Mosul Leaders Threaten to Join Guerrilla Movement
Protest Firing of Police Commissioner

Al-Zaman: Cabinet member Adil Abdul Mahdi's brother was assassinated on Sunday. A government oil company official in Kirkuk was assassinated. There were about a dozen announced deaths in guerrilla violence on Sunday. Guerrillas detonated a bomb in Fallujah, killing two Iraqi soldiers; a woman and a child died when police fired indiscriminately after the bomb went off.

The US air force dropped a 500-pound bomb on guerrillas near Taji who fired on a US helicopter, killing at least six, and later capturing another 5.

Al-Hayat: Northern Iraq is a sectarian tinderbox after Saturday's massive car bombing of a Shiite village near Baqubah in the mixed Diyalah province. The Iraqi Islamic Party (Sunni) called for calm and avoidance of reprisal killings, seeing the bombing of the Shiites and the killing of 25 Mahdi Army militiamen in an ambush in Baghdad on Friday by Sunni Arabs as steps toward sectarian civil war. Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports that the Shiite Badr Corps militia is denying any link to the assassination last week of Saadoun al-Janabi, a defense lawyer for one of Saddam's relatives.

Some 51 clan elders from the Sunni Arab and Kurdish families of Mosul agreed with policemen in the city that they will return it to the control of armed guerrillas if the Interior Ministry implemented its decision to fire Ninevah's police chief, Ahmad Muhammad al-Juburi, who is accused of corruption. Hundreds of armed men surrounded the provincial headquarters on Saturday evening to protest al-Juburi's firing. US troops stopped the protesters from storming the building. The armed protesters, including police and civilians, surrounded a number of government buildings. They shouted through megaphones, complaining of Kurdish domination of provincial offices.

The clan leaders complained in a letter to Jaafari that no official investigation of al-Juburi had been carried out. They threatened to turn the city into a hotbed of insurgency.

Al-Juburi himself charged on Saturday that Kurds and Shiite Arabs had connived at his dismissal because they hoped to roil the province and therefore keep its 1.7 million inhabitants, a majority of them Sunni Arabs, from voting in large numbers in the December 15 parliamentary elections. He warned that they would follow the same tactics in Salahuddin and Anbar Provinces (other Sunni Arab strongholds).

Mosul exploded with violence in November of 2004 when 4,000 policemen suddenly resigned and masked gunmen emerged to police the city of over a million (Iraq's third-largest). The current situation seems so tense that there is a danger of the repetition of that scenario, which helped prevent Sunni Arabs from being properly represented in parliament, since it threw Ninevah into chaos.

Reuters reports on Mosul here.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports that many Sunni Arabs in Ninevah are convinced that their province actually defeated the constitution by a 2/3s margin in the Oct. 15 referendum, and that the constitution was therefore in reality shot down and is illegitimate.

The Boston Globe reports on the evolution of Marine tactics in turbulent Anbar province.

Shibley Telhami makes the point that the Bush administration's rushed attempts to stabilize Iraq with cosmetic measures like passing a constitution seem in fact to be exacerbating Sunni Arab resentments and destabilizing the country further.

Al-Zaman: Iyad al-Ta'i, a member of the Virtue Party's political office, affirmed Sunday that his party would join the United Iraqi Alliance under the leadership of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. He emphasized that the Virtue Party [a puritanical Shiite fundamentalist party especially popular in the southern port city of Basra that follows the teachings of Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr] is dedicated to upholding Iraq's national unity. He said national unity was the best path to security and stability in Iraq. He said there would be no change in the top officers, which include secretary-general Nadim al-Jabiri; his deputy is Muhammad Abd Nasir al-Sa`idi, a member of the Baghdad provincial council; Ammar Tu'mah, member of parliament; and of course Shaikh Muhammad Yaqubi is the group's spiritual guide. He said the Virtue Party sought dialogue with three groups-- 1) [secular] national leaders, 2) Muslim leaders of various denominations, and then 3) specifically with Shiite leaders.

Al-Ta'i's list is a welcome acknowledgment of Iraq's pluralism from a party that is often rather narrow in its program, though the reality of militias in Basra that close video stores and harass unveiled women is hard to reconcile with the call for dialogue.

His emphasis on national unity seems intended to defend the party's choice of allying with al-Hakim, who last summer seemed to back a Shiite autonomous zone in the South.

BBC World Monitoring of the Iraqi Press for October 30, excerpts:

Al-Bayan carries on the front page a 250-word report on the press conference by Unified Iraqi Coalition yesterday, 29 October, during which Abd-al-Aziz al-Hakim predicted the coalition's majority in the next National Assembly . . .

Tariq al-Sha'b publishes on the front page a 600-word report citing Iraqi Communist Party Chairman Hamid Majid Musa as saying that the party's representation in the Iraqi National Bloc's candidate lists [led by Iyad Allawi] for the governorates is satisfactory . . .

Al-Bayyinah publishes on page 1 a 200-word report that former Ba'thists are behind Amr Musa's recent visit to Iraq.

Al-Bayyinah runs on page 2 a 200-word report on the negotiations between Adil Abd-al-Mahdi and Hasan al-Sari, Hezbollah Movement in Iraq's secretary general, to discuss the unfair representation of the movement in the Unified Iraqi Alliance.

Al-Bayyinah publishes on page 3 a 2,500-word report revealing the injustice in the distribution of seats in the Unified Iraqi Alliance, accusing senior members of favouring politicians who either lived abroad or in specific places in Iraq, and excluding members from southern Iraq . . .

Al-Mu'tamar carries on the front page and on page 6 a 600-word article by Muwaffaq al-Rifa'i criticizing the US policy in Iraq and the democracy "imposed by occupation". . .

Al-Mada publishes on the front page a270-word report citing the Iraqi Council for Peace and Solidarity calling on the Iraqi government to join Rome Law for International Criminal Court.

Al-Mada publishes on page 2 a 50-word report on the resignation of the head of Babil Governorate Council . . .

Al-Furat runs on the front page a 100-word report saying that former Iraqi Army General Ahmad al-Musili, who was in charge of the rocket attack on Israel in 1991, his wife, and their daughter, were assassinated in Mosul. No dates were given . . .

Al-Zaman carries on the front page a 230-word report citing a security source saying that three Iraqi soldiers were killed and seven others were injured in an attack by gunmen in Ba'qubah. The report cites an official source at Diyala Police Command saying that unidentified gunmen assassinated a member from Al-Sadr Bureau in Ba'qubah.

Al-Zaman carries on page 2 a 200-word report on a statement by Al-'Ilm University of Imam Al-Khalisi that US forces arrested a companion of Shaykh Jawad al-Khalisi in Al-Kazimiyah yesterday, 29 October. . .

Al-Mu'tamar carries on page 8 a 700-word report on drug addiction and trafficking in Iraq. . .

Al-Manarah carries on the front page a 50-word report citing sources at the Iraqi Police saying that secretary general of Iraqi Islamic Movement in Maysan was assassinated. . .

Al-Mashriq publishes on the front page a 30-word report citing police forces saying that seven bodies were found in Al-Latifiyah.

Al-Mada publishes on page 3 a 1,000-word report on the sit-in announced by lawyers in Mosul to protest against the assassination of Iraqi lawyer Sa'dun al-Janabi. [Al-Janabi was defending a relative of Saddam; Sunni Arabs accused the Shiite Badr Corps in the assassination.]

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Top Five Resignations the American People Should Demand
In the Wake of Libby's Indictment

Apologize? Apologize? Is that all the US Democratic leadership can demand from George W. Bush after it was confirmed that his key aides and those of Vice President Cheney planned a petty campaign of retribution against a distinguished foreign service officer by outing his wife, undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson? I should think not. I should think some high-profile resignations are in order. Although Senator Reid did ask for one resignation, I have a better idea.

1. Vice President Richard Bruce Cheney. Dick Cheney told Irving Lewis Libby about Plame working for the CIA. Although both Cheney and Libby had security clearances, it is not the case that any two persons with such clearances may properly share any information at will. Classified information is disseminated on a need to know basis and for specific security-related purposes. For Cheney to bandy about classified information merely as a form of office gossip or for partisan political purposes, even with other government officials, is unethical and poor tradecraft at the very least, and would get any junior CIA case officer fired. So surely the same should apply to the vice president of the United States at a time of war.

2. Karl Rove. The president's adviser clearly told Matt Cooper of Time Magazine, at the very least, about Valerie Plame Wilson working for the CIA. Since this information was classified, Rove learned it from someone with a clearance. If he did not double check as to whether the information was classified before he released it to the press, then he was criminally irresponsible. If he released it with the knowledge that it was classified, then what he did was highly unethical and possibly illegal. Either way, no one who behaves so cavalierly with national security-related information during a time of war has any place in the White House. Rove must resign. If Bush does not request and accept Rove's resignation, then he becomes an accessory after the fact to a possible crime, and should be impeached as such.

3. John Hannah. Hannah, a key Cheney aide, also mentioned to Libby that Plame worked for the CIA. He should not have been bandying about this information without a serious national security purpose. He should go.

4. John Bolton. Currently Ambassador to the United Nations. He has not been implicated in the outing of Plame yet, but he did visit implicated journalist Judith Miller in prison and is tightly connected to key figures in the crime. He has been a twenty-first century Goebbels of national security disinformation aimed at scaring the American public into pursuing a series of disastrous wars (beyond Iraq, he wants wars against Syria, Iran, and Cuba to start). He was not confirmed by the Senate. He is a serial liar or a serial incompetent. He has expressed himself vehemently against the existence of the United Nations and dismisses US international treaty obligations. He should not be representing the American people at the United Nations.

5. Elliot Abrams. Abrams lied to the Congress assiduously over the Iran-Contra criminal proceedings. During this period, high Reagan administration officials illegally sold off high-poweered weapons like TOWs from Pentagon storehouses to the Ayatollah Khomeini. They then took the Iranian money paid for them and put it in secret bank accounts, using it to fund rightwing death squads in Central America. Abrams was part of this unconstitutional and criminal plot. He should be in jail, but was pardoned. W. appointed him to the National Security Council, where he was in charge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for a while (he is, like Doug Feith, more ideologically so aligned to the far rightwing Israeli Likud Party as to be virtually a card-carrying member; so that was really a signal of US even-handedness!). Now he is said to be in charge of Iran! He should never have been allowed back in high office after lying to Congress and both houses should be ashamed that they did not block his appointment. No wonder there is all this criminality in the White House-- they are allowing criminals to be appointed!
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26 Killed by Car Bomb North of Baquba
3 US GIs Killed

Guerrillas in a Shiite village near Baqubah, northeast of Baghdad, detonated a huge truck bomb on Saturday, killing at least 26 innocent bystanders. In separate violence, 3 US GIs were killed, and US air forces attacked suspected guerrilla strongholds in western Iraq.

The Washington Post profiles the Kurdization of the city of Kirkuk and the villages around it, and tens or hundreds of thousands of Kurds whom Saddam had earlier expelled are brought back and settled, often on private property. Saddam brought Arabs into the city and the area part of an effort to "Arabize" the northern oil-producing region, which he renamed the "nationalized" province (Ta'mim) in commemoration of the nationalization of Iraq's petroleum industry. Kirkuk is a traditionally Turkmen city, but Kurds became a major force there with the rise of the oil industry and labor migration. Because control of Kirkuk province would give the Kurds an enormous petroleum revenue, enabling their quest for an autonomous state, the Turkish government is very worried about all this. Any violence that targeted Kirkuk's Turkmen would produce a strong reaction in Ankara and perhaps drawn Turkey into the conflict.

First the government of Italian Prime Minister and wealthy sleazeball Silvio Berlusconi's got involved in forging the Niger uranium documents that underpinned Bush's rationale for war. Then Berlusconi strongly backed Bush, and sent Italian troops to Nasiriyah (where o26 of them have been killed). Now, in an obvious sign that the Bush administration is a sinking ship, Berlusconi is abandoning it. He maintains that he tried to talk Bush out of going to war in Iraq before the fact. This allegation looks to some observers like a bare-faced attempt to run away from Bush in Italian domestic politics, where Berlusconi will face an election soon.

Al-Hayat: The United Iraqi Alliance, the mainly religious Shiite coalition, will be made up of 17 parties. They include the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Sadr Movement, the Dawa Party, the Islamic Dawa Part (Iraq Organization), the Virtue Party, The Centrist Grouping, the Badr Organization, the Justice Grouping, Hizbullah in Iraq [no, not that Hezbollah], the Prince of Martyrs Movement, the Center Grouping, the Faithfulness Movement of the Turkmen, and the Turkmen, etc.
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Sistani May Call for US Withdrawal
Party Coalitions are Finalized

The intrepid Hamza Hendawi of AP gets the scoop: Aides around Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the chief spiritual leader of Iraqi Shiites, are broadly hinting that after the December 15 elections, he may begin a Gandhi-like campaign to demand a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. A lot of sentiments are attributed to Sistani that he later has to deny, so we should be cautious about whether the aides have their own axe to grind. But if this report is true, it would suggest that Sistani is confident that the Iraqi police and military are strong enough to protect him and the other members of the current Iraqi political class, and that the Americans are not needed.

If Sistani gives The Fatwa for a US withdrawal, the Bush administration will simply have to acquiesce. The situation would be similar to what happened in the Philippines in 1991, when the Philippines senate declined to authorize the extension of the treaty that permitted US naval bases in that country. Given the ongoing Sunni Arab guerrilla movement (which killed another 5 US GI's in the past couple of days), the US simply cannot keep troops in Iraq if the Shiites also begin vehemently demanding their departure. Any attempt by Bush and Rumsfeld to remain in Iraq in defiance of Sistani would certainly radicalize the Iraqi population and risk pushing it toward anti-American Muslim extremism both on the Shiite and the Sunni Arab fronts. As Hendawi notes, most close observers of Iraq, such as Vali Nasr and Ahmad Hashem (who has experience on the ground as US military officer) believe that any such move by Sistani, should it succeed, risks throwing Iraq into substantial sectarian violence.

A majority of Americans now say that getting the troops out of Iraq as soon as possible is more important than ensuring that the country is a stable democracy.

Sistani seems to be encouraging a new political coalition that is multi-ethnic. Al-Zaman says that some independent Shiite notables close to Sistani have formed the Independent Iraqi Capabilities Bloc. It groups many of the independents who were in the (Shiite religious) United Iraqi Alliance in the January 30 elections, but altogether includes 120 Shiites, Sunni Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen. (If this group was not offered many seats by the UIA this time, it might explain both why it bolted and why Sistani is said not to be as enthusiastic about the UIA this time around.) Husain Shahristani, a former nuclear scientist now close to Sistani, was originally involved in this project but ended up staying in the United Iraqi Alliance (see the NYT) [revised 10/27/05]. Among Western news reports only the Financial Times even alludes to this new list. Unless Sistani directly endorses the new list, something his aides said Friday would not happen, I don't expect it to do very well, unfortunately.

On Friday, the young nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called for calm after a major engagement between his Mahdi Army and Sunni Arab guerrillas, who killed 25 of the latter. Sadr called for an investigation and forbade individuals from taking the initiative. Also on the sectarian civil war front, the Washington Post reported Saturday that a family of 10 Shiites was found dead earlier this week in Qamishli in Babil province, killed by Sunni Arab guerrillas. Babil is a mixed province where Saddam stole land from Shiites and settled Sunni Arabs on it.

Al-Zaman/ Deutsche Press Agentur are reporting further breakaways from the United Iraqi Alliance. The UIA groups the Dawa Party, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Virtue Party, the Sadrists of Muqtada al-Sadr, and the Islamic Action Party based in Karbala. Aside from the last, these are the big, central Shiite religious parties, and the UIA is likely to have a plurality or even majority in the new parliament elected on Dec. 15, unless there is a voter revolt of some sort.

It is probably therefore not very important that there were some last minute defections from the UIA.

Ahmad Chalabi in the end decided to run his Iraqi National Congress as an independent list. The INC mainly represents the secular-leaning expatriate Shiite business class and seems unlikely to do well in open elections inside Iraq. It has been joined by Sharif Ali bin al-Husain, a Sunni Hashimite who has in the past put himself forward as candidate for king of Iraq (not a likely prospect). Kirk Semple of the New York Times lists some other INC candidates, including " Iraq's justice minister, Abdul Hussein Shandal . . . Other members are Salama al-Khafaji, an independent Shiite who also defected from the Shiite coalition." Khafaji, a Shiite traditionalist who is uncomfortable with the idea of a clerically dominated state, has narrowly escaped assassination; as it is, her 17-year-old son was killed in an ambush. It would be interesting to know more about why she split with the UIA and joined Chalabi. Her advocacy for women's issues may have played a role.

Chalabi should never be underestimated, and he is perfectly capable of getting up some vote-buying scheme. But if the election is free and fair, I'd be just stunned if the INC got many seats in parliament.

Semple also reports that Abdul Karim al-Muhammadawi, the Marsh Arab leader from Amara, is running as an independent. Al-Zaman thought he would join Chalabi's list, but that possibility appears to have fallen through. Since most of the Marsh Arabs appear to have gone over to Muqtada al-Sadr since the fall of Saddam, I don't expect al-Muhammadawi to do well on his own, though he might get a seat for himself in parliament.

Hamza Hendawi reports that the secular "Iraqi Nationalism" list of Iyad Allawi groups the Iraqi Communist Party, secular Sunni figures such as Ghazi al-Yawir and Adnan Pachachi, and of course the ex-Baathist Shiites that Allawi has long attempted to organize. Allawi's list only received 14 percent of the vote in the last elections. The communists and al-Yawir could bring him an extra 4 seats or so, but it is also possible that his list will not poll as well this time. He no longer has the advantages of incumbency. He has been critical of Sistani. And several members of his cabinet have been charged with massive embezzlement. Hendawi reports that Allawi is angling to form a government with the Kurds so as to outmaneuver the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance. But I doubt Allawi's list will get more than 40 seats, and the Kurds are unlikely to do much better than 55. Even if they get some of the 40 seats that will be redistributed after the election by some complex formula, I don't see how they can get to the 138 needed to form a government. Only if all three-- Allawi's list, the Kurdistan Alliance, and the Sunni coalition unite could they form a government that left out the United Iraqi Alliance, assuming it does not end up with 138 itself. Such a strange-bedfellows government would be highly unstable and I doubt it would last. It is going to be hard to exclude the religious Shiite parties.

Hazem Shaalan, the former defense minister accused massive fraud committed while in office in 2004 and early 2005, maintained that he was the victim of an attempted assassination in his London flat, but which failed, according to al-Sharq al-Awsat. Shaalan, however, is a notorious liar, and has also charged that there are one million Iranian Shiites surreptitiously in Iraq and that Iran is allowing al-Qaeda operatives to freely roam its territory. Both charges are so laughable that you have to wonder whether Shaalan isn't a good friend of and source of information for Irving Lewis Libby.

The Turks went ballistic when Bush received Massoud Barzani (Mesut in Turkish) at the White House and called him "President Barzani." They wanted to know what Bush thought Barzani was president of. The Turks are afraid of an independent Kurdistan state in northern Iraq, which might create secessionist sentiments in Turkish Kurds. Bush at least did tell Barzani that Iraq had to remain a united country. Secretary of State Condi Rice pressed Barzani on behalf of the Turks to see that the PKK (a Marxist Kurdish revolutionary party in eastern Turkey) not be allowed to operate freely from or take refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Turks were very upset when the US and the Iraqi government attacked the Turkmen city of Tal Afar in August on the grounds that terrorists operated from it, but seemed unconcerned about what the Turks consider Kurdish terrorists of the PKK establishing themselves in the same region.
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New Word: "To libby"

It seems to me that we may have the makings of a new lexical entry, what with the indictment and resignation of Irving Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

It strikes me that "Libby" is close to "fib." So "to libby" would have the connotations of "to tell a falsehood." But it is also close to "lobby." So the sense would be of lying for the purpose of convincing a large number of persons to adopt some policy that was bad for them. Thus, "the pitchman libbied his audience to buy snake oil as a way to treat their gout." Or, "the mole libbied the public on behalf of a foreign power." That could be definition 1 in those numbered entries at Merriam Webster.

The name is also close to "libel." So it would have an overtone of launching a vindictive smear. "To retaliate for the critical review of the film, the director had the newspaper libbied." Again, the sense would be that a persuasive falsehood was told, but here with the connotation of ruining someone's career and reputation. This could be definition 2.

I'm sure there are other dimensions of the verb "to libby" that haven't yet occurred to me.

The Los Angeles Times argues that the ordeal may not be over for Vice President Richard Bruce Cheney. I agree. A trial of Libby could yet throw up information that would spark further indictments. In fact, I take from Fitzgerald's language on Friday that he actively envisages such a possibility. Cheney was one of four individuals who told Libby that Valerie Plame Wilson worked for the CIA. And, as Steve Gilliard picks up from Josh Marshall the canny insight that Cheney told Libby specifically that Plame Wilson was in a division in the Directorate of Operations. That is, any knowledgeable government official would immediately conclude that she was not a mere analyst but an undercover field officer.

For more insights:

Beyond Middle East Studies.

Did Bolton out Plame?

Tomdispatch.
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Sunni-Shiite Warfare breaks out in Southeast Baghdad
Sadr Joins United Shiite Coalition

Al-Hayat: Exhibit A in the case for seeing what is going on in Iraq as a low-intensity civil war: On Thursday, Sunni Arab guerrillas from the Nahrawan district of southeast Baghdad kidnapped a member of the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr . When the rest of the Mahdi Army militiamen in the man's neighborhood heard about this, they traced the kidnappers to a house in Nahrawan and mounted an assault on it, freeing their colleague. They took the two kidnappers captive. But then as they were leaving Nahrawan they fell into an ambush and 25 of them were killed by Sunni Arab guerrillas. Then the Ministry of Interior gendarmes showed up to help the Sadrists (typically they are drawn from the Badr Corps paramilitary of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq). They engaged the Sunni Arab guerrillas, and lost two of their men in the firefight. Ironically, SCIRI fighters and Mahdi Army militiamen had clashed with each other in Najaf not so long ago. Assuming these gendarmes were originally Badr, they in any case were able to unite with the Sadrists against Sunni guerrillas.

The last time this sort of thing had happened, the "Wrath of God" Shiite militia came up from Basra to Mahmudiyah to defend the Shiites. That was a much smaller conflict. The danger of Thursday's clashes is that they could easily spread.

Three US GIs were killed on Wednesday.

In the political arena, Iraq's political parties finalized their coalition lists for the December 15 elections, for which the deadline is today, Friday.

Secular ex-Baathist and old-time CIA asset Iyad Allawi will head a list called "The Centrist Bloc." The Sunni Arab religious parties will run as the Front for Iraqi Concord. The Kurdistan Alliance retained its unity.

Hazem Shaalan, former minister of defense under Allawi, who stands accused of massive fraud and embezzlement, failed to find a perch in any party list.

The huge United Iraqi Alliance list, which groups the major Shiite religious factions as well as some other parties, managed to stay together. Their strategy is to avoid splitting the Shiite vote.

The followers of Muqtada al-Sadr joined the UIA, and were given 30 places in the United Iraqi Alliance list. They insisted as a prerequesite for joining on two things. The first was that they must have parity with the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. The second is that there must be not normalization of relations with Israel ("the Zionist entity"). They said that this principle was a red line that could not be crossed under any circumstances.

The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq also received 30 places.

The Dawa Party of Ibrahim Jaafari received 15 places.

The Dawa Party - Iraq Organization led by Hashim al-Musawi also received 15 places.

The Fadilah ("Virtue") party of Nadim Isa al-Jabiri was given 15 places.

The Islamic Action Organization was given 5 places.

The Iraqi National Congress of Ahmad Chalabi was given 3 places, but Chalabi continues to attempt to negotiate a slightly higher number. Chalabi had earlier threatened to bolt the list.

It appears that minister of petroleum Ibrahim Bahrululum may leave the list to run as an independent.

As noted yesterday, Grand Ayatollah Sistani has so far declined publicly to back the United Iraqi Alliance this time, as he had before.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

All the Vice President's Men

My article on the Neoconservatives running Vice President Richard Bruce Cheney's foreign policy shop is out today in Salon.com.

An excerpt:

All the vice president's men

The ideologues in Cheney's inner circle drummed up a war. Now their zealotry is blowing up in their faces.

By Juan Cole

Oct. 28, 2005 | As Washington waits on pins and needles to see if special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald hands down indictments, the focus falls on Dick Cheney's inner circle. This group, along with that surrounding Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made up what Colin Powell's top aide, Lawrence Wilkerson, called "a cabal" that "on critical issues ... made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made." Cheney is the first vice president to have had, in effect, his own personal National Security Council. This formidable and unprecedented rump foreign policy team, composed of radical hawks, played a key role in every aspect of the war on Iraq: planning for it, gathering "evidence" to justify it and punishing those who spoke out against it. It is not surprising that members of that team, and Cheney himself, have now also emerged as targets in Fitzgerald's investigation of the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson to the press, along with Bush advisor Karl Rove . . .

"Cheney Assembles Formidable Team," marveled a Page One article in the Feb. 3, 2001, edition of the New York Times. It turns out that Cheney had 15 military and political advisors on foreign affairs, at a time when the president's own National Security Council was being downsized. The number of aides who counseled Cheney on domestic issues was much smaller. In contrast, Al Gore had been advised by a single staffer on security affairs.

The leader of the team was Libby, Cheney's chief of staff. Libby had studied at Yale with Paul Wolfowitz, who brought him to Washington. He co-authored a hawkish policy document with Wolfowitz in the Department of Defense for its head, Dick Cheney, after the Gulf War in 1992. When it was leaked, it embarrassed the first President Bush. Libby was a founding member of the Project for a New American Century in 1997 during the Clinton years, when many neoconservatives were out of office. The PNAC attempted to use the Republican-dominated Congress to pressure Clinton to take a more belligerent stance toward Iraq, and it advocated significantly expanding military spending and using U.S. troops as "gendarmes" in the aftermath of wars to "shape" the international security environment . . .

Read the rest . . .
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Larry Johnson on the Plame Scandal

I think this interview by Wolf Blitzer with Larry Johnson on CNN's Situation Room on Wednesday is extremely important and worry that it may be missed. I'm quoting some excerpts below. I was struck by the information that Plame Wilson has had death threats from al-Qaeda, and that the CIA has declined to offer her any special protection even though she still works there.

So the Bush administration is throwing our own counter-proliferation intelligence operatives to al-Qaeda by outing them, and Porter Goss refuses even to provide any security? Oh, yeah, we're going to recruit a lot of capable, competent people into counter-terrorism after this.

At one point former CIA officer Larry Johnson slams Clifford May as "not credible." May, a far rightwing Zionist, has been a hatchet man for the Neocons, smearing Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, the husband of Valerie Plame Wilson, with innuendo and half-truths. The principle on American television news (aside from Fox, which gets a pass because Rupert Murdoch is so rich and crazy) is that some sort of partisan balance has to be maintained. So Johnson's going after May required Wolf to step in to defend May's credibility, since he didn't have a guest on to counter Johnson.

Johnson's anger and bitterness, as a US intelligence professional, about the damage done by Rove and Libby in leaking Plame's name to the press for petty political advantage, are well worth considering.

'BLITZER: . . . For more on the damage that may have been done by the leak, I'm joined now by former CIA officer Larry Johnson. He was a classmate of the outed operative Valerie Plame at the CIA's training school way back.

How many years ago was that, Larry?

LARRY JOHNSON, COUNTERTERRORISM EXPERT: Nineteen-eighty-five, September.

BLITZER: So, you were basically with Valerie Plame...

JOHNSON: Right . . .

BLITZER: Now, in order for any charges, an indictment, to really have weight, I think what everyone wants to know is, was there serious damage done to U.S. national security? And I have been trying to find out if the CIA actually did a postmortem, a damage assessment. You have been looking into that as well.

JOHNSON: Now, CIA did a postmortem. There's no way that they could not have. They have not delivered any written report to Congress, to the House or Senate Intelligence Committees.

But what they done with this report, they had to do it internally, because...

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Is there a piece of paper there that's written?

JOHNSON: Yes. There will be a written -- there's a written document within the CIA. There has to be, because every time that someone like this is outed, it's not just the person. In this case, it's the front company. It's other NOCs who may have been exposed.

BLITZER: Non-official cover is the NOCs.

JOHNSON: Non-official cover officers, also other intelligence officers who were exposed to that company, as well as intelligence assets overseas who were working with Brewster-Jennings who didn't know that it was a CIA front, and some who may have been witting...

BLITZER: Well...

JOHNSON: ... assets.

BLITZER: ... do you know whether or not they concluded that serious damage did occur?

JOHNSON: I have heard that serious damage did occur.

BLITZER: In terms of lives lost, agents, foreign agents...

JOHNSON: To that...

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: ... U.S. allies?

(CROSSTALK)

JOHNSON: To that extent, I don't know.

But what I do know for certain is, we're not just talking about Valerie Plame. We're talking about an intelligence resource, a United States national security resource that was destroyed by these White House officials that went out and started talking to the press about this. Reckless. And they have -- they have harmed the security of this country. They're trying to pretend no harm, no foul, and find lots of excuses.

BLITZER: Let me read to you from a Bob Novak column in "The Chicago Sun-Times" and other newspapers October 1, 2003, a couple of months or so after he revealed her name . . . That doesn't make it sound like she was very covert.

JOHNSON: Not only does -- you know, Bob Novak once again demonstrates he doesn't know what he's talking about. And that is a lie.

I defy anybody. I have got $5,000 that says that you can't find a reference to Valerie Plame and the CIA prior to Robert Novak's column. Can't do it. The fact that she's married...

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Well, why would Clifford May say that he knew about it?

JOHNSON: Clifford May has been wrong on a whole variety of things.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: But he's a respected guy, Clifford May.

JOHNSON: Well, he's respected by some people. I don't respect him, because I...

BLITZER: I have known him for many years... JOHNSON: I...

BLITZER: ... going back to when he was a reporter for "The New York Times."

JOHNSON: His information -- his information -- his information on this issue has been repeatedly wrong.

And, again, I'll bet Clifford May $5,000. Find the reference prior to Robert Novak's column in which that information was out there. It wasn't out there. Not only that. When Valerie wrote that check to Al Gore's campaign as a member of Brewster-Jennings, she was living her cover. Not a single neighbor knew that she worked for the CIA.

She protected that cover. She was in the process of moving from non-official cover to official cover, but, under the law, official cover still protected.

BLITZER: Because there is some suggestion that she had been outed by other -- by Aldrich Ames or others...

JOHNSON: Well, my...

BLITZER: ... who were U.S. -- were American spies spying for...

JOHNSON: Sure.

BLITZER: ... the Soviet Union or other countries.

JOHNSON: My understanding is that, as a result of the Aldrich Ames betrayal, the damage assessment there came up with the possibility that she may have been compromised, so she's moved back to the United States, home-based here, but continues to operate from here, traveling overseas as a consultant with Brewster-Jennings. So, she was continuing to work overseas.

BLITZER: What about the argument that she was driving in and out of Langley, CIA headquarters, on a daily basis for her job as an analyst in counter -- nuclear counterproliferation?

JOHNSON: People saying that just demonstrate their further ignorance of the CIA.

At least 40 percent of the people driving through those gates every day are undercover. They are -- sometimes, they are here in the United States for two or three assignment. Then they go back overseas. Their acknowledged relationship with the CIA is unacknowledged. They're presumed to work for some other U.S. government agency. Their covers are backstop.

So, just because they are driving through the gates there doesn't mean that they're not undercover. I was out there for four years driving through the gates. I was undercover until I day I left. And the only one who knew I worked with CIA was my wife . . .

BLITZER: Were you surprised that, after her name was revealed, that she posed for pictures, that famous picture in "Vanity Fair," that she posed for pictures elsewhere with her husband? . . .

JOHNSON: Yes. With the benefit of hindsight, I don't think Joe and Valerie would have done that again.

But they also recognized, at the time when they did it, her career had been completely destroyed. And she had received death threats overseas from al Qaeda. So, as a result of that outing...

BLITZER: How do you know she got death threats from al Qaeda?

JOHNSON: I have heard it directly from people that have been told that there was a threat.

BLITZER: Because she is a...

JOHNSON: Because...

BLITZER: ... a former CIA operative?

(CROSSTALK)

JOHNSON: ... operative and outed by Robert Novak.

There were three people that were identified as having a threat. And she was contacted by the FBI.

BLITZER: Does she get security protection...

(CROSSTALK)

JOHNSON: She did not.

BLITZER: Why didn't she?

JOHNSON: She called...

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: She still works for the CIA.

JOHNSON: She called CIA and was told, you will have to rely upon 911 . . .

BLITZER: Larry Johnson, former CIA officer, worked at counterterrorism at the State Department as well.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Cockburn Misrepresents Cole

Alexander Cockburn says in his piece in The Nation: 'Cole says to The Nation Institute's Tom Engelhardt that for the United States to "up and leave" Iraq would be to become an accomplice to genocide. He counsels the heightened use in Iraq of "special forces and air power." In other words, assassinations and saturation bombing.'

Cockburn is referring to my interview with Tom Engelhardt.

I actually haven't called for any assassinations or saturation bombing, and Mr. Cockburn's "In other words" is just a trite way to open up a mendacious smear.

For the thousandth time, what I have in mind is that in the wake of a substantial drawdown of US troops (which I think advisable), a civil war may well break out in Iraq. It is also likely that Sunni Arab militiamen will attempt to kill the members of the current government. (I mean, they are already trying to kill them, they just aren't usually succeeding.)

I am distressed at the prospect of a Cambodia in Iraq, which strikes me as a real possibility. As it is, there was that nastiness of Shiite and Sunni militiamen killing each other Thursday.

I'd like to see such an outcome prevented. I said earlier that I thought the best outcome would be for Iraq to be internationalized and to have a United Nations military force enforce the peace. However, it does seem increasingly a rather forlorn hope (the UN is made up of member nations whose politicians would like to stay in power, and that might be difficult if they send their constituents' young men into the meat grinder of Anbar province.) The Bushies aren't very likely even to allow it during the next 3 years. I haven't stopped advocating it, I just don't see it happening tomorrow.

So what is left, if I am right that the US ground troops engaged in assaults such as Fallujah, Tal Afar and Qaim are doing more harm than good and there is no cavalry coming to the rescue any time soon?

I'm suggesting that the sort of tactics used in northern Afghanistan be retrofitted. The Northern Alliance fighters (surely not that much better than the current Iraqi army) accepted Special Ops embeds. They told the Special Ops guys where the Taliban positions were, and the GIs put lasers on the targets and called down smart air strikes on warlord HQs, tanks, etc. Once the Taliban positions were disrupted and their armor and machine guns taken out, the Northern Alliance could advance on cities like Mazar and take them, even on horseback. I think the same sorts of synergies can be deployed to protect, e.g., the Green Zone from the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement should it mount an aggressive army to march on parliament.

Many readers have told me that this tactic would not prevent car bombings or other killings. That is correct. Nothing can prevent the low-intensity guerrilla war from continuing, probably for a decade or more. The question is only if it can be kept from escalating into a civil war that kills a million Iraqis and sparks a generalized Middle East war.

I am arguing for a defensive set of tactics, not offensive. I think I am probably the first observer in Iraq to speak out consistently against US bombing raids on civilian neighborhoods in Iraqi cities. I don't know where Cockburn gets his weird misinterpretation of what I said.

If Mr. Cockburn has any realistic ideas for preventing this outcome, I'd be glad to hear them. But, he can't just dismiss the possibility of massive killing-- that would be intellectually dishonest and morally reprehensible. The real possibility exists. How to guard against it?
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Sunni Arabs Launch Political Campaign to Kick US Out

Three small Sunni parties formed a coalition list on Wednesday. The Iraqi Islamic Party, the National Dialogue Council and the People's Gathering will join forces to contest the December 15 elections.

Before anyone gets too excited about this development, it should be noted that Reuters goes on to report,

' "Our political program will focus more on getting the Americans out of Iraq," Hussein al-Falluji, a prominent Sunni who took part in talks on the constitution, told Reuters. "Our message to the American administration is clear: get out of Iraq or set a timetable for withdrawal or the resistance will keep slaughtering your soldiers until Judgment Day." '

How this is good news for the Bush administration I do not understand, but that is the way that Rupert Murdoch will spin it on Fox Cable News.

The other thing to remember is that most Sunni Arabs in Iraq are not followers of the Iraqi Islamic Party, which is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood mainly based in Mosul. A lot of Sunni Arabs are still secular Arab nationalists. Al-Hayat pointed out recently that there is a fair Baath constituency in Iraq still, which some parties are angling for. Even among religious Sunnis, opinion polls show that Hareth al-Dhari of the Association of Muslim Scholars is far more popular than Muhsin Abdul Hamid of IIP.

Still, the Sunni Arabs will certainly improve their position in parliament on December 15.

Al-Hayat says that Muqtada al-Sadr is attempting to form a coalition list that will run with Sunni Muslims in Anbar. There has been a pan-Islamic tinge to the cooperation of hardline Shiite nationalist Muqtada with hardline Sunni nationalists such as the Association of Muslim Scholars.

AP is reporting that the Sadrists will largely stay in the United Iraqi Alliance. It also says that Grand Ayatollah Sistani is not endorsing the largely Shiite UIA this time around, having been disappointed by the performance of the Jaafari government. Personally, I think that the control of 9 provinces by the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and its allies gives the UIA such a strong party "machine" in the provinces that they no longer need Sistani's endorsement to win.

AP also says that the Iraqi National Congress, which leans more to the secular side (but actually you could say it just leans to any side that benefits it at any time), has split from the UIA. Unless it gets a big infusion of foreign money and buys a lot of votes, I'd be surprised if the INC can win more than a handful of seats running on its own in a free election.

The Iraqi Electoral Commission has released the distribution of seats by province. The distribution seems to me grossly unfair to the Kurds and incredibly generous to the Sunni Arabs, but it is unlikely that the Sunni Arabs will be able to take advantage of this opportunity, because so many of them reject the idea of elections in the shadow of foreign military occupation, while others will be afraid to come out and vote, for fear of guerrilla reprisals. About 45 seats will not be contested by election as I understand it, but will be appointed in some way. That would leave about 230 in play in the elections. [I've been corrected that the 45 seats are not appointed but will be distributed by some complicated formula among parties that did not reach a certain threshold or perhaps also that did.)

How the 230 would be apportioned in the election can only be guessed out. But let me just do a thought experiment to see what is likely to happen. I am not making tight predictions, just thinking heuristically to get the likely lay of the land.

Below, I am going to arrange the seats by likely ethnic outcome:

Sunni Arabs:

Al-Anbar 9
Salahuddin 8
Ninevah 19

I think the Sunni Arab lists will get all the seats in Anbar and Salahuddin, for 17. I think they will pick up about 10 in Ninevah (they would get more, but the turnout may be light among Sunni Arabs, throwing a disproportionate number of seats to the Kurds and perhaps Shiite Turkmen). So that is 27.

Other places the Sunnis could pick up some seats are:

Babil 11
Baghdad 59
Diyalah 10

However, if the constitutional referendum was any guide, the Sunni Arabs seem unlikely actually to compete well in these mixed provinces. Again, in provinces such as Anbar and Salahuddin where they are the vast majority, light turnout will still produce Sunni seats in parliament. But in the mixed provinces, light Sunni turnout would allow Shiites to pick up most of the seats. I think this is what will happen. From the three provinces above, the Sunni Arabs could pick up as few as 15 seats. They could also get a few seats here and there elsewhere.

So, the Sunni representation in the new parliament could increase from the current 17 to more like 45 to 50. But I think this is the upper range. Obviously, this group could easily be outvoted by the Shiites and Kurds.

The Kurds

Duhok 7
Erbil 13
Sulaimaniyah 15
Kirkuk 9

The Kurds will get almost all the seats in the three northern provinces where they predominate, for a total of about 35. I suspect they will get about 5 of the Kirkuk seats, though it could be more if there is light Sunni Arab turnout. Call it 40.

They can also pick up some seats from some mixed provinces, say 7 or so from Ninevah and a few from Diyalah. There are said to be a lot of Kurds in Baghdad province (several hundred thousand), and they could get 5 or so there. Call it 55.

So, I think the Kurds will be cut down from their current 78 seats to only about 50 or 55, and they they will have only a few more seats than the Sunni Arabs or perhaps only be equal to them.

The Shiites:

Basra 16
Karbala 6
Maysan 7
Muthanna 5
Najaf 8
Qadisiyah 8
Dhi Qar 12
Wasit 8

I believe that the Shiite religious parties will dominate all of the Shiite-majority provinces. There are 70 seats above, and all but a handful will go to the United Iraqi Alliance or its successors. (The Basra middle class could vote for Iyad Allawi's secular list or for the INC. But it has been devastated as a constituency by decades of poor economy, with many of its members driven into poverty or abroad. It is easy to be surprised in making these prognostications, but if the secular parties got more than 3-5 seats from Basra, I would be astonished. I doubt anyone in Dhi Qar or Wasit would vote for them, and certainly not in Karbala or Najaf).

Then let's revisit the mixed provinces:

Babil 11
Baghdad 59
Diyalah 10

The religious Shiites could pick up as many as 60 of these 80 seats. Remember that they may also pick up stray seats in mixed provinces such as Ninevah and Kirkuk. So the religious Shiites could have 130 seats easily. They need 138 for a simple majority. They could get it. But in any case they will be close to a simple majority, and would probably only need to find a couple of small lists with which to ally in order to form a government. Moreover, there is the wild card of the 45 or so seats that will be allocated by redistribution afterward. If any of them go to the religious Shiites, it would clench it.

You could also imagine an alliance of the Shiite fundamentalists with the Iraqi Islamic Party on issues such as Islamic law. If that development occurred, I suspect it would hasten Kurdish secession, since the Arabs could consistently outvote the more secular-leaning Kurdish bloc if they united.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

More on Niger-gate

Part One of an article in La Repubblica about the Niger uranium forgeries has been translated and made available. Part two has been made available here. And this is Part 3.

Laura Rozen has been on this story for a couple of years now, and her remarks are important. Scroll down.

The new information is that Nicolo Pollari, head of Italian military intelligence (SISMI), met with deputy director of the national security council, Stephen Hadley. SISMI circles, with their American acolytes on the right, are suspected of having a hand in the creation and distribution of the forgeries alleging Iraqi purchases of Niger yellowcake uranium. Such a meeting is unusual, since foreign officials usually meet their own peers. So Pollari should have been meeting with the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, not with a high national security council staffer. If Hadley gathered intelligence from Pollari, I suspect it may even have been illicit. (See below*).

This meeting could be important, because as I remember the story, Hadley authorized the claims in Bush's State of the Union address about Iraqi purchases of African uranium. Bush kept wanting to put the claim in, and the CIA kept making him take it back out, as the Washington Post reported in 2003. When the CIA wouldn't sign off on the Niger uranium claims, someone in Rice's national security council staff (I remember it as Hadley) suggested that it be sourced instead to "British intelligence." But I suspect "British intelligence" is actually a euphemism for "Italian military intelligence." Anyway, Tenet was forced to go along with the change as long as the CIA did not have to certify it was correct. He later apologized even for that much of a lapse. But of course Hadley should have been made to resign.

If Pollari passed the Niger forgeries over to Hadley, that was a form of intelligence gathering on Hadley's part and should have been reported to the Senate Intelligence committee according to the 1947 National Security Act:

' REPORTING OF INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES OTHER THAN COVERT ACTIONS

SEC. 502. [50 U.S.C. 413a] To the extent consistent with due regard for the protection from unauthorized disclosure of classified information relating to sensitive intelligence sources and methods or other exceptionally sensitive matters, the Director of Central Intelligence and the heads of all departments, agencies, and other entities of the United States Government involved in intelligence activities shall -

(1) keep the congressional intelligence committees fully and currently informed of all intelligence activities, other than a covert action (as defined in section 503(e)), which are the responsibility of, are engaged in by, or are carried out for or on behalf of, any department, agency, or entity of the United States Government, including any significant anticipated intelligence activity and any significant intelligence failure; and

(2) furnish the congressional intelligence committees any information or material concerning intelligence activities, other than covert actions, which is within their custody or control, and which is requested by either of the congressional intelligence committees in order to carry out its authorized responsibilities. '

Not to mention that if Hadley believed those forgeries to be true, he is a fool. Elbaradei of the International Atomic Energy Commission was able to show they were false in an afternoon with some google searches.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

The Amazing Shrinking Donkey

Arianna Huffington nails it: the Democratic leadership is continuing to make a big mistake on the Iraq issue by refusing to provide the alternative voice that the American public truly wants. Ironically, Republicans like Chuck Hagel are taking the more courageous stance. If 2008 came and it were Hilary with her AIPAC speeches versus a veteran like Hagel asking hard questions about the Iraq misadventure, my guess is that Hagel wins hands down.

After Arianna posted, Senator John Kerry called for a drawdown of 20,000 US troops by the end of this year and bringing all of them out by the end of 2006. But this sort of "troops out ASAP" policy is not realistic. If Kerry wants there to be a December 15, election, then he needs to acknowledge the need for 150,000 or so troops to be in Iraq so as to lock the country down and stop vehicular traffic so that suicide bombers don't blow up the voters at polling stations. And, you couldn't get 20,000 out by the end of December if they were still there on December 17. You could physically succeed in getting US troops out by the end of 2006, of course. But 20,000 out this year makes no sense. (Actually there will be a drawdown after the elections anyway; Rumsfeld sent an extra 10,000 for the election season and they'll come back out). I'm glad Kerry addressed Iraq. Now he has to do so with something more practical than applause lines.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

A Shining Beacon on a Hill
Iraq and Israel/Palestine

The Neoconservatives promised us that an American-dominated Iraq would become a model for the rest of the Middle East.

Iraq has been turned, by the mismanagement of Bush and the Neoconservatives at the Department of Defense, into a hellhole of suicide bombings and subterranean campaigns of ethnic cleansing. Another 14 Iraqis were killed in guerrilla violence on Wednesday. And, groups like the Association of Muslim Scholars charge the Shiite Badr Corps with waging a "campaign of extermination" against Sunni Arabs. Hard line Shiites launch the same accusation at Sunni Arab extremists. Suicide bombings planned out from Sunni Arab cities draw retaliation in the form of US air raids.

But you know what? At least the Neocons were right about "Iraq the Model."


Therewas a gruesome suicide bombing in Israel which the Palestinian al-Jihad al-Islami said that it carried out to avenge the Israeli murder of its leader on the West Bank last Monday.

So then the Israelis bombed Gaza in retaliation.

Then on Wednesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who stole the Iranian election last June, talked about wiping Israel off the face of the earth." His (stupid and monstrous) speech underlined what kind of trouble Ariel Sharon's policies of annexing all of Jerusalem and gradually cleansing it of Muslims is likely to cause in the Middle East. So we have the same language about ethnic groups being wiped out, as in Iraq.

Yup, suicide bombings, retaliatory air strikes, charges and counter-charges of ethnic cleansing, and genocidal threats.

Iraq has become the model for the Middle East.

Or, was it the other way around?
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Iraq requires more sacrifice: Bush
Constitution Enacted, According to Electoral High Commission

It takes an Aussie newspaper to put the headline so bluntly. As the milestone of 2,000 US military deaths in Iraq since the beginning of the war passed on Tuesday, " Iraq requires more sacrifice: Bush." Now Bush is menacing us with Usamah Bin Laden taking over Iraq. Note that this scenario would have been utterly laughable in 2002. That is, anyone who heard that Bush thought Usamah Bin Ladin could overthrow Saddam and take over Iraq would have just fallen down laughing. Saddam would have had all the al-Qaeda people just taken out and shot. Twice. It was risible. Now, Bush has screwed up things so royally that he can even say this with a straight face. (It still is fairly ridiculous, since 80 percent of Iraqi is Shiites and Kurds who would kill Usamah on sight, and few Iraqi Sunni Arabs would want a fugitive Saudi terrorist as their leader). It is George W. Bush's fault if this outcome is at all plausible. His policies have reduced Iraq to violent chaos, and he is the one who let Usamah escape at Tora Bora. And then he made the US military lie about it during the presidential campaign! Impeachment is too good for this kind of dishonesty and incompetence. Actually I have to just stop writing about this now before my blood pressure goes into the 200s. Usamah in Iraq, indeed.

Al-Hayat: The Iraqi High Electoral Commission announced that 78.4 percent of Iraqis who voted in the constitutional referendum approved the new constitution. But there were enormous differences among the provinces, which observers expected to result in increased violence. The two largely Sunni Arab provinces of Anbar and Salahuddin rejected the constitution by a wide margin. The third province where they might have done so was Ninevah, and if they had succeeded in mustering a two-thirds majority against it there, it would have failed. As it was, the official tally against in Ninevah was 55.08 percent.

The Kurdistan Alliance and the United Iraqi Alliance, the two coalitions that dominated parliament and produced the constitution, hailed its passage as "historic" and said it would help fight terrorism.

Nancy Youssef of Knight Ridder reports on the extreme suspicion with which the results were viewed by Sunni Arabs and by Shiites of the Sadr Movement.

A constitution should be a bargain and a compromise among the major factions in a nation. If a single bloc like the Sunni Arabs of Iraq rejects the constitution, then it isn't really a constitution. And this one guarantees that the guerrilla war goes on for a long time.

Al-Hayat: Sunni figure Salih Mutlak complained that the tallying in Ninevah was carried out by Peshmerga militiamen, who, he alleged, tampered with the ballots. He insisted that the vote in Ninevah was in fact 2/3s against, and that the constitution had really failed, even if the elected Iraqi government would not recognize it. Mutlak intimated that the Sunni Arabs would now boycott the December 15 parliamentary elections.

Three car bombs exploded in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah, resulting in the deaths of 13 Peshmerga militiamen. This city is the power base of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, and the Sunni Arab guerrillas are underlining that they can reach into any corner of the country. No one is safe. In other attacks, guerrilla violence killed 2 US GIs and 11 Iraqis.

Al-Sabah: Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari dedicated $182 million to the southern port city of Basra, much of it to be used to build two new docks. Jaafari and his government will go to the polls on December 15.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Ship of State Springs a Leak

James Ridgeway of the Village Voice recalls the ghost of corrupt vice presidents past in the light of the NYT's revelations Tuesday that Richard Bruce Cheney was the one who revealed the name of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson to his chief of staff, Irving Lewis Libby.

Libby had earlier maintained that he learned the name from a "journalist."

If both things are true, it makes perfect sense of our weird American news reporting. Cheney isn't just "a" journalist, he is The Journalist--who calls up Roger Ailes at Fox Cable News and tells him what to report and how. Why, Jimmy Olson and Clark Kent are pikers compared to super-Dick.

Or it could just be that Libby was lying, in which case he gets Martha Stewart's old cell.

I saw Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison say that she hoped Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald would not bring a charge like perjury, which would be a sign that he could not discover a real crime, or words to that effect. She was speaking off the current Republican Party talking points aimed at spinning this scandal.

So let's get this straight. The Republicans roiled the country for two years and impeached Clinton for lying about sex under oath, but now all of a sudden perjury is a minor crime not worth bothering about. Remember that 1998 was a period when Clinton needed to focus on the threat of al-Qaeda, but he was being distracted by the Republican bulldogs and everything he did about al-Qaeda was dismissed as "wag the dog." Vicious partisan politics was put before the benefit of the nation. (Many of the major Republican figures who impeached Clinton had themselves had affairs and covered them up, and besides, who cared or cares?)

But what Cheney, Libby and Rove did was not just a private impropriety. The leak of Valerie Plame Wilson's identity did enormous harm to US national security, since it blew the cover of the dummy corporation the Company was using to investigate weapons of mass destruction proliferation.

Although it was not illegal for Cheney to share classified information with Libby, since both had clearances, there is a question of whether the idea of leaking Valerie's name originated with Cheney. Even if that were not true, there is a question of propriety. Undercover CIA operatives' names should not be bandied about without some serious purpose. At a time of a War on Terror, when the nation's security is under assault by a sinister and determined terrorist organization, do we want a vice president in the White House who has the kind of loose lips that sink ships?
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

37 Dead as Palestine Hotel is Attacked


A set of 3 powerful bombings in Baghdad, along with other attacks and violence, left 37 dead and dozens wounded on Monday. Among the dead in Baghdad, al-Zaman says, was the director of the biggest of the American security companies in Iraq, which is responsible for safeguarding the big personalities and diplomats.

The full force of the bomb blasts, some of which targeted the Palestine Hotel (frequented by foreigners and journalists), is visible in a CNN Video (sorry, you have to scroll down or search for the video-- I could not find a way to bookmark it past the javascript.) You could see the flash of the first bomb, and the mushroom cloud of the second (all big bombs produce mushroom clouds). These huge bombings occurred around Firdaws Square, where in April of 2003 US troops helped pull down statues of Saddam Hussein. Nearly 2 1/2 years later, the US no more controls Firdaws Square than it controls the surface of Mars.

Twelve workers were found dead in Jurf al-Sakhr south of Baghdad; usually these murders are sectarian in character. Moroccan diplomats appear to have been kidnapped on the road between Iraq and Jordan. A car bomber detonated his payload near a US convoy in Mosul. In Hilla, guerrillas used mortar fire to kill Muhsin Abdul A'imah, a leader of the Badr Corps and three of his guards.

The US military on Monday announced that a GI had been killed at Ramadi.

In Fallujah, about 700 local police took over security duties from the Ministry of Interior gendarmes (the latter mostly Shiites and Badr Corps). (-Al-Zaman & AP).

The Iraqi election commission released some numbers concerning the recent constitutional referendum. Numbers for only 14 of 18 provinces were released, and they revealed that Sunni Arabs were hostile or lukewarm. The numbers for the key Ninevah province have not yet surfaced.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Rupert Murdoch and Judith Miller

The extraordinary exchanges between New York Times editor Bill Keller and reporter Judith Miller over her role in the Plame scandal and reporting on non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq have suggested to me a wider context of the entire matter.

The wider context is that Rupert Murdoch, and Richard Mellon Scaife, and other far rightwing billionaires have deeply corrupted our information environment. They are in part responsible for what happened at the NYT.

Miller attempts to excuse her shoddy reporting on Iraq's imaginary weapons of mass destruction by saying that "everyone" got that story wrong. But the State Department Intelligence and Research Division did not get it wrong. The Department of Energy analysts were correct that the aluminum tubes couldn't be used to construct centrifuges. Elbaradei of the International Atomic Energy Commission was not wrong. Imad Khadduri, former Iraqi nuclear scientist, was not wrong. "Everybody" got it wrong only in the sense that "everybody" had been brainwashed by Rupert Murdoch.

As Rightweb notes:

' His Fox News was singled out for criticism because of its blatantly one-sided coverage of the war in Iraq and for printing unsubstantiated stories about the conflict. When CNN reporter Christian Amanpour blamed Fox for creating "a climate of fear and self-censorship" regarding coverage of Iraq, a Fox spokeswoman shot back, "Given the choice, it's better to be viewed as a foot soldier for Bush than a spokeswoman for al-Qaeda." Said Murdoch of the war, "The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be $20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax cut in any country." '

Gee, we got $60 a barrel oil instead. You wonder how someone so stupid got to be so rich (hint: stabbing people in the back is more lucrative than canny market research).

So here is how Murdoch and Fox and the Right in general tie into the NYT scandal. They stalked the Times. If you lexis Fox "News" transcripts and the NYT in the period between September 11 and the Iraq War, you find a constant stream of attacks. Brit Hume even waxed wrathful that the Times urged Tiger Woods not to play golf on a course at a club that excluded women.

Here's Bill O'Reilly on September 10, 2002:

'In the "Unresolved Problem" segment tonight, according to "The New York Times," some American diplomats are outraged that the USA is denying visas to young Muslims overseas. The "Times" reporter was extremely distraught by this. That's is no surprise since a new study by Center for Media and Public Affairs says that "The Times" and network news, as we mentioned in the "Talking Points" memo, skew against President Bush in his view of Iraq. '

But the big attack on the Times was in summer of 2002, when it was accused of paying no attention to Ahmad Chalabi and others who were alleging Iraqi weapons of mass destruction programs. It was even blamed for for Bush Senior National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft not liking the idea of an Iraq War (Fox News Sunday, Aug. 25, 2002):

' CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: It's a question here also of timing. I'm not sure the administration really wanted to have the debate heat up in August. This is not the administration directing the pace of this debate. It was the opposition who, after eight months, after all the president launched all this in his State of the Union address when he talked about the axis of evil and emphasized Iraq, it's the opposition that has now seized the day and made its case, starting with the Scowcroft piece and the assist from the New York Times. '

I spoke last year about the attack Andrew Sullivan launched in Murdoch's London Times on NYT editor Howell Raines for not cheerleading Bush's building Iraq War. Sullivan had been especially incensed that the NYT gave no credence to the Iraqi expatriates on the nuclear issue.

So in this polluted information environment, in which Howell Raines's view of reality, which was perfectly correct, was constantly pilloried by powerful rightwing media as nothing short of treason, there was every incentive to give Judith Miller her head. Remember that the NYT is a commercial publication. All major newspapers were seeing their subscription base shrink. After September 11, the country had moved substantially to the right on national security issues. The Times could easily go bankrupt if it loses touch with the sentiments of the American reading public. There is a lot at stake in the Murdoch et al. assault on the NYT. In its absence, the information environment in the US would be even more rightwing. I've even rethought my own rash response to its editorial on the Columbia Middle East studies issue last spring.

The NYT had no sources to speak of inside the Bush administration, a real drawback in covering Washington, because it was a left of center newspaper in a political environment dominated by the Right. Miller had sources among the Neoconservatives, with whom she shared some key concerns (biological weapons, the threat of Muslim radicalism, etc.) So she could get the Washington "scoops." And her perspective skewed Right in ways that could protect the NYT from charges that it was consistently biased against Bush. Of course, in retrospect, Bush's world was a dangerous fantasy, and giving it space on the front page of the NYT just sullied the Grey Lady with malicious prevarications.

I have been told that Miller was also important in hiring decisions, and she probably created her own base of clientelage among new hires over time. It has been alleged to me that senior neo-conservative-leaning reporters at the Times at one point blocked the hiring of an Arab-American reporter. I have this from a single source and cannot be sure it is true, and cannot be sure that Miller was part of it if it was. But that she could affect the careers of her colleagues at the paper does seem clear and helps explain why even those critical of her had to tread lightly.

Raines began the strategy of letting Miller's stories act as responses to the constant attacks from the Right. But then he had to resign when he was caught up in the Jayson Blair scandal (like Miller, Blair made things up, and like Miller, Blair was unsupervised; unlike Miller, he was caught fairly early on).

The Blair scandal was red meat to NYT critics and the whole rightwing Sound Machine. I suspect that for the paper to face the Miller problem at that moment in 2003 might have seemed fatal to its credibility on the parts of Keller and owner Sulzberger. And, there are rumors that Miller had Sulzberger wrapped around her pinky.

So Bill Keller comes on board. And there are these complaints about Miller

So this is the larger context of Keller's recent remarks:

' First, I wish I had dealt with the controversy over our coverage of WMD first thing upon becoming executive editor. At the time, I thought I had compelling reasons for kicking the issue down the road. The paper had just been through a major trauma, the Jason Blair episode, and needed to regain its equilibrium. It felt somehow unsavory to begin my tenure by attacking the previous regime. I was trying to get my arms around a huge new job, appoint my team, get the paper fully back to normal, and I feared the WMD issue could become a crippling distraction. So it was a year before we got around to really dealing with the controversy. At that point we published that long editor's note acknowledging the pre-war journalistic lapses, and -- to my mind at least as important -- launched a body of aggressive reporting aimed at exposing how bad or manipulated intelligence had fed the drive to war. (I'm thinking of our excellent investigation of how those infamous aluminum tubes became a supposed smoking gun, the report on how the Iraqi National Congress recruited exiles to promote the notion of Saddam's WMD threat, our close look at the military's war-planning intelligence, and several other pieces. Critics sometimes overlook the fact that lot of the best reporting on how this intel fiasco transpired appeared in the NYT.) By waiting a year to own up to our mistakes, I allowed the anger inside and outside the paper to fester. Worse, I fear I fostered an impression that The Times put a higher premium on protecting its reporters than on coming clean with its readers. If I had lanced the WMD boil earlier, I suspect our critics -- at least the honest ones -- might have been less inclined to suspect that, THIS time, the paper was putting the defense of a reporter above the duty to its readers.

Second, I wish that when I learned Judy Miller had been subpoenaed as a witness in the leak investigation I had sat her down for a thorough debriefing, and followed up with some reporting of my own. It is a natural and proper instinct to defend reporters when the government seeks to interfere in our work. And under other circumstances it might have been fine to entrust the details -- the substance of the confidential interviews, the notes -- to lawyers who would be handling to case. But in this case I missed what should have been significant alarm bells. Until Fitzgerald came after her, I didn't know that Judy had been one of the reporters on the receiving end of the anti-Wilson whisper campaign. I should have wondered why I was learning this from the special counsel, a year after the fact. (After the initial leak to Robert Novak in 2003, we asked the Washington Bureau to ask our correspondents whether any of them had been offered similar leaks. As we reported last Sunday, Judy seems to have misled Phil Taubman about the extent of her involvement.) This alone should have been enough to make me probe deeper. '

In essence, Murdoch, Scaife and other far rightwing super-rich propagandists succeeded in maligning the NYT and in pushing it off its liberal perch even further to the Right. In trying to defend themselves from the charge of treason, Raines and Keller fell into the trap of using Miller's shoddy reporting as a rampart. In the end, it was revealed to be not a rampart but a Trojan Horse for the Right.

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I liked the discussion of this posting at the Democratic Underground, and thought several of the posters added importantly to my argument.
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Wave of Assassinations, Bombings
Oil Exports Halted

Here's the headline of The Times of Baghdad [al-Zaman] for Monday, October 24, 2005: Wave of Assassinations in Tikrit, Baqubah, Ramadi, and Mahawil; Oil Exports Halted from Basra & Ceyhan; Kidnapping of Director of Resources at Southern Petroleum Co.; A Sudanese Detonates a Car Bomb Near an American Patrol at Kirkuk.

Guerrillas detonated bombs in Baghdad, Kirkuk and Tikrit, killing some 20 Iraqis and wounding even more, along with five US GIs.

Veteran reporter Hamza Hendawi notes that the guerrilla war shows no sign of abating.

The guerrilla forces in Iraq are sharing information on building roadside bombs with one another, and are becoming increasingly sophisticated. In particular, they are now using pressure-sensitive triggers instead of having to detonate the bombs remotely. You wonder how long it will be before all this expertise is used against the US homeland.

Many of the more than 15,000 US military personnel wounded in Iraq have grievous injuries.

Iraq Body Count, Reuters says, estimates that 38 Iraqis die in violence every day. Over thirty-five years, that would amount to nearly 500,000 dead. In fact, it is estimated that the Baath party killed 300,000 Iraqis, so the current rate seems to be greater than the Baath rate. (The number of civilians killed by the Baath is probably in fact exaggerated. Only a few thousand bodies have been recovered from mass graves so far.)

A poll of Iraqis commissioned for the British military came up with the following findings:

'• Forty-five per cent of Iraqis believe attacks against British and American troops are justified - rising to 65 per cent in the British-controlled Maysan province;
• 82 per cent are "strongly opposed" to the presence of coalition troops;
• less than one per cent of the population believes coalition forces are responsible for any improvement in security;
• 67 per cent of Iraqis feel less secure because of the occupation;
• 43 per cent of Iraqis believe conditions for peace and stability have worsened;
• 72 per cent do not have confidence in the multi-national forces. '

The Telegraph also earlier reported that a British plan to draw down its forces in southern Iraq has had to be shelved because of continued poor security. But the Iraqis are saying they'll take their chances with poor security.

The way the Telegraph reports the poll makes me wonder if it is really nationwide. Maysan is dominated by Marsh Arabs who tend to support Muqtada al-Sadr, so it is not urprising that 65 percent of them want coalition troops out now. But even greater numbers of Sunni Arabs want them out immediately, so why mention Maysan as having an unusually large number of anti-coalition residents?

As I noted in a BBC interview on Sunday, A USA Today poll in April, 2004, came up with similar findings. Then, 57 percent of Iraqis wanted coalition troops out immediately, and about half said that there were circumstances in which it was legitimate to attack US troops. Attitudes now are more negative, but the attitudes revealed in the British Ministry of Defense poll have been there for some time on about the same orders of magnitude.

US troops continue to face a special challenge in Ramadi and other cities of Anbar province.

The petroleum exports occurred in part because of sabotage, in part because of weather. Unknown persons kidnapped Khidir Fathullah, the director of resources at the Southern Oil Company in Basra from in front of his home when he set out for work.

Oil exports from Ceyhan in Turkey via pipelines from Kirkuk were halted because of 4 explosions at the oil fields at Kirkuk. (In a recent 60 Minutes interview, Vice Premier and notorious liar Ahmad Chalabi claimed to have perfected a new guard system for the pipelines that had stopped the sabotage.) The bombs that went off on Sunday will probably stop northern exports for a month.

Dust storms and high winds, producing choppy water in the Oil Gulf, have also stopped the loading of petroleum onto ships at Basra since Friday. Iraq has only been able to produce 1.8 million barrels a day this year, down from the past few.

Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa gained the approval of Kurdish leaders Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani (current Iraqi president) for the conference of national reconciliation he plans to host in Cairo. The Iraqi Kurds had earlier been annoyed with the Arab League, but Moussa praised their role in building a new Iraq.

I saw a spokesman for the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq today on Aljazeera saying that SCIRI favors the conference, as well, but had been critical of Moussa for not having held it long before now. (The subtext here is that Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, SCIRI leader, has long been outraged by the generally pro-Saddam sentiments in the Arab League, and its failure to condemn the massacres of Shiites. Modern Arab nationalism is inflected as "Sunni" in the same way that American nationalism tends to be inflected as "white.")

Al-Zaman/ AFP: The recent kidnapping and killing of an attorney involved in the defense of a Saddam associate has provoked a strike on Wednesday by the attorneys in Baghdad. Some are also calling for a boycott of the trial of Saddam by trial lawyers until the killers of Saadoun al-Janabi are apprehended. The man killed was from the Janabi clan, and the clan leader alleged on Sunday that the murder was committed by the Badr Corps, the Iran-trained paramilitary of the fundamentalist Shiite SCIRI party. Such charges are explosive at a time of constant Sunni-Shiite violence, and are harbingers of the kind of raw emotions and perhaps violence that are likely to be stirred up by the trial of Saddam.

Al-Hayat [Arabic] is reporting that Iraqi political parties are scrambling to put together joint lists again. It says that the fundamentalist Shiite Dawa Party has decided to run again with the fundamentalist Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. The Fadilah (Virtue) Party may join that list, as well. But SCIRI is trying to attract some secular and Sunni candidates so as to combat the impression that its United Iraqi Alliance is a Shiite cat's paw of Iran. Al-Hayat says that the Kurdistan Alliance is exploring a coalition with religious Sunni parties. Several groups are negotiating to join the secular list of Iyad Allawi. For a while it seemed that the Iraqi Islamic Party (mildly fundamentalist Sunnis) might join Allawi, but it has decided to run alone. One subtext of the article is that both the Kurds and Allawi are trying to find ways to attract votes from the vast number of voters who used to support the secular Arab nationalist Baath Party.

A British colonel and battalion commander is resigning and leaving Iraq in protest at the failure of the Coalition governments to provide properly armored vehicles to his troops. One was killed by a roadside bomb last week.
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Syria and the Fundamentalist Crescent?

Some kind readers have requested that I say something about the report of UN-appointed German diplomat Detlev Mehlis concerning the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, the former prime minister of Lebanon. Mehlis is a careful and determined investigator and his findings, which fingered persons in the direct circle of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Asad, are explosive for the area.

Mark LeVine has commented on this issue at his blog at the History News Network.

And, of course, the go-to blog for Syria is that of Josh Landis, who is burning up the track these days with a series of newsworthy revelations about US/Syria relations. These include that NSC chief Steven Hadley asked the Italians about a possible successor to Bashar al-Asad, and that Syrian cooperation with the US on the terrorism front has been extensive and unrequited (because Bush wants to overthrow the Baath regime.)

I was surprised about Hadley and the Italians, since it is surely the French who would be consulted on this issue. They have been as aggressively anti-Syrian in Lebanon as the US.

Personally, I have been convinced by the series of bombings in Lebanon against anti-Syrian personalities (most recently May Shidyaq, the LBC journalist and interviewer), that high-level Syrian secret police officials are on a rampage. Whereas when Hariri was killed, his was only the second high-profile such assassination, and I found an al-Qaeda hit on him plausible (given his long association with the Saudi royal family), the subsequent string of such killings made that theory less and less likely. Mehlis's report seems to me highly credible. The only question left is whether al-Asad himself is implicated, or whether the Baathist Old Guard (which checked his reformist tendencies) has been operating behind his back. That his brother is implicated, as Mark LeVine says, is pretty damning, though.

The Bush administration wishes to take advantage of the scandal to push the Baath Party out of power. The likely successor in Syria, however, is the Muslim Brotherhood. If you had an MB state in Syria, it would certainly menace the stability of Jordan and very possibly of Saudi Arabia. You'd have a possible Fundamentalist Muslim Axis, stretching from Tehran to Basra to Damascus, then down to Amman and Maan, and over to Gaza. It would have problems of cohesion because of the Sunni-Shiite divide, but on issues like Israel the two can generally agree. Al-Sharaq al-Awsat had a piece not so long ago about how the Israelis had decided that having a weak Bashar al-Asad in power in Syria might be preferable to most likely alternatives. But Bush doesn't have the common sense of the Israeli officer corps, and is better at breaking things than gluing them together.
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Galbraith on Iraqi Army, Partition

Former Ambassador Peter Galbraith wrote in response to a posting of last Thursday, and has kindly agreed to allow me to reprint the letter here:

' Dear Professor Cole:

. . . You quoted today the Brattleboro Reformer’s account of my remarks last night to the Windham World Affairs Council. You noted a transcription error in my description of the sorry state of Iraqi military and said you would seek clarification. I am happy to provide it.

I described the Iraqi Army as consisting of nine Kurdish battalions, sixty Shiite battalions, and 45 Sunni Arab battalions. There is exactly one mixed battalion. The Kurdish battalions have no Arab officers, while there are a few Kurdish and Sunni Arab officers with Shiite battalions. Being a Kurdish or Shiite officer of the Sunni Arab battalions is risky, so there are not many at all. This is hardly the picture of a national institution. I also noted that up to half the nominal troop strength consists of ghost soldiers. As there is no direct deposit in Iraq, the battalion command can pocket the salaries of soldiers that don’t exist, so there is an incentive to maintain full strength on paper. More of this can be found in my October 6 article in the New York Review of Books, “Iraq’s Last Chance”, which also analyzes
the new Constitution.

You also describe me as advocating the break up of Iraq. My position is slightly different. I argue that Iraq has already broken up, and that it will be much more costly—in terms of lives and money—to put it back together than to accept the new reality. One reason I like the new Constitution is that I believe it is
realistic.

You argue that partition could lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths, but you ignore the fact that holding Iraq together has already cost well more than
100,000 lives in the various Kurdistan wars.

I also think you draw the wrong lessons from the break-up of Yugoslavia, about which I have a certain experience.* The US and Europeans focused on trying to hold Yugoslavia together when there was no way to do so. Instead, US and European diplomacy should have focused on the issues that caused the war. The war was
preventable; the break up was not.

I do not believe it is possible to keep people in a state they hate, and the Kurds clearly want out of Iraq. I do not think the break up of the rest of Iraq is inevitable, but it is possible.

Saddam murdered over 100,000 Kurds, used poison gas, and destroyed more than 4000 villages in Kurdistan as part of his effort to keep Iraq united. Mismanaged
divorce can be costly, but so is an unwanted marriage. The human cost of holding Iraq together may be much higher than that of a negotiated separation.

All the best.

Peter Galbraith '

When I mentioned to him that I didn't see sentiment for partition among the Arab Iraqis, he kindly replied:

' I agree that the situation of Kurdistan is different from that of the South, and that there are not many Arab Iraqis who want their own independent state. But, I have talked to several prominent Shiite politicians who do say that they might consider separation if Iraq continues to deteriorate and if there is no accomodation with the Sunni Arabs. The "three state soluton" (plus Baghdad as a federal capital) may be the outcome in the context of a federation, but it is not necessarily precursor to the three independent countries. I see two independent states--not three--as the much more likely end result. '

*Galbraith was ambassador to Croatia
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