Jihadists wired to explode - Say Iraqi bombers took heroin, speed
New York Daily News ^ | 12/03/04 | JAMES GORDON MEEK
 

WASHINGTON - Some suicide bombers who battled U.S. troops in Fallujah were doped up on heroin and speed, the Pentagon's top general said yesterday.
Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his aides said the suicidal jihadists used the drugs for courage or to motivate them into martyrdom.

Myers said some of the suiciders in Fallujah "are foreign fighters, but not exclusively."

But when asked to account for the fanaticism of some of the fighters, Myers said, "The other thing you need to understand is...the number of drugs found there as well."

A top Pentagon source told the Daily News there were "numerous reports" out of the battle of U.S. soldiers stumbling onto small amounts of drugs and paraphernalia in insurgent safehouses around Fallujah.

"They found heroin and speed," said the senior military official. "They're using it to bolster their courage and get up the nerve and make them braver in the face of what they're getting ready to do."

Asked if young Iraqis were convinced to blow themselves to bits after getting stoned or wired by insurgents, the official replied, "That is the reporting we're seeing."

Myers derided those who "spur on these young people to commit jihad, who were some of the first ones out of Fallujah" and "cheering from a very safe haven."

Drugs and alcohol are forbidden by Islam.
 

The Pentagon also acknowledged yesterday that the price of taking Fallujah was higher than previously reported, as the death toll for Americans in the city was raised from 51 to 71.

Fighting continues in the ruined city, as insurgents who stayed behind or have slipped back into Fallujah are attacking U.S. troops trying to rebuild the city.

Because of fighting in Fallujah and other Sunni cities, some Sunni leaders have called for delaying the Jan. 31 elections.

But President Bush rejected those suggestions yesterday, insisting that the vote is too important to put off.

"It's time for the Iraqi citizens to go to the polls," Bush said.

The President predicted Iraq's elections would leave the world "amazed that a society has been transformed so quickly."

Insurgents, many of whom fled the U.S. offensive in Fallujah, remained intent on making parts of the country too dangerous for elections.

Attacks on the key road between Baghdad and the country's main airport have become so frequent that the U.S. Embassy barred employees yesterday from using the dangerous highway.

Mortar strikes pummeled central Baghdad yesterday and an American soldier was killed in the restive city of Mosul.
 

Iraqi and U.S. forces discovered 14 bodies in Mosul yesterday, bringing to at least 66 the number of bodies found there since Nov. 18.
 

With News Wire Services

Originally published on December 3, 2004