Iraq War Broke Back of US Counter-Terrorism: Experts


Fresh bombings and assassinations, and the discovery of 18 bodies brought the death toll in Iraq on Thursday to some 34.

A new poll of counter-terrorism and national security experts finds that 84 percent of them believe the US is not winning the war on terror, and they see the Iraq War as the reason why.

' One participant in the survey, a former CIA official who described himself as a conservative Republican, said the war in Iraq has provided global terrorist groups with a recruiting bonanza, a valuable training ground and a strategic beachhead at the crossroads of the oil-rich Persian Gulf and Turkey, the traditional land bridge linking the Middle East to Europe. "The war in Iraq broke our back in the war on terror," said the former official, Michael Scheuer, the author of Imperial Hubris, a popular book highly critical of the Bush administration’s anti-terrorism efforts. "It has made everything more difficult and the threat more existential." '

Let's list those results of the Iraq War again:

1. Recruiting bonanza for Qutbist terrorists

I.e. it was getting hard to get people to sign up for al-Qaeda-type operations after the Afghanistan War and the disruption of the organization. But what with Abu Ghraib and Fallujah, a lot of red-blooded Muslim young men are so angry that it is much easier to get their blood boiling. Hence Madrid and London.

2. Valuable training ground (and experience fighting the most sophisticated army in the world)

3. strategic beachhead at crossroads of Persian Gulf and Turkey (not so far from Europe and in the vicinity of 2/3s of the world's proven petroleum reserves).

Scheuer was on the Bin Laden desk at the CIA and knows whereof he speaks. He says the Bush war in Iraq broke our back when it comes to fighting the followers of Sayyid Qutb and Abd al-Salam Farag.

The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point has a new translation of a key al-Qaeda text outlining the Qutbists plans for America. The CTC is doing excellent work and should be supported by everyone who cares about the security of our country.

The Supreme Court ruling on Guantanamo addresses the key problem I saw with Bush administration policy toward those it has captured. Many of them are really bad characters, but it only compounds the mistake to deny them basic American rights.

If we go in that direction, we put at risk all that is most distinctive about the United States of America. The Declaration of Independence says, " We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights . . ." It doesn't say "some men."
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Members of Israeli Parliament on the Gaza Operation

The USG Open Document Center translates this report from Israeli news broadcasts in Hebrew:

Israel: Islamic Movement, MKs Comment on Gaza Operation
Israel -- OSC Report
Thursday, June 29, 2006 T17:23:50Z

Ro'i Nahmias reports at 1036 GMT on Ynetnews: "The northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel aggressively condemned the arrest of HAMAS ministers and parliament members Thursday. 'The occupation is to blame and Israel carries full responsibility for what is taking place,' a message by the movement said. The statement said that 'the arrest of ministers, parliament members, and Palestinian mayors is proof that there is no place for Palestinian sovereignty in the lexicon of the Israeli government. Therefore, it is no wonder that the 'there-is-no-partner' melody is heard over and over again.' Before releasing the statement, the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel announced a day of fasting to identify with 'our besieged Palestinian people.'" (Tel Aviv Ynetnews WWW-Text in English -- centrist news site operated by Yedi'ot Media Group)

Israel radio reports at 1200 GMT: "Meretz chairman Yosi Beilin called on the government to set the earliest possible time to end Operation Summer Rains and to take steps toward achieving a comprehensive cease-fire. The longer it takes, Beilin said, the higher the risk of sinking in the Gazan swamp. He added that their arrest turned HAMAS leaders into heroes of the Palestinian street, despite their failure to run their people's affairs. His party colleague Zehava Gal'on said the government took up a military operation whose beginning is known but whose outcome isn't. Neither is it clear how it advances the release of the abducted soldier, she said.

"MK Jamal Zahaliqah of BALAD said that capturing people as bargaining chips is what criminal gangs do, not a state. The Israeli Government is pouring fuel on the fire and deliberately escalating the situation, he added. His party colleague Azmi Bisharah said that Israel is behaving like a terror organization, and that the abduction of elected public officials is an act of terror.

"MK Arye Eldad of the National Union-NRP congratulated the government for showing the first signs of understanding that Israel is at war. His party colleague Uri Ari'el said that the fact that no senior government or army official called on the Asheri family in Itamar as soon as their son Eliyahu was kidnapped is a disgrace bordering on discrimination." (Jerusalem Voice of Israel Network B in Hebrew -- State-funded radio; independent in content)

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Israel Detains Palestinian Ministers
Knocks out Electricity to Half of Gazans

Half of the Palestinians in Gaza, who were already living pretty miserable lives after decades of marginalization and brutalization by the Israelis, were left without electricity yesterday.

Palestinian officials like Saeb Erekat rejected the idea that knocking out electricity for hundreds of thousands of people is targeting a "terrorist infrastructure." In fact, destroying electricity generation capability interferes with water purification. Palestinian children will die because of this, from drinking unpurified water. And what crime did Palestinian toddlers commit, to be murdered in this way?

The Israelis escalated the crisis by detaining Hamas government ministers. The likelihood is that the captors of the Israeli soldier are freelancers. This wasn't something plotted out by the Haniyeh government, which, in fact, recently granted a huge concession on the issue of potentially recognizing Israel.

PM Ismail Haniyeh called for the United Nations Security Council to intervene.

The ministers detained are members of a freely and democratically elected government. I can't imagine under what legal authority the Israelis have arrested them. But everyone in the Middle East can see exactly what "elections" and "democracy" amount to. Bush's promises have never seemed so hollow.

Secretary-General of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, called for the US to get involved as an honest broker. Well, I suppose miracles do happen.

I am upset about the renewed crisis in Palestine because it is an emotional issue and will spill over into Sunni Arab Iraq. It is likely that pro-Palestinian Sunni guerrillas will kill some US troops specifically to avenge the people of Gaza. This is one reason I am complaining about the massively disproportional character of the Israeli response. It has the potential of further endangering American lives in the region.

And, it is counter-productive. The Israelis can't get back their soldier by destroying electricity plants in Gaza. They can't get more security by depriving Palestinians of security.

PS Jeff Morley at WaPo does a fine piece on the beach bombing background to the current round of violence.
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Bombings in Baghdad, Baquba, Mahaweel
Guerrilla Groups offer Truce if US will Withdraw

Reuters details Iraq's ongoing civil war violence:

Guerrillas bombed a market in the Shiite quarter of Kadhimiyah, Baghdad, killing one person and wounding 8.

Guerrillas detonated a car bomb near a throng of workers who had gathered to look for work at Baquba, killing 3 and wounding 12.

Also in Baquba, guerrillas set off a bomb at a Shiite mosque, which produced no casualties. But then when policemen came running in tesponse to the first bomb, guerrillas set off a second, seriously injuring the two policemen.

A US military raid that netted a radical Islamist resulted in the death of an innocent civilian, the US military admitted.

In Mahaweel south of the capital, guerrillas detonated a roadside bomb near a police patrol, killing 1 and wounding 3.

In Falluja, guerrillas killed two policemen.

Two US GIs were announced dead, one north of Baghdad and one in al-Anbar province.

Guerrillas in the south near Samawah targeted the Australian troops with a roadside bomb, but missed.

Several Sunni Arab guerrilla groups have offered a ceasefire to the United States if the US will pledge to withdraw all foreign troops within two years.

One problem with this offer is that the goal of the guerrilla groups in their roadside bombings and other violence is . . . to get US and other foreign troops out of the country. In other words, they are seeking to get simply by asking what they have not achieved in 3 years of concerted warfare.

Another problem is that there is no guarantee that when the US presence is completely gone the guerrillas will not try to storm the Green Zone and take over.

The two largest and most important Baathist guerrilla groups (Jaysh Muhammad and Jaysh Islam al-`Iraqi), along with the Salafi Jihadis of the Mujahidin Shura Council, all declined to join in the backchannel negotiations.

Finally, the Bush administration just has no intention of getting out within two years and will blow these groups off.

Relief agencies are overwhelmed and cannot meet the needs of Iraq's 150,000 recently displaced persons.

Billmon is scathing on the hypocrisy of the Bush administration and the Republicans in congress in branding anyone who talks of troop draw-downs in Iraq as devotees of "cut and run," while Gen. Casey is clearly trying desperately to figure out plausible ways of drawing down US troops in Iraq.

The USG Open Source Center paraphrases reports from the Iraqi press for June 27:

. . . Tariq al-Sha'b runs on page 2 a 300-word report on the statement issued by a number of Iraqi parties and civil society organizations condemning Al-Mahawil police for raiding the Communist Party's headquarters. . .

Al-Zaman carries on the front page a 1,100-word report entitled "1,500 Iraqi Dinars for 1 Liter of Gasoline in Black Market; Huge Jump in Commodity Prices and Transportation Costs; Kilometers-Long Lines and 7 Hours Waiting in Front of Gas Stations." . . .

Al-Zaman carries on page 3 a 200-word report entitled "Maysan Advisory Council Declares General Strike on Wednesday and Thursday in Solidarity with Karbala Advisory Council Chairman." [The Karbala council chairman, from the Fadila Party, has been arrested for possible complicity in terrorism.] . . .

Al-Sabah carries on page 2 a 320-word report citing a source at the Kurdistan parliament saying that a senior Kurdish delegation will visit Baghdad to urge Iraqi officials to quickly solve the issue of Kirkuk . . .

Al-Bayyinah al-Jadidah carries on the front page a 350-word report citing Al-Sadr Trend member Hazim al-A'raji calling for a national reconciliation inside the parliament. He held parliament members responsible for the blood shed in Iraq. . .

Dar al-Salam carries on the front page a 180-word report citing Iraqi Al-Tawafuq Front member Salim al-Juburi saying that the front supports Nuri al-Maliki's initiative for national reconciliation, but the problem lies in the details. . .

Al-Mashriq carries on the front page a 400-word report citing Adnan al-Dulaymi calling on the Shiite religious and political scholars to open dialogue with their Sunni counterparts. . .

Al-Bayyinah al-Jadidah carries on the front page a 180-word report that a terrorist group has warned Shiite families in Al-Muqdadiyah to leave the city. . .

Al-Zaman carries on page 3 a 750-word report entitled "Baghdad Health Directorate: Campaign To Control Violations in Residential Areas; Baghdad's families Resort To Breeding Sheep To Overcome Economic Crisis."

Al-Adalah carries on page 4 a 1,500-word report on the illegal slaughtering of cattle and storing of meat.

Al-Sabah al-Jadid runs on page 4 an 80-word report on the role of unemployment and not enforcing the law in discouraging drug addiction. . .

Al-Sabah carries on page 14 a 120-word report citing director of Al-Sadr Bureau in Al-Diwaniyah saying that the bureau has started a campaign to clean up the governorate.

Al-Sabah carries on page 15 a 1,400-word report citing Karbala's inhabitants complaining about the fuel crisis in the governorate.

Al-Sabah carries on page 15 a 70-word report citing an official source in Al-Najaf Governorate saying that the governorate has signed a contract with a Bahraini company to construct a sports city at a cost of $42 million. . .

Tariq al-Sha'b carries on the back page a 600-word report entitled "Communist Party Supporters Association in Baghdad Holds Third Conference." . . .

Al-Da'wah runs on page 7 a 400-word article by Karim al-Najjar criticizing Iraqi newspapers for claiming that 5 million Iraqis issued a petition demanding the government to support Mujahidin-e-Khalq Organization. . .

Al-Bayyinah al-Jadidah carries on page 2 a 600-word article by the political editor strongly criticizing Saudi Arabia for supporting terrorism and exporting terrorists to Iraq to kill Shiites. . .

Al-Sabah al-Jadid runs on page 5 a 1,500-word report on the recent demonstration by Babil's Al-Qasim district's inhabitants, stating that the major reasons behind the demonstration were corruption and unemployment. . .

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Defending Markos
And the Discourse Revolution

I've been doing a lot of traveling recently, some of it abroad, and have barely been able to keep up with Iraq, much less with the blogosphere. I was sorry, as a result to have missed yearly Kos and to have been unable to return Markos Moulitsas's kindnesses (i.e. favorable comments and links) at that point. The internet community he fostered at Daily Kos has been absolutely central to progressive politics in the US in recent years.

I was therefore so sorry to hear that Martin Peretz at The New Republic, which he occasionally hijacks from its seasoned professional journalists for petty vendettas and cranky editorials underwritten by his wife's Singer Sewing Machine money has presided over an attempt to smear Markos, as Billmon details. Likewise, Kos was attacked, very unfairly, by David Brooks of the NYT, who comes off sounding like a conspiracy theorist from the McCarthy period.

That this smear campaign involved a forged email published without contacting its putative author at TNR is all the more egregious.

Smear campaigns, underpinned by just making things up about people, are the viruses of blogosphere politics. Memes in cyberspace are easy to get started and hard to knock down. The rich and determined can just buy the destruction of a reputation, and our watered-down libel laws offer no avenue of self-defense to the smeared where the person is a public figure. (The rich and determined can also buy and ruin major formerly liberal magazines like The New Republic).

Like Billmon, even after looking into it a bit, I can't figure out what wrong Markos is actually alleged to have committed. It is falling down funny to imagine that anyone "controls" bloggers, especially progessive bloggers. And as for money, for the most part a blogad goes for less than a 3-line classified ad in a small town newspaper does. And, blogads.com allows anyone to form a network on any basis, so Markos's just is not and cannot be the only game in town, quite apart from which lots of bloggers on blogads have the authority to "sponsor" other weblogs.

Billmon thinks that the attacks on Kos and his cyber-community may in part be coming from the section of the Democratic Party that leans toward Neoconservative philosophy and policies, and who, for instance, are disturbed by the prospect that Lieberman will be unseated by a Democratic challenger.

This point makes sense. But I think that the struggle is larger. For all the talk about freedom of speech and individual freedom in the United States, ours is actually a hierarchical society in which most people cannot afford to speak out unless they are themselves independently wealthy. A lot of Americans work for corporations, which would just fire anyone who became so outspoken in public as to begin to affect their company's image. Look at how many bloggers are anonymous! Purveyors of opinion in the mass media, who use their real names, are employed by, or in some way backed by, media moguls. It is fairly easy to depart from the spectrum of acceptable opinion (i.e. acceptable to the three million or so people who have disproprotionate weight in how America is run), and if one does, after a while one is not heard from so much any more. Thus, those attacking Kos work for Martin Peretz and Arthur Shulzberger, Jr., and if they didn't they would not have their current influential perches.

The very wealthy are used to getting their way in US politics and to dominating public discourse, since so much can be controlled at choke points. Journalists can just be fired, editors and other movers and shakers bought or intimidated. Look what happened to MSNBC reporter Ashleigh Banfield, who dared complain about the propaganda in the US new media around the Iraq War. Phil Donohue, who presided over MSNBC's most popular talk show, was apparently fired before the war because General Electric and Microsoft knew he would be critical of it, and did not want to take the heat. Politicians who step out of line can just be unseated by giving their opponents funding (the Supreme Court just made it harder to restrict this sort of thing).

A grassroots communication system such as cyberspace poses a profound challenge to the forces of hierarchy and hegemony in American society. Now anyone with an internet connection and some interesting ideas can potentially get a hearing from the public.

Kos and his community, in short, are at the center of a discourse revolution. Now persons making a few tens of thousands of dollars a year can be read by hundreds of thousands of readers with no mediation from media moguls. The old joke had been that anyone can own a newspaper, it only takes a million dollars (a really old joke, since it would take much more).

The lack of choke points in cyberspace means that people like Kos can't just be fired. How then to shut them up? Why, you attempt to ruin their reputation, as a way of scaring off readers and supporters. This technique, as Billmon points out, does not usually work very well in cyberspace itself, though it can be effective if the blogger moves into a bricks and mortar institutional environment where big money and chokeholds work again. A political party is such an environment.

Cyberspace itself, though, is a distributed system, not a centralized one. That is why the charges against Kos are so silly. In essence, creatures of the old choke-point hegemonies are projecting their own hierarchical system inaccurately on Kos. Of course you wouldn't expect people like Peretz or David Brooks to understand what a distributed information system is, dinosaurs as they are, of both politics and media.
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Iraqi Sermons from June 23, 2006

The USG Open Source Center translates sermons in Iraq on 6/23/2006:

"At 0845 GMT Baghdad Satellite Channel in Arabic, reportedly sponsored by the Iraqi Islamic Party, carries a live relay of Shaykh Harith al-Ubaydi's sermon from the Sunni Al-Shawwaf Mosque in Baghdad.

In his sermon, Shaykh Harith Al-Ubaydi touches upon the issue of security. Al-Ubaydi asserts that only upright and trustworthy people should be charged with security responsibilities, adding that "those who are not trustworthy are incapable of providing others with security. Those who are unjust are incapable of providing others with justice." Al-Ubaydi also underlines the importance of retribution for the achievement of security and the elimination of crime.

Moreover, Al-Ubaydi maintains that sectarian and political tensions are the driving force behind the killings and abductions in Iraq. Al-Ubaydi asks: "Who benefits from these killings and the blood that is being spilled on the streets of Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, and Al-Anbar, as well as many other cities in Iraq?" He adds: "Who benefits from the bombing of mosques and husayniyahs? Who benefits from the bombing of churches? Who benefits from the assassination of scientists, doctors, and university professors?" Al-Ubaydi holds certain parties, "who do not wish for stability in Iraq, or who seek the benefit of their people," responsible for the atrocities committed in Iraq. Similarly, Al-Ubaydi denounces the killing of Sunni and Shiite imams and the displacement of Iraqi families."

Read the rest.
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Israel invades Gaza, Hits Bridges, Electricity

The Israeli military destroyed 3 bridges that connect Gaza, and knocked out electricity along the coast, as troops made incursions into Gaza.

I don't have time to comment much on all this right now, except to say that the use of force here is all out of proportion. Without electricity, you can't purify water, and uncooked water is a severe health problem, especially to babies. It can ultimately cause cholera.

The incursion was made necessary by the Sharon-Olmert unwise policy of unilateral withdrawal. Unilateral withdrawal means that no structure was put in place for security in the evacuated terrirories, which increasingly look like a failed state, a Somalia. The PLO and Hamas have fought hot encounters recently.

Why would anyone create a failed state all around their house, right in their neighborhood?

The US press has, as far as I can see, been irresponsible in not broadcasting much about the prologue to the present violence, the Israeli military's bombing of civilians on a Gaza beach earlier in the month. This atrocity was on the front page of every Arabic language newspaper every day for a while earlier this month. We cannot understand the region if we cannot understand how outraged they are, and the source of the outrage.

Predictably, the Israeli military's propaganda machine denied responsibility for the beach explosion. Human Rights Watch called the Israeli military inquiry "not plausible" based on its own evidence-gathering at the scene. The Israeli Army has a long history of using plausible deniability to muddy the waters about its accountability in deaths of innocents. If we had videotape of everything they have done in the West Bank and Gaza, we'd be having war crimes trials for the rest of the century. The fact is that Israeli culpability for the Gaza beach incident is, on the evidence gathered independently by HRW at least highly plausible. The press should be looking into it instead of taking talking points from war propaganda offices.
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Sunni Mosque Burned

Guerrillas (likely Shiite militiamen) use mortar fire to destroy a Sunni mosque and burn down 20 shops in Shahraban near Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, on Wednesday morning.

Reuters reports the civil war violence for Tuesday. There were bombings in Baghdad, Kirkuk and elsewhere, killing some 21 persons in iraq on Tuesday.

Al-Zaman runs an article claiming that 632 Palestinians have been killed or imprisoned in Iraq since the war started in spring 2003.

Iraq displaced children suffer health effects, mental problems from their plight.
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Personal Investment as Commitment

AP says that a "safer Iraq" is needed for US investment. D'oh.

But this article reminds me of all the politicians (of both major parties) and bloggers who keep saying that things are just fine in Iraq and that the bad news is exaggerated by the "liberal media" (oh mythic phoenix!).

And, I think we ought to hold their feet to the fire. Every time someone says that in reality things are just fine in Iraq, we should ask them how much of their own, personal money they have invested in a private business enterprise in Iraq. The Iraqi-American Chamber of Commerce can help them with specific investment opportunities.

I think we should exclude buying real estate or investing in mercen . . . I mean US contracting. Also, it has to be an investment in Arab Iraq, not the Kurdistan Regional confederacy. But, if things are going so great, then surely this is the time to put $100,000 into, say, a textile factory in . . . I don't know, Baquba. Most of these politicians and bloggers on the Right could afford such an investment, and most wouldn't even be too badly off if they lost the whole wad.

So, Fox Cable News anchors, rightwing bloggers, smug pundits, etc., etc.-- Pony up. How much have you put on the line here to back up your Dr. Pangloss-style rose colored glasses? And, if you haven't put at least a few tens of thousands of dollars into a private Iraqi business, then you do not have a leg to stand on.
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Saudi Ambassador Calls on Palestinians to Use Gandhian Tactics
Saudi Elected Parliament within the Decade?

I heard the Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Turki Al-Faisal, give this speech Tuesday evening at the US-Arab Economic Forum, and am excerpting a few key passages. He also made remarks in the afternoon. At one point he said that he expected that within the next decade, Saudi Arabia's Shura Council or legislature would be popularly elected. I.e., it would become a democratic parliament. He said that the provincial legislatures would also be elected by then. I, at least, had not before heard such a direct and specific timetable laid out for this development. Of course, he is an ambassador and not the Saudi executive, but his remarks were unequivocal.

On Tuesday evening, he openly called on the Palestinians to give up all violence to and wage their struggle for self-determination using Gandhian principles of nonviolent peaceful resistance.

I have in the past been critical of Reagan-Fahd policies in the 1980s, both in Central America and in Afghanistan, and the willingness to fund irregulars (who in the next generation became the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan) to fight the Soviets. But from what I heard this eveing, Prince Turki, who as Saudi minister of intelligence circa 1980-2001 must have been a key part of those 1980s events, has had a significant change of heart. If so, he has learned more from the earlier mistakes than has e.g. Donald Rumsfeld (imagine Rumsfeld or any old Reaganaut invoking Gandhian ahimsa!) I have to say, I was startled. As for the question of sincerity, well, Reagan used to quote what he said was a Russian saying, "Trust, and verify." This could be an important development, and we should keep our eyes on the new Saudi Ambassador in Washington.

"A Force for Peace & Stability"

Speech by Saudi Ambassador to the U.S.

Prince Turki Al-Faisal

at the U.S. Arab Economic Forum Gala Dinner

Houston, Texas on June 27, 2006

. . . Political reforms are also being implemented to increase citizen participation, such as last year's elections for municipal councils. More elections are planned for the future in order to give our people a more direct say in the decisions that affect them.

Saudi Arabia's goal is also to promote peace and stability in our region. The Roman poet Horace once wrote: "It is your concern when your neighbor's wall is on fire." Right now, our neighbors' walls are ablaze. Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine all require immediate attention. In addition, the situation with Iran calls for international engagement and diplomacy. In each of these circumstances, the Kingdom is doing what it can to bring parties together, open up dialogues, and offer solutions for peace and progress.

Many of the world's problems also require humanitarian assistance, such as for natural disasters, disease and poverty. In those areas Saudi Arabia is a leader. Many people don't know that the Kingdom contributes more per capita in foreign aid than any other country in the world. We have also provided hundreds of millions of dollars to victims of the tsunami in the Indian Ocean region, hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and the earthquakes in Pakistan and, most recently, in Indonesia. . .

. . . So tonight, I lay down the following challenges for all of us.

First, to Saudi Arabia, I challenge ourselves to meet the needs of our youth and ensure that they have the education, the tools and the means to help change the world, and become a force for good and tolerance.

I challenge the Palestinian people to give up the armed struggle and follow the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King by engaging in civil disobedience instead of violence, even in the face of Israeli guns. Violence is the weapon of the weak; non-violence is the weapon of the strong.

I challenge the Israeli people to give up their illegal, immoral and colonial occupation of Palestine.

I challenge the United States to use the power and abilities with which God has blessed this great nation to bring about an end to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict through the implementation of the President's Roadmap.

And I challenge the Arab-Americans in this audience tonight to take a more active part in resolving the conflicts that exist in the world today. We must compel the governments of the world to take the required actions to end the injustices that fuel tensions, distrust, hatred and violence. And so as you leave this conference, I implore each of you to continue in your own right-as ambassadors from the Arab world. Whether you are from Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, or any other part of the Arab world, you should be proud of your Arab heritage and legacy-which truly does extend here to the United States. You should be proud of the contributions Arabs have made to the advancement of humanity over the centuries, and to the greatness of American culture and life. And you should be proud of yourselves, for you are the only ones who can bridge the gap between the two great societies. It is not always easy, but it will always be rewarding. And it can't be done without you. . ."

This material is distributed by DNX Partners, LLC on behalf of the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia. Additional information is available at the Department of Justice, Washington, DC.
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The Zarqawi Effect

My article on the aftermath of the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the Muslim world is out in Salon.com.

Excerpt:

' Whatever the meaning of the killing of Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi by a U.S. airstrike earlier this month, it has not lessened Iraq's violent nightmare, or calmed tensions in the Middle East. Al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri called him "the prince of martyrs" and vowed revenge on the U.S. Some reports suggest that the two U.S. soldiers captured at Yusufiyah were tortured and killed by Zarqawi's shadowy successor. The three weeks after his death have witnessed daily bombings with dozens of casualties throughout Iraq. And Zarqawi's demise has stirred up trouble throughout the region, as controversies on how to respond to it have erupted among secularists and fundamentalists, Sunnis and Shiites. '

Read the whole article.
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Civil War Violence Leaves 60 Dead over 100 Wounded
130,000 Displaced in Past 4 Months

Bombings and other civil war violence took the lives of at least 60 Iraqis on Monday. In addition, guerrillas kidnapped 10 Sunni students who were attending a technical institute in Shiite East Baghdad.

In the worst incident, guerrillas detonated a bomb in a crowded market in the Shiite city of Hilla south of Baghdad, killing 30 and wounding 56.

In the village of Khairnabat near Baquba, a troubled city northeast of the capital, a motorcycle bomb in a crowded market killed at least 18 and wounded 30.

Guerrillas used a car bomb in the Amiriyah district of Baghdad to kill 5 Iraqi soldiers.

In Saydiyah, southern Baghdad guerrillas detonated a bomb at a checkpoint, killing 3 police commandos.

Guerrillas tried yet again on Monday to kill Adnan Dulaimi, a leader of the Sunni fundamentalist Iraqi Accord Front that is cooperating with the new government of PM al-Maliki. They only managed to kill his bodyguard.

Four Russian embassy employees, kidnapped earlier, were confirmed dead.

US and Iraqi troops--but mainly US troops are trying to take Ramadi neighborhood by neighborhood and then to garrison Iraqi troops in each so as to keep them secure in the long term. But there is a problem with Iraqi troops not showing up to fight, saying they do not want to fight other Iraqis or that they fear they will provoke tribal feuds if they fight the Dulaim in Ramadi.

As the AFP/ Daily Times piece linked above notes, the Iraqi government is saying that 7 Sunni Arab guerrilla groups, mostly Baathist in character, have indicated a willingness to engage in talks. This news may or may not lead anywhere. Guerrilla insurgencies often talk to the governments they are endeavoring to overthrow, and sometimes go on to overthrow it even after the talks.

Iraq violence in the past 4 months has expelled 130,000 persons from their homes and neighborhoods, leaving them displaced and uncertain of their future.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat/ DPA say [Ar.] that the people of Tikrit are disappointed in Maliki's reconciliation plan, insofar as the amnesty it offers to opponents of the new regime is too limited.

School enrollment is up over-all in Iraq. This phenomenon is largely a result of the removal of the United States/ United Nations sanctions, which had devastated the Iraqi middle classes, and had actually cause the literacy rate to fall substantially in the 1990s. Tavernise notes, however, that school enrollment has actually fallen in Baghdad, which is about a fourth of the country.
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Iraqi Petroleum Exports up
25 killed in Civil War Violence

Borzou Daragahi of the LA Times reports severe doubts about PM Maliki's reconciliation plan in the Sunni Arab al-Anbar province.

Iraq's petroleum production has recently surged to above 2 million barrels a day, according to petroleum minister Husain Shahristani. The government recently managed to get the northern Kirkuk pipelines back online, after they faced repeated sabotage. Bad winter weather had also harmed exports from Basra earlier this year, but that problem subsided with the onset of summer.

That the US military has contingency plans for troop cuts in Iraq is not actually very interesting. Actual significant troop cuts? That would be interesting. Swopa points out that the same story about planned cuts appeared in the NYT last summer.

Al-Zaman says that the Revenge Brigades in Basra, a secretive Shiite organization, is circulating a pamphlet warning Sunni Arabs in the largely Shiite southern port city that they had until 1 July to leave the city. The threat is part of a general move to ethnic cleansing of Sunnis in the city; many Sunni families are fleeing to West Baghdad hundreds of miles to the north.

Al-Zaman reports that US troops invaded the homes of Shaikh Mithal al-Hasnawi of the Sadr Movement, and of his brother, in the town of Hindiyah in Karbala province. Al-Hasnawi eluded them, not being at home. He is accused of being implicated in attacks on music shops

Reuters reports violence in Iraq's ongoing civil war on Sunday:

Guerrillas set off a roadside bomb in the al-Shorja shopping district of Baghdad, killing 3 and wounding 17. Then guerrillas detonated a bomb in a minibus, killing 2 and wounding 5 in al-Nahda district of Baghdad. Then in the eastern Zayouna district, a suicide car bomber detonated his payload at a police checkpoint, killing a police commando and wounding 9 persons. So that is 6 dead and 31 wounded from bombings in the capital, at a time when there is a major crackdown on the guerrilla movement in Baghdad.

Guerrillas kidnapped 16 employees of a technology institute at Taji north of Baghdad.

In Khan Bani Sa`d, near Baquba to the northeast of Baghdad, guerrillas attacked a police checkpoint and killed 5 Iraqi soldiers.

In the mostly Christian town of Bartila (near Mosul) in the north, guerrillas set off a car bomb near the office of the (Shiite) Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, among the leading parties in parliament, killing 2 persons and wounding 13.

There were other scattered shootings and assassinations around the country, with a GI killed near Tikrit. US forces killed or captured a number of guerrilla fighters. The total number of dead was at least 25 on Sunday, with dozens wounded.

Number of car bombings in Iraq from the dawn of time until 2002 before the US invasion: 0.

At least 50,000 Iraqis have died in violence since the US invasion, according to Iraqi health officials. I am told by people who should know that the Lancet estimate of 100,000 is perfectly plausible, and that was some time ago.

Fresh fighting broke out in Diwaniyah. Clashes took place in al-`Asri district, gunmen clashed with police commandos. (Just speculation, but this is probably actually a fight between Mahdi Army irregulars and Badr Corps who were recruited into the police commandos by the SCIRI-dominated Interior Ministry.

In downtown Amara, gunmen assassinated Haydar Abdul Husain al-Maliki, who had just received a fellowship to study English in Switzerland from the Iraqi Ministry of Education. He was in a taxi when he was cut down; the driver was wounded.

The Iraqi parliament seems set to affirm the free market legislation of Paul Bremer, allowing foreign concerns to own 100 percent of Iraqi firms and allowing unconstrained repatriation of profits.

Sarah Smiles of The Age in Melbourne reports on Australian worries that its troops will face a tougher situation replacing the Italians in Nasiriyah than they had in sleepy Muthanna. Nasiriyah has competing Dawa, SCIRI, Mahdi Army and Fadhila factions and has seen many anti-Western demonstrations. She interviews Ahmed S. Hashim, who has been in Iraq and talks of the new Iraqi army:

' Critics have described the new force [the Iraqi Army], forged after the 2003 war when the coalition dissolved the old Iraqi army, as highly unprofessional, and doubt its ability to provide security.

"I really wasn't impressed by them, their training or equipment," said Dr Ahmed Hashim of the US Naval War College, who was in Iraq as an adviser to the US Army until late last year.

"Some units were more like militias of each ethnic and sectarian group rather than a national army … Their allegiances are owed to political parties and class rather than the nation per se."

Smiles is to be congratulated for reporting the reality from Hashim, who is qualified to judge it; we see too little of this in the US press.
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23 Killed in Renewed Violence
Reconciliation Plan to be Unveiled

US troops had briefly arrested, then released, Shaikh Jamal Abdul Karim al-Dabaan. He is the chief Sunni jurisconsult (mufti) of Iraq, and the US military called his arrest "a mistake." A thousand people gathered to picket the house of the governor of Salahuddin Province in protest.

Reuters gives the specifics of some of the bombings and other violence on Saturday.

Al-Hayat says that 23 fresh lives were lost on Saturday to civil war violence.

Steve Hurst points out that the guerrilla and civil war violence has gone on in spades since Zarqawi's death. I'd make two further points. First, the daily carnage against Iraqis has been enormous in the past two weeks. There were several deadly car bombings again early Sunday in Baghdad itself. Second, the violence is not most "al-Qaeda"-driven. People in the Sunni district of Adhamiyah in Baghdad are mostly Baathists, not al-Qaeda, and some of them are surely planning out these bombings. Adhamiyah is now under actual attack by US and Iraqi forces, though there is some kind of news blackout on the operation. But the violence is going on anyway. The guerrillas, who still are able to coordinate, have just shifted operations to some other cities, or other districts of Baghdad. As Hurst notes, there was heavy fighting on Haifa Street near the Green Zone just the other day, an area of longstanding guerrilla activity that has been declared pacified over and over again by the US military and press. Bottom line, this article's corrective is a good one, but doesn't go far enough.

Update: Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki presented a 28-point reconciliation plan to parliament on Sunday.

Al-Hayat reports that Malik views this initiative as a privilege of the executive and that he does not intend to have parliament vote on it. A Shiite parliamentarian said it was outrageous to by-pass parliament in this way. Also, significant elements within al-Maliki's own United Iraqi Alliance (Shiite) are disturbed by the idea of granting amnesty to Sunni Arab guerrillas.

The problem is quite the other way around. The amnesty is not extended to anyone who has "shed Iraqi blood," and the Bush administration made al-Maliki back off the idea of granting amnesty to guerrillas who had killed US troops.

But if the point of the amnesty is to bring the guerrilla leadership in from the cold, this amnesty is useless. What Sunni Arab guerrillas worth their salt have killed no Iraqis and no US troops? As for the rest, why would Sunnis who had not killed anyone need to be amnestied? And wouldn't they be rather pitiful guerrillas?

This is like Kissinger saying he would talk to the North Vietnamese but not to any of them who helped the VC kill ARvN and US soldiers. There wouldn't have been any round table talks (not that that whole thing went very well anyway. Just saying.)

It appears that the main point of the "reconciliation" is not in fact to reconcile with the guerrilla movement. It is an attempt to draw off support from it by rehabilitating the Sunni Arabs who had been Baath party members. Those who had not actively killed anyone would now be brought back into public life and deep debaathification would be reversed, as I read it. (Ironically, al-Maliki led the charge for deep debaathification in the past 3 years!) Sunni Arabs would be compensated for losses inflicted on them by Iraqi and US troops (this is key to settling clan feuds against the new order). Shiite militias are to be disbanded. Militia influence in Iraqi police to be curbed. etc.

The plan also hopes to separate out the ex-Baathists from the Qutbists, who style themselves "Salafi Jihadis" but actually are just violent vigilantes, who, in the tradition of Sayyid Qutb of Egypt, blithely brand as non-Muslims worthy of death anyone who disagrees with their version of Islam. The Qutbists are coded as mainly foreigners.

My reading is that large numbers of Iraqi Sunni Arabs have swung to fundamentalist religion, and that the ex-Baathists use them in various ways, and it won't be easy to break up this alliance of convenience.

I do not think this plan goes far enough. It is too little too late. But, well, reversing Ahmad Chalabi's deep debaathification, in which school teachers were punished for joining the Baath Party in 1994 to get a promotion, would be a positive step, if that is what is envisaged. But then there is the question of implementation, and the question of what economy or government is left for the ex-Baathists now to join. Moreover, there is a lot of anger that can't be dampened down so easily.

British forces seem unable to quell the rising tide of violence and insecurity in southern Iraq.

Some Iraqi veterans are already showing up back in the states as among the homeless.
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Militias Oppressing Iraqi Women

The USG Open Source Center translates an article about the oppression of women in the new Iraq.

Woman's Rights Observatory on Retreat of Women's Role in Political Process

Organized acts of oppression against Iraqi women The National Observatory for the Iraqi Woma's Rights: The militias prevent women from going to the market in Karbala

Al-Ittijah al-Akhar

Wednesday, June 21, 2006 T13:06:41Z

Document Type: OSC Translated Text

In a memorandum addressed to the United Nations and a number of embassies in Baghdad, the National Observatory for Iraqi Woman's Rights said that it has received bitter complaints from Iraqi female activists and defenders of women's rights in Iraq indicating that there has been a retreat in what the observatory described "woman's role in political life". The number of female ministers has dropped from six to four, the memo added. The memorandum drew attention to the fact that the Unified Iraqi Coalition, which is the largest bloc in the new government, has refused to nominate any woman for a ministerial position. The four appointed female ministers are all from other political blocs. Two of them are from the Kurdish Alliance; one is from the Iraqi al-Tawafuq Front and the fourth one is from the Iraqi List.

Read the rest.
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Bombings in Basra, Hibhib kill at least 20

Ayman al-Zawahiri, the number 2 man in al-Qaeda, released a video Friday in which he pledged that the organization would take revenge on the United States for the killing of Zarqawi. He quoted Bin Laden as saying that the Americans would never rest easy until the Palestinians have their rights. In a recent video, al-Zawahiri had urged the jihadis to concentrate on Afghanistan, but on Friday he again expanded the field of endeavor.

Reuters has Friday's report on civil war violence:

Up to ten persons were killed and 15 injured by a car bombing near a gas station in the southern port city Basra. The Basra governor attempted to downplay the number of deaths.

Another bombing, near a mosque in the small town of Hibhib near Baqubah, killed 10 and wounded 15. Hibhib was where the US recently killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. In nearby Buhriz, a roadside bomb at an army checkpoint wounded 3 civilians. Iraqi soldiers laid down fire around them in response, wounding another 11 civilians.

In downtown Baghdad, Iraqi policemen and soldiers clashed with guerrillas around Haifa Street. Three to five Iraqi police and/or army soldiers were wounded. There are also reports of US troops battling the Mahdi Army militia of Shiite nationalist Muqtada al-Sadr.

Police fished 5 bodies out of the Tigris near Kadhimiyah. The bodies were probably those of factory workers kidnapped last week.

Also in the capital, 4 more US troops were announced killed.

In Kirkuk, the sister of the former speaker of the Iraqi parliament was injured in an attack.

Guerrillas in Hilla killed two policemen.
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CAIR: Miami Cult not Muslims

I just saw the spokesman for the Council on American Islamic Relations on CNN saying that the Miami cult members just arrested are not Muslims. I'd say that is a fair statement.

For one thing, they are vegetarians!

It seems pretty obvious that they are just a local African-American cult which mixed Judaism, Christianity and (a little bit of) Islam. It seems to be a of vague offshoot of the Moors group founded by Dwight York. I heard on CNN that one of them talked of being Moors. And Batiste, the leader, called whites "devils" in the tradition of the original Nation of Islam and York's Moors. Now CNN is saying one member said they practiced witchcraft [likely meaning Haitian voodoo or perhaps Santeria-like rituals]. One former member is called Levi-El, suggesting he might be associated with the Black Hebrew movement or an offshoot. Now a relative of one of the members, Phanor, said that they wore black uniforms with a star of David arm patch and considered themselves of the Order of Melchizadek. I wonder if it is "Seas of David" or "C's of David", with "c" meaning commando or some such?

I define cult as a religious group that has values that put it in a high state of tension with the norms of mainstream society, and that has a leadership that imposes high levels of discipline and demand for control of adherents' lives.

This Seas of David group primarily seems to have been studying the Bible. The mother of one insisted that he is a Catholic. Then there is all that Jewish symbology and terminology, even in their names. Islam was nothing more for them but a set of symbols they could pull into their syncretic local culture. The group drew on poor Haitian immigrants and local indigent African-American youth. If this were the 1960s, they'd have been Black Panthers or Communists.

American folk religion, pursued in small groups with charismatic leaders, is replete with such groups, from Father Divine to Jim Jones of the People's Temple to David Koreish.

The group never got past the stage of talking big, and violently. They talked dangerously, and some sort of intervention was warranted. Since they begged the FBI informant for "shoes," they weren't exactly a well-heeled group that seems very dangerous in actual practice. And, to what extent did the FBI informant press an al-Qaeda connection on these otherwise clueless but imaginative zealots?

But contrast the grandstanding of Alberto Gonzales on this group of poor unarmed ghetto folk with the way in which the Robert J. Goldstein case was treated. He actually had the bombs in his house and was going to blow up Floridians. No press called him a "Jewish" terrorist and no questions were ever raised about his possible international links.

Imagine the horror of an urbane Arab-American professional with university higher degrees, steeped in Islamic culture and contributing to American society, at being lumped in by the American press and officialdom with these cultists who appropriated his religion for their violent religious fantasies.

The other thing to say is that American law is soft on cultic practices, of dirty tricks against and smearing of critics, enforced third-party shunning, manipulation, and group coercion. These things are not protected by the First Amendment and I think one part of our counter-terrorism strategy must be to develop legal strategies to make it easier to disrupt the workings of cults before they accumulate a critical mass for violent action. The practice of just letting the head of the Internal Revenue Service decide if a group is a tax-free religion should also be revisited. In the past, some IRS heads appear to have been blackmailed by cults into granting them that status, which allows them to accumulate more wealth.

Whereas most terrorism is a form of educated, middle class politics, this particular group clearly grew out of the grievances and resentments of race and class inequality in the United States.

The sister of one was just on MSNBC saying that he deeply resented Bush spending money to drop bombs on poor people who could not defend themselves, while depriving the poor in the United States of any support. "We are not capable," she said. This is a theory of class war, connecting the poor of Kut with the poor of Miami's inner city. The city, by the way, has horrific levels of unemployment.

The position of the poor and workers in particular is deteriorating in the US, as more and more of the privately held wealth is concentrated in the hands of a white, privileged, few. The unions have been gutted, the minimum wage is inadequate, and racist attitudes are reemerging on a worrisome scale. Cities such as Detroit, New Orleans and Miami continue to witness enormous strains coming mainly from racist attitudes. In this case, the best counter-terrorism would be more social justice.
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Senate rejects Withdrawal
Bombings in Basra, Baghdad, Diyala
25 Executed at Mosul

53% of Americans want a timetable for a phased withdrawal of troops from Iraq. How unrepresentative the Senate is is demonstrated by the lack of majority there for any sort of withdrawal from Iraq.

The Senate rejected the withdrawal plans put forward by the Democrats. The two parties have now drawn a clear distinction on Iraq between themselves on the basis of which voters will decide in November. The Democratic plan, of gradual withdrawal, will be even more popular in November than it is now. There is no sign of progress in Iraq. The killings go on daily. And the Iraqi parliametary committees have not been able to choose chairmen because they are wrangling over sectarian candidates.

More on the private contractors in Iraq and their use of coerced labor.

Iraqi oil minister Husain Shahristani complained on Thursday about Iranian complicity in petroleum smuggling in the water south of Basra.

The Lebanese Hizbullah denied on Thursday that it had any links to the Iraqi insurgency. The American charges in this regard puzzle me. Hizbullah is not helping the fiercely Sunni Arab guerrillas in the center-north and west. In the Shiite south, there are many Iraqi groups that would like to attack coalition forces, and they don't need Lebanese encouragement. If the US has captured Lebanese Hizbullah in Iraq, it should reveal their names and the circumstances of their arrest.

Israeli firms are under investigation for illegal exports to northern Iraq.

Some 25 persons have been executed Mafia-style in Mosul during the past week. Mosul, which lies in the north, is Iraq's third-largest city.

AP also reports,

' In other parts of the country Thursday, police reported 13 other deaths tied to insurgent or death squad attacks, including six bodies that floated to the surface of the Tigris River in Kut, a city 100 miles (160 kilometers) southeast of Baghdad. '

A police raid freed some of the dozens of Shiite workers abducted on Tuesday, but between 15 and 25 are still unaccounted for. It is still unclear exactly who was kidnapped. Some sources say that they were employees of the ministry of industry, others that they were factory workers.

Reuters reports ongoing Iraq violence:

In Basra, guerrillas fired mortar rounds at official buildings, but they fell short and wounded 9 Iraqi civilians near a gasoline station.

Guerrillas set off a roadside bomb near the car of the governor of Diyala provinve, injuring him, a bodyguard, and his driver.

A motorcycle bomb in central Baghdad killed 2 and wounded 25.

A roadside bomb south of Baghdad killed a US GI.

14 bodies of employees of an electricity plant were discovered in the Baghdad morgue. They had been captured by guerrillas and killed a week and a half ago.

Guerrillas in the Shiite holy city of Najaf south of Baghdad assassinated a police officer.

Guerrillas in Dhuluiyya killed an Iraqi soldier in his home.

Guerrillas in Hawija assassinated a carpenter on Wednesday.

In the northern oil city of Kirkuk, Iraqi soldiers clashed with guerrillas, leaving one guerrilla dead and two wounded.

From BBC World Monitoring, summaries of the Iraqi Press for June 22:

Al-Mashriq carries on the front page a 650-word report citing Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani calling for providing security and services. . .

Al-Muwatin carries on page 2 a 1,100-word report citing Deputy US Ambassador David Satterfield criticizing Syria for allowing former regime leaders residing in Syria to support terrorism and the infiltration of terrorists into Iraq.

Ishraqat al-Sadr publishes on page 1 a 400-word report citing Muqtada al-Sadr calling for the withdrawal of multinational forces from Iraq, urging the Iraqi political parties to hold the national reconciliation conference, and criticizing the multinational forces for raiding Karbala Governorate.

Al-Bayyinah carries on page 1 a 100-word saying that the Central Criminal Court has issued the death sentence against Muhammad Army leader Mu'ayyad Yasin Aziz and an officer in the Iraqi Army called Umar Khalid Ubayd Jaddah al-Janabi for leaking information to terrorists . . .

Al-Muwatin runs on page 3 a 200-word report citing a security source in Basra confirming that security forces have defused two roadside bombs near the strategic oil pipeline in Basra.

Tariq al-Sha'b publishes on the front page a 700-word report citing a spokesman for Iraqi Army in Basra confirming that so far Iraqi Army's 10th Division has not received any instructions regarding the security plan in Basra. . .

Al-Mada runs on page 3 a 450-word report that 1250 families have fled from Al-Ramadi to Hit due to deteriorating public service conditions. . .

Al-Da'wah carries on page 7 a 500-word article by Muntazar al-Mu'min severely criticizing Ba'thists for still defending their party and attacking anyone who criticizes it. . .

Ishraqat al-Sadr publishes on page 1 a 500-word editorial by Chief Editor Fattah al-Shaykh saying that Al-Sadr trend is infiltrated by some opportunists who are demolishing it . . .

Al-Bayyinah publishes on page 2 a 500-word article by Hasan Karim accusing Tariq al-Hashimi of supporting terrorism.

Al-Istiqamah carries on page 3 a 900-word commentary by the newspaper's political editor holding the Association of Muslim Scholars' unrealistic conditions responsible for the postponement of the projected National Conciliation Conference, which was scheduled for 22 June . . .

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Press Access to Internet being Censored

Journalists at the Los Angeles Times and elsewhere are suffering a loss of internet access as a result of censorship programs that routinely filter out blogging sites such as Boing, Boing.

Readers should please let me know if Informed Comment is being routinely blocked by such software.
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Western Soldiers writing from Iraq, Then and Now

War Post shares letters of soldiers in Iraq back home, from two historical periods. Some letters are from Indian and British soldiers in Iraq in the early twentieth century colonial period. Some are from US soldiers now.
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Michigan Peaceworks event on Sunday

The internet isn't very good for narrow-casting, but for my Michigan readers let me draw attention to the following important event. And for everybody, send money to Peaceworks!

"BREWING PEACE": A dinner and silent auction to benefit Michigan Peaceworks

Sunday June 25, 5 to 8 pm
Arbor Brewing Company, 116 E. Washington, Ann Arbor.

Host and emcee: Mayor John Hieftje

- Talk by Renee Heberle (Assoc. Professor of Political Science at University of Toledo) on The Politics of Violence: Guantanamo & Beyond.
- "Iran's People, Culture & 2,500-year History": A slide show by Hosain Mosavat.
- Music by Jesse Sinatra
- Special encore performance of "Bush's Impeachment Blues" by Phillis & the Left Sidemen

$40 Adults/$15 children under 18. Reservations required, 734-761-5922.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Shiite Workers Abducted
4 Marines Killed

The US military announced that guerrillas killed four US Marines in al-Anbar Province.

Some reports said that guerrillas abducted 85 mostly Shiite workers from a factory in a mostly Sunni district of Baghdad. Later reports by Iraqi officials said it had been 30 that were abducted, and that 25 were released. Not good news for at least 5 people, even if that narrative is correct.

16 corpses were found in the streets of the northern Sunni city of Mosul [Ar.]. Some were police or security men, others businessmen, and had likely been tagged as "collaborators" by the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement that is trying to overthrow the new government.

Gunmen in largely Sunni Zubayr north of Basra invaded a school and assassinated its principal [Ar.]. Al-Zaman says that security is collapsing again in Basra.

A car bomb in Sadr City, Shiite East Baghdad, killed 2 and wounded 14.

Another of Saddam's defense attorneys was assassinated. That tribunal, which at one time seemed as though it would be source of good news for the Bush administration, has been handled so badly that it has become nothing short of an embarrassment. Three defense lawyers killed, and one witness alleging that some of the men Saddam is alleged to have had killed at Dujail are still alive. Saddam even emerged after the February bombing of the golden dome at Samarra and the subsequent faith-based massacres between Shiite and Sunni as a voice of national unity. To give the old mass murderer the occasion to grandstand that way. It is incompetence, criminal incompetence.

Australia's economic ties with Iraq, surely among the main reasons it has troops in the country, have been imperilled by the shooting of a bodyguard of the trade minister by Australian troops.

7 Marines and a sailor were charged with the murder of an Iraqi civilian at Hamdaniyah. This case is in addition to the Haditha massacre and another murder case at Salahuddin.



Don't miss the interview given by Tom Engelhardt. Money para:

"I've always claimed that, when you read articles in the imperial press, the best way -- and I'm only half-kidding -- is back to front. Your basic front-page stories, as on the TV news, usually don't differ that much from paper to paper. It's when you get toward the ends of pieces that they really get interesting. Maybe because reporters and editors sense that nobody's paying attention but the news junkies, so things get much looser. You find tidbits the reporter's slipped in that just fall outside the frame of the expectable. That's what I go looking for. Sometimes it's like glimpsing coming attractions.

Here are a couple of tidbits I picked up deep in the Times recently.

There was an interesting front-page piece by Sabrina Tavernisi, "As Death Stalks Iraq: Middle Class Exodus Begins." After the jump, pretty deep inside, there's this line: "In all, 312 trash workers have been killed in Baghdad in the past six months." There it is: basic, good reporting that no one's going to notice or pick-up on. And yet it probably tells you just about everything you need to know about life in Baghdad today. Forget the security forces, forget top officials. Three hundred and twelve garbage men slaughtered. Holy Toledo!

So that kind of reporting, hidden but in plain sight, can start me on an Iraq piece."

The Iraq War isn't just over there. It hits home, too.
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For Outgoing Senator Santorum:
Top Ten Ways We Know Saddam Did not Have WMD

"There are many Senators whom I hold in a certain respect and would not think of declining to meet socially, if I believed it was the will of God. We have lately sent a United States Senator to the penitentiary, but I am quite well aware that of those who have escaped this promotion there are several who are in some regards guiltless of crime--not guiltless of all crimes, for that cannot be said of any United States Senator, I think, but guiltless of some kinds of crime.
- Mark Twain in Eruption

In the fantasy world of the Hard Right, Senator Rick Santorum and Michigan Representative Pete Hoekstra attempted to make it look like some old pre-1991 shells lying around Iraq with degraded chemicals in them were the dreaded "weapons of mass destruction" that the Bush administration went to war over.

AP bothered to actually ask the Department of Defense about this, which might be expected to know something on the subject:

' But a defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the weapons were not considered likely to be dangerous because of their age. Also, Democrats said a lengthy 2005 report from the top U.S. weapons inspector contemplated that such munitions would be found. '

As Think Progress noted (link above), Alan Colmes let the Sanatarium know the bad news for his little smoke and mirrors routine on cable television:

' COMBS: Congressman, Senator, it’s Alan Colmes. Senator, the Iraq Survey Group — let me go to the Duelfer Report — says that Iraq did not have the weapons our intelligence believed were there. And Jim Angle reported this for Fox News quotes a defense official who says these were pre-1991 weapons that could not have been fired as designed because they already been degraded. And the official went on to say these are not the WMD’s this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had and not the WMD’s for which this country went to war. So the chest beating at this Republicans are doing tonight thinking this is a justification is not confirmed by the defense department.

SANTORUM: I’d like to know who that is. The fact of the matter is, I’ll wait and see what the actual Defense Department formally says or more important what the administration formally says. '

Quite apart from who said what, here are the Top Ten Ways We know Saddam Didn't Have WMD:

1. The authors of Cobra II show that before the 2003 Iraq War, Saddam called his top generals together and let them know that he did not in fact have any WMD any more. They were allegedly shaken and disturbed.

2. The Saddam regime faced certain destruction in March-April 2003, but no Iraqi military unit deployed any WMD to save themselves.

3. All searches of all tagged facilities in post-war Iraq found that the weapons programs had all been closed down by the mid-1990s.

4. On September 30, 2004, the U.S. Iraq Survey Group Final Report concluded, "ISG has not found evidence that Saddam Husayn (sic) possessed WMD stocks in 2003, but the available evidence from its investigation—including detainee interviews and document exploitation—leaves open the possibility that some weapons existed in Iraq although not of a militarily significant capability." Let me put that in bold for Mssrs. Santorum and Hoekstra: not of a militarily significant capability.

5. What most people mean by weapons of mass destruction is nukes. Iraq did not have a nuclear weapons program after the United Nations weapons inspectors dismantled it in the early 1990s.

6. Remember those "mobile biological weapons labs"? When Irv Lewis Libby, now in custody, realized that UN inspectors were finding no evidence for biological weapons labs, he made up this silly idea of mobile labs. Biological weapons labs need a clean room. Where would you put that on a winnebago? And, would you really want your germ lab to hit a pothole? In reality? The trailers were for the production of hydrogen to fill artillery balloons, just as the Iraqis had said.

7. Chief inspector David Kay has already admitted that "We were almost all wrong"! Kay staked his professional reputation on there being WMD in Iraq, and he actually chased it on the ground for months and months. If he could have found any shred to uphold his basic human dignity, he would have. He couldn't.

8. Not only has the Department of Defense admitted it, so has the CIA.

9. Chemical weapons are battlefield weapons, not weapons of mass destruction:

"National Public Radio (NPR)
SHOW: Talk of the Nation 1500-1600 PM
May 8, 2006 Monday
LENGTH: 5971 words
HEADLINE: A History of Chemical Weapons
ANCHORS: NEAL CONAN
BODY:
NEAL CONAN, host . . .
Mr. TUCKER: Yeah, I think it's important to distinguish between tactical weapons and strategic weapons. Chemical weapons were really designed for battlefield use. They--very large quantities are required to cover these--the size of a city. So they are not really contemplated as strategic weapons the way nuclear weapons would be used against entire cities. So perhaps there is some distinction there. Whether chemical weapons should be called weapons of mass destruction is somewhat debatable. They are really more tactical or battlefield weapons. . . '
Mr. JONATHAN TUCKER (Author, War of Nerves; Senior Fellow, Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute)"

10. Powell and Rice admitted as much in spring of 2001!:

Powell: "but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction. We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to make sure that they are directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq..."

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Kirkuk Governor: Not a Cent from Baghdad!

The USG Open Source Center translates an interview with the governor of oil-rich, ethnically turbulent Kirkuk city.
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Bombings in Basra, Baghdad
US Airstrike Kills 13 at Baqubah

A suicide bomber targeted pensioners standing in line in Basra, killing 1 and wounding 5.

In Baghdad, a bomber killed 7 and wounded 18 in a market.

Al-Zaman/ DPA say that police found 16 corpses in various parts of Iraq.

Al-Zaman reports that [Ar.] dozens of physicians went on strike in Baghdad on Tuesday to protest the assassination of a specialist.


The US killed 15 persons it says were insurgents in an air strike near Baqubah. Locals denied that the deceased, who include an 12-year-old boy, were involved in violence. Arab news channels tended to see that strike as a tragic error or as a "massacre."

British Lieutenant General Nick Houghton came out Tuesday with a gloomy portrait of sectarian violence in the southern port city of Basra:

' "There is a worrying amount of violence and murder carried out between rival Shia factions," he said. "The security situation in Basra has no doubt got worse of late due to the protracted period of talks to form the government." That, he said, allowed "a period of time in which politics that should have been conducted more appropriately, actually were conducted through violent means on the streets". Gen Houghton continued: "There has been inter-faction rivalry, much of it then reflecting in non-judicial murder between rival Shia factions struggling for political and economic power." '

Supreme Jurisprudent of Iran Ali Khamenei, pressed again Tuesday for withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq.
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Rosser Guest Op-Ed: Innocent Kurdish-Americans Victimized by Patriot Act

A Travesty of Justice: Oppressing the Kurds of Harrisonburg, Virginia

J. Barkley Rosser, Jr.

On June 26, three Kurdish men in Harrisonburg, Virginia (Rasheed Qambari, Ahmed Abdullah, and Amir Rashid) will be sentenced for sending money to Iraqi Kurdistan without a license to their families and those of fellow members of their community via the traditional hawala system (a fourth man, Fadhil Noroly, will be tried on July 11). This is a felony offense under amendments to the Patriot Act introduced after 9/11.

No longer does the transfer have to be linked in any way to any illegal activity or terrorism, nor does the party doing the transferring have to know that what they are doing is illegal. Even the FBI and prosecuting attorneys agree that none of these transfers through the traditional halawa system had anything to do with terrorism or anything of the sort. Indeed, one prosecutor declared to Rasheed Qambari during his trial on January 31, "we know that you are not the bad guys." What is going on here?

First of all observers should realize how completely absurd these cases are. Prior to 1996 these men, and most of the 70 Kurdish families now living in Harrisonburg in the Shenandoah Valley, were involved with aiding US and UK aid organizations. In that year Saddam Hussein attempted to have them arrested and killed (he succeeded with many who did not get out). The US government airlifted about 6500 of them out to Turkey as part of Operation Pacific Haven. After extensive security vetting in Guam, many were allowed to immigrate as refugees into the US, with this group ending up in Harrisonburg. These people were anti-Saddam and anti-terrorism, literally dancing in the streets at his overthrow.

Nevertheless, after 9/11, the FBI began visiting their homes, as well as those of other Muslims in the Harrisonburg community, asking them about links to terrorists and terror groups. During these interrogations these four men all told of their money transfer activities for the community to help out their families with medical and other problems. They were told that this was not a problem. No one told them that they needed to obtain federal licenses or that that they were doing anything illegal. Two of them never made any profits on their activities (Qambari in particular has translated for hospitals, schools, and even the courts for free). The two that made small profits obtained local business licenses and were under the impression that this was sufficient.

During the summer of 2006, about eight homes of Kurds in the area were raided in massive operations that involved as many as 12 different government agencies. Families were mistreated and belongings were seized, including things that did not belong to those raided (including $20,000 for the down payment on a house for someone not raided, an amount only recently returned). On October 19, 2005, the four men were indicted and were arrested in the early hours two days later. At their indictment a Croatian translator was provided, and Ahmed Abdullah spent a week in jail because he was afraid to answer any questions due to his inadequate English. On January 31, Qambari was convicted. This led to Abdullah and Rashid pleading guilty, while Noroly still holds out for a trial. They face possible sentences of up to five years and possible deportation. Qambari has stated that his life will be in danger if he returns. All four men had applied for US citizenship (they all are married with children born in the US), and Qambari had even passed the final exam with a perfect score, only awaiting his swearing in, when these events intervened.

There was almost no coverage of this in any media, only a brief, not-on-the front cover story in the Harrisonburg Daily News-Record (DNR) that repeated the prosecution's argument that Qambari was threatening "the integrity of the US financial system" by his activities. Since then a movement has grown in the area, triggered initially by blogposts by this writer on Maxspeak (whose archives contain much material) and then appearing in various local media. The most thorough story on this appeared in the June issue of the local monthly, Eighty-One, by Jeremy Nafziger, which can be accessed here [pdf]. A front page story appeared in the Washington Post on Sunday, June 18, entitled, "Kurdish Defendants Find Support in Town's Clasp," by Karin Brulliard. After two op-ed pieces, several letters, and a petition signed by over 600 citizens, the very conservative DNR came out in an editorial on May 8 for "leniency in sentencing" of the men. Leading this local movement has been a group called Standing With Our Neighbors (SWON), which has been spearheaded by local religious groups, especially many Mennonites from Harrisonburg. The DNR editorial cited an op-ed by me, "If I am Deported back to Iraq, I will die" (titled "An Investigation Gone Sour" in the paper), which can be accessed at http://cob.jmu.edu/rosserjb.

What has led to this travesty? These cases arose out of a Joint Terrorism Task Force based in Roanoke involving many agencies. They searched and searched and found nothing, but needed to show somebody that they were doing good. So, they nailed these people who have done nothing wrong other than try to help their neighbors, ignorant of the law. Given the visits to the mosque by the FBI and the general situation, it is clear that this reflects a broader anti-Muslim character of these investigations and the associated lack of respect for human rights. One can appreciate that this statute might need to be used against actual terrorists if there is no other evidence that can be used against them in court (much as Al Capone was eventually convicted of income tax evasion). But no one says these men are terrorists. This is an anti-terror bureaucracy gone out of control. Prosecuting these men makes as much sense as when autoworkers in Detroit beat a Chinese man to death because they were upset at Japanese car imports. This is an unfair and disturbing prosecution that indicates how seriously in jeopardy our rights in America have become endangered by egregious enforcement of the Patriot Act. I only hope that the judge is indeed lenient with these very worthy men.

J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. Professor of Economics and Kirby L. Kramer, Jr. Professor of Business Administration James Madison University Editor, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization

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Ed. note: See also This recent Washington Post article.
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Iraq Intel Chief Decries Partisanship

From the USG Open Source Center, a translation of an interview with Iraq's intelligence head:

' Iraqi Intelligence Chief Al-Shahwani Warns of Danger of Partisan Politics

Interview with Iraqi Intelligence Service chief Major General Muhammad al-Shahwani by Sa'd Abbas; place and date not given: "There Will Be Security in the Country When the Political Parties Stop Undermining the Authority of the Prime Minister"

Al-Zaman
Tuesday, June 20, 2006 T16:37:56Z

Document Type: OSC Translated Text


(Abbas) How far has the intelligence service gone in terms of qualitative preparedness?

(Al-Shahwani) One can say that Iraq at present possesses a professional intelligence service. The intelligence service is much better and more advanced than its predecessor under the former regime, technically and in terms of national loyalty. However, in view of the abnormal security situation in the country, the intelligence service does not practice its duties in many fields outside Iraq, as it is supposed to do. The country's circumstances require the intelligence service to focus its activity inside the country, yet it has had a presence in some fields in some of the neighboring countries. So far, we have not been able to work in more distant areas, such as Europe and other countries.

The rest is here.
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Open Source: Cole with Wright

Here is the transcript of my appearance Monday evening with Lawrence Wright of the New Yorker on Chris Lydon's PRI show, Open Source, to discuss radical Islamism and Iraq after Zarqawi.
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Dems Back Phased Withdrawal
Republicans: Stay and Stay, Spend and Spend

Senate Democrats have come up with two resolutions, with most of the coalescing around the vaguer one.

AP describes the more popular resolution:

' The resolution would urge _ but not require _ the administration to begin "a phased redeployment of U.S. forces" in 2006 and, by year's end, give Congress its plan for "continued redeployment" thereafter. Additionally, the resolution calls for American troops, which have been focused on combat operations in Iraq, to more quickly switch to "a limited mission of training and logistic support of Iraqi security forces, protection of U.S. personnel and facilities, and targeting counterterrorism activities." It also maps out steps Senate Democrats say the fledgling Iraqi government must take to lay the foundation for a successful democracy and calls for an international conference to help Iraq overcome problems it faces. '

My hero, Russ Feingold, and other heroes Barbara Boxer and John Kerry, are pushing a more specific withdrawal plan with a July 1, 2007 deadline for withdrawal of most US forces. AP says:

' It would require the administration to withdraw all combat troops from Iraq by July 1, 2007, leaving in place only U.S. troops essential to training Iraqi security forces, conducting counterterrorism operations and protecting U.S. personnel and facilities. "A deadline gives Iraqis the best chance for stability and self-government, and most importantly, it allows us to begin refocusing on the true threats that face our country," Kerry and Feingold, two Democrats eying potential presidential candidacies in 2008, said in a joint statement. '

The old traitor Karl Rove, who revealed the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame to the Iranians (and everyone else), castigated the Democrats' proposals as "cut and run." Rove wants us to go on spending $5 billion a month in Iraq, and to go on losing thousands of maimed young people.

Here are some other examples of cutting and running:

The United States withdrew from the Philippines in 1946.

Britain withdrew from India in 1947.

France withdrew from Morocco and Tunisia in 1956.

France withdrew from Algeria in 1962.

Rove only has two choices. He either has to agree that these withdrawals were a good thing, or he has to blame Britain and France for cutting and running. Does this mean he thinks the US should try to re-colonize the Philippines? Does he want France to take back over Algeria? By the way, neither India nor Algeria was stable when the colonial power withdrew.

Either, Mr. Rove, the US is a Republic among independent nations, or it is a Colonial Power intent on subjecting other peoples. If it is a Republic, it should be leaving Iraq to the Iraqis. If it is a Colonial Power, then it is doomed. Because no instance of successful foreign colonialism on the nineteenth-century model has been implemented in the past 50 years, for the simple reason that the peoples of the global south are socially and politically mobilized-- literate, urban, industrial, skilled, networked-- in a way they never were before in history. And no mobilized people can be successfully occupied.

The US military presence in Iraq is retarding a political settlement. It makes the Shiites and Kurds cocky and unwilling to compromise with the Sunni Arabs. It keeps the Iraqi army weak and ineffective, lacking proper armor or an air force. And US military tactics of search and destroy are turning progressively more Iraqis against us over time. The longer the US stays in Iraq, the more likely it is that one day one of our cities will be attacked by Iraqi terrorists bearing a grudge for Fallujah or Tal Afar or whatever other Iraqi cities we plan to destroy.

And, about that $5 billion a month. I live in the Detroit area. This is what my city looks like:



Could we please have just one of those $5 billion dollar installments you are squandering in Iraq, Mr. Rove, to -- you know-- fix up Detroit a little bit. I'd say those windows need replacing. And since you painted all those schools over there, maybe you wouldn't mind painting some of the buildings in my area. We don't have any oil, but we have a helluva port and enormous industrial capacity. It is just that, you know, the Federal government has been busy rebuilding a foreign country (which somehow still seems to be in flames and run down, despite having its own petroleum). And somehow my city just isn't a priority. In fact, you can correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Rove, but my recollection is that neglect of Detroit has driven its population below 1 million, and that as a result, the Federal government actually cut back on the aid it gives the city. Is that really good urban policy? Wouldn't it make more sense to bring Detroit back to life and reinvigorate the American Midwest?

Is it cut and run? Or is it 'withdraw and spend American money on Americans'?

And what is the Republican plan? Is it "Stay and stay, and Spend and Spend?"
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26 Dead in Civil War
3,000 Demonstrate in Karbala

Japan has announced that it will withdraw its 600 troops from Iraq over the next few weeks. The announcement was probably prompted by the plan to turn security in Muthanna province, where the Japanese soldiers are stationed, over to Iraq.

Japan joins Italy in this firm commitment to withdrawal. Muthanna is under the control of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and its Badr Corps militia, and presumably they will provide what security there is in the province.

The British appear to just have given up on lawless Maysan, a stronghold of the displaced Marsh Arabs, who have largely gone over to Muqtada al-Sadr. Their departure from Amara strikes me as more a surrender than a withdrawal. Amara has not been kind to British troops, ever since WW I.

The Australian troops that had been at Samawah in Muthanna will be moved to Nasiriyah, to replace the departing Italians.

Three US troops have been charged with premeditated murder for shooting Iraqi detainees.

The US military operation against Ramadi continued on Monday, though details were scarce. It is a little odd that we can have a major military operation, of great importance to the ongoing war, and yet know almost nothing of its course. Likewise, I have seen no reporting on the progress of the supposed sweep of guerrillas in Baghdad. It doesn't in any case appear to have put a crimp in the car bomb industry, as yet.

Reuters reports civil war violence in Iraq:

In central Baghdad, a suicide car bomber killed 4 and wounded 10 in an attack on an Iraqi army checkpoint.

In south Baghdad, a car bomb killed 3 and wounded 3 in an attack on a police checkpoint.

Guerrillas detonated a roadside bomb near the Shiite shrine city of Najaf, south of the capital, killing one and wounding 5.

In the Shiite shrine city of Karbala, guerrillas assassinated a senior police officer and injured two of his bodyguards.

Al-Zaman/ AFP say that [Ar.] guerrillas assassinated Gen. Khudair Abdallah `Ibad, the deputy police chief of Fallujah. In Mosul, guerrillas assassinated an officer in the former Baath army.

Guerrillas assassinated Makki Mandil al-Maliki, a military commander in Amara, as well as a junior officer, while wounding a third officer. They also killed 4 policemen in the Imarat al-Sakniyah district in central Amara.

Gunmen killed 3 family members in Mada'in.

In and around Baqubah, five civilians were killed and five wounded in a firefight.

In the Kifl area south of Hilla, a roadside bomb killed a civilian and wounded 5.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat/ AFP report that some three thousand persons demonstrated in Karbala on Monday morning against the US military's arrest of Aqil al-Zubaidi, the head of the provincial council. Al-Zubaydi, from the Shiite Fadhila [Virtue] Party (a non-Muqtada branch of the Sadr movement), is under house arrest at the center of the city and stands accused of involvement in terrorist attacks. Shaikh Muhammad al-Hasnawi warned the Americans of an explosion of popular rage if this sort of thing went on.
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