Free the Captives: Witness Against Illegal Detention and Torture

There was no news on Friday February 3 of Tom Fox and the other CPT peacworkers, held captive in Iraq.

from Reuters: Security incidents in Iraq, Feb. 3

U.S. and Iraqi forces are battling a Sunni Arab insurgency against the Shi'ite- and Kurdish-led government in Baghdad.

BAGHDAD - A U.S. soldier was killed when a roadside bomb struck his patrol north of Baghdad on Thursday, the U.S. military said.

KIRKUK - A translator working with the U.S. army was shot dead by gunmen in Hawijah, 70 km (43 miles) southwest of Kirkuk, police colonel Sarhan Khadir said.

KIRKUK - A policeman and a civilian were kidnapped by gunmen in Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles), north of Baghdad, said Khadir.

from the Associate Press: Iraqis Forces Conduct Security Crackdown

Iraqi police and soldiers rounded up nearly 60 people Friday in security crackdowns in Baghdad and the southern city of Basra, and the U.S. military reported the death of an American soldier in a bombing.

At least 22 people were detained and weapons were seized in raids launched before dawn Friday in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, the Iraqi army said.

An additional 37 people - including five Palestinians and a Syrian - were arrested in pre-dawn raids in Baghdad's Dora district, the Interior Ministry said. The neighborhood is a mostly Sunni Arab area and has been the scene of frequent bombings, ambushes and assassinations.

Sunni Arab politicians have complained that raids by the Shiite-led Interior Ministry have enflamed sectarian tensions as politicians seek to form a new government that will include all communities and calm the Sunni-led insurgency. Shiite officials counter that Sunni militants have killed many police and soldiers.

from Reuters: $439.3 billion sought for next U.S. "defense" budget

President George W. Bush will ask Congress for $439.3 billion in defense spending for fiscal 2007, a 4.8 per cent increase over the current U.S. military budget, defense and administration officials said on Thursday.

The new military budget does not include $120 billion in planned new U.S. funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Pentagon plans new arms to meet rivals like China

The United States will build new long-range weapons in a hedge against potential rivals like China, the major power best-placed to challenge U.S. supremacy, the Pentagon said in a new strategic blueprint on Friday.

The Defense Department also plans to boost U.S. special forces to fight terrorism, strengthen homeland defense and step up efforts to thwart transfers of the deadliest weapons, the 92-page document said.

The Pentagon released the congressionally mandated Quadrennial Defense Review to outline its strategy for meeting anticipated security threats over the next 20 years. [...]

"Of the major and emerging powers, China has the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States and field disruptive military technologies that could over time off set traditional U.S. military advantages absent U.S. counter strategies," the survey said. [...]

The document said that "to strengthen forces to defeat terrorist networks," the Pentagon starting in fiscal 2007 will increase special-operations forces 15 percent from the current approximately 52,000 and boost the number of special forces battalions by a third.

Special-operations forces, already a favorite of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and used heavily in Iraq and Afghanistan, are more highly trained and capable of taking on more sensitive missions than regular forces.

The document anticipates an evolution of threats posed by the most dangerous weapons, including electro-magnetic pulse weapons, portable nuclear devices, genetically engineered biological pathogens, and new chemical agents.

It also calls for an increase in psychological warfare units.