celebrate after wining a championship game against the Diwaniay team May 5, 2005 in Baghdad, Iraq. The Iraqi national baseball and softball federation was established after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Hussein considered baseball a product of U.S. imperialism. The Baghdad softball team has been invited to travel to the U.S. in July 2005.

• A Mothers' War
  They were talking about military burial benefits as the waitress took the salad plates away, and one of them had come up with something perversely humorous even on this subject, so they had been laughing.

• Bush Administration May Alter Terror Policies
  Critics say an internal review aimed at moving from post-9/11 efforts to broader counterterrorism strategies is too late in coming.

• Time for an Iraq Accounting
  American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan deserve the nation's thanks and respect this Memorial Day. But they deserve more. They deserve a clearer, more realistic explanation from President Bush of their strategic mission, and they deserve directives that show them precisely how to accomplish it.

• Ground Zero Is So Over
  IN its not-so-brief and thoroughly unhappy life, ground zero has been a site for many things: tragedy and grief, political campaigns and protests, battling architects and warring cultural institutions, TV commercials and souvenir hustlers. Perhaps it was inevitable we'd end up at pure unadulterated farce.

• Iraq War Images Seep into Popular Culture
  After seeing the reality of war in Iraq as a Marine, Jonathan Barton now finds himself in Hollywood as a military consultant. These days, business is booming.
  "There are more military shows being made in the next five years than were made in the past 20," Barton said.

• British forces suffer casualties in Iraq attack
  British forces came under attack in the southern Iraqi town of Amara on Sunday and suffered casualties, a British military spokesman said

• U.S. military develops tiny sensors disguised as rocks
  The U.S. military is developing miniature electronic sensors disguised as rocks
  The disguised sensors can be dropped from an aircraft and used to help detect the sound of approaching enemy combatants, the London Financial Times has reported.

• U.S. Set to Test Missile Defenses Aboard Airlines
  In an airplane hangar north of Fort Worth, technicians are preparing to mount a fire-hydrant-shaped device onto the belly of an American Airlines Boeing 767. It is an effort that could soon turn into a more than $10 billion project to install a high-tech missile defense system on the nation's commercial planes.

• Japanese hostage tried to kill captor: Iraqi insurgents
  Japanese security guard Akihiko Saito tried to kill one of his captors in Iraq before being fatally wounded, insurgents claimed after showing his bloodied body on a website video.

• Australian hostage moved to safer location-mufti
  Australia's top Muslim cleric says he has been told by Iraqi tribal leaders that Australian hostage Douglas Wood has been moved to a safer location by his captors and he should return to Baghdad to try and secure Wood's freedom.

• Judge: Public Has Right to See Abuse Photos
  A federal judge has told the government it will have to release additional pictures of detainee abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, civil rights lawyers said.
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  The judge's decision stems from a lawsuit the ACLU filed in October 2003 seeking information on treatment of detainees in U.S. custody and the transfer of prisoners to countries known to use torture. The ACLU contends that prisoner abuse is systemic

• Demonstrators interrupt Rice's speech
  Protesters dressed as Abu Ghraib prison abuse detainees interrupted US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's speech in San Francisco on Friday. | Shortly after Rice started speaking, three protesters

• Nine Inch Nails drops MTV show over Bush backdrop
  "We were set to perform 'The Hand That Feeds' with an unmolested, straightforward image of George W. Bush as the backdrop. Apparently, the image of our president is as offensive to MTV as it is to me," Nine Inch Nails' leader Trent Reznor said in a statement posted on the band's Web site.

• Japanese Trying to Contact WWII Soldiers
  Japanese diplomats pressed ahead Saturday with efforts to contact two World War II soldiers reportedly living in the southern Philippines since they were separated from their division six decades ago.

• Iran demands Pakistan's Musharraf explain nuclear bomb comment
  Iran demanded that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf explain his claim that Tehran was keen to obtain a nuclear bomb, repeating its assertion that it only wants to generate electricity.

• Major nuclear leak undetected 9 months
  Tens of thousands of litres of highly radioactive liquid leaked unnoticed for up to nine months from a ruptured pipe in the controversial Thorp reprocessing plant at Sellafield in what the IoS can reveal was Britain's worst nuclear accident for 13 years.

• Lebanese vote in Beirut with Syrian troops gone
  Voters trickled to the polls in Beirut on Sunday in an election starting a month after Syrian troops quit Lebanon, with the son of assassinated former premier Rafik al-Hariri seeking a clean sweep in the capital.

• Assad's Uncle Calls for Reform in Syria
  His resemblance to his older brother, Syria's late President Hafez Assad is astounding. As a behind-the-scenes strongman and head of an elite military unit, he has been linked to a brutal repression of Islamic militants that reportedly left thousands dead.

• Oliver Stone Arrested on Drug Suspicion
  Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone was arrested on suspicion of drug possession and driving while intoxicated, police said Saturday. Stone, 58, was arrested Friday night at a police checkpoint on Sunset Boulevard after showing signs of alcohol intoxication, police Sgt. John Edmundson said. A search of his Mercedes turned up drugs, Edmundson said. He did not specify what kind, but Lt. Micaela Garland said police confiscated pills that were being analyzed at a lab.

• Big Ben's Silence Baffles Engineers
  Big Ben, the landmark London clock renowned for its accuracy and chimes, stopped ticking for 90 minutes, an engineer said Saturday.

• Web journals quickly bring war front to homefront
  In her Palm Bay home, Elizabeth Stickney has a front-row view of life on the battlefields of Iraq, where her husband has been fighting.

  E-mail, satellite phones and now Web logs are bringing home up-to-the-minute personal accounts from troops on the front.

  "If stuff happens, the next day I find out," she said. Her husband, Army Spc. A.J. Stickney, is an infantryman on his second tour in Iraq.