Is Iraq in a Civil War?

[Kensterberg]

Wasn't I just saying last week that Saddam in death could be made to represent much more than Saddam alive ever could? Historians are going to look back on this debacle in fifty years and see the Bush administration as the 1962 NY Mets. "Can't anyone here play this game?"

[rockysigman]

What, you mean you don't think 20,000 more troops is going to fix everything? Weird, the generals don't think so either.

Honestly, the fact that we're even discussing the possible escalation of this war blows my mind. But we aren't just discussing a possibility -- NBC reported yesterday that it's pretty much a certainty that that is what Bush is going to announce as his "new way forward". Weird that the "new way forward" sounds an awful lot like "stay the course", although I've noticed that some partisans who support the measure are calling it the "McCain Doctrine", which, if it catches on, could pretty much destroy McCain's chances in '08. Nice way of pushing the responsibility for it on him instead of on the Commander in Chief, who turned down every other possible idea out there until McCain came along with something he liked.

[RocDoc]

This idea of 20 000 more troops strikes me as plain nuts unless they've got some sort of a super-duper means of infiltrating these militias' information pipelines and by their increased numbers, they can stage somne sort of 'raids' ala friggin' Elliot Ness in the 30s.

ie

Shouting 'Good Fucking Morning Assholes' in Farsi as they simultaneously batter down doors in like 30-40 useful locations.

THAT would be a best case scenario, but since the Iraqi police are totally traitorous fucks and that's SO very likely doomed to fail, HOW in the hell is a larger presence on the streets going to benefit circumstances?
Other than to give the shit-for-brains 'martyrs' more targets...

No, I feel really queasy regarding this supposed 'solution' here....

~

Hitchens' article made perfect sense.

~

I still hope that 'Chemical Ali' et al are going to give the Kurds a chance at their own closure....while obviously EVERY trail ended at Sodom's doorstep.
With everyone knowing it.

Is the 'magic moment' the Kurds are supposedly being deprived of by the absence of Sodom's smirking-ass face, simply the utterance of 'Yes, he and he and HE did it.'?

Other than exposing the other exogenous 'dirty laundry' that Phil is presupposing about..."Chemical Ali' will indict the whole lot of 'em, don't you worry.

[Kensterberg]

Time.com has an excellent description here of why it was better to have Saddam in power in Iraq rather than forcibly remove him as we did. Fascinating, and short, reading.

www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1573593,00.html

[Kensterberg]

This is from an inspired commentary from Keith Olbermann:


The only object still admissible in this debate is the quickest and safest exit for our people there.

But you — and soon, Mr. Bush, it will be you and you alone — still insist otherwise.

And our sons and daughters and fathers and mothers will be sacrificed there tonight, sir, so that you can say you did not “lose in Iraq.”

Our policy in Iraq has been criticized for being indescribable, for being inscrutable, for being ineffable.

But it is all too easily understood now.

First we sent Americans to their deaths for your lie, Mr. Bush.

Now we are sending them to their deaths for your ego.

If what is reported is true — if your decision is made and the “sacrifice” is ordered — take a page instead from the man at whose funeral you so eloquently spoke this morning — Gerald Ford:

Put pragmatism and the healing of a nation ahead of some kind of misguided vision.

Atone.

Sacrifice, Mr. Bush?

No, sir, this is not “sacrifice.” This has now become “human sacrifice.”

And it must stop.

And you can stop it.

Next week, make us all look wrong.

Our meaningless sacrifice in Iraq must stop.

And you must stop it.

© 2006 MSNBC Interactive

Read the whole thing here: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16442767/

[sisyphus]

can you paste it into a post, ken? i can't get in to read it.

[Kensterberg]

Which one, S?

I'll send it to you in a PM.

I just PM'd you both articles, Sisy.

[phil]

Geez! And I thought I was the cynical one ...

Read this on The Guardian "Comment is Free" site ...


JamesSilkDavey
Comment No. 363921
January 4 16:32

GBR I think attacking Iran is a great idea.
After all, we've got Iraq beat and Iran is only,
what, three times the size?

Plus they've got nukes, so it should be an interesting battle.
Iraq was a bit one-sided for me.

[Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.]

marrakesh
Comment No. 363934
January 4 16:41

GBR "I think attacking Iran is a great idea."

On the plus side, it would simplify the logistics of withdrawal from Iraq.


OUCH !!

[phil]

Cheney's last stand

Robert Fox
January 4, 2007 02:58 PM


The new policies for Iraq due to be announced on January 10 could be the final act in the Freudian politics of the Bush family. According to the leaks, and they have been more than in your average suburban water main, George Bush is going to set recommendations by Papa Bush's old consiglieri, led by James Baker, neatly on their head.

"Staying the course is not an option" stated the Iraq Study Group of Baker and Hamilton. But that is just what the president is about to order. US troops are not to leave Iraq until "the insurgents are beaten". That means the troops will be on the ground for a month of Sundays, with no remission for good conduct. Wisely, Baker-Hamilton suggested that the resolution to Iraq's state of meltdown is not primarily a military issue.

Yet Bush, and Dick Cheney even more so, see the matter as being almost entirely military. Cheney believes that more US troops in Baghdad and seats of the insurgency in the Sunni Triangle like Ramadi can in the end deliver "success", if not "victory." The president is expected now to order in between 20,000 and 30,000 more combat troops. Some 11 combat brigades will start clearing Baghdad sector by sector of militias and insurgents.

US combat teams have tried this before, of course, but this time they will be told to stay on after they have cleared each zone. This is the key part of the plan produced by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a favourite haunt of Dick and Lynn Cheney. The report's author Frederick Kagan told BBC Newsnight this week, "this has never been done before. This time the Americans will take and occupy these places." *

Cheney and co believe that the present administration must learn from the mistakes of Vietnam, which was lost because of the lack of resolve of US political and military leadership. The advice of Vietnam veterans like Colin Powell has been ignored totally. Powell has warned that even an extra 20,000 troops for only a matter of months could put an intolerable logistical strain on US forces, and - his words, not mine - could "break the army." The view has been endorsed sotto voce by General John Abizaid, the commander of Central Command. His immediate subordinate, General George Casey, the theatre commander in Iraq, has put the accent of his command on handing over to viable Iraqi forces - a tall order on the face of it now - and a plan of measured US and British withdrawal, not least because that's what most Iraqis want.

For the neocon grand wizards of the AEI this is defeatist talk. Another AEI member, who has criticised the conduct of the war, has counselled the president follow the example of his hero Winston Churchill when he sacked Auchinleck and Wavell and put Montgomery and Alexander in charge in the Western Desert in 1942. So, Casey is coming home early, and Abizaid pushed into retirement in March, if not earlier.

The blueprint Bush now appears to have embraced has two big flaws. First it still hopes a solution can be found kinetically, ie by the application of brute military force. Cheney, by all accounts, believes Iran should be dealt with by force, too, and sooner rather than later. In this he is supported by the Israelis and the Saudis, though for different reasons. The war plans for an aerial strike on Iran have been drawn up, but according to latest reports from Washington, the military command there is united in opposing it.

The second big problem with the AEI plan, and some of those drawn up by the US army, is that the American forces' bid to "reclaim the security" of Baghdad and Ramadi is not theirs to run and control, because technically it is not within their jurisdiction. The US is not the government of Iraq, for that was handed over by the Coalition Provisional Authority to the Iraqis themselves, when Bush's viceroy Paul Bremer did a runner from Baghdad in the summer of 2004.

The terms under which the international forces operate in Iraq are expected to be changed and reduced radically when UN security council Resolution 1547 comes up for review this summer. The word from UN HQ in New York is that it will not be renewed in its present form. It is increasingly likely that the Iraqi authorities, whoever they may be by next June and July, will then set down a strict timetable for the Americans and British to get out of Iraq. One of the principal military planners for the new options for US forces admitted privately just before Christmas, "We have very little time left to make anything work, only a matter of months, and not years, at most."

The violence in Iraq now seems to defy easy definition, following its version of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle - define it one way, and it changes before you can blink. For this reason both the Americans and the al-Maliki government appear to have completely miscalculated the execution of Saddam. In the way he was despatched, and then allowed to be buried in public ceremony, they have allowed him to become a martyr, his image an icon for anti American, and anti Iraqi Shia, sentiment across the Arab world. The Ba'ath party has just announced that General Izzat al-Douri is to be their new leader. Izzat has long been reported dead or dying. One of the few non-Tikritis close to Saddam he appears now to be the brains behind the Baath Party element of the Sunni nationalist insurgency - and the Ba'ath claim they have "four divisions" in the guerrilla campaign in central Iraq.

The insurgency is now a complex of Sunni secular and religious militias, some bent on having their own civil war. According to British and other intelligence sources, outsiders, including al-Qaida and Iranian advisers, have only a small, though at times very noisy, role. Taking on the complex multifaceted civil war would be beyond the capacity of 200,000 US and allied troops - despite what the American Enterprise Institute believes. The only effect the new plan might have is to unite everybody against the Americans and their pals.

Faced with the shifting strategic facts on the ground, George Bush resembles Ethelred, one of the less fortunate ancient Saxon kings. He was known as the Unready not so much because he couldn't get up in the morning in time to beat the Danes, but more from the Saxon unraed, roughly meaning "short of counsel/good advice". Like Ethelred and the Danes, Dubya the Unready still finds it difficult to smell the coffee about Iraq, and more bereft than ever of good counsel of what to do about it.

********

Let's hope Junior will at least ask advice from the Israeli army
on how to behave in occupied territories ... !

[phil]

Tuesday, November 12, 2002

Iraqi cancers, birth defects blamed on U.S. depleted uranium

By LARRY JOHNSON
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER FOREIGN DESK EDITOR

SOUTHERN DEMILITARIZED ZONE, Iraq -- On the "Highway of Death," 11 miles north of the Kuwait border, a collection of tanks, armored personnel carriers and other military vehicles are rusting in the desert.

They also are radiating nuclear energy.

In 1991, the United States and its Persian Gulf War allies blasted the vehicles with armor-piercing shells made of depleted uranium -- the first time such weapons had been used in warfare -- as the Iraqis retreated from Kuwait. The devastating results gave the highway its name.

Today, nearly 12 years after the use of the super-tough weapons was credited with bringing the war to a swift conclusion, the battlefield remains a radioactive toxic wasteland -- and depleted uranium munitions remain a mystery.

Although the Pentagon has sent mixed signals about the effects of depleted uranium, Iraqi doctors believe that it is responsible for a significant increase in cancer and birth defects in the region. Many researchers outside Iraq, and several U.S. veterans organizations, agree; they also suspect depleted uranium of playing a role in Gulf War Syndrome, the still-unexplained malady that has plagued hundreds of thousands of Gulf War veterans.

Depleted uranium is a problem in other former war zones as well. Yesterday, U.N. experts said they found radioactive hot spots in Bosnia resulting from the use of depleted uranium during NATO air strikes in 1995.

With another war in Iraq perhaps imminent, scientists and others are concerned that the side effects of depleted uranium munitions -- still a major part of the U.S. arsenal -- will cause serious illnesses or deaths in a new generation of U.S. soldiers as well as Iraqis.

THE DANGERS

Depleted uranium, known as DU, is a highly dense metal that is the byproduct of the process during which fissionable uranium used to manufacture nuclear bombs and reactor fuel is separated from natural uranium. DU remains radioactive for about 4.5 billion years.

Uranium, a weakly radioactive element, occurs naturally in soil and water everywhere on Earth, but mainly in trace quantities. Humans ingest it daily in minute quantities.

The desert around the vehicles was 100 times more radioactive than background radiation; Basra, a city of 1 million people, some 125 miles away, registered only slightly above background radiation level.

But the radioactivity is only one concern about DU munitions.

A second, potentially more serious hazard is created when a DU round hits its target. As much as 70 percent of the projectile can burn up on impact, creating a firestorm of ceramic DU oxide particles. The residue of this firestorm is an extremely fine ceramic uranium dust that can be spread by the wind, inhaled and absorbed into the human body and absorbed by plants and animals, becoming part of the food chain.

Once lodged in the soil, the munitions can pollute the environment and create up to a hundredfold increase in uranium levels in ground water, according to the U.N. Environmental Program.

Studies show it can remain in human organs for years.

The U.S. Army acknowledges the hazards in a training manual, in which it requires that anyone who comes within 25 meters of any DU-contaminated equipment or terrain wear respiratory and skin protection, and states that "contamination will make food and water unsafe for consumption."

Just six months before the Gulf War, the Army released a report on DU predicting that large amounts of DU dust could be inhaled by soldiers and civilians during and after combat.

Infantry were identified as potentially receiving the highest exposures, and the expected health outcomes included cancers and kidney problems.

The report also warned that public knowledge of the health and environmental effects of depleted uranium could lead to efforts to ban DU munitions.

But today the Pentagon plays down the effects. Officials refer queries on DU munitions to the latest government report on the subject, last updated on Dec. 13, 2000, which said DU is "40 percent less radioactive than natural uranium."

The report also said, "Gulf War exposures to depleted uranium (DU) have not to date produced any observable adverse health effects attributable to DU's chemical toxicity or low-level radiation. . . ."

In response to written queries, the Defense Department said, "The U.S. Military Services use DU munitions because of DU's superior lethality against armor and other hard targets."

It said DU munitions are "war reserve munitions; that is, used for combat and not fired for training purposes," with the exception that DU munitions may be fired at sea for weapon calibration purposes.

In addition to Iraq and Bosnia, DU munitions were used in Kosovo and Serbia in 1999.

Also in 1999, a United Nations subcommission considered DU hazardous enough to call for an initiative banning its use worldwide. The initiative has remained in committee, blocked primarily by the United States, according to Karen Parker, a lawyer with the International Educational Development/Humanitarian Law Project, which has consultative status at the United Nations.

Parker, who first raised the DU issue in the United Nations in 1996, contends that DU "violates the existing law and customs of war."

She said there are four rules derived from all of humanitarian law regarding weapons:

- Weapons may only be used in the legal field of battle, defined as legal military targets of the enemy in war. Weapons may not have an adverse effect off the legal field of battle.

- Weapons can only be used for the duration of an armed conflict.

- A weapon that is used or continues to act after the war is over violates this criterion.

- Weapons may not be unduly inhumane.

- Weapons may not have an unduly negative effect on the natural environment.

"Depleted uranium fails all four of these rules," Parker said last week.

On Oct. 17, 2001, Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., introduced a bill calling for "the suspension of the use, sale, development, production, testing, and export of depleted uranium munitions pending the outcome of certain studies of the health effects of such munitions. . . ."

More than a year later, the bill -- co-sponsored by Reps. Anibal Acevedo-Vila, Puerto Rico; Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis.; Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio; Barbara Lee, D-Ca.; and Jim McDermott, D-Wash. -- remains in committee awaiting comment from the Defense Department.

Read more ...
seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/95178_du12.shtml

*****

It's been said that radioactive dust particles coming from those ammos
are transported by winds as far as Europe ...

NICE GOING GENIUSES !

The only clear winners in any war are the ones benefitting financialy
by manufacturing/selling those Weapons of Mass Destruction !!

[strat-0]

Oh my aching dick.

[phil]

Sending American reinforcements is George Bush's last roll of the dice

Christopher Bellamy
Sunday January 7, 2007
The Observer


Increasing the number of US troops in Iraq by 30,000 to 40,000 is probably the last and only hope the US has of achieving any sort of 'victory'. Such a surge could not be sustained for long, however, and might not work. It would be a final gamble.

US opinion, and perhaps even the Bush administration, is divided between those who want a phased withdrawal to start now and the proponents of one last 'surge' to try to finish off the widespread insurgency. But even if the 'try harder' faction wins, the situation in Iraq is not one which war-fighting troops are best placed to solve.

There are about 140,000 US troops in Iraq. The plan has been to train and empower the Iraqi army and police to take over, with a target of 325,000. According to a Pentagon report, however, casualties and resignations have reduced that to 280,000 and, with 30 per cent 'on leave' at any one time, there are fewer than 200,000 Iraqis on the job. Mass defections to the insurgents and corruption in the police, exemplified by the need for the British to take out an entire police HQ in Basra recently, show that reliable police, not soldiers, are what is really needed.

The Americans' best hope is the new general in charge in Iraq, David Petraeus. He commanded 101st Airborne Division in the 2003 invasion and later directed the US army's 'brain' - the Combined Arms Centre at Fort Leavenworth. He is practically unique among US officers in his understanding of what is needed in counter-insurgency operations.

In an article a year ago he set out 17 observations, beginning with T E Lawrence's that in cases such as Iraq, you should 'not try to do too much with your own hands'. It may take the Iraqis longer to make their country work, and not be remotely perfect, but because it is theirs, it will be better. From this, it follows that you must increase the number of 'stakeholders' - Iraqis who feel they have an interest in the new society.

Petraeus's most trenchant observation, in the Iraq context, was that 'the liberating force must act quickly because every army of liberation has a half-life beyond which it turns into an army of occupation'.

Petraeus also knows that operations have to be planned for their long-term effects - 'Will this operation take more bad guys off the street than it creates by the way it is conducted?'

A short-term surge could create a window for Iraqi forces to develop and take over, but it would have to be temporary. In any case, the US does not have enough troops to sustain a surge for long. Sending back troops who have only just returned from Iraq will be catastrophic for morale and rushing troops in without extensive training would preclude them from developing the new mindset that Petraeus advocates. If US troop levels are raised, it really would be the last throw of the dice.

· Christopher Bellamy is professor of military science and doctrine at Cranfield University

[strat-0]

I had said earlier that I was at least willing to entertain the idea of a temporary increase in troops in Iraq as a possible way to help stop the hemmoraging in Baghdad, providing the military leaders were in favor and had a plan for what to do with them. I knew we were in deep shit when the looting started in 2003. But the original calls for an increase of 40 - 50,000, plus maybe some allies being discussed has steadily been reduced until the number I was hearing as of Friday was 9,000 US. Some "surge." Next it will be a couple of boy scouts. Such decisiveness! Might as well just start bringing the troops home.

[Kensterberg]

I was just reading where the generals had originally said we needed 400,000 troops to adequately conquer and secure Iraq ... back when we invaded in 2003. That was before there was any sort of organized resistance, etc. Instead, we went in with 80,000, and look what the result has been.

There's just no way that the US has enough forces to deploy today to do an adequate job against an enemy who can win merely by not losing. The kinds of weapons that are being used there are relatively mobile and easy to hide -- and we're going to be giving them weeks (if not months) of notice before these new troops are deployed. There won't be any weapons in Baghdad to confiscate, they'll be secreted where ever US troops aren't.

We need to declare victory and go home, with our tail between our legs.

[phil]

But ... There are still good money to be made over there !!



They have made a killing


The US has spent a million dollars for every dead Iraqi -
is that what they mean by value for money?

Terry Jones
Saturday January 6, 2007
The Guardian


Early this year the Bush administration is to ask Congress to approve an additional $100bn for the onerous task of making life intolerable for the Iraqis. This will bring the total spent on the White House's current obsession with war to almost $500bn - enough to have given every US citizen $1,600 each. I wonder which the voters would have gone for if given the choice: shall we (a) give every American $1,600 or (b) spend the money on bombing a country in the Middle East that doesn't use lavatory paper?

Of course, there's another thing that George Bush could have done with the money: he could have given every Iraqi $18,700. I imagine that would have reduced the threat of international terrorism somewhat. Call me old-fashioned, but I can't help thinking that giving someone $18,700 brings them round to your side more quickly than bombing the hell out of them. They could certainly buy a lot of lavatory paper with it.

In 2002 the house budget committee and the congressional budget office both guesstimated the cost of invading Iraq at approximately $50bn; $500bn seems a bit wide of the mark. What's more, with over half a million dead, it means that the world's greatest military superpower has spent a million dollars for every Iraqi killed. That can't be value for money!

So how on earth could such a vast overspend occur? After all, the US is the flagship of monetary common sense. Well, for starters, in 2003 the White House refused to allow competitive bidding for contracts in Iraq, which is odd for the champions of free enterprise. Then the White House ensured there would be no overseeing of what was spent. In the original Iraq spending bill, which earmarked the first $87bn to go down the drain, there was a provision for the general accounting office to keep a check on things, but that provision was stripped from the bill - even though the Senate had originally voted for it 97 to 0.

But what I want to know is: how do they actually spend all that money? Well the answer is: they don't. According to the website Halliburtonwatch, the Halliburton subsidiary KBR bills the US taxpayer for $50-$80 per day for labourers working for it in Iraq, but pays them only $5-$16 per day. It's the same with Halliburton. In December 2003 the US army discovered that the company had overcharged by $61m for fuel transportation and $67m for food services in Iraq.

Then there is good old-fashioned incompetence. Take the al-Fatah pipeline: KBR went through $75.7m of taxpayers' money, supposedly trying to replace a pipeline across the river Tigris that US forces had blown up. They never finished the job, but still got paid.

With all this double-dealing and incompetence, you'd expect that those responsible would have been penalised by now. But that's where the mystery deepens. Companies such as Halliburton and its subsidiaries have never had it so good. In January 2006 the Bush administration intervened in a dispute between the Pentagon and Halliburton, and agreed to pay the company $199m in disputed charges. On January 26 2006 Halliburton announced that its 2005 profits were the "best in our 86-year history". And to date KBR has received around $16bn from its contracts in Iraq.

Vice-President Dick Cheney, formerly CEO of Halliburton, has not had a bad war either. His tax returns for 2005 show that he earned $194,862 from his Halliburton stock options alone. Mind you, it's small change compared to his $36m payoff when he left the firm. Was that for his past role, or was Halliburton anticipating further services from the future vice-president of the US? Perhaps it's just as well that in 2003 the White House removed from the Iraq spending bill any provision to penalise war profiteers who defrauded US taxpayers.

· Terry Jones is a film director, actor and Python

www.terry-jones.net