Is Iraq in a Civil War?

[shin]

Close your eyes, and it sounds like Cleveland from Family Guy.

thinkprogress.org/2007/02/15/goode-iraq/

[rockysigman]

This article is incredibly helpful. From Salon:


The Iraq insurgency for beginners

A leading expert on the insurgency clarifies who is shooting whom in Iraq, the growing power of al-Qaida, the influence of Iran, and the only thing left for the U.S. to do.

By Kevin Berger

March 2, 2007 | For somebody in America, Evan Kohlmann has a remarkably intimate view of the Iraq insurgency. In 2004, he founded GlobalTerrorAlert.com, a clearinghouse of virtually every communiqué -- video, audio, Internet, printed -- issued by insurgent groups in Iraq. For three years, Kohlmann has pored through every one of them, with the help of Arabic translators, and emerged with a clear-eyed view of who is fighting whom in Iraq and why. Given his insights, Kohlmann has been put to work as a consultant by the U.S. Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, the FBI and the CIA.

Spending time in Kohlmann's archives is an extraordinary experience. It strips away the cloudy myths of the insurgency steamed up by U.S. politicians and pundits and leaves you with a bracing portrait of roving insurgent groups, more like neighborhood gangs, with their own identities and insignias, progressively growing more violent. I wanted to talk to Kohlmann for the simple reason that as much as I follow the news about the Iraq war, I have always felt slightly frustrated at not knowing who the enemy really is. Kohlmann says I'm far from alone. And he's talking about people way over my head. "I find it tragic that people in Washington, D.C., who are the heads of major congressional committees, and deciding things about Iraq, don't know the difference between Sunnis and Shiites," he says. Kohlmann insists he is nonpartisan. He spoke from his office in New York.

Every day you look at Iraq through the lens of insurgent videos and Internet postings. What do you see?

A picture of fundamentalism. Shiite fundamentalism clashing with Sunni fundamentalism clashing with American fundamentalism. We have tried imposing things upon Iraq that are totally foreign to it. Now each side is unwilling to acknowledge the right of the other to have a voice in what's going on. It's a disaster.

Describe the insurgency.

You have to be careful when you say "insurgency." You have to distinguish between the Shiite militias and the actual insurgency, which is the Sunni groups. Most of the Shiite militia activity is not directed at the U.S., it's directed at the Sunnis. The Sunni insurgency, meanwhile, is directed at everyone -- the U.S., the Iraqi government, the militias.

The best way to divide it up is into three camps. You have Sunni nationalists, initially a large portion of the insurgency; the moderate Sunni Islamists, who use Islamic terminology and talk about establishing a government based on Sharia law; and you have the Salafists, like the group Al-Qaida in Iraq. To them, the fight is not about preserving the borders of Iraq, it's about revolution, about rebuilding something completely new on the basis of some kind of idyllic Muslim empire.

What drives people to join the insurgency?

I've called up families of fighters and when I ask that question, the response is always the same: Wouldn't you? They are extremely upset about what's going on in Iraq. Some of them have a burning hatred for the U.S. They see the U.S. as imposing its will on their countries. Some of them have a burning desire to be a missionary and martyr for Islam. You have people who have broken out of prison and gone to fight in Iraq. It's now a vacuum sucking in every disaffected voice in the region.

How has the insurgency evolved?

When the U.S. invasion began in 2003, it was mainly Baathists, ex-Iraqi military, and Saddam loyalists. They were Iraqi nationalists, opposed to foreign occupation, who saw Iraq as a competitor with Egypt for the control of the Arab world. It was an issue of national pride. Video recordings and communiqués were coming out from everybody who had an AK-47. But as the war dragged on, some of these groups started coalescing; others were destroyed. Only the strongest, the most hardcore, the best financed, the people with the most training, survived, despite airstrikes and the arrest of their senior leaders by the U.S. military.

Do you call the insurgents "terrorists"?

No. The nationalist insurgents have done a lot of really brutal things. But in general they are people opposed to foreign occupation. If foreign occupation were removed, they wouldn't necessarily sit down and shake hands with Shiites. But at the end of the day, they would like to see a peaceful Iraq where Sunnis and Shiites can at least coexist with each other. Terrorists are people who set off bombs in marketplaces and deliberately kill innocent civilians for no good reason. Any suicide bombing is a terrorist act. It's not an insurgent act. There is no military objective in it. The vast majority of suicide bombings that take place in Iraq are either the work of al-Qaida or al-Qaida-linked groups. Al-Qaida are the terrorists.

Who constitutes al-Qaida in Iraq now?

It includes everyone from past conflicts in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya to people from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, North Africa, Syria and Jordan. A growing number of Iraqis continue to join its ranks every day. The people in the nationalist groups feel intensely hurt to see Iraq being torn apart. This is their homeland. And now their groups are taking on an Islamic tinge or else becoming straight-up jihadist groups controlled by al-Qaida. A lot of people joining the jihadist groups are now convinced there is no future left for Iraq, that the only future left is with al-Qaida, the only people who can protect them is al-Qaida.

David Kilcullen, an astute counterinsurgency expert, told George Packer in the New Yorker that what drives a lot of young men to become jihadists is a "sense of adventure, wanting to be in the big movement of history that's happening right now." Do you agree?

Oh, yeah. For some of these guys, it's like a safari. They see themselves as knights of the round table. In fact, that's how al-Qaida now sells the insurgency to them: Are you a chivalrous knight or a coward?

Has the U.S. invasion, in fact, strengthened al-Qaida?

Definitely. And this is the depressing thing. The hardcore true believers of al-Qaida at one time were probably 10 percent of the insurgent groups. Now they're 50 percent. Al-Qaida is growing in places it shouldn't. You have groups like the Islamic Army of Iraq that have transitioned from being traditional insurgents to extremist ones. Or take a popular insurgent group called the 1920 Revolution Brigades. The very name of the group has a nationalist, not Islamist meaning. And yet very recently, the head of al-Qaida's Islamic State in Iraq issued a statement in which he said that people from the 1920 Revolution Brigade were now fighting alongside al-Qaida. The U.S. is failing miserably at containing the spread of al-Qaida.

Why are the more moderate Muslim groups siding with al-Qaida?

They have no choice. There's a group called the Iraqi Islamic Resistance Front. They are far from angels. They recently released a video of supposedly a chemical rocket attack on a U.S. base in Samarra. But they were also the subject of a flier that was being posted around in Ramadi. The flier was signed by al-Qaida and said the Front was working with the Iraqi Islamic Party, the Iraqi government, and so is no longer a legitimate group. The Front was furious. They issued a statement saying, "We're not working with the government, we're with you guys, so don't issue these kinds of accusations." So there's a lot of pressure to work with al-Qaida or be targeted by it.

Does that message go out to people on the streets too?

Yeah, sure. That's the sad thing. If you work with the U.S. or the Iraqi government, you are targeted by al-Qaida. If you work with anyone else, you are targeted by the Shiites. It's a lose-lose situation. And what's amazing is this slide has all happened over the past 12 months. It's pegged to one singular event, the spark, which is the 2006 bombing of the Askariya Mosque in Samarra. Al-Qaida never claimed direct responsibility for it but they did call the mosque the heretical idol and mocked the fact that the Shiites were upset about it. Afterward, it was saying, "We've been fighting Shiite militias all along." To broaden its appeal, it said, "We're declaring the formation of an Islamic state in Iraq. This is no longer just an insurgent movement. We now have a state that we're fighting for, so come and join our cause. You're either with us or against us." Sure enough, we started seeing more groups edging toward al-Qaida's jihadists umbrella network.

Would al-Qaida have blown up the mosque if the U.S. wasn't in Iraq?

There wouldn't be an al-Qaida in Iraq if the U.S. wasn't there. The story of al-Qaida in Iraq begins in 2003. We handed al-Qaida exactly what it was looking for, a real war in the Middle East where it could lead the way. Al-Qaida is like a virus. It goes for weak victims and it uses conflicts to breed. Iraq gives al-Qaida a training ground, a place to put recruits in combat. If they come back from battle, you have people who have fought together, trained together, you have a military unit. As Richard Clarke has said, it was almost like Osama bin Laden was trying to vibe into George Bush the idea: "Invade Iraq, invade Iraq." This was an opportunity they seized with amazing alacrity. As brutal and terrifying as what they've done is, you have to acknowledge they capitalized on an opportunity that we handed them.

What happened to the U.S. message of democracy?

It totally failed. The idea of Western-style democracy in Iraq doesn't appeal to anyone. It was our own myth. We thought that if we get rid of Saddam Hussein, people would come together and celebrate and democracy would reign throughout the Middle East. The people who thought that up are people who think Iraq is like Texas. Iraq is not Texas. To Iraqis, tribal affiliations, religion and family mean a lot more than saying, "I'm from Iraq." You know we're doing a bad job of communicating our own message when we're losing the propaganda war to people who cut other people's heads off on camera. Think about it: People in one of the most Westernized countries in the Middle East would rather trust al-Qaida than the United States. That's a terrible sign of things to come.

How many total insurgents are there?

Somewhere in the tens of thousands. I would say al-Qaida, including the various groups in its alliance, has about 15,000 people, probably more. To give you an idea of its strength, consider that it has sacrificed 800 of its own members in suicide bombings. We know that through direct evidence because al-Qaida has videotaped and recorded many of the bombings. And remember, those 15,000 are just on the Sunni side, and constitute just one group out 10 or more.

The U.S. is fighting both the insurgency and Shiite militias, right?

Right. But the Shiites aren't a simple group either. They have divided themselves into two factions: the pro-Arab Shiites who are Iraqi nationalists and the pro-Iranian Shiites. There have been some incidences involving the Shiite Mahdi Army and the U.S. and British military. But the scope of activity between the Mahdi Army and the U.S. military is minute. The militias pose less of a day-to-day insurgent problem and more of a problem in the way they have infiltrated the Iraqi police force and other Iraqi government services, particularly the Interior Ministry, and how they arranging the murder of Sunnis through those agencies. They are creating instability, and that's the main reason we're going after them. It's also the No. 1 reason why Sunnis fight and are upset: The Shiite militias have essentially taken over the law enforcement and are using it to murder Sunnis.

We invaded Iraq to rectify crimes by Saddam Hussein against the Shiites, right? We wanted to bring him to justice. What the Sunni groups are saying is, "How come there's no justice to people who are drilling holes in people heads right now? Never mind 20 years ago." They have a point. Dozens of bodies turn up every day in Baghdad but nobody is paying heed to them. So the Sunnis are saying to the U.S., "If you guys are not going to prosecute the people responsible for this, then we're going to take matters into our own hands." And the Shiites are saying the same thing. They're saying, "You can't protect us from al-Qaida's suicide bombers. Your idea of strengthening security is to crack down on the Mahdi Army, who are the only ones preventing suicide bombers from coming into Sadr City. Why should we trust you? We should rely on ourselves. You can't trust anyone but your own people." It's an arms race. It just builds up and up.

How do the militias stack up against the insurgents in number of fighters?

There are probably fairly equal numbers of militiamen to Sunni insurgents, if not more. Given that they're waging open war with each other, and neither one seems to be winning outright, the answer is that one doesn't outnumber the other to create an imbalance.

Is a surge of 21,000 new U.S. troops going to help?

I don't think any number of new troops is going to help unless we're going to station troops on every single corner of every single street in every single city in Iraq. The problem is the insurgents are not just a foreign force. You're talking about such a diverse organization and network, where even major groups, when their leaders are killed or captured, still persist. They're self-sustaining operations.

Look at Fallujah. In late 2004, we pumped that place full of overwhelming military force. We went block by block, street by street, and liquidated the place. We got rid of all the insurgents. We chased al-Qaida out of there. That was undoubtedly a military victory. But was that the end of al-Qaida? No, it moved to other cities, established bases in Ramadi, Samarra and Mosul. And Fallujah itself? It was relatively stable but in the past year has started to fall apart. And once again, insurgents are attacking Fallujah.

What do you make of the recent furor over the New Yorker that the U.S. is taking part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and Syria and that a "by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups"?

The idea that the U.S. is bolstering Sunni extremist groups in Iraq deliberately is pretty ridiculous and sounds awfully conspiratorial to me. Most of the Sunni groups consider themselves to be antithetical to the very idea of the United States. Even if we were to offer to help them for some strange reason, they would never knowingly work with us. But I can't say the same for Saudi Arabia and other supposed U.S. allies in the Gulf region, who don't have any soldiers in Iraq at risk from Sunni insurgents, and who would do just about anything to curb the expansion of Iran.

Contrary to what U.S. leaders are always saying, do you think the insurgency, and militias, have, ultimately, won the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people?

Unfortunately, I do. But I tell you this: Between August and December of 2005, there was a dramatic loss of influence of al-Qaida in Iraq. People associated with groups like the Islamic Army in Iraq, mainstream Sunni insurgent groups, were not so sure about killing people at a polling station. Al-Qaida was threatening to kill anyone, Sunni or Shiite, who tried voting. But the Sunni insurgents were saying, "No, we're not going to let the Shiites take power willingly. We're going to try and beat them anyway we can." At the time, I could see the various Iraq tribes saying, "Forget this, al-Qaida, maybe we can achieve reconciliation with the Shiites." The U.S. could have capitalized on that friction. But it didn't. A month went by, there was bickering about the makeup of the government and the results of the election, and we weren't hands-on enough in trying to broker out some kind of truce. Then came the bombing of the mosque in Samarra and it was too late.

What should the U.S. have done to capitalize on the friction at the time after the elections?

We needed to make sure that the Shiite militias were kept in check. And that's exactly what we didn't do. Following the bombing of the mosque, there should have been a serious clampdown. It was a matter of trying to stop the cycle of reprisals. But we did nothing while the Shiites went on a rampage.

Do you think the U.S. should withdraw from Iraq?

I'm afraid not. If we withdraw from Iraq right now, there's no doubt what will happen. First there's going to be a war for control of Baghdad and then once Baghdad is ripped to the ground, the battle is going to spread across Iraq. It could potentially be like Rwanda. Right now, hundreds of people are being killed each month, which is awful and horrifying in itself. Imagine if that figure was 100 times bigger. Also, if we withdraw, a widespread war is going to be entirely our responsibility. It's easy to say it's Iraqis killing Iraqis. But nobody else is going to see it that way. Everyone is going to affix blame to us. We will ultimately cause a situation that forces us to reinvade Iraq and create even more casualties. It's an awful Catch 22.

I take it you have little faith in the Iraqi government.

The Iraqi government is a joke. A very sad joke. It's beset on all sides. It's been thoroughly infiltrated by militia groups and has no sway whatsover among Sunnis, even moderate Sunnis. It is completely incapable of defending itself, despite whatever bizarre claims Prime Minister Maliki may make. If we were to withdraw, it would collapse. An Iraqi government would only work if it included both Shiites and Sunnis, and there are precious few Sunnis who are working in Iraqi government, and even the ones who do are under constant threat.

So what's the solution?

We have to give people a reason to stop supporting al-Qaida. And the only way to do that is to punish the people who are harming them. We have to show that democratic forces can also hold up justice. Right now, democracy for Iraqis amounts to Shiites in control of the police force and running everything. The things that might convince Sunnis to move back in the other direction would be a real step at trying to reform the Iraqi police force, the Interior Ministry, and try and bring some of the individuals in those places, which have committed gross crimes, including crimes on the scale of Saddam Hussein, to justice.

Does the Bush administration have the smarts to figure that out?

I'm not sure they do. I thought perhaps, in invading Iraq, they had some long-term view that nobody else could see. But that hope faded very quickly. The Bush administration didn't reach out to anyone credible when they were asking about, for instance, the connections between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein. Anybody with any real knowledge of the region would have told them there are no connections between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. The only people who believed that nonsense were lunatics.

If I was going to invade Iraq, the first thing I would do is commission the top history experts, top geographical experts, top cultural experts, and sit them down at a table and say, "This is what I'm thinking about doing. Is this feasible?" That was never done. Nobody in their right mind would have taken a look at Bush's plan and said, "Oh, yeah, that's going to work." It's not possible that it could work. Every historic precedent works directly against Bush's plan. I know it's easy to say, but the best solution is not to have invaded at all.

[shin]

thinkprogress.org/2007/08/14/casey-10-yr-plan/

The sweet, sweet smell of victory!

[phil]

The War as We Saw It

By BUDDHIKA JAYAMAHA, WESLEY D. SMITH, JEREMY ROEBUCK, OMAR MORA, EDWARD SANDMEIER, YANCE T. GRAY and JEREMY A. MURPHY

VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the “battle space” remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers’ expense.

A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.

As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.

Similarly, Sunnis, who have been underrepresented in the new Iraqi armed forces, now find themselves forming militias, sometimes with our tacit support. Sunnis recognize that the best guarantee they may have against Shiite militias and the Shiite-dominated government is to form their own armed bands. We arm them to aid in our fight against Al Qaeda.

However, while creating proxies is essential in winning a counterinsurgency, it requires that the proxies are loyal to the center that we claim to support. Armed Sunni tribes have indeed become effective surrogates, but the enduring question is where their loyalties would lie in our absence. The Iraqi government finds itself working at cross purposes with us on this issue because it is justifiably fearful that Sunni militias will turn on it should the Americans leave.

In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear. (In the course of writing this article, this fact became all too clear: one of us, Staff Sergeant Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head during a “time-sensitive target acquisition mission” on Aug. 12; he is expected to survive and is being flown to a military hospital in the United States.) While we have the will and the resources to fight in this context, we are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground require measures we will always refuse — namely, the widespread use of lethal and brutal force.

Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.

Coupling our military strategy to an insistence that the Iraqis meet political benchmarks for reconciliation is also unhelpful. The morass in the government has fueled impatience and confusion while providing no semblance of security to average Iraqis. Leaders are far from arriving at a lasting political settlement. This should not be surprising, since a lasting political solution will not be possible while the military situation remains in constant flux.

The Iraqi government is run by the main coalition partners of the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, with Kurds as minority members. The Shiite clerical establishment formed the alliance to make sure its people did not succumb to the same mistake as in 1920: rebelling against the occupying Western force (then the British) and losing what they believed was their inherent right to rule Iraq as the majority. The qualified and reluctant welcome we received from the Shiites since the invasion has to be seen in that historical context. They saw in us something useful for the moment.

Now that moment is passing, as the Shiites have achieved what they believe is rightfully theirs. Their next task is to figure out how best to consolidate the gains, because reconciliation without consolidation risks losing it all. Washington’s insistence that the Iraqis correct the three gravest mistakes we made — de-Baathification, the dismantling of the Iraqi Army and the creation of a loose federalist system of government — places us at cross purposes with the government we have committed to support.

Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict — as we do now — will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run.

At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation. “Lucky” Iraqis live in gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal.

In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, “We need security, not free food.”

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.

Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.

We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.


Buddhika Jayamaha is an Army specialist. Wesley D. Smith is a sergeant. Jeremy Roebuck is a sergeant. Omar Mora is a sergeant. Edward Sandmeier is a sergeant. Yance T. Gray is a staff sergeant. Jeremy A. Murphy is a staff sergeant.

[shin]

An astonishing piece of news that I can't believe I just heard about today. We're talking dozens of feet separating our what-is-Britney-wearing-today world from a Tom Clancy novel brought to life AND the de facto end of our involvement in Iraq.

US lawmakers' plane under fire in Iraq

By BEN EVANS, Associated Press WriterThu Aug 30, 8:15 PM ET

A military cargo plane carrying three senators and a House member was forced to take evasive maneuvers and dispatch flares to avoid ground fire after taking off from Baghdad on Thursday night.

The lawmakers said their plane, a C-130, was under fire from three rocket-propelled grenades over the course of several minutes as they left for Amman, Jordan.

"It was a scary moment," said Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., who said he had just taken off his body armor when he saw a bright flash outside the window. "Our pilots were terrific. ... They banked in one direction and then banked the other direction, and they set off the flares."

Sens. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., and James Inhofe, R-Okla., as well as Rep. Bud Cramer, D-Ala., were also on the plane.

Cramer and Martinez said they had just begun to relax about five or 10 minutes after the plane took off under darkness.

Crew members apparently communicated to the pilots as they saw the initial RPG fired from the ground, Cramer said. After the first burst, the pilots maneuvered aggressively and set off flares used for drawing incoming fire away from aircraft.

Once the flares lit up the sky, lawmakers said, two more RPGs were fired as the pilots continued maneuvering.

Martinez said he quickly put back on his body armor.

"We were jostled around pretty good," said Cramer, who estimated the plane had ascended to about 6,000 feet. "There were a few minutes there where I wondered: 'Have we been hit? Are we OK?'"

Capt. Angel Wallace, a spokeswoman for U.S. Central Command, said she was not aware of the incident, and military public affairs officials in Baghdad could not be reached immediately.

Lawmakers travel to Iraq regularly to get a closer look at military and political progress there, usually staying inside Baghdad's secured Green Zone and traveling under heavy security.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and other lawmakers who walked around a Baghdad market this spring were criticized for offering a rosy assessment of security there.

Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., for example, later said he chose his words poorly when he compared the market to a "normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime."

Despite the scare, Shelby, Martinez and Cramer said they believed the recent increase in troop levels has helped stabilize parts of the country.

"It was kind of dicey," Shelby said. "But it just shows you what our troops go through every day."


There's no way this administration could maintain our presence in Iraq after the political implications of an assassination of 4 members of Congress, including 3 senators. It would be the most horrific act of murder against our government in the last 40 years, complete proof that this Iraq endeavor is an unmaintainable failure that must be ended ASAP, and not even the 25%'ers could possibly create enough cognitive dissonance to ignore it.

So anyway, how about that Lindsay Lohan? Boy, she sure is a drunken slut.

[phil]

From a distance

Rory Stewart's first hand-account of post-invasion Iraq
should serve as an antidote to the armchair warriors of liberal intervention.

Conor Foley


It is a shame that all of the armchair commentators on Iraq and Afghanistan cannot be made to read Rory Stewart's Occupational Hazards before they burden the rest of us with their opinions on what has gone wrong in both countries.

Stewart worked for the post-invasion administration in Iraq, as an acting deputy governor of two provinces, from September 2003 until June 2004. This coincided with part of the time that I spent in Afghanistan and our experiences also seemed to overlap. I recognised several of the colleagues he mentions, who I have worked with elsewhere, and also his own motivation in trying to help rebuild a shattered country. Before stating anything else it seems necessary to record that most people who take such jobs do it out of a genuine belief that they can help make the world a better place.

Stewart's book is funny, insightful, frustrating and, at times, farcical. It is also a colossal indictment of those who bought the "liberal interventionist" line of Tony Blair and believed that the invasion was ever going to end in anything but tears. For those who think that the main problems lay in avoidable mistakes during the post-war administration it is particularly worth reading. The task was impossible, he concludes, because of "who we were" rather than "what we did."

Article continues ...

commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/conor_foley/2007/09/from_a_distance.html

[phil]

17 September 2007

It's All About Oil

By Gwynne Dyer

Australia's defence minister, Brendan Nelson, is not the sharpest
tool in the box, so people were not really surprised in July when he
blurted out that the real motive for invading Iraq was oil: "Obviously the
Middle East itself, not only Iraq but the entire region, is an important
supplier of energy, oil in particular, to the rest of the world.
Australians and all of us need to think what would happen if there was a
premature withdrawal from Iraq."

Silly old Brendan, off-message again. Didn't he know that
Australia invaded Iraq because of its weapons of mass destruction? No, wait
a minute, it was because Saddam Hussein might help Islamist terrorists.
Hang on, forget that, we really went there to bring the blessings of
democracy to the Iraqi people, dead or alive. Brendan just mis-spoke
himself about the oil.

Fast forward two months, and a rather sharper tool has just offered
the same analysis. Alan Greenspan, chairman of the US Federal Reserve
banking system for eighteen years and the high priest of capitalism, puts
it quite brutally in his new book, "The Age of Turbulence."

"Whatever their publicised angst over Saddam Hussein's 'weapons of
mass destruction'," Greenspan wrote, "American and British authorities were
also concerned about violence in the area that harbours a resource
indispensable for the functioning of the world economy. I am saddened that
it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq
war is largely about oil."

"What everyone knows"? No, what everyone has been encouraged to
believe, by the protestors and the manipulators alike. And poor old Alan
fell for it too.

In interviews following the publication of his book last week,
Greenspan explained that Saddam Hussein had wanted to seize the Strait of
Hormuz, and so control oil shipments through the only sea route out of the
Gulf. It would have been "devastating for the West," he said, if Saddam had
done that. The Iraqi dictator could have shut off 5 million barrels a day
and brought "the industrial world to its knees."

Actually, more than twice that amount of oil leaves Saudi Arabia,
Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates each day in
tankers and passes through the Strait of Hormuz, so it really is a crucial
waterway. But Saddam Hussein couldn't close it.

Saddam Hussein was a bad man. He probably held the record in the
modern Middle East for the number of citizens his army, secret police and
torturers had killed. But control the Strait of Hormuz? He had about as
much chance of doing that as he did of controlling the English Channel, and
anybody with access to a map should have known it.

Iraq lies at the north-western end of the Gulf, one thousand
kilometres (600 miles) from the Strait of Hormuz. It has only fifty km.
(30 miles) of coastline, and most of its naval and air assets were
destroyed in the Gulf War of 1991. It had NO strategic ability to reach
that far east. Even if the US Navy had not been permanently present in the
Gulf in overwhelming force, the notion of an Iraqi military threat to the
Strait of Hormuz was sheer nonsense.

The only country in the region with the military ability to shut
the Strait of Hormuz is Iran. Since it depends on oil income to support its
domestic economy and feed its population, it won't do that unless it is
attacked. It may call the United States the "Great Satan," but it has
pumped oil as fast as it could and sold it at the world market price every
year since the 1979 revolution. It can't afford to care where the oil ends
up.

That is true of all the major oil exporters, whatever their
political convictions. They HAVE to sell their oil, so it does not really
matter much to the West who rules these countries (although it obviously
matters greatly to the local residents). You don't need to invade countries
to get oil from them. Just send them a cheque.

There's no point in invading Iraq to control the oil price, either.
The price is set by a very efficient global market, and not even all of
Iraq's oil will give you enough leverage to force the price down. Besides,
why would an administration whose closest friends are in the American oil
industry want to force the price of oil down?

Greenspan doubtless believed what he said, but it doesn't make
sense. He just fell for the cover story that "it's all about oil," which
serves to distract Western electorates from the more complex and often even
less defensible motives of their governments.

So why did they invade Iraq, in the end? One motive was certainly
the desire for permanent American military bases in the Gulf from which the
United States could, at need, stop oil flowing to China. The strategic
community in Washington has identified China as America's new strategic
rival, and it is becoming more and more vulnerable to interference with its
oil imports. (Those "enduring bases" are still being built in Iraq.) But
that is not a big enough reason to explain what happened.

I have written tens of thousands of words on the Bush
administration's motives for invading Iraq, but in the end I do not know
why they did it. I suspect that they don't, either. It just seemed like a
neat idea at the time.

[phil]

El País newspaper prints transcript of pre-war conversation between President Bush and José María Aznar


El País today prints the transcript of a conversation which took place on February 22, 2003, between President George W. Bush and the then Spanish Prime Minister, José María Aznar.

The meeting was on the President’s ranch at Crawford in Texas, and the subject of conversation was a possible war against Saddam Hussein.

El País prints the minutes of the meeting which show that Bush wanted to invade Iraq in the month of March that year ‘if there was a United Nations Security Council resolution or not’.
‘We have to get rid of Saddam. There are two weeks left. In two weeks we will be ready militarily. We will be in Baghdad at the end of March’. Bush said the victory would come ‘without destruction’.
To all this Aznar said that it was important to have a UN resolution and that it was not the same to act without one.
Aznar called for patience, but Bush replies that his patience has run out and that he will not wait longer than the middle of March.

To that Aznar said ‘I don’t ask that you have infinite patience. Simply that you do all that is possible for it all to fit in’.

Later Aznar asked Bush for his help to change public opinion in Spain which was firmly against the war.
‘We need you to help is with our public opinion’ said Aznar, adding that he was changing the politics that Spain had followed for ‘the past 200 years’.

[phil]

Will they ever learn ... ??

Annals of National Security

Shifting Targets

The Administration’s plan for Iran.
by Seymour M. Hersh

October 8, 2007

In a series of public statements in recent months, President Bush and members of his Administration have redefined the war in Iraq, to an increasing degree, as a strategic battle between the United States and Iran. “Shia extremists, backed by Iran, are training Iraqis to carry out attacks on our forces and the Iraqi people,” Bush told the national convention of the American Legion in August. “The attacks on our bases and our troops by Iranian-supplied munitions have increased. . . . The Iranian regime must halt these actions. And, until it does, I will take actions necessary to protect our troops.” He then concluded, to applause, “I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran’s murderous activities.”

The President’s position, and its corollary—that, if many of America’s problems in Iraq are the responsibility of Tehran, then the solution to them is to confront the Iranians—have taken firm hold in the Administration. This summer, the White House, pushed by the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney, requested that the Joint Chiefs of Staff redraw long-standing plans for a possible attack on Iran, according to former officials and government consultants. The focus of the plans had been a broad bombing attack, with targets including Iran’s known and suspected nuclear facilities and other military and infrastructure sites. Now the emphasis is on “surgical” strikes on Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities in Tehran and elsewhere, which, the Administration claims, have been the source of attacks on Americans in Iraq. What had been presented primarily as a counter-proliferation mission has been reconceived as counterterrorism ...

Article continues ...

www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/10/08/071008fa_fact_hersh?printable=true

[phil]

HÉ! Junior ...

Don't forget to drop a few bombs on Pakistan while you're at it !!

[phil]

War for profit! What an interesting idea ...

FACTBOX: Report says Blackwater Iraq shootings at 1.4 per week

Tue Oct 2, 2007 1:42pm EDT

Blackwater under fire

(Reuters) - Blackwater, the embattled U.S. security contractor, defended itself in Congress on Tuesday over "escalation of force" incidents in Iraq that a congressional report said equal 1.4 shootings per week.

The report prepared by Democratic staff of the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said Blackwater has been involved in 195 shooting incidents since 2005 and shot first 84 percent of the time despite a contract agreement to use force only in defense.

The report said Blackwater usually does not remain at the scene to determine if there are casualties. But Blackwater's own incident reports still record 16 Iraqi casualties and 162 instances of property damage, mainly to Iraqi vehicles.

Blackwater activities came under intense scrutiny in Washington after a September 16 shooting killed 11 Iraqi civilians, wounded 14 and initially prompted the Iraqi government to revoke the company's license.

Article continues ...

www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN0240572920071002

[phil]

"not subject to Iraqi or US law".

Absolutely incredible ... Complete immunity from ANYBODY !

Those guys can do whatever they fuckin' please !!


US to keep closer watch on private security firms in Iraq


Simon Jeffery in Washington and agencies
Friday October 5, 2007
Guardian Unlimited


The US is to keep a closer watch on private security firms in Iraq after Blackwater guards shot dead at least 11 civilians last month.
A state department spokesman said a review ordered by the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, recommended that American security agents accompany private security guards who escort US diplomatic convoys. The US relies on private security firms to protect its diplomats in Iraq.

Extra monitoring measures include installing video cameras in vehicles and recording radio traffic between diplomatic convoys and the US embassy in Baghdad.

Sean McCormack told reporters that Ms Rice wanted to "make sure there is a management feedback loop".

He said the measures meant that the state department could better control private security firms. He would not acknowledge that previous practices were at fault.

Blackwater is the largest of three security firms employed by the state department in Iraq.

Erik Prince, the firm's founder, was called this week to testify before a congressional committee over the shootings in Baghdad on September 16. He said the Blackwater team had acted appropriately despite claims by Democratic committee members that his guards were out of control.

US military reports indicate that the Blackwater team opened fire without provocation and used excessive force, firing with grenade launchers and machine guns, the Washington Post said today.

"It was obviously excessive. It was obviously wrong," a US military official told the newspaper. "The civilians that were fired upon, they didn't have any weapons to fire back at them. And none of the Iraqi police or any of the local security forces fired back at them."

Both the FBI and the Pentagon are investigating the incident, which came as Blackwater escorted a diplomatic convoy in west Baghdad.

Blackwater suffered another blow yesterday when the House of Representatives passed a bill to end the immunity of private security firms in war zones. The company, like the 170 private security firms operating in Iraq, is not subject to Iraqi or US law.

The state department is investigating 56 shooting incidents involving Blackwater guards this year as part of its review of private security firms.

[maarts]

Wow.
Wonder how they got that 'status aparte'.

[phil]

Just what "Junior & the Hawks" need ...


Upsurge in Kurdish attacks raises pressure on Turkish prime minister to order Iraq invasion


· Bomb brings death toll of soldiers in one day to 15
· Erdogan caught between public opinion and US

Ian Traynor, Europe editor
Tuesday October 9, 2007
The Guardian

Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, came under intense pressure last night to order an invasion of northern Iraq following the deadliest attacks for over a decade on the Turkish military and civilians by separatist Kurdish guerrillas.

Mr Erdogan, who has resisted demands from the Turkish armed forces for the past six months for a green light to cross the border into Iraqi Kurdistan, where the guerrillas are based, called an emergency meeting of national security chiefs to ponder their options in the crisis, a session that some said was tantamount to a war council.

A Turkish incursion is fiercely opposed by Washington since it would immensely complicate the US campaign in Iraq and destabilise the only part of Iraq that functions, the Kurdish-controlled north.

Two Turkish soldiers were killed yesterday in booby trap explosions laid by guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers' party (PKK) - fighters classified as terrorists by Ankara, Washington and the European Union. Those casualties followed the killing of 13 Turkish soldiers in the south-east on Sunday when PKK forces outgunned a Turkish unit of 18 men without sustaining any casualties, according to the Kurds.

Last week, in an ambush also ascribed to the PKK, gunmen sprayed a bus with automatic fire in the same region, killing 13 civilians, including a boy of seven.

The Turkish media described the toll from the attacks as the worst in 12 years in a conflict spanning several decades that has taken almost 40,000 lives.

Article continues ...

www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2186530,00.html

[phil]

A refreshing course in the Irak War history ...

thinkprogress.org/iraq-timeline


From March 19th 2003 until now ...


MARCH 19, 2003: Bush launches invasion of Iraq


MARCH 30, 2003: Donald Rumsfeld: We know where the WMD are

We know where [the weapons of mass destruction] are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat. [ABC This Week, 3/30/03]

APRIL 1, 2003: Pfc. Jessica Lynch recovered by U.S. forces. What the Pentagon framed as a heroic rescue was later revealed to have been staged. [Guardian, 5/15/03]