More than four years of conflict in Iraq, and six years of fighting in Afghanistan, have taken a toll on the armed forces, both in terms of the number killed as well as the number mentally and physically wounded, Reuters reported.

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Another 500 troops will now pull back from Saddam Hussein’s former palace, their only remaining base in the city.

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Earlier reports said the expert was German.

Witnesses and sources told the BBC that the kidnappers wore police uniforms and arrived in up to 40 police vehicles.

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Iran’s uranium enrichment programme has been plagued by constant technical problems, lack of access to outside technology and knowhow, and a failure to master the complex production-engineering processes involved. The country denies developing weapons, saying its pursuit of uranium enrichment is for energy purposes.

Despite Iran being presented as an urgent threat to nuclear non-proliferation and regional and world peace – in particular by an increasingly bellicose Israel and its closest ally, the US – a number of Western diplomats and technical experts close to the Iranian programme have told The Observer it is archaic, prone to breakdown and lacks the materials for industrial-scale production.
The disclosures come as Iran has told the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA], that it plans to install a new ‘cascade’ of 3,000 high-speed centrifuges at its controversial underground facility at Natanz in central Iran next month.

The centrifuges were supposed to have been installed almost a year ago and many experts are extremely doubtful that Iran has yet mastered the skills to install and run it. Instead, they argue, the ‘installation’ will more probably be about propaganda than reality.

The detailed descriptions of Iran’s problems in enriching more than a few grams of uranium using high-speed centrifuges – 50kg is required for two nuclear devices – comes in stark contrast to the apocalyptic picture being painted of Iran’s imminent acquisition of a nuclear weapon with which to attack Israel. Instead, say experts, the break-up of the nuclear smuggling organisation of the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadheer Khan has massively set back an Iran heavily dependent on his network.

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The soldier was serving with 2nd Battalion The Rifles – formerly 1st Battalion Royal Green Jackets – when he came under fire in the Al Maqil district of Basra yesterday morning.

He was taken to hospital but died from his injuries, the MoD spokesman said. The soldier’s next of kin have been told of his death.

He is the 133rd member of the British forces to die in Iraq since hostilities began in March 2003 and the 102nd to be killed in combat.

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But anyone tempted to think that we can afford to carry on with Blair’s pathetic no-win, do-it-on-the-cheap, ‘wars’ must consider three rarely understood points:

1) Given that Britain has only some 7,000 soldiers in Iraq, while the USA has 134,000, our casualty rate is in fact very similar to theirs. If we had 134,000 soldiers out there (unlikely, of course, because our castrated army doesn’t even have that many soldiers) then our death toll at present would be in the region of 2,500.

Bearing in mind that our troops are in a supposedly ‘peaceful’ Shi’ite sector, rather than tied down in the Sunni triangle, the comparative figures suggest that our boys (and girls) are suffering the consequences of inferior kit, tin can Landrovers and all.

2) Both the American and British death rates mask a hidden horror. Massive improvements in battlefield first aid techniques, casualty evacuation speed and the technologies of hospital treatment mean that the death rate for wounded service personnel has fallen dramatically.

During the Korean war (the last one where large numbers of GIs and Squaddies were in it together) the death rate was roughly one dead for every ten wounded. In Iraq this has dropped to ‘just’ one in twenty.

Overall, of course, this is very good news. But the hidden side effect is the corresponding jump in the number of survivors who are terribly maimed or disfigured, for life. “The legless, the armless, the blind, the insane” of this war are being shipped home in far larger numbers than the figures for bodybags would suggest.

Is it too much to hope that a small band of these betrayed and forgotten victims of Blair’s deceit and arrogance will make it their business to hobble around him and haunt every photo opportunity of Labour’s next General Election campaign?

3) Winter will soon be over in Afghanistan. When it is the reorganised Taliban will step up their attacks on our under-funded, under-manned and ill-equipped garrisons in that God-foresaken barren wilderness. Our casualties there will inevitably go through the roof.

If they had wiped out heroin production it might be worth it. If they were killing Islamic fanatics faster than they are being recruited over there, and if at the same time the networks of Islamic advance in Britain were being dismantled, it might be worth it.

But those things are not happening. Our boys are being sent to die or be maimed in futile no-win ‘wars’ against a politico-religious imperialism whose takeover of our homeland is still being encouraged by our own ruling elite, and part-funded by them with our tax money.

Bring our boys home. Now!

http://www.bnp.org.uk/news_detail.php?newsId=1301

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The attack comes a day after British forces seized what they described as their largest cache of weapons yet.

It brings the UK death toll in May to nine, after five were killed when a Lynx helicopter crashed and two others died in a roadside bomb.

At the weekend, President Jalal Talabani urged Iraq’s new government to help improve security in the Basra area.

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ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — The top U.S. military officer called Thursday for a formal Pentagon review of the policies that led to defense officials paying the Iraqi media to place favorable stories in their newspapers.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said people need to know whether they are reading an article by an independent reporter or by someone paid by the U.S. government.

“They need to know that, so they can make their own judgment about what they believe and don’t believe in the article,” said Pace in the interview aboard a military aircraft heading for Turkey. “The worst thing you can have is people feeling like somehow they’ve been snookered.”

But left unanswered was the broader question of whether the Pentagon should be actively paying journalists or media outlets to publish positive stories.

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