So what do we do now?

[kmc]

[strat-0]

kmc said:

9/11/06

Five years later - score is still Terrorists 1, USA 0.

I don't know that that's fair, Kenny. I mean, what would you chalk up as a "point" for the USA? I don't think a counter-9/11 is a realistic expectation. Nailing bin Laden to the wall would be a point, I guess. But even as bad as Bush and his administration have screwed things up, and as much as I disagree with most of their approach to the "war on terrror," they have gotten one or two things done. Also, they're not the only ones on the case, fortunately. I'm not giving him kudos, nor am I optimistic, but let's be realistic, here.

You might say that cumulatively, we have a score of "1", which I guess makes for a stalemate thus far.

[kmc]

Ok. Terrorists 2, USA 1.

[rockysigman]

I agree that it may be unfair to say we've accomplished nothing in the last 5 years, but for everything we've accomplished, there have also been a lot of horrendous screw-ups to offset those gains. I'm not sure if we've gained more than we've lost (I think probably not), but there's certainly no question that the goals (or at least what seem to be the goals) of the terrorists have been achieved to a greater degree than our own. Our own government is working hard to limit our freedoms. That's a huge point to the terrorists.

[strat-0]

The Proboards servers are having some problems lately...

I agree with everything there, Rocky. I would say, though, that it's harder for terrorists to get to us now. I know we've also paid a very high price for it. Hey, I'm not happy about any of it, but I just think it's not right to say "Terrorists 1, USA 0," outright. It's much more comlex than that. And I would agree that Iraq set us way back in the struggle. And I do think they'll hit us again.

[kmc]

I was just at Ground Zero this past weekend. From my point of view, and in the midst of the smiling families taking tongue-in-cheek pictures of their children in front of the rubble, I had a hard time not feeling disappointed in the American people.

Good times in the city, though. It was good to see just how skeptical New Yorkers are of The President. Almost like the World Trade Center attacks didn't happen in Manhattan. I was completely overwhelmed by the extraordinary level of reason, especially in Bizarro America, where people without an ounce of true military experience are asked to make difficult military decisions, where torture doesn't really mean torture, evolution is fake, separation of church and state does not exist, and gays aren't really tax paying citizens deserving of rights.

But I will offer that it isn't really true that Americans have not been asked to make sacrifices in the war on Terror. Why, at the security checkpoint, I had to throw away my $1.99 recently purchased bottle of water! That sucked. I had my revenge, though. American Airlines totally missed my water bottle as I checked in at LaGuardia on the way back. I walked right up to security with my bottle of water in my right hand, and they let me right through without so much as batting an eye.

[phil]

Fighting the wrong war

George Bush's battle to control the world's oil supply has cost billions of dollars, much more than it would have cost to discover new sources of energy.

Jeffrey Sachs

It always comes back to oil. The continuing misguided interventions in the Middle East by the United States and the United Kingdom have their roots deep in the Arabian sand. Ever since Winston Churchill led the conversion of Britain's navy from coal to oil at the start of the last century, the Western powers have meddled incessantly in the affairs of Middle Eastern countries to keep the oil flowing, toppling governments and taking sides in wars in the supposed "great game" of energy resources. But the game is almost over, because the old approaches are obviously failing.

Just when one is lulled into thinking that something other than oil is at the root of current US and UK action in Iraq, reality pulls us back. Indeed, President Bush recently invited journalists to imagine the world 50 years from now. He did not have in mind the future of science and technology, or a global population of nine billion, or the challenges of climate change and biodiversity. Instead, he wanted to know whether Islamic radicals would control the world's oil.

Whatever we are worrying about in 50 years, this will surely be near the bottom of the list. Even if it were closer to the top, overthrowing Saddam Hussein to ensure oil supplies in 50 years ranks as the least plausible of strategies. Yet we know from a range of evidence that this is what was on Bush's mind when his government shifted its focus from the search for Osama bin Laden to fighting a war in Iraq.

The overthrow of Saddam was the longstanding pet idea of the neoconservative Project for a New American Century, which was already arguing in the 1990's that Saddam was likely to achieve a stranglehold over "a significant proportion of the world's oil supplies." Vice President Dick Cheney reiterated these fears in the run-up to the Iraq war, claiming that Saddam Hussein was building a massive arsenal of weapons of mass destruction to "take control of a great portion of the world's energy supplies".

Cheney's facts were obviously wrong, but so was his logic. Dictators like Saddam make their living by selling their oil, not by holding it in the ground. Perhaps, though, Saddam was too eager to sell oil concessions to French, Russian, and Italian companies rather than British and US companies.

In any event, the war in Iraq will not protect the world's energy supplies in 50 years. If anything, the war will threaten those supplies by stoking the very radicalism it claims to be fighting. Genuine energy security will come not by invading and occupying the Middle East, or by attempting to impose pliant governments in the region, but by recognizing certain deeper truths about global energy.

First, energy strategy must satisfy three objectives: low cost, diverse supply, and drastically reduced carbon dioxide emissions. This will require massive investments in new technologies and resources, not a "fight to the finish" over Middle East oil. Important energy technologies will include conversion of coal to liquids (such as gasoline), use of tar sands and oil shale, and growth in non-fossil-fuel energy sources.

Indeed, there is excellent potential for low-cost solar power, zero-emitting coal-based technologies, and safe and reliable nuclear power. Solar radiation equals roughly 10,000 times our current energy use. We tap that solar power in many fundamental ways - food production, wind power, hydroelectric power, solar heating, solar-thermal electricity, solar panels - but the possibilities for greatly increased use of inexpensive, widely available, and environmentally friendly solar power are huge.

Coal, like solar energy, is widely available. It is already inexpensive, but it is a solid rather than a liquid, a major pollutant, and a source of greenhouse gas emissions. Yet all of these problems can be solved, especially if we make the needed investments in research and development. Gasification of coal allows for the removal of dangerous pollutants, and coal can already be converted to gasoline at low cost; a South African company is beginning to bring that technology to China on a large scale.

Nuclear power, both fission-based and fusion-based, is yet another possibility for vast, reliable, secure, and environmentally safe primary energy. Here, too, there are technological obstacles, but they seem surmountable. Of course, there are also major political, regulatory, and security considerations, all of which need to be addressed properly.

It is ironic that an administration fixated on the risks of Middle East oil has chosen to spend hundreds of billions - potentially trillions - of dollars to pursue unsuccessful military approaches to problems that can and should be solved at vastly lower cost, through R&D, regulation, and market incentives. The biggest energy crisis of all, it seems, involves the misdirected energy of a US foreign policy built on war rather than scientific discovery and technological progress.

[Thorngrub]

best avatar yet:
kmc

[phil]

Stung by criticism, Bush calls for offensive 'across the world'

Agence France-Presse

WASHINGTON


US President George W. Bush called Saturday for fighting America's enemies "across the world" as he stepped up his counteroffensive following charges that his policies were breeding a new generation of Islamic terrorists.

The comment, delivered in his weekly radio address, were aimed to counter a rash of accusations that the Bush administration had seriously mishandled the war in Iraq and created fertile political ground for Islamic extremism.

The criticism was fueled by a new National Intelligence Estimate, portions of which were declassified this past week. The document argues that the war in Iraq had spawned a new generation of Islamic radicals determined to strike against the United States.

Casting another cloud over the administration's policy was a new book by veteran Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward "State of Denial" that details a number of policy blunders committed in Iraq and insists the president and his closest aides bitter feuded over Iraq and simply refused to acknowledge reality.

The controversy may have further dimmed the public's view of the war. The latest CNN television poll showed 61 percent of Americans now believed the war in Iraq was going either "very badly" or "moderately badly," compared to 38 percent who thought it was going "very well" or "moderately well."

But Bush insisted Saturday that claims that the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq was helping foster anti-American terrorism were tantamount to buying "into the enemy's propaganda."

"The only way to protect our citizens at home is to go on the offense against the enemy across the world," the president said. "So we will remain on the offense until the terrorists are defeated and this fight is won."

The Republican president, who just two days ago branded Democrats "the party of cut-and-run," argued an early withdrawal from Iraq, as suggested by some Democrats, would only embolden terrorists.

"It would help them find new recruits to carry out even more destructive attacks on our Nation, and it would give the terrorists a new sanctuary in the heart of the Middle East, with huge oil riches to fund their ambitions," Bush stressed. "America must not allow this to happen."

He said that for Al-Qaeda and its allies, a safe haven in Iraq "would be even more valuable than the one they lost in Afghanistan."

However, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in an interview published Saturday, offered a different rationale for continued US military presence in Iraq, saying it was needed to counter the growing influence of neighboring Iran.

"We just have to fight tooth and nail for the victory of the Iraqis who do not want Iranian influence in their daily lives," she told The Wall Street Journal. "We've got a chance to resist the Iranian push into the region, but we better get about it."

The dissonant messages came against the backdrop of stinging criticism from top Democrats, who have found in the intelligence estimate and the Woodward book fresh fodder for attacks on the administration ahead of the November 7 midterm congressional elections, in which they hope to win back control of the House of Representatives and maybe even the Senate.

Democrats have long accused the White House of failing to foresee an Iraqi insurgency, create a viable international coalition behind the invasion, and of sending too few soldiers to do control the restive country.

Now they are also charging the president is in a state of denial.

"He doesn't want to see the facts. He doesn't want to acknowledge reality," Carl Levin, the top Democrat of the Senate Armed Services Committee, insisted Friday.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean called President Bush's political counteroffensive "the product of a desperate White House with no credibility left with the American people."

[phil]

Poll: Nearly two-thirds of Americans say Iraq in civil war


(CNN) -- Nearly two-thirds of Americans surveyed consider Iraq to be in a civil war, a CNN poll said Thursday, and more people view the three major architects of the U.S.-led operation there unfavorably than favorably.

Iraq, particularly its capital, Baghdad, has endured months of Sunni-Shiite sectarian killings, and debate has simmered over whether the country has or has not entered into a full-blown or low-grade civil war.

Asked whether Iraq is "currently engaged in a civil war," 65 percent of the poll's respondents said "yes," and 29 percent answered "no." By comparison, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll in April found 56 percent of the respondents believed Iraq was in a civil war, while 33 percent disagreed. (Read full poll results - PDF)

The poll found that most Americans polled -- 60 percent -- said they have a clear idea of what the United States is fighting for in Iraq, while 39 percent said they did not.

The same question was posed 39 years ago, when America was deeply divided over Vietnam. At the time, 49 percent said they had a clear idea of what the United States was fighting for there; 48 percent said no.

Of those questioned now, more people -- 48 percent of those surveyed -- considered themselves doves than hawks (44 percent). When the Iraq war began, the numbers were not that much different: 45 percent of those polled considered themselves doves, while 43 percent called themselves hawks.

The poll defined a hawk as "someone who believes that military force should be used frequently to promote U.S. policy" and a dove as "someone who believes the U.S. should rarely or never use military force."

The poll's results came a day after a separate poll by the University of Maryland found that 71 percent of Iraqis favor a commitment by U.S.-led forces in Iraq to withdraw in a year. (Details)

As for the nation's leaders, half or more of the respondents of the CNN poll expressed unfavorable views toward President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The new poll found that 50 percent of those surveyed held an unfavorable view of Rumsfeld, while 35 percent held a favorable view. The poll found a five percentage point rise in his unpopularity since April. (Graphic: Rumsfeld approval rating)

By contrast, Rumsfeld's popularity was riding high in February 2003 as preparations were under way for the war in Iraq: 58 percent had a favorable view of him, while 20 percent did not.

Bush's popularity has risen since April, when 57 percent of those surveyed viewed him unfavorably, and 40 percent favorably. The latest poll found that 52 percent had an unfavorable view of him, while 46 percent saw him favorably.

As for Cheney, 37 percent have a favorable view of him, compared with 57 percent who do not. In April, 35 percent saw him favorably, while 52 percent did not.

In contrast, first lady Laura Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice emerged popular. The poll said 68 percent have a favorable opinion of the first lady, while 23 percent have an unfavorable opinion of her.

Rice's numbers are 57 percent favorable and 30 percent unfavorable -- the same favorable rating as in April, but she had a lower unfavorable rating -- 22 percent -- at that time.

The Opinion Research Corporation conducted the poll by surveying 1,009 adult Americans by telephone Friday through Sunday. The poll has a sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

[phil]

Musharaff, Stop Aiding the Taliban

Ahmed Rashid, Lahore, Pakistan - Commanders from five Nato countries whose troops have just fought the bloodiest battle with the Taliban in five years, are demanding their governments get tough with Pakistan over the support and sanctuary its security services provide to the Taliban.

Nato's report on Operation Medusa, an intense battle that lasted from September 4-17 in the Panjwai district, demonstrates the extent of the Taliban's military capability and states clearly that Pakistan's Interservices Intelligence (ISI) is involved in supplying it.

Commanders from Britain, the US, Denmark, Canada and Holland are frustrated that even after Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf met George W. Bush and Tony Blair last week, Western leaders are declining to call Mr. Musharraf's bluff.

"It is time for an 'either you are with us or against us' delivered bluntly to Musharraf at the highest political level," said one Nato commander.

After the September 11 attacks in 2001 America gave Mr Musharraf a similar ultimatum to co-operate against the Taliban, who were then harboring Osama bin Laden.

"Our boys in southern Afghanistan are hurting because of what is coming out of Quetta," he added.

The Taliban use the southern province of Balochistan to co-ordinate their insurgency and to recuperate after military action.

The cushion Pakistan is providing the Taliban is undermining the operation in Afghanistan, where 31,000 Nato troops are now based. The Canadians were most involved in Operation Medusa, two weeks of heavy fighting in a lush vineyard region, defeating 1,500 well entrenched Taliban, who had planned to attack Kandahar city, the capital of the south.

Nato officials now say they killed 1,100 Taliban fighters, not the 500 originally claimed. Hundreds of Taliban reinforcements in pick-up trucks who crossed over from Quetta -- waved on by Pakistani border guards -- were destroyed by Nato air and artillery strikes.

Nato captured 160 Taliban, many of them Pakistanis who described in detail the ISI's support to the Taliban.

Nato is now mapping the entire Taliban support structure in Balochistan, from ISI- run training camps near Quetta to huge ammunition dumps, arrival points for Taliban's new weapons and meeting places of the shura, or leadership council, in Quetta, which is headed by Mullah Mohammed Omar, the group's leader since its creation a dozen years ago.

Nato and Afghan officers say two training camps for the Taliban are located just outside Quetta, while the group is using hundreds of madrassas where the fighters are housed and fired up ideologically before being sent to the front.

Many madrassas now being listed are run by the Jamiat-e-Ullema Islam, a political party that governs Balochistan and the North West Frontier Province. The party helped spawn the Taliban in 1994.

"Taliban decision-making and its logistics are all inside Pakistan," said the Afghan defense minister, General Rahim Wardak.

A post-battle intelligence report compiled by Nato and Afghan forces involved in Operation Medusa demonstrates the logistical capability of the Taliban.

During the battle the Taliban fired an estimated 400,000 rounds of ammunition, 2,000 rocket-propelled grenades and 1,000 mortar shells, which slowly arrived in Panjwai from Quetta over the spring months. Ammunition dumps unearthed after the battle showed that the Taliban had stocked over one million rounds in Panjwai.

In Panjwai the Taliban had also established a training camp to teach guerrillas how to penetrate Kandahar, a separate camp to train suicide bombers and a full surgical field hospital. Nato estimated the cost of Taliban ammunition stocks at around £2.6 million. "The Taliban could not have done this on their own without the ISI," said a senior Nato officer.

Gen Musharraf this week admitted that "retired" ISI officers might be involved in aiding the Taliban, the closest he has come to admitting the agency's role.

----------------


With a friend like this ... Who needs ennemies !!


It's hard to bully a nuclear power ...
Better nuke Iran while it's "still defenceless" ...

[phil]

Iraq, Iran and the Folly of Faith-Based Foreign Policy

by Randolph T. Holhut

www.opednews.com



CHESTER, Vt. - The latest New York Times/CBS News poll has President Bush's approval rating down to 34 percent. More telling, though, is that 83 percent of those who responded to the poll say Bush is either "hiding something or mostly lying" about how things are going in Iraq.

This is the logical conclusion of what former Ambassador Peter Galbraith called the Bush administration's "substitution of ideology for national security strategy, of wishful thinking for reality."

Galbraith appeared with former United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter here on Oct. 7. They delivered brutally frank assessments of the ongoing U.S. occupation in Iraq and the possibility of a U.S. attack on Iran during a two-hour joint presentation.

Both men have just come out with pertinent books on the current situation in the Middle East.

Galbraith, who was the first U.S. ambassador to Croatia and who helped negotiate an end to the war in that country in 1995, says his new book, "The End of Iraq," is partly a memoir of his two decades of involvement in Iraq, partly a critique of U.S. policy since 2003 and partly "a prescription for what I think should happen next (in Iraq)."

Ritter, a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who was the top UN weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, has written extensively on Iraq over the past four years. But in his latest book, "Target Iran," Ritter switches his focus to the Bush administration's plans for that country.

Neither man was particularly optimistic about the future of Iraq, and that lack of optimism can be traced back to the aftermath of the U.S. invasion and how it was handled. The looting and chaos following the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, Galbraith said, set the tone for what followed.

"The Pentagon failed to do even the most elementary planning for the postwar period," said Galbraith. "To the Iraqis, the perception was that we were either so incompetent that we could not secure their country or so evil that we allowed the chaos to happen."

The outcome, Galbraith said, was a classic example of "the first victim of propaganda is the propagandist. ... They wanted to transform Iraq by making it a democratic state and, in the process, transform the Middle East. This was their vision, an incredibly radical thing to do."

Galbraith described this thinking as "faith-based military strategy," and said it was a disaster waiting to happen. He said the Bush administration now cannot win this war, "if winning is defined as creating a stable and democratic Iraq. If we're not going to build a unified, democratic Iraq, then we should change the mission to fit the resources and realities."

Some of those realities include the formation of a separate Kurdish republic, something that is now all but official in Iraq. As the most stable, pro-U.S. part of Iraq, Galbraith believes it is the most logical place to withdraw U.S. troops to.

As it stands now, Galbraith believes the current U.S. force is powerless to intervene in the ongoing civil war without substantially increasing troop strength and taking over more of the responsibility for security - something that would greatly increase the risk of heavy U.S. causalities.

"Events in Iraq are happening beyond our power to influence them," said Galbraith. "Civil wars have their own dynamic and once they get started; they empower the extremists on both sides."

Ritter was even more blunt about the situation in Iraq.

"We're losing," he said. "We're getting our butts handed to us."

But even more frustrating to Ritter is what he believes is a general lack of understanding by most Americans about what war is really about.

"The burden is on us," he said. "We are responsible for the debate about whether the sacrifices we are asking our young people make are worthy of their sacrifice."

The U.S. casualty totals in Iraq - nearly 2,800 dead and more than 20,000 wounded - "is the true cost of our ignorance (of war)," Ritter said.

While the general sentiment of the more than 150 people who attended the lecture was against the war in Iraq, Ritter said that they shouldn't be fooled by opinion polls that say more than 60 percent of Americans are against the war.

"Sixty-five percent may be against the war in Iraq, but don't think this means that 65 percent are against war itself," he said. "If everything worked right in Iraq, we wouldn't be have this debate now. All this means is 65 percent of Americans are against losing."

Before the Iraq invasion, Ritter was one of the most prominent critics of the Bush administration's claims that there were nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in Iraq.

Considering that most of what Ritter said about the lack of weapons in Iraq has been proven accurate, he said that he hoped that it wouldn't be as easy for the news media to belittle his views on Iran.

"I have the benefit of history," he said. "It won't be as easy to dismiss it."

Ritter says plans for a U.S. attack on suspected nuclear production sites in Iran have been made, despite the recent determination by the International Atomic Energy Agency that there isn't enough evidence that Iran is making components for a nuclear weapon.

"We have excellent intelligence on Iran," said Ritter, "but the truth is not conducive to achieving the (Bush administration's) goal of regime change."

Ritter said that Iran is more concerned about a resurgent Iraq than about Israel. He also said that while he dislikes the regime in Iran, during his last visit there, in September, he was greeted warmly by ordinary Iranians.

"Iran is not black and white. It's not good against evil. It's gray. Very gray," said Ritter. "If you want to solve the problem (of Iran possibly building nuclear weapons), you need to talk about genuine diplomacy and we haven't even begun to do it."

Will there be an attack? Ritter said he hopes there won't, but if there is, he said that if Americans think what's happening in Iraq is bad, a war with Iran will be far worse.

"Congress has pretty much capitulated," said Ritter. "The public debate is over on Iran. Seventy percent of Americans says Iran is trying to get nuclear weapons, so the Bush administration doesn't have to sell this war. We're in a very dangerous climate right now."

While Galbraith disagreed with Ritter's assessment, saying he has hope "there will be a different Congress soon," Ritter is convinced that an attack on Iran is imminent.

"The new National Intelligence Estimate reaffirms the Bush administration's prerogative to intervene in any country it deems to be a threat, and the country that's named the most is Iran," said Ritter. "And if we use nuclear weapons in Iran, this game will not end until some Islamic group detonates a nuclear weapon in this country. Which city are we prepared to lose if that happens?"

[Paul]

Gee, thanks for brightening my day Phil

[phil]

In any event, it must be brighter than the ones the Iraqis people face ...


'655,000 Iraqis killed since invasion'

Sarah Boseley, health editor
Wednesday October 11, 2006
The Guardian


The death toll among Iraqis as a result of the US-led invasion has now reached an estimated 655,000, a study in the Lancet medical journal reports today.

The figure for the number of deaths attributable to the conflict - which amounts to around 2.5% of the population - is at odds with figures cited by the US and UK governments and will cause a storm, but the Lancet says the work, from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, has been examined and validated by four separate independent experts who all urged publication.

In October 2004, the same researchers published a study estimating that 100,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the war since the beginning of the March 2003 invasion, a figure that was hugely controversial. Their new study, they say, reaffirms the accuracy of their survey of two years ago and moves it on.

"Although such death rates might be common in times of war, the combination of a long duration and tens of millions of people affected has made this the deadliest international conflict of the 21st century and should be of grave concern to everyone," write the authors, Gilbert Burnham and colleagues.

"At the conclusion of our 2004 study we urged that an independent body assess the excess mortality that we saw in Iraq. This has not happened. We continue to believe that an independent international body to monitor compliance with the Geneva conventions and other humanitarian standards in conflict is urgently needed. With reliable data, those voices that speak out for civilians trapped in conflict might be able to lessen the tragic human cost of future wars."

The epidemiological research was carried out on the ground by teams of doctors moving from house to house, questioning families and examining death certificates. Between May and July this year, they visited 1,849 households in 47 separated clusters across the length and breadth of Iraq. The doctors asked about deaths among members of the household in a period before the invasion, from January 2002 to March 2003, and about deaths since. In 92% of cases, they were shown death certificates confirming the cause.

A total of 629 deaths were reported, of which 547 - or 87% - occurred after the invasion. The mortality rate before the war was 5.5 per 1,000, but since the invasion, it has risen to 13.3 per 1,000 per year, they say. Between June 2005 and June 2006, the mortality rate hit a high of 19.8 per 1,000.

Thus they calculate that 654,965 Iraqis have died as a consequence of the invasion. It is an estimate and the mid-point of a range of numbers that could equally be correct in the context of their statistical analysis. But even the lowest number in the range - 392,979 - is higher that anyone else has suggested. Of the deaths, 31% were ascribed to the US-led forces. Most deaths were from gunshot wounds (56%), with a further 13% from car bomb injuries and 14% the result of other explosions.

"Since 2004, and especially recently," writes the Lancet editor, Richard Horton in a commentary, "independent observers have recognised that the security situation in Iraq has deteriorated dramatically." The new study, he continues, "corroborate the impression that Iraq is descending into bloodthirsty chaos".

Yet, he writes, "absolute despair would be the wrong response. Instead, the disaster that is the west's current strategy in Iraq must be used as a constructive call to the international community to reconfigure its foreign policy around human security rather than national security, around health and wellbeing in addition to the protection of territorial boundaries and economic stability.

"Health is now the most important foreign policy issue of our time. Health and wellbeing - their underpinning values, their diverse array of interventions and their goals of healing - offer several original dimensions for a renewed foreign policy that might at least be one positive legacy of our misadventure in Iraq."

[phil]

Army chief: British troops must pull out of Iraq soon

General attacks government policy that has 'exacerbated' security risks

Richard Norton-Taylor and Tania Branigan
Friday October 13, 2006
The Guardian

General Sir Richard Dannatt, the head of the army, dropped a political bombshell last night by saying that Britain must withdraw from Iraq "soon" or risk serious consequences for Iraqi and British society.

In a blistering attack on Tony Blair's foreign policy, Gen Dannatt said the continuing military presence in Iraq was jeopardising British security and interests around the world.

"I don't say that the difficulties we are experiencing round the world are caused by our presence in Iraq, but undoubtedly our presence in Iraq exacerbates them," he said in comments that met with admiration from anti-war campaigners and disbelief in some parts of Westminster.

In an interview with the Daily Mail, Gen Dannatt, who became chief of the general staff in August, said we should "get ourselves out sometime soon because our presence exacerbates the security problems".

He added: "We are in a Muslim country and Muslims' views of foreigners in their country are quite clear.

"As a foreigner, you can be welcomed by being invited in a country, but we weren't invited ... by those in Iraq at the time. The military campaign we fought in 2003 effectively kicked the door in.

"Whatever consent we may have had in the first place, may have turned to tolerance and has largely turned to intolerance." He added that planning for the postwar phase was "poor" and the aim of imposing a liberal democracy in Iraq had been over-ambitious. He was more optimistic that "we can get it right in Afghanistan."

Such an outspoken intervention by a British army chief is unprecedented in modern times and bound to increase pressure on the government to continue making its Iraq case against a backdrop of increasing mayhem on the ground.

Mr Blair denied last month that Iraq would be safer if British troops withdrew. Downing Street said last night that Britain's 7,000 troops were in Iraq "at the express wish of the democratically elected Iraqi government", and under a UN mandate.

But Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat leader, said last night government policy on Iraq was collapsing "brick by brick". "Senior military figures who were always doubtful about action in Iraq and its aftermath are becoming increasingly anxious about ... the risks involved," he said.

There was widespread surprise at Gen Dannatt's frankness, with some backbenchers privately questioning whether he could carry on in his role after his comments. Doug Henderson, a former minister for the armed forces and ally of Gordon Brown, questioned why the general had made his thoughts public.

"One can only assume that Sir Richard has made his views known privately and that they've been ignored," he told BBC2's Newsnight programme. He said soldiers expected to have the support of the chief of the general staff, adding: "The soldiers on the frontline must be wondering why they are there now."

Kevan Jones, a Labour MP on the defence select committee, said: "There was always going to come a tipping point in Iraq, where we were no longer a solution but a problem. If General Dannatt is saying that time has been reached, that's very concerning. An interview like this, though, is not the way to say that."

In his first interview since taking the chief of staff job, Gen Dannatt told the Guardian last month that the army could only just cope with what the government was demanding of it, and said he believed ministers were taking British soldiers for granted. In the Mail interview he went further, criticising the defence secretary, Des Browne, for the "unacceptable" treatment of injured troops and warning that the government was in danger of breaking the "covenant" between a country and its army. He said he was "outraged" by reports of injured soldiers recuperating in hospital being confronted by antiwar campaigners who told them to remove their uniforms.

A devout Christian, he said a moral vacuum opening up in Britain was allowing militant Islamists to flourish.