Fallujah revels in pullout of forces

U.S. military officials were neither surprised nor alarmed by the reaction.
COMBINED DISPATCHES
FALLUJAH, Iraq -- Covering their faces with checkered head scarves, militiamen loyal to a former Iraqi army general jubilantly took to the streets of this battle-scarred city Saturday to celebrate what they called a triumph over withdrawing U.S. Marines.
As the militiamen drove through Fallujah in trucks and congregated on deserted street corners, residents flashed V-for-victory signs and mosques broadcast celebratory messages proclaiming triumph over the Americans.
Although the militiamen were scheduled to take over checkpoints and patrol duties from Marine units Friday, many of those tasks appeared to go unfulfilled Saturday. Several of the militiamen, clad in street clothes and toting battered AK-47 rifles, said they still were waiting for orders from their commanders. But as they waited, many said their first priority was to rejoice.
"We won," said one of the militiamen, a former soldier who gave his name only as Abu Abdullah. "We didn't want the Americans to enter the city and we succeeded."
A few miles away at the headquarters of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, Lt. Gen. James Conway, the top Marine commander in Iraq, also praised the turn of events in Fallujah. He told reporters that the new Iraqi force, which he authorized in an effort to quell insurgent activity, "marked the formation of a military partnership that has the potential to bring a lasting, durable climate of peace and stability."
A senior U.S. military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the Marine command was not alarmed by the gleeful reaction in the city. Of more significance, the official said, is whether the militiamen will succeed in restoring security to a level sufficient enough for U.S. troops to enter the city without being attacked.
"If we can drive into town shoulder to shoulder with legitimate Iraqi authorities and we can go down and start delivering humanitarian aid ... to a city that has been left in the cold for the last year, that's our victory," the official said. "Owning a rubbled city gets us nowhere."
Attacks continue
Meanwhile, attacks against U.S. soldiers and foreign contractors working for the occupation authority continued unabated following the bloodiest month for U.S. forces since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq a year ago.
One U.S. soldier and two contractors were killed Saturday in separate attacks near the northern city of Mosul, while another U.S. soldier died of wounds sustained in a roadside bombing a day earlier. The military also announced Saturday that two sailors in Anbar province in western Iraq were killed the day before in an attack. Sailors are sometimes used for logistics or hospital work.
Inmate abuse
Elsewhere, a member of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council demanded Saturday that Iraqi authorities investigate reports that American guards abused inmates in the very prison where Saddam Hussein's regime tortured opponents.
As international condemnation intensified, the scandal broadened with a British newspaper publishing new photographs of a hooded Iraqi prisoner, who reportedly was beaten and humiliated by British troops. The Daily Mirror's front page showed a soldier apparently urinating on the prisoner, who was sitting on the floor.
Also Saturday, The New Yorker magazine said it obtained a U.S. Army report that Iraqi detainees were subjected to "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.
Those abuses included threats of rape and the pouring of cold water and liquid from chemical lights on detainees, said the internal report by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba. Detainees were beaten with a broom handle and one was sodomized with "a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick," the report said, the magazine reported in its May 10 issue.
Col. Jill Morgenthaler, spokeswoman for the U.S. command here, said Taguba had prepared an internal report but she could not comment on its findings because they were classified.
Many Arabs in neighboring countries accuse the United States of having double standards on human rights and say the issue will rally support for Islamic fundamentalists.
The new allegations are expected to fuel a growing sense of outrage that swelled in Iraq after the release of shocking pictures showing prisoners being humiliated by their U.S. captors -- who invaded Iraq last year to liberate the country from Saddam's tyranny.
Televised photos
Although the pictures have not been widely published by Iraqi newspapers, many Iraqis have seen them on Arabic-language satellite television stations, such as Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya.
"After what we saw, all Iraqis will attack them now," Abdulilah Mohammed, a 55-year-old Baghdad street vendor, said of the Americans.
Some photos, aired first on CBS' "60 Minutes II," showed two U.S. soldiers standing near the prisoners, smiling and clowning for the camera.
Another showed a hooded prisoner standing on a box with wires attached to his hands. CBS said the prisoner was told that if he fell off the box, he would be electrocuted, although the wires were not connected to a power supply.
"The Governing Council should investigate this, because it is the legitimate authority responsible for protecting the Iraqis," council member Sondul Chapouk told The Associated Press. "During Saddam's time we rejected such acts, and after the liberation we still reject them."
Another council member, Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer, said the perpetrators must be punished "as war criminals" because "the dignity of an Iraqi citizen is no less than the dignity of an American."
Council member Mahmoud Othman, a member of the pro-U.S. Kurdish minority, warned that the allegations had harmed the U.S. military's image in Iraq.